Get Used to It: Ep. 81, "AB101 Demonstrations"

uh [Applause] this [Music] hi welcome to get used to it i'm sheila kewell and i put this show together every month so that we can have a conversation primarily about issues that affect the gay and lesbian community for you to share and hopefully join in wherever you're watching this it's almost impossible for us to talk about anything except what happened on september 11th and i know that most of us have been talking about this and i hope we'll continue to today we had planned a show and we're going to do the show about a 10th anniversary of an issue of an uprising of a response from the gay and lesbian community in los angeles that happened because our former governor pete wilson decided to veto a bill that would have protected us from discrimination in the workplace we think there are lessons that we learned and lessons may be to be learned and i have three wonderful guests here to talk about this today uh first is tori osborne who is the executive director of the liberty hill foundation which is a wonderful foundation that funds grassroots organizing change not charity as the organization puts it but ten years ago torrey was the executive director of the la uh gay and lesbian center welcome tori glad you're here glad to be here our second guest is uh phil wilson who is the founding director of the african american aids institute and also a very recent recipient of a a ford foundation grant that only went to 20 leaders in the entire united states though i understand 3000 were nominated a leadership grant congratulations phil and thank you for joining us today well thank you and i'm glad to be here glad you're here our third guest is peter mackler who is the southern california policy liaison for the california department of health services but 10 years ago he was the southern california coordinator for national coming out day and has a personal story to tell about that time but tori let's start with you because you're sort of my favorite historian for uh stuff in the movement and especially here uh tell tell us a little bit about what happened ten years ago this this uh what this bill was about and what this veto kind of set in motion well the story is about a gay riot i mean we are in a movement that was founded by another gay riot in in greenwich village a few years earlier but this story is about the community in the in los angeles essentially hitting the streets upward of 50 000 people over six or seven weeks all those every single night for 17 days in a level of militants that as one state trooper said to me had not been seen in the state of california since the watts riots now remember this was about six months before the l.a riots of 1992. but here's the context it was 1991 governor wilson was running uh had had just run and beaten senator well now senator dianne feinstein for governor by a very slim margin less than one percent about 110 000 votes which was arguably it had been credited to the gay community to gay republicans and others who had voted for wilson as opposed to feinstein because he had uh campaigned very aggressively saying he would sign the centerpiece of the gay legislative agenda for 15 years in california which was called ab101 assembly bill 101 it was a very simple job equity bill an anti workplace discrimination a bill that said that the state assemblyman terry friedman had put forward um and uh he had been i mean he had waffled at all wilson had said he would sign it feinstein of course it said he would sign it now and it had been something it was a you know son of or daughter of ab101 which art agnost had put forward and there was a whole history centerpiece of the gay legislative agenda very simple here's the context you have you know act up meetings it's the height of the aids epidemic it's the height of the mobilization of the gay and lesbian community hundreds and hundreds of people are volunteering hundreds and for aids organizations for gay and lesbian organizations people are writing checks you have the gay community mobilized as never before even before even before this you mean yeah you know that's what i'm saying is that in the late 80s from the mid 80s when they when the aids epidemic really hit the game was the gay community um in los angeles as well as elsewhere around the country you had this community response to aid so you had all the aids organizations that had come into being and you had gay and lesbian activism you had queer nation at its height you had a group called in los angeles that was quite influential at the time called league america you had literally hundreds of people going to act up meetings hundreds of people going to queer nation meetings you had people mobilized so about 30 days before september 30th which was the day by which wilson was supposed to sign or or let this bill go um a young a young aids activist a person with aids pwa named rob roberts started a hunger strike right smack dab in the middle of west hollywood and he was doing a countdown on and this is an aids activist primarily on this bill and at the time i remember sitting in my office at the gay lesbian center saying aids job equity what's the connection um and he did a hunger strike and when on sunday afternoon september 30th the governor betrayed the gay community capitulated to the right wing that was lobbying heavily and vetoed this bill against what he'd said his campaign promised rob roberts and a few aids activists who had had a hunger strike basically became the magnet for hundreds of us who went down to the middle of west hollywood and beg and and basically engaged in you know traffic stop stopping traffic civil disobedience and sort of hit the streets and then that night um over a period of three weeks intensively and then sporadically over several weeks thereafter there was this intensive you know street demonstrations and and as i said remember i said to you like kind of aids activism which i was really engaged in running the center at the height of the aids epidemic they can kind of what's the connection well what it really was was the depth of the injury the the indignity that a community that had worked so hard in the face of genocidal neglect by the federal government to build this this beautiful and you know kind of powerful and and desperate but very far-reaching community