Get Used to It: Ep. 119, "Transitions"

(typewriter clacking) (upbeat music) - Hi, welcome to "Get Used to it." I'm Sheila Kuehl, and your guide, pathfinder person for this hour. And today we're gonna talk about transition. What has that got to do with the LGBT community? Well, our guest, Torie Osborne, who is the recently departed executive director of the Liberty Hill Foundation, a longtime activist in our movement, executive director of the LA Gay and Lesbian Center, executive director of the Task Force, and who knows what next actually you do. We're gonna talk about transition, and people in the lesbian and gay community, leaders in the lesbian and gay community, the changes that we've made in our lives, and kind of how that's affected us and I guess the broader world if it has. So welcome, Torie. - Glad to be here. - Thank you so much for being here. Well, you made a transition let's talk a little while ago, maybe eight, nine years ago. For a long time you had done really strong leadership in the LGBT community being at the center, being at the Task Force, and then you made a transition into the philanthropic community. Will you talk about that? 'Cause I think that was a big change for you or maybe not. - Well, the way that I experienced it and really intended it wasn't so much a transition from the nonprofit sector, advocacy, and organizing to the philanthropic sector, although that's kind of the field that the Liberty Hill Foundation is in. But the transition that I was making was from the GLBT community and movement to an organization whose primary work was really around economic issues and economic justice. I had one of those aha moments when I was in Washington during the Clinton Administration when I saw, when I heard really the debate about Welfare Reform. And I'll distinctly remember sitting at a table with Jane Hickey, who's a wonderful member of our community who was for many years actually former Texas Governor Anne Richard's political person in Washington, and who was a longtime kind of feminist advocate in the state of Texas and was in Washington heading up the Texas office at that time. And she said to me, we literally was at an informal dinner, and she said, "Who cares about poor women these days?" And literally the next day, Mike Iscowitz, another member of our community who was one of the senior advisors to Senator Kennedy was at my apartment, and he was talking about, you know, sort of the right-wing takeover of the country and of Congress. This was Newton Gingrich era. This was, you know, '94. And he said, you know, "I've watched how they hate gays and lesbians." They meaning the right-wing in Congress in particular. "I've walked the halls "and watched how they hated people with AIDS, "but I have never seen anything "like the hatred that they have for poor women." And so it was, you know, something around that debate, and then watching Clinton not be able to maneuver, basically watching there be no left, if you will, or no liberal. You know, at that point, liberal was a bad word, the left didn't exist. There was no Michael Harrington writing "The Other America." There was no policy counterweight to the right-wing notion that you're poor because you don't try hard enough, that anybody can pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and the government should be shrunk to the size that it could fit in a bathtub, which was Grover Norquist's kind of famous line. And something about that experience of being in Washington with a fairly good president, a Democratic president with some vision and some care, and watching his options be shut down because there was a lack of a voice on poverty in America. And I thought to myself, "Whoa," you know? We have been fighting the right on GLBT issues. And, you know, I did a little bit of education and some other folks helped to educate me on kind of the economic policy shifts that have been happening that I'd been so busy inside our community that I hadn't really been noticing. So anyway, so I had this kind of like aha experience, I said, "I wanna somehow work on anti-poverty stuff." And that was really what happened. So when I came back to LA, the transition that I made was from wanting to reconnect with my own roots in a broader, progressive movement that includes economic democracy as well as civil rights, GLBT rights, feminism, and so forth. - But it's interesting, the two people that you cited talking to you in Washington, I don't know about, the question, I guess, is people say, "Gee, they happen to be gay," or, "They're whatever," but it's interesting to me how many people in our community. And I guess the question is, have they seen the connection between our issues and other issues, or have they left our issues to go to other issues? Because talking about the right-wing as you have, it's become much clearer these days that our enemies are other enemies. But to hear the right-wing talk about the gay agenda, but to see so many of us working from many other agendas and broader agendas, was it because you saw a connection or do you think people saw let's put that movement over there and go to work for something else? - For me, it was, I experienced it, actually, I've had a series of transitions in my life. I think many people, particularly, I mean, for me, the through line in my life is social activism. I celebrate 40 years this past summer from my first anti-war demonstration, 1965, on a rainy day in a park in Philadelphia. So, but I've done that in different times and different ways and different movements. And I've had several of these kind of aha experiences. And for me it feels like a calling. When I was in the anti-war movement, Vietnam war was winding down therefore the anti-war movement was winding