This comes directly from an announcement made by the National Black Justice Coalition:

Moving Beyond History: LGBT Civil Rights in a Post-Racial America?
A National Dialogue with the National Black Justice Coalition

“Our National Town Hall focusing on the intersection of race and sexual orientation is only a few weeks away! Moving Beyond History will be a conversation between African American lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people and mainstream LGBT organizations. This groundbreaking discussion will be held on March 28th, 2009 at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco, CA.

African-American LGBT people find themselves at the center of a controversial action taken by the NAACP—but this time, the nation’s oldest civil rights group is advocating on their behalf. The passage of California’s Proposition 8 has forced the realization of the gay rights struggle as central to the goal of civil rights for all Americans, and last week this resulted in action, with the groundwork in place for meaningful progress. In a historic action the NAACP wrote California legislators asking them to overturn Prop 8. This national dialogue is particularly important given the racial tensions revealed in the aftermath of the passage of Proposition.”

Click here for more information.

Deb Price, in “Educators fail gay students of color,” an article article at The Detroit News (2/23/2009), describes a report put out by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) that “captures what school feels like for America’s LGBT minority youth.”

Price writes:

The survey results paint a grim picture of kids so hardened to anti-gay remarks, shoving or worse that they don’t even bother reporting the abusive incidents to a school official or parent.

These students rarely read about LGBT people in textbooks, nor do they learn about gay history or people in class.

What they too often learn firsthand is that school is a place where they can expect to be hurt — emotionally or physically. The predictable but sad result is that many of these kids skip classes and see their grades drop.

To read the full report go to GLSEN’s website by clicking here.

California’s Prop. 8 legal challenge harkens back to 1966 housing measure, by Aurelio Rojas, in The Sacramento Bee (2/19/2009)

As Derald Granberg follows the legal challenge to Proposition 8 now before the California Supreme Court, he thinks back to 1966.

That year, in a case that divided Californians as much as same-sex marriage does today, the court overturned a voter-approved measure that had allowed housing discrimination based on race.

A demonstration will take place in New York in support of the New Jersey 4. Though One Struggle, One Fight is based in California and so won’t be able to attend this action, it’s important to get the word out there. And, who knows, maybe people who can attend will come across this blog. Here’s a description of the NJ4 case and the upcoming protest:

“Demand that the Manhattan district attorney stop persecuting the New Jersey 4.

On August 16, 2006, seven young African American lesbians were in New York’s West Village and were accosted by Dwayne Buckle, who eventually grabbed one of them, and a fight ensued. The seven women were arrested and charged with crimes such as “gang assault.” Three of them took plea agreements.

The other four lesbians Terrain Dandridge, Renata Hill, Patreese Johnson, and Venice Brown were put on trial in 2007. In the trial and the surrounding media they were dehumanized, villified, and called a “lesbian wolf-pack.” The prosecution and trial were so baised that the appeals court completely overturned all of Terrain’s convictions, and dismissed the indictment with prejudice, although by that time she had served almost two years in jail/prison. The appeals court also overturned the more serious charges against Renata and Venice, and they both got out on bail after serving more than two years. Patreese’s sentence was reduced, but not overturned. The district attorney is demanding that Renata be returned to prison, or face another trial.

It is time to demand that the NY county district attorney, Robert Morgenthau, stop persecuting Renata, Patreese and Venice. They fought back to defend each other. Had they not fought back successfully, one or more of them might have been killed or raped. Are rape, death, or prison the only three options open to lesbians who are attacked on the street?

Protest Monday March 2
noon - 1 p.m.
1 Hogan Place
Manhattan, NY
For more info e-mail: freenj4@yahoo.com”

You can also visit the Free the New Jersey 4 Blog

San Jose Mercury News, 2/8/2009: We are family, too: Vietnamese Gays and Lesbians join San Jose’s Tet parade, by Jesse Mangaliman: “Nguyen was one of 40 Vietnamese gays and lesbians from the Bay Area and other parts of California who marched during the traditional annual celebration of Tet, the lunar new year. It was only the second time in the parade’s history that gays and lesbians marched openly — and the first time that families joined them. For Vietnamese gay and lesbian groups, the event signaled a new kind of visibility and openness in a culture that traditionally views homosexuality as shameful — and something to hide.”

A recent Racialicious Blog post: When Xenophobia Meets Homophobia, by guest contributor Marisol LeBron, originally published at Nacla and Post Pomo Nuyorican Homo: “The Prop 8 fallout shows how much work remains to be done to connect the LGBT rights movement with other struggles for social justice across a spectrum of issues. Unfortunately, it may have taken the brutal murder of Ecuadoran immigrant Jose Oswaldo Sucuzhañay to highlight the invisibility of queer people of color – particularly queer immigrants – in LGBT rights discourse. His murder will hopefully provide an impetus for coalition building.”

This is an article posted on the Common Dreams website: Gay Woman Fights over Hospital Visitation Rights in Miami court, by Luara Figueroa: “A gay woman not allowed to visit her dying partner at Jackson Memorial Hospital in 2007 hopes a federal judge will allow her claims of emotional distress and negligence to go to trial.”

An article in the New Haven Independent: Camaign Puts the “T” Back in “LGBT”, by Melinda Tuhus: “Now that they’ve brought same-sex marriage to Connecticut, advocates took on a new mission to a downtown town hall meeting: protecting transgender civil rights.”