response to aids all these different organizations hospices and health care centers and social support groups and and a community that had been mobilized that was losing our friends that was going to to funerals every day that was you know joining arms without being arrested with act up that that suddenly somebody would dare to say that we legally couldn't work i don't know what the community means i mean there were a number of activists you know the people who like the six people that are at every meeting and then nine people in a dozen people and whatever but this was beyond that well it started with the activists i mean that first demonstration maybe 300 of us and i mean i i was there and i can tell you it was pretty much the same folks there were people calling each other on the phone saying do you know what pete wilson did today yeah there was i was already kind of activated because people knew rob roberts had been there for 30 days and he was covered in the paper and kind of this lone pwa became a moral voice he was kind of our gandhi of that moment and so but the so the first kind of set of folks that showed up at that little crescent you know triangle at crescent heights in west hollywood were largely the activists although there was there were i remember richard rillard was there who was the head executive director i mean not executive the publisher of the um advocate the editor of the advocate at the time it was a little bit more mainstream of a crowd you know some of the suits started to join the demonstrations that first night maybe had a few of the kids young guys from the bars out on the streets but for the most part it was the next night and the next night and the next night that the word spread and you know being on the streets for those of us who have done it in different movements is a very powerful experience it's a very empowering experience to take public space that that isn't yours you know to kind of take whether it's taking over buildings in the student movement of the 60s to basically feel so strongly that you need to make a moral statement that you basically will break the law uh and you and you know a few people will always do that there's a few radicals that will always do that but the depth of this indignity called to so many more people who had never been on the streets before and that's really the narrative that that's that's the centrally powerful narrative of this was that people whether they had been the suits and they now came in the streets for the first time which i think is peter's story maybe but or whether they were people who had never been anywhere near a demonstration but just felt moved pulled like a magnet to where people were just saying no with their bodies as many other people in other movements had before well you know the sense of outrage it's again i i've told said to everybody let's not stretch too many comparisons here because we've we've all been talking about kind of what happened in our personal response to uh september 11th and our our communities are our friends but one of the things that struck me about one of the many many many discussions about america's response so far is this feeling of a loss of innocence and one article that struck me said how many times can america lose its innocence you know every time we're feeling betrayed or something has happened or whatever we keep thinking gee my bubble's been burst again but it felt as though 10 years ago there were a lot of us that thought you know the government will never do anything good for us so never mind but there were more and more and more that apparently felt i can't believe this i worked for wilson i i voted for him he said he'd be with us um did you get a sense that this sort of extended group expanded the the active out participation i mean that's the thing is that people who were coming onto the streets were coming out of the closet some you know they may have been able to write a check to apla or even volunteer at apla without being out on the clock out of the closet if you were in the streets committing civil disobedience putting your body down on the street and blocking traffic and mind you these demonstrations were quite extraordinary they started in west hollywood the next night they were in century city and down in mid wilshire they were at the airport they were uh they almost went on out on 405 one night i have heard stories about they were in silver lake they were in beverly hills where the chant was we're here we're queer and we're not going shopping and there was and this is actually another whole piece of it is that the transformative power of civil disobedience in of really of group action of collective action shows that from outrage was really forged a kind of a joy and a sense of empowerment people would go back because it was really a wonderful place to be the sense of solidarity the sense of of collectivity the sense of people coming together for a cause greater than their own uh individual you know whatever whatever their experience was and and i think that's the power of of direct action that's the power of demonstrations it's a particular power of civil disobedience when people are moved far enough to commit it there's nothing really more empowering and you know i i think that the shock waves uh in turn did reach people who were brand new to coming out brand new to social change brand new to the gay and lesbian movement and it was one of those catalytic experiences that i think had impact for you know forever on the people who were part of it some of them were more cynical than i had been you know i've been kind of you know doing civil disobedience for a long time but but a lot of cheerfully so too well not cheerfully necessarily i mean but but with it but it wasn't new to me all i mean is that no one would really characterize you as a cynic generally just because you're a realist i mean no but i do but i am i am sometimes cynical about what tactics are you know will resonate with people i don't i mean there are a lot of times that i've seen people chain themselves to this and that that like it's like it's like been a little blip that's gone nowhere this was a a mass organizing experience and an empowering experience for tens of thousands of people well phil you've been involved in a number of aspects of this movement