down, and I went to my first women's music concert. Actually, I went to my first women's music concert in 1973, but I just knew that when my work fighting the Vietnam war was done that I had to be part of this flowering of lesbian feminist kind of counterculture. And then I went to work with Holly Near and women's music, and that was kind of my next phase. And then, you know, Reagan came to power, and I thought I needed to get some more skills, and I went back to business school. And when I came out of business school, I ended up working with PRO-peace with David Mixner, and it was kind of like looking at other issues. So then I ended up going to the center, and then diving into AIDS activism through the No On 64, No On LaRouche campaign. And then basically becoming executive director of, you know, a set of GLBT and AIDS organizations. Now, I say that because for me, I've followed some inner voice that has said this is the issue that calls to me. Now, my call to somebody else might be different. But I will say that for women, I think, and for people of color, it hasn't been, GLBT rights has not been a single issue, has never been a single issue movement. You can't separate the, you know, fight for racial justice from the fight for GLBT rights for a Phill Wilson. You couldn't separate for say a Jean O'Leary. She really belongs to feminism, you know, may her soul, her feisty, Irish, lesbian, dyke soul rest in peace, she belongs to both the women's movement and the GLBT movement. So many of us have felt, over the arc of our activist lives, connected to, compelled by different primary movements. I will say that I do see that a cohort of activists who came of activist age through AIDS activism, through the huge momentum of the early '90s, let's just say, the gay moment, the gay '90s, you know, the Clinton years, which were a huge call to action and opening of political space for broad numbers of gay and lesbian folks, ordinary gay and lesbian folks. That I do think there are large numbers of people who it's almost kind of a developmental thing, who cut their teeth, you know, whether it was ACT UP or whether it was building the institutions of our movement such as Lambda, or NGLTF, or on a local level, the Gay and Lesbian Center. That people who have moved through those organizations, given a piece of themselves, a piece of their time and souls, are beginning to recognize that we need to, you know, connect with other communities, connect with other issues, and also just on a personal level be sort of inspired to do something, whether it's on, I don't know, global, you know, fighting for women's rights in Africa, or anti-poverty work. An interesting number of gay activists, GLBT activists, who I know who come out of the gay movement have really moved into one way or another into economic justice. You know, David Mixner is doing a lot of work on Appalachia and anti... - [Sheila] In Africa. - Africa. - [Sheila] Right. - And the Africa connection is the natural outgrowth of AIDS activism, I mean, where the epidemic has so much central significance now is in Africa, but even domestic poverty issues. So, I think it's about, you know, both a cohort, you know, sort of a generation or several generations of activists looking for new arenas for leadership. - Yes, but it's interesting to me how many people in our community have made this transition and taken leadership. I mean, I saw a lot of leadership in the women's community, for instance. And I think there are places, and including national organizations, where feminist leaders have moved into leadership positions, maybe out of an experience of injustice and their aha moment went from their own right injustice to the women's movement to, hey, it's not just about girls and women kind of thing. But it's interesting in terms of philanthropy. I mean, whenever I say to you, well where's so and so, you know, that used to run such and such in our movement, they're at some foundation. There are several people who have done that. - I mean, Urvashi Vaid was at Ford for five years and has now moved to advise a private foundation. Tim Sweeney, who has been a major leader of several of our organizations, Gay Men's Health Crisis, and Lambda, and Empire State, the New York organization is now the Haas Jr. Fund. An old cohort of mine, Alma said, "Comrade shows you the era I'm talking about," named Pam David from my days in San Francisco in the mid '70s, heads up another one of the Haas foundations. And there are many more examples who are even, you know, who may not have had quite the same name recognition as those folks. I'll tell you what it is a function of, I think. Partly, and Liberty Hill is unusual because it's an unendowed public foundation. It's like a community foundation that has to raise... - [Sheila] But it's a big one now. - Well, it's a small one. - It's getting bigger. - Small bit mighty. But in other words I had to raise money, we have to raise money for our annual grant making, unlike some of these other foundations, the Ford Foundation, whatever. But regardless, I think there's two reasons. One is if you've been an activist for a very long time, if you're like me when you came to Liberty Hill, you don't have any savings, you don't have a pension, you've been underpaid your entire professional life. And I was 48, and I was deeply in debt, I had no savings, no pension, and I came to Liberty Hill and you know what? The foundation world pays better than the nonprofit sector. I mean, you know? It isn't like you get those corporate CEO salaries, thank God, but you get paid decently. There's a value and the work culture is not workaholic. And so you basically get a humane work environment, you get decent pay, I've got a pension for the