How Organized Labor Helped Win Marriage Equality in Maryland and Washington--And What We Can Learn

http://www.alternet.org/story/154925/how_organized_labor_helped_win_marriage_equality_in_maryland_and_washington--and_what_we_can_learn/


As a straight, black labor organizer, Ezekiel Jackson is not the conventional face of gay rights. But as a visible defender of queer justice to the non-queer population, Jackson was the ideal choice for the presidency of Marylanders for Marriage Equality, a coalition of progressive groups. Last month, MFME made Maryland the eighth state to legalize same-sex marriage, just two weeks after Washington became number seven.

“It wasn’t any struggle to get us on board,” Jackson says of his union, 1199, a local of the Service Employees International Union representing some 400,000 healthcare workers throughout the northeast. “We took a leadership role in putting together the coalition.”

Once the self-described guardian of “union power, soul power”—an ally of the Black Panthers and student New Leftists and an opponent of the Vietnam War—1199 is still a force for civil rights. This time, it joins a front of union confederates in the march for marriage equality. In fighting for “working families, not just certain families,” as Jackson put it in one campaign spot, labor is pushing the boundaries of queer politics while recharging its own power.

A black and blue rainbow in Maryland

Passing marriage equality in Maryland took a full deck of cards. First there was the inside game. MFME amplified the support of movers and shakers, including the mayor of Baltimore, a Baltimore Ravens player, the lieutenant governor, and Governor Martin O’Malley, who, after the bill narrowly failed the legislature last year, made it a legislative priority. Then there was what Kevin Nix of the Human Rights Campaign calls a “grassroots groundswell.” Unions, clergy, civil rights groups, and traditional advocacy groups like the HRC and Equality Maryland worked together to mobilize their constituencies. Given the likelihood that marriage equality will be challenged by ballot referendum in November, the ground game rolls on.