and other movements um where were you at this point in your life well you know ten years ago i was the aids coordinator for the city of los angeles and a special assistant to mayor bradley uh the one period in my life where i was a bureaucrat uh and i have a pursuit as well exactly a little different spin on it than than tori i think that there were a few things that that were going on first of all i think the tour was absolutely right that one of the reasons why this happened is that quite frankly i think it was the height of the gay and lesbian activism i mean that people were mobilized they were energized but the other thing that happened is that because of that activism and because of quite frankly you know ab101 was the result of a lot of suit work if you will you know the activists and the lobbyists which is you know a lot of the work that i was doing at the time you know the suits basically said we could do this you know and react within the law and make it all work that's right now kind of the insider outsider strategy and and also the message was in the face of age you know this is a part of human dignity now that of course the governor is is going to sign and so when he vetoed it and i think it's also important that he vetoed it he didn't do a pocket veto you know he could have waited one day and it just would have gone away i think people would have been angry but he felt the need to send a message to both sides you know and i think what happened in the face of all of the dying and all of the the grieving that we were going through for him to say we don't matter you know you know created a reaction uh that caused the events to happen and also i think that there's a context and relating different movements i often think about the things that happen within the gay and lesbian movement and compare them to my experience as an african american and remember this is basically six or seven months before the los angeles uprising that you know was precipitated by the rodney king virtus and i think that in some ways there was a relationship because in the rodney king case black people felt that we knew that we were being brutalized by the police but we also knew that if if they got caught on camera when you couldn't deny it you know our sense of justice now would say this is wrong and you have to do something and the gay enlistment community felt if we're able to convince our legislators you know on both houses know that we deserve you know to be able to work you know and to have insurance you know and to be able to care for our loved ones who are dying now it's a small thing for the state of california to say that you can't be fired just because you're a gay and lesbian person and for the governor to say no you don't count now just like for the jurors in simi valley to say even when we see it you know we don't care you know i think that was a part of the rage so for me i think there are multiple things going on part of it is that i think a lot unlike before a lot of suits you know were on the streets now we're in the streets because basically it was the suits who were leading the ab101 the relationship between aids and the job thing was very clear to me you know as a person living living with aids it made absolutely sense you know what what rob was doing in in santa monica you know um that it was about yes a lot of us are dying you know but we're human beings yeah and and at that point in time any place where you can kind of you could stake that out to say i'm a person too i'm equal to i count two you know was absolutely a big deal for us now and so i think a lot of those things contributed to the magnitude of the response i think that what was shocking was not so much that the riots happened but that they didn't expect you know queer people to do that they didn't expect the sissies to do that no they didn't expect the to do that now and the fact that gay men and lesbians you know basically said that we're that that basically went to the streets the other part now that people don't talk about a lot because i think that a lot of these things are uh kind of its serendipity that the different things coming together at the same time and there was an incident that actually happened in santa monica and then people filled the streets and then cars were were being blocked and people were angry about that and there was an incident where someone caught someone a from a car you know and that was kind of one of those things that was either an additional spark or an added flame to it but it was just another reminder that what pete wilson was really saying is that there was a group of californians that were less than other californians and at that point in our history no we could not take that well it was interesting to me too because i think that people put their faith as i uh started to say with tori i think we are kind of a good community and any time you'll give us just a little bit of something to hope for that somebody will actually treat us well we we turn into puppy dogs in many ways well for years you know elected officials or candidates they just had to show up they didn't have to vote the right way then all they do is show up take a picture they just had to not send our checks back that's right exactly exactly so no and and even even i think many of us felt that we were not asking for a lot no quite frankly i don't think that many of us felt that ab101 was even asking to be equal is there any staying power though after all of this happens you know we've seen as torrey said people have gone out on the street they've gotten arrested it's joyful it's sort of fun for some people you know and we have these stories and we save our little plastic handcuffs you know for our scrapbooks etc and then it's kind of over do you see that there was any long-term effect from this in the community or different parts of the community i actually disagree with it so i don't think it's ever over i think that every time people step out that they can't step all the way back you know and i think that it's the it's it's the little piece that you can't get all the way back in that actually makes a movement run it's the engine of movements you know and so now the person who came out on the streets and maybe he he or she never came out on the streets again but they were a different person you