first time. And so it's a kinder, gentler work culture than unfortunately the under-resourced over-driven nonprofit sector that we come out of. So number one, I think, for many people sort of burned out former executive directors reaching a certain middle age and needing to just look at retirement and having nothing in the bank. - What's wrong with Citibank, AT&T? Hey, don't they have pensions? - Well, I actually think that there are some younger activists coming up who are choosing to go into corporations and, you know, I think it's harder to do... There aren't as many jobs. Although if you go to the corporate giving side of the banks and the financial and other corporate organizations that actually have philanthropic programs, you will find a lot of LGBT people. And, you know, a lot of people who are actually looking for some decent work conditions. So that's number one, I think, is just personal. And then on a political, or not political, but on a kind of macro level, the reality is that because of the very same right-wing conservative economic policies that have gutted government programs, and have fostered free market fundamentalism and global corporatization, are the same economic policies that have increased the assets of wealthy people and you have a burgeoning number of foundations. I heard this amazing statistic. There's something like a 100 new foundations being formed every day in America. I mean, it's huge. There were, I'm just gonna get my numbers wrong, but there were, you know, several thousand 10 years ago, and now there's, you know, 100,00 or something. Don't quote me on the numbers. So what's happening is because this obsession with privatization, part of the offshoot of that, and this has a positive silver lining effect, is you have a huge, huge increase in the number of private foundations and private philanthropies. And then you had the conversion foundations in California that create... - [Sheila] In healthcare. - Healthcare conversion foundations that created a whole bunch of jobs. So if you just look at what's called the independent sector, which is philanthropy plus nonprofit, the independent sector. The nonprofit sector is growing like wildfire because government money is driving, you know, the lack of a safety net, and these nonprofits are stepping up to try to provide some kind of safety net, and then the philanthropic sector is expanding. So frankly there are growing number of jobs. - So you're saying that many people who were heading up organizations in our community looking to broaden, or change, or have a little more security. - [Torie] Still do good work. Have a little more economic security, still good work. - Still do good work. There were an increasing number of jobs for them to look at. - [Torie] Right. - And they had gained leadership skills. - [Torie] Right. - I mean, this was the interesting thing I think for us is that going from like the, you know, dykes going from the streets, or even women's music, which wasn't thought of as the most sort of corporate secure world. - [Torie] Kind of counter-cultural. - Yeah, a little counter-cultural. - [Torie] Lesbian... - And the guys in the AIDS movement who were mostly on the streets were becoming professionalized, I suppose, through our major organizations. I mean, the center grew, you got that big new building. You know, it's just grown and grown. Same thing with the task force, same thing with HRC, GLAD, all of these large organizations. So people gain the skills too, I guess, to go into the broader world. - Well, you know, in my view, it actually requires, well, I don't wanna be negative here, but I think it's tougher to be an executive director of a nonprofit organization than it is to be a program officer at an endowed foundation where you get to give away money, and you don't have to raise it, and you don't have to manage much of a staff, and you actually get to be about policy and ideas. I mean, not only do you get to write checks and support good works and organizations, but you actually have some impact on how people think, because funders have enormous at least influence in how policies are enacted in the nonprofit sector. So it's an increasingly influential sector. So somebody like Urvashi, for example, who had tons of experience as a lawyer and as an organizer and as a nonprofit executive going into Ford, had an enormous amount of influence at Ford. She had been a movement leader for heaven's sakes, and you go inside a big organization and you can bring those leadership skills, and actually not just impact where money goes but where thinking goes, and how institutions think about what they're funding in terms of philanthropy. - So do you think it makes a difference to the LGBT community? I mean, I don't wanna be just identity focused, but does it make a difference that, you know, how you were at Liberty Hill, Urv at Ford, Irvine Foundation, number of healthcare, the way we're looking at healthcare and health issues, you think that makes a difference having our leadership transition into the philanthropic community? - I think the primary difference is the ultimate expansion of vision that comes from issues being linked together. So when you have a, you know, if I speak from my Liberty Hill experience, Liberty Hill, I mean, yes, I brought a lesbian and gay fund that had been at the California Community Foundation. But, so my being there helped to sort of midwife a whole new focus on LGBT funding at the foundation. It also brought in my Rolodex into Liberty Hill. You know, we have the best graphic designer in Los Angeles, you know, who happens to be a lesbian doing our annual report at Liberty Hill. I could give you a number of examples of the knowhow, the intellectual capital, just