National call for civil disobedience issued

Received via email (no web link to text):


NEW WEBSITE SEEKS TO EDUCATE PUBLIC AND TRAIN ORGANIZERS NATIONWIDE

www.nonviolence4equality.org

In response to the growing equality movement in California and across the country, community organizers are issuing a call for the use of nonviolent civil disobedience to further the cause. This call comes at a time when the equality movement is energized surrounding the upcoming California Supreme Court decision on the validity of Proposition 8.

Soulforce is collaborating with individual organizers and groups, including Join the Impact, to issue this call. Jeff Lutes, Soulforce Executive Director, drafted the call to action which has been signed already by several community leaders, including Cleve Jones, who is the founder of the NAMES/AIDS Memorial Quilt, and was a historical consultant on the Academy Award winning film MILK.

Working closely with other leaders, Soulforce organizer Chris Hubble created a new website, www.nonviolence4equality.org, to assist in educating the public on nonviolent civil disobedience. The website launched Monday and is designed to help community members learn about the philosophy, practice and history of nonviolent strategies and connect with others locally who are interested in organizing nonviolent civil disobedience. This website is a collaborative effort and is intended to be reflective of the diverse spectrum of approaches to nonviolent resistance. It is also envisioned as an open-source set of learning tools for grassroots organizers. The materials provided suggest a simple outline for facilitating a training in nonviolence which organizers may adopt or adapt to fit their needs.

The call to action (full copy below) specifically promotes nonviolent tactics. Community leaders are urged to sign the call to action at www.nonviolence4equality.org and to begin training in their own communities immediately. For questions pertaining to the new training website, please contact Christopher Hubble at N4E@soulforce.org.

Time to Take It to the Streets

An urgent national call for nonviolent direct action to achieve full equality

Today, we issue a national call for social change through the ongoing use of nonviolent direct action - including civil disobedience when necessary - until the federal government extends equal protection in all fifty states on matters governed by civil law.

Efforts to achieve full civil equality - such as the right to marry the person we love, the right to care for our families, the right to nondiscrimination in the workplace, and the right to serve openly in the military - have awakened a sleeping giant within the soul of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ) community. We are tired of agonizing political setbacks, token change, defending ourselves against charges of moral inferiority, and being told to "wait" in the land we love while liberation occurs in other countries. Martin Luther King, Jr. acknowledged that real change takes time; yet he also warned against the "tranquilizing drug of gradualism" and instructed the oppressed to demand equality now - not on the convenient time schedule of those doing the oppressing. Legislative efforts toward equality, while essential, have proven woefully inadequate under current circumstances.

Today, we affirm that nonviolent strategies such as marches, vigils, demonstrations, public protests, and civil disobedience, seek to create what Dr. King called "healthy tension".. This constructive tension forces those who perpetuate injustice, and society as a whole, to pause, reflect, and consider the ugliness of their prejudices and the indecency embodied in their discrimination. In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, Dr. King wrote: "Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored."

In addition to Dr. King's legacy, we remember that those of Mahatma Gandhi, Bayard Rustin, Oscar Romero, Cesar Chavez, the Velvet Revolution, and countless others are deeply rooted in United States and world history. Nonviolent resistance continues to play a vital role in undermining the power of repressive political regimes.

We call on community organizers, activists, movement leaders, and all LGBTQ people across the nation to begin training the masses in nonviolent direct action. We have prepared a new online resource - www.nonviolence4equality.org - to assist in this vital task. As we resist injustice, we must avoid violence of the fist, tongue, and heart and remember that in truth we are challenging unjust systems, not people. In due course, we seek to be in community with those from whom we currently find ourselves divided.

We, the undersigned, call on LGBTQ and allied people everywhere to act with strength and integrity. Today, we reclaim nonviolent direct action as part of that process. Let's understand that the vision of equality belongs to all of us and we are each responsible for taking action in pursuit of that dream. We all have the faculty to be powerful, influential, and prevailing. Let's reinvest in our movement for social change and believe in our own capacity to effect that change. Let's allow the boldness and hunger for justice to grow and contagiously spread to others.

Let's take it to the streets.