know their vote was different their speech was different now there's something about about a person that's moved you know when your body and your spirit and your soul says i have to take action you know and i think quite frankly you know um as we kind of look backwards and we look forward particularly in light of september 11th now it's going to require a lot of us to kind of look at those experiences and say what made me move what was organic in my soul that made me take action because i think they're going going to be lots of occasions where we're going to need to ask ourselves you know what kind of action are we going to take and what will it say about us you know it's interesting too when you talk about crossing that line which of course i think is different for every single person we also i think as americans want to be obedient in a way i don't mean just law abiding but i mean kind of you know as good as we can be with very few exceptions i mean sometimes activists know no matter what you do america's not going to totally be with you so you're going to always be at odds you know with the majority you don't have to be angry you don't have to give up but you're just always going to be in that position but i think for a lot of people that got involved in those weeks there was as you said tory a place that you've sort of crossed it when you go into the street or you show up or you get arrested or hurt or you publicly admit that the governor of california doesn't think you count but it's hard because you've still got neighbors and you're still going to have thanksgiving dinner um you know where you have to kind of explain what you did and i think people sometimes feel still a little bit ashamed that they kind of went against regular life and were disobedient well i think that it's it would be wonderful if in fact we could we were to get to the place and i think some people do where you don't feel shame but i don't think the feeling of the shame or having to go through the process of having the nervousness to deal with your actions i don't think that that in any way diminishes the power of the action well that leads us right to you doesn't it peter i mean it's um it's it's one of many many many stories that we've been talking about more or less in the abstract but tell us a little bit of what happened to you you sort of when and what right well now now we do hear from one of the true suits and and taking a line from a few moments ago i i did lose my innocence at that time uh and i'd become an activist six or seven years prior to prop 64 1986 when lyndon larouche had tried to had put a uh initiative on the california ballot to actually quarantine anybody with hiv i had only come out about a year so before had absolutely no sense of community no sense of belonging i had just said the words i'm gay i had no idea what that meant um and prop 64 in 1986 gave me that sense of community and the way that i empowered myself through the community was as a suit on on this side of the of the street working in the elected officials offices working in the capitol working here in city hall trying to put different pieces of legislation together that made the most sense for our community uh being part of a fundraising movement with the with meckler the municipal elections committee of los angeles which was a powerful pac it was a political action committee what pacs do is to raise big money and give away big money um frankly never had i gone to an act up meeting and i had enormous respect and admiration for those people who who did but it just it wasn't it wasn't me uh the suits was where i i was empowered well then comes the the veto of course and certainly watching uh the maturation of ab101 and and also hearing of course candidate wilson and then governor wilson saying that that he was going to sign it and and feeling that same same betrayal you know one day before the veto if someone had told me that i will spend the better part of the next 17 nights on the streets in my jeans and my national coming out they sweatshirt and and our t-shirt um i would say you know you're crazy if someone had told me that six weeks later on november 15th i was actually going to get hit by a by a police officer with a baton on top of my head because i'm part of this demonstration i would have said you're crazy if someone told me that i would take that action one step further and actually sue the city of los angeles i would say you're crazy but come the veto on on september 30th uh that was where we needed to be at that time i would wear my suits during the day and then change it to my tell me you heard about the veto but how does it how do you bridge from that information and your life at that moment to needing to do something that you hadn't done before it was very interesting because that evening i was actually hosting imru or gay and lesbian radio show on national coming out day which is celebrated october 11th so we're here at on on september 30th this is just coming up in a couple weeks later and we get the phone call of the of the veto and of these folks coming together now on at the triangle on on crescent heights and here i am on the radio urging people to get out and to demonstrate and to have our voices heard i'm urging people now to do something that a day before i can never see myself doing but it was where we needed to be at that time and it felt right just as the suits had felt right going into into the capitol this was this was how we needed to be this was what what we needed to do to to not sit back and say it's okay to treat me like that it was it was a very natural progression for me my own experiences throughout those six or seven weeks each step that i took the first time that i did go out on the streets and then and the radio show of course and and each demonstration uh and the subsequent law school lawsuit it was an absolute natural progression for me now did you feel did you feel that you wouldn't be attacked by the police i mean there's a point at which you think oh i'm just going to demonstrate but they're not going to shoot me because they don't do that here and then things go sour sometimes and all of a sudden of course in many many of the circumstances that we've seen the police attack people who are peacefully demonstrating but there's that moment of disbelief isn't