the talent that's come from the GLBT community into Liberty Hill because that's who my friends were or that's who my Rolodex was. So that transforms an organization. Pretty soon you have straight people making campy jokes, you know? It's infectious gay culture, and humor, and leadership. But on the other side, what you have is the exposure of a whole set of GLBT folks, not everybody, but the ones that have chosen to partake of a Liberty Hill offering, you know? Somebody who's involved with human rights campaign comes on a van tour to Pico-Union, learns about Homies Unidos, learns about kind of a gang work, just sees the other Los Angeles, and it affects his or her thinking. And so you have this kind of cross pollination of education and exposure that over time knits together the communities, the fabric of a new vision. And that's what I think the real advantage is. It's not just that say Urvashi at Ford, you know, lifts up GLBT issues by virtue of having a formal leader there, but it cross fertilizes ideas. Ideas Urv had from the gay movement get filtered back into the people that she's working with because you do partner, the good foundations do partner with their grantees in the conversation. I recently, you know, I've been struck by a new discourse in the foundation world. I don't know if it's gonna filter back into the GLBT movement, I kind of hope it does, about human rights. There's a new conversation sort of catalyzed by philanthropy about using the phrase human rights to mean both economic rights, that people should have food, clothing, shelter, and they're talking about, for example, victims of Hurricane Katrina, and civil rights, gay rights, women's rights. And I don't know if this is a discourse that we will all be sharing in five years when we talk about human rights, we'll know that it means both... - [Sheila] All of those. - The right to healthcare and gay rights. I hope so. We need some common language. I'm not sure what it will be. But I think the GLBT movement by virtue of being the most successful movement in the most right-wing era in American history, does God have a sense of irony or what, I think that we, and that watching our leaders weave in and back and forth among communities, constituencies, whatever, I think that we will, you know, I think we're helping to build some of these new bridges and language, and what I hope will eventually be new vision for a new world. - Well, speaking of new vision and a new world, we've got a new mayor in LA. And since you announced at Liberty Hill that you thought you'd done, you know, your work as ED, and it was maybe time to have a new ED, it didn't take the new mayor very long to figure out that you might be available for something, and it seemed to me, it was very interesting. Talk a little bit about your next move here. - Speaking of transitions. - [Sheila] Transition, right. - Well, yes, I really think in this crazy kind of world and this very dismal political social space in terms of who's in power in this country, Los Angeles is a bright light. We have, you know, in my opinion, one of the bright lights of the progressive community has been elected mayor. And my sense is he's one of these guys that decides there's a few people that he wants to seduce to be part of his administration no matter what their own plans for their life are, and I was one of those. And I really thought that this transition, I had already made the decision to leave Liberty Hill, although I'm gonna stay on part-time, do some work for them. But then it was really time for me to, I wanted to think, and write a book, and teach, and I had a whole little plan for my life. And Antonio kind of. - He said, "Nevermind what you want, Torie. - You got it. And so what I'm gonna be doing is he's created a special position for me, special advisor to the Mayor. There are a couple of other people as well, I'm not the only one, there are three of us at this point. And I'm gonna be working on some special projects that are catalyzed by philanthropy, actually some attempts to organize some action, some applied researchers, and come up with kind of some innovative policy solutions on tough issues, economic development, transportation, public safety, education, and housing, and so forth. And I'll be the person inside that will help to make them happen. My official portfolio, if you will, will be liaison to the foundation community, to philanthropy. I have learned that there are other cities that have a liaison from the mayor to the philanthropic community. Chicago has had one, Mayor Bloomberg has one in New York. Los Angeles will not be the first, but it's the first time that LA has had such a position. Previous mayors have looked to the organized foundation community to kind of fund some of their pet ideas. I don't think this is Mayor Villaraigosa's intention. It will be much more of a give and take and a partnership. And I look forward to the opportunity to kind of craft some communication and some vision between these very important sectors that aren't always talking to each other, you know? And you know this. - Well, and they're all doing policy. I mean, it's been interesting to me in the government doing policy, especially say, for instance, around healthcare, to look at foundations who decide what aspect of healthcare they want to affect and fund that. Then you have nonprofits who somewhat rely on government funding, but not as much, less and less and less each year, having their own initiatives, their boards and executive directors thinking up initiatives. And I know they talk to each other, but there's not real coordination because no one's in charge of the government, the philanthropic sector, and the nonprofit sector all at once. So I think some