Jeff Lutes, Soulforce
Cleve Jones, UNITE HERE
Willow Witte, Join the Impact
Sara Beth Brooks, San Diego Equality Campaign
David Comfort, Equality Network
Kip Williams, Radical Designs
Jeff Sheng, Fearless Campus Tour
David Valk, UCLA Student
Laura Kanter, Orange County Equality Coalition
Christopher Hubble, Soulforce in Colorado
Note: Organizational affiliation listed for identification purposes only.

Add your endorsement today by going to www.nonviolence4equality.org!

enough of the "Wait" calls from scumbags. It is TIME

and give the fascist cops an excuse th shoot us down in the streets..

being there was no suggestion for a positive approach make me suspicious of this group.. why piss off the people who could support us as the first option... oh..ask the Anarchists..the brown shirts of the Rethuglican Party, they know

now thats a way to win people over
:sarcasm:

you say you want positive demonstrations and then act so negatively towards the opposition. To attack them is to play into thier hands and confirm thier stereotypes.

Anarchists destroy property.. liberal media people were arrested for asking directions and detained long periods with trumped up charges later dropped when they made their point.. during the conventions..

not all cops are bad but the ones holding down women doing passive civil disobedience, while other pigs pulled up their eyelids and sprayed a shit load of pepper spray directly on their eyeballs and obviously behind them.. more than once... whatdaya call those guys,..??

i did not mean to refer to all police .. just the dangerous fascist pigs. i was a Parole officer, i taught meditation in the prison, tutored prisoners, got a lot of crap for it from custody..

http://www.nopepperspray.org/nov97-editorials-torture.htm

the video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QwcxaQCO1Q

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=cops+spray+eyes+of+demonstrators&btnG=Search

jurnalists arrested at RNC
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=++jurnalists+arrested+at+gop+convention&aq=f

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM8z63PxQKA

2008 RNC : Protester arrested for "falling" off his bike
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNc9ImWpNT0&NR=1

oh boohoo. That is nothing compared to what civil rights activists had to go through in the 60's. The point is, if the philosophy of non-violence is followed through those punishing activists will be demonized.

Non-violent Civil Disobedience isn't supposed to be easy, it isn't. It is however, a very effective method.

so why should I give a shit about my image?

I am violent, nasty tempered, have shitloads of disposable income and live a dissipated and hedonistic life "style" fucking whoever I want (where there is mutual interest) with no regrets and no ensuing brats.

You better believe I don't have to pretend to be peaceful - if they use the law to make me less of citizen, then I don't care about The Law.

They better figure this shit out quick, because I'm not alone. And I'm not with peaceful demonstrators either.

Kumbaya doesn't fucking work. Playing the pity card just makes them want to slap you.

Not advocating violence AT ALL but believe me there is no turning the other cheek in my legislatively induced psychosis. Burn a pink triangle in my front yard and I will make christmas ornaments out of your balls.

cause I feel what you say sui. Unfortunately they don't lrt you take your anti rejection pills to jail. But I will buy donuts for the young warriors

I'd rather get there with the light of Reason first and foremost but our very own GLBT "leaders" are saying stupid things like that comment about us avoiding being "the stereotype", whatever that is.

If we have to pretend to be something we're not so we can get what they give us, then what's the point?

Not asking for rights - taking them. Locks are to keep honest people honest. Laws are like locks. If you don't apply them honestly and equally, then we don't have to play fair either.

Thanks for the donut!

and a lot of Gay stuff in SF, too. They tried like hell to make a problem at the first Gay In in GG Park, but failed. The tenderloin drag queens they carted off from Speedway Meadows came off as heroes to the motley assortment of gays and friends who had been surrounded by every conceivable police weapon in their arsenal. For a fucking Party yet. Picture it, Honda Hogs, mounted police , TAC squad all hiding in the bushes around Speedway ready to pounce, Finally they managed to get a few queens for something and drobe the black moria into the center of the meadow. They were waving to the cheering crowd as they were carted off. All and all a PR loss for the pigs

Our neighbors went and voted us as second class citizens .\; now go make nice?

Is positive. I don't think you know what it means. It means making street theater events to educate and inform! It means act up, you might like it.

Before then, civil disobedience will not help.