there where you just can't believe they're going to do that oh absolutely throughout the entire those entire 17 days or so you know how could they be treating us like this number one and number two maybe this is a bit imperial of me but i felt that even though i was on the streets as was everybody else in the same genes as everybody else saying well that's you know don't they know i'm a suit during the day i work for the government right exactly don't they know that that you know and and i'm here now but this isn't like and what it was certainly the real me at that time but absolutely i felt that that i would be uh um uh barricaded from from that moment i'm sorry go ahead well and and taking your your question one step further the instant that i was struck by the police officers this was at the married hotel out in um woodland hills that instant when i was falling to the ground and when i was on the ground there were so many things whirling through my brain not to mention probably a couple hundred thousand brain cells just getting hit by a police baton but part of that was also oh my god what has happened to me i was just hit by a police officer and it was the shame and it was the guilt and it was the fear and it was oh my god how could this be me this is you know this is me falling to the ground it was an absolute sense of of great disbelief there was also a a um a sense that i would only come to understand about seven or eight years later when we actually settled my lawsuit with the city of los angeles there was a sense that this was much bigger than me that this had absolutely that that the the action that had just been perpetrated on me had actually nothing to do with me but at the same time i'm also feeling the guilt and the shame and the fear and the pain and had all of these feelings just you know each one of their own separate importance so how did you come to the decision to file a suit because that's another big thing i mean i was only a lawyer for about two seconds in my life but plaintiffs in these cases in employment discrimination cases or police brutality cases it's hard it's another line that you cross you know it's not just going off the curb into the street you have you really do make yourself an individual i won't say target so much as uh you know you're famous i mean you have gone another step how did you come to take that it was actually not that difficult for me uh-huh um as you know so the bruise helped the boobs helped you know great evidence um it uh you know as you said i was the the southern california coordinator for national coming out day at the time so all i was doing in the community was supporting people and taking their next step it became so obvious to me that if i hid behind my fear of being public about the brutality that i would be hypocrite and that my next step at that time was to go public into file to file a lawsuit uh my attorneys john davidson and jenny pies overland the legal defense and co-counseled by the aclu i'd often use the word brave and courageous in describing myself and my actions about being public about the lawsuit um i knew that i was taking a great risk going out that publicly i was in business at the time and what have you i felt anything but brave or courageous i just felt this was my next step and this was something i had an obligation to myself to do and of course i had an obligation to the community at large both the gay and lesbian and the non-gay community uh to make sure that no one else was brutalized by a police officer under the circumstances that i was and i had i had a commitment had an obligation to that and the settlement was not just about getting you some bucks either no the settlement was not just about the bucks you know was nice of course but uh the settlement also included a few pieces of police reform uh the circumstances behind my uh uh attack was i had asked a police officer who was pushing a few of us uh for his his uh badge number and his name and it's at that time that i saw him lift his baton above his head and come crashing down on me his badge number was not visible his name was not visible and as it turns out we found out subsequently that there was nothing in the police manual about having your badge number or your name visible and about actually giving that information to somebody who was asking for it so as part of our settlement we mandated that uh the police reform the police training manual be changed which has been to say that other than in tactical riot situation that whenever a citizen asks a police officer for his or her name or badge number that they are obligated to give that information and and that came through our lawsuit and that to me brought me back to november 15 1991 when i was on the ground i'm saying you know this is so much bigger than me what is this all about that answered the question for me that's what it was about for me well you know you've talked actually all of you have mentioned the word movement and we've heard a lot of talk obviously recently about whether there is uh a movement whether there will be a peace movement whether there will be what you know sort of what what people will decide to do do you think there was a growth in the movement here or the community's agenda or notions of itself after this uprising did make a difference i certainly think it made a difference i mean one of the things that us peter and peter responded to that that struck me and and sadly as an example of where i don't think the community has grown enough is the question of uh did you the thing about the police being violent or that you think that this could happen to you and peter said no he didn't think it happened uh to him and and the difference in this is a race question is i know it could happen to me sure you know and um in fact one of the stories that i tell people that is that i think is a funny story was the first civil disobedience in washington when activists were arrested and david mixner called me to say phil you should get arrested we're going to washington you should get arrested with us uh and and we were talking and what have you and he says and it's really important now that there'll be some african americans with us now and i said to david i said when you get there there'll be lots of african-americans in jail in the dc jail system you know and but the point is now as a black person you know i'm i'm not surprised when that happened you know and one of the things that i think happened somewhat but not enough is that i think you know gay and lesbian people particularly gay men you know had an experience that a lot of us have regularly you know and and and that's part of understanding you know ways to break down the them and us now that it was an experience where you know there's more of us in that experience and certainly i think that that's a question that is very timely now you know is this whole mentality about them and us and one of the things that we're going to struggle with now over the the foreseeable future you know this kind of you know who is the enemy and how do you fight a war and who is them and who is us and who are we protecting ourselves from and also what do we do i mean it's a question of each individual i know we talk about movement and we talk about community but what i found is that it's sort of one person at a time made the decision or is making the decision to you know to do it and i hear a lot of people saying today i don't know what to do what should i do should i should i donate blood you know they said they've got lots of blood should i give money but there's also this sense that there may be some things we're not going to like that the government has done you know we liked what the legislature did they got this bill through barely actually there's a great story of senator leroy green a state senator at the time who was the deciding vote on ab101 when it came over to the senate he had just had surgery and was not supposed to be in the capitol and they brought him in i mean the story is they brought him in on a stretcher i have no idea if they brought him they did they brought him in on a stretcher and he was the vote that got that bill back over to the assembly for concurrence i mean that and probably took a lot of heat for it but it was that individual kind of decision you know and the question is what do we do and clearly a lot of people made a decision i think part of the confusion about this i mean things got much clearer when he vetoed it the unity the outpouring the militants that wasn't just a few act up folks but it was tens of thousands of los angeles queers most of whom had not ever been on the streets before things became very clear very quickly with that vote i mean rob roberts was a leader in a moral voice that drew people but it was very clear i think part of the challenge uh now and we're in the immediate aftermath even if it's a you know a couple of months after the september 11th tragedy but is that the stakes are very very high and the lessons are the potential lessons and potential implications are very huge there's a generation of us that when we hear that that you know i mean that are so that have a grounding in america's own responsibility in foreign policy that has pissed people off ever since the second world war and before that and so and are also cynical about the government i when i turn on the tv we're now in the phase where you turn on the tv and biological and chemical warfare are the specter raised by these the terrorists the logical conclusion of the tariffs well i mean i want to tell you i'm from a generation that does not believe everything our government tells us because we remember the gulf of tonkin resolution and we remember another war and i can't you can't compare the wars believe me i know this but there are many many conflicting things happening one of the most moving things to me and when i talked about the joy on the streets it's i was talking to somebody who was involved in those three demonstrations that had never been active before and was uh activated by those demonstrations in west hollywood and then all of los angeles a different street a different night 10 years ago and he said to me he said you know we don't talk much about the joy because we want it to be kept for history forever as the anger and the righteousness and the moral statement and he said but what brought us back night after night was the community was the sense of being part of something greater than ourselves and the sense of love and he said well suppose it was anger that got us there it was love that kept us there well if there is one lesson that i think people are still grappling with how to talk about because all of a sudden it's a war economy and the domestic agenda shot and immigration reform is shot and all the issues that any of us care about are not front and center okay and we're all trying to figure out oh my god what are we going to do about meeting our budgets and what are we going to do about the people who are going to be more impacted at home and what are we going to do about the victims and you know my partner lost a really good friend on the plane and she's in in primary grief and on and on but the thing that is most stunning to me and i will speak only for myself is that the universal truth of the power of love is was the magnificent message whether it was everybody on those cell phones when they knew they were going to be about to die connecting with people and saying i love you i mean do we all wonder what we're going to do if we're in a similar situation well now we know because all of them did it who possibly could or whether it was the love where class and race and every other difference in new york city evaporated for an instant uh as as a community was built of extraordinary self-sacrifice and love we saw the best of america my mother has never flown an american flag in front of her house and i said to her so what's with all these american flags she says torah i got two of them i said why she said communal mourning and solidarity with a part of america i thought was lost now that is good so if the conversation becomes about democracy and becomes about you know the if we look at the roots of terrorism and look at the opposite and as one brilliant writer said you know those words i love you that came out of people that is the greatest defense against terrorism and if our foreign policy starts to not just be about war and power and imposing our economic system but it is also has another ethic underneath it along the line along somewhere along the end of the way we may see an end to terrorism and if it doesn't we won't especially if the discourse is about real democracy exactly and not about jinglism and not about being the same you know and about celebrating our diversity you know we should be outraged that barbara lee got death threats we should be outraged you know and that she was accused of not being patriotic you know she was being extremely patriotic that's what patriotism is about now we should be outraged you know that beer bill maher you know got challenged because i lost his job after all the other things he said you know that are really creepy and bad because he said that they weren't and in fact they weren't cowards you know what they did was horrible it was hateful it was evil they weren't but it was not cowardice these are individuals who are willing to die for what they believe yeah and i think they have to we have to take that very best even more that's right seriously than the word you know then the word cowardice and relative to our community you know understanding that we are a part of this you know there was a gay man on that flight from newark you know there was a gay man on the roof of the world trade tower who was on a cell phone talking his liver as the building collapsed you know one of the stories that was in the wall street journal was about a gay couple who had been together for 25 years and the and and the the one of the partners was a security guard now who was killed no and so all of us were there regardless of race or or sexual orientation or creed or religion or any of those issues you know it was about us and where we go from here has to be about us i think we also have to look at the real definition of terrorism and who really are the terrorists why are we not taking a stronger stance against falwell and against robertson for their comments a few days later saying that they point the finger at feminists abortionists the gay and lesbian community who wants to make that lifestyle normal and liberals liberals pagans people for the american way you know um he's made a great coalition for us actually exactly exactly and and how you know how i see them as much of a terrorist as bin laden and why in a way we are i mean there's a difference it depends on who we is in a way it's there you know the american people how do i know what they think i read the you know i listen on the talk shows i i read what they write into the papers you know in the letters and so and so from you know such and such a city they were universally castigating right that uh that conversation that he had with pat robertson it was kind of a very good thing that it was revealed in terms of what a terrorist a terrorist religious terrorist you know he is all right now phil just used the word fatches i remember someone going back now to the conversation for about about the veto when wilson gave a speech at ucla was pouring pouring rain a couple hundred of us out there again adolf wilson adolf wilson and he was calling us our community fascists and you know and that hurt a lot of people uh my mother also not not a you know also uh may not have a flag on on her our gay flag actually at that time but had written a letter to pete wilson first political letter she had ever written saying i am the proud mother of a gay man how dare you call my son a fascist so that was her gay patriotism if you will you know 10 years ago just like you know your mother keeping two flags up on on the house now and and we'll take those we'll take those fights we can get them there was a there was an article you know there's been so many emails that i can't keep them all straight but there was one that said that uh actually gloria steinem said that that the most revolutionary emotion is empathy and i really believe that i feel like you know the gay and lesbian community has won every time we've been able to make our case personally politically in a way that has inspired empathy uh and the there's a there was somebody wrote that the beginning empathy is the beginning of morality if you could step out yourself outside yourself and step in somebody's shoes or for just or just have a flash of understanding that it's the beginning of knitting together some kind of ethic or morality and when we talk about democracy whether we're talking about democracy at home i mean i am acutely aware because most of the work that i'm working on and now is on economic and racial justice and how much the roots of the riots in the april of 92 later on the la uprising are very similar to the roots of what causes terrorism when you have great vast desperate poverty and inequities and you have america imposing mcdonald's in countries where people don't have jobs where they can afford to buy mcdonald's and you have this growing gap between this global economy that is increasing the gap between rich and poor when you have uh you know hatred and bigotry and fanaticism thrive in those conditions and you know it's you whether you're looking at inner group uh ethnic inter-ethnic relations in los angeles or whether you're talking about religious differences internationally in in a new global world you know we have got to start dealing with these core issues and i think the gay and lesbian community actually has some things to teach about that some of them came alive during our own riot in los angeles and 10 years ago but i think in our own movement has has given us some gifts in terms of learning some of the lessons that need to be taken out into the world and suddenly it's ratcheted up to a global level but i i think we would do well to to examine um to examine our own kind of you know our own lessons hard hard fought and hard won about building community and the quest bridging difference what each individual does though when you were talking about barbara lee and i was also thinking about each individual person saying i'm leaving my house and going out to the street it isn't the kind of thing that you could say oh gee there's a big group i'm doing it as a group it's an individual thing a democracy is the most interesting intersection of the individual decision and the collective result barbara lee and i served in the assembly together she was already there when i came in and one of the things that she and a few others taught me right away is you just have your vote that's it's a big thing but you can have you can talk to other people you can try to persuade them you have your own bills but when you get right down to it what the people sent there up you you up there to do is you have your own individual vote that's all but you will be moved to vote in different ways only in so far as you feel connected to its very purpose that is greater than your individual she thought she she wouldn't be the only one that was an interesting thing to me and yet because she was the only one she's both singled out for praise appropriately so and singled out for you know castigation at least you opened up the space at least somebody claimed that because of her right you know i mean so the importance i'm not saying in isolation never but it becomes a collective act and i guess i've been saying to people don't wait to find out what the group wants you to do you know follow your heart but when you get out to the street you'll be absolutely amazed there's thousands of people and that's the challenge for this community right now actually no because i think that there are some of us who perceive that as a community we have something to lose now and so um a line is going to be drawn now and some folks are going to be on one side of the line and some folks are going to be on other side on the other side of the line as a community i think that some of us feel that we now have something loose i think that one of the one things that was powerful around ab101 that helped make it happen so i don't know if if we thought that we had anything to lose and then those of us who thought that we did realize that we didn't yeah so that pissed them off but i think that now there are a lot of us who do think that we have something to lose and so i think that there's a lot of political calculus you know that makes it difficult for folks to in fact follow their heart yeah and in fact be able to build empathy through that morality because it is the empathy the the morality that happens through empathy happens because we are true because we step out we we we we vote the right way not thinking that we're going to be the only one that's but voting because that's what we believe no we go out to the streets of santa monica because we're moved to do it and in fact we are surprised that there there are people out there also and that's the power you know because there's that connection when you get there says oh you're there too you know and that's the power one other thing one other way that we could affect some change because one place that we won't see our gay brothers is at the red cross as gay men we're not allowed to give blood still to this day you know 20 years into the aids epidemic and you know 15 years into into testing and know how to isolate the hiv hiv and we still cannot give blood as gay men so and yet we have our brothers non-gay brothers and sisters standing on lines to give blood as their contribution to this relief and again we are excluded well it's interesting i i actually heard an african-american young man say well at least i won't be racially profiled for a while and i was thinking about this thing about you know gay men can't give right arab americans are going to be experienced racial profiling and maybe the black community will get a break for a while you know it's like but there is this way in which at some point and i feel as if it's possible that there could be this new patriotism that that has an empathy for the world you know i saw driving actually to do this show i saw a card it had a heart like i heart new york but just a heart and an american flag and then a peace symbol and i thought yeah they're going for something here you know love is the best thing that we've seen i mean nobody has talked about in those terms and it sounds simple and corny but the bottom line is the power of love but this is the only thing that can fight hey do we know this better than anybody else or what that's one of the things i remember actually all of us at different times talking to each other about this about how uh in a way we have been you know an army of lovers by fail remember by the police and we've been discriminated against and all this stuff and frankly what we have to teach here all we're about is who we love i mean but at some point if you're willing to say it's not about what i lose if i give up a little bit and then they give up a little bit and somebody else give and and if you if it's in a spirit of kind of sacrifice and i i don't know i think we're going to be seeing a new movement it's not just going to be a teach-in about central asia we're all going to learn more about afghanistan than we ever thought we would know and that's a good thing teach-ins are a good thing it's always good knowledge is good but ultimately this is going to be some sort of revolution of values and of the heart and i think that the gay and lesbian community has a lot to say about it is not a naive thing you know how they go oh peace love joy like it has no connection to the real world could nothing could be further from the truth because we learned that love is a very powerful real world approach not just naivete and that you pay for it every day pay for it every day say more now that that the the the what we know is that now being willing to love who whom we love is not a one-time occurrence you know that every day when you decide i'm gonna hold my boyfriend's hand i'll hold my girlfriend's hand or put that no photograph on my desk or not play no games with pronouns now every day you have to reaffirm your love now and the same thing i think around whatever movement that's going to happen out of us every day we we need to reaffirm our democracy we need to reaffirm that the foundation of our society is based on love you know and it's not something that's going to be short or quick or easy and that's okay and that is a perfect ending to this show we've come to the last minute of the show i want to thank the three of you so much it's always wonderful to have you on the show i hope you enjoyed this as much as i did i can't even leave you with a meaningful message because i couldn't sum up everything we're all feeling in one sentence so i guess just echoing what we've been saying here at the end think about the power of love in all of this the practicality of it the basic power of it and i hope we can all get used to it [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you