of that knitting together that you were talking about, you know, will be very important. It's another transition for you. But it's been interesting too with the nonprofit sector which you were talking about, because a lot of our community leaders have really entered that broader sector as well, haven't they? - Well, it's the fastest growing sector in this country, because, I mean, again, for some of the wrong reasons, because government has abdicated its responsibility to care for social needs of the people, many people. And so this sort of brave nonprofit sector that started 30 or 40 years ago in this country has just in an entrepreneurial and quite gorgeous way frankly, that I think history will recognize far more than it does at this moment, has grown this public-private partnership that is the nonprofit sector. Now in Los Angeles, 65% of the dollars to the largest sector of the nonprofit sector, human services, comes from governments, but it's still, the non-profit by nature is the third sector, the independent sector. It's funded both by private dollars and sometimes by public dollars, not exclusively. So, yeah, no, it's actually very interesting, because you have three players in policy and services. And services is policy, you know, who you serve is policy. You have, you know, government, three independent drivers, you have foundations, although it's important to recognize that philanthropy operates through the nonprofit sector, nonprofit sector is the mechanism. - [Sheila] So they're the grantees you mean for philanthropies. - They're the grantees. Although because the foundations have the dough and are therefore in the power position, they often drive it. You know, hopefully not independent from the feedback that they get from the nonprofit sector, but still in all, they drive it independently, you have the nonprofit sector, and then you have government. And you're absolutely right, there's too often been too little coordination. There's been, often it's not a question of, you know, problems or tensions, is just simply moving too quickly, problems too big, so much happening not knowing even to pick up the phone and talk to the other guy. And, you know, I don't know what one part-time person working for a fabulous mayor can do to fix it, but I can certainly bring my organizing chops and my best attempts and work hard to try to at least bring people together a little bit, or at least see what kinds of synergies are possible. Sometimes it's just very simple. And Antonio, you know, Mayor Villaraigosa, the mayor, my new boss, has an enormous amount of, it's not just political capital, it's when you are capable of inspiring hope in people, it's bigger than political capital. In fact, it's kind of infinite. It's one of the few things that's infinite. When people feel inspired to go the next level, to stretch. And he has all of Los Angeles, I swear to God. You know, he has people so excited. He's showing up everywhere, and every community claims him, and follows him. And he brings out the best in people. And so I think people are gonna want to, I mean, I've seen it already, you know, people want him to succeed, and they know that there's a deficit in the city of Los Angeles, and they know that there's declining government dollars. And so it's a time, I think, when people will, you know, try harder than ever to reach for some new vision and some new synergies. And I don't know what that's gonna look like, you know? I'm gonna have to learn the players. I'm gonna have to learn to be on the inside. I've never been on the inside. I've happily been the movement organizer, you know, on the outside, or working in the quite independent foundation that Liberty Hill is, and that sees itself as funding and training and mobilized, you know, serving the building of social movements from the ground up. And so it'll be very different to be special advisor to the mayor, to be kind of in those conversations in City Hall, and to be on the inside. But I do think that there's a huge window of opportunity, because there's so many people who want him to succeed on the opposite sides of different tables, you know, business, and labor, and small business people, and community people in every community in Los Angeles. And when you have that kind of, when you inspire that kind of hope, you generate the possibility that things people didn't dare to dream could happen. And that's the environment in Los Angeles. It's very exciting. - Well, the inclusivity that Antonio has always been, you know, even from the beginning when we served together, starting in '94 when we were elected to the assembly, it's always felt that way, very natural, you know, very organic to him in terms of, and he doesn't wanna ignore the differences. It's not like, oh, you just happen to be gay, or you just happen to be African-American, he wants to recognize the richness that that brings, and I think that's gonna be a great strength for the city. But I had a question about the impact personally and then I think kind of on the world of this, it's not a diaspora exactly, but this movement from everybody's working on their own gay and lesbian issues, and now we've got this, and now we're moving to another broader area. When I was in law school, the women who graduated from law school were hired more frequently by government organizations. You could be a DA. I'm not a DA, but, you know, an Assistant DA, Deputy DA, public defender, county council, et cetera. The law firms were very slow to be hiring women. Do you find that the philanthropic community and the nonprofit community might be an easier place for us to access than going to, you know, the banking world, even if we wanted to, the banking world or, you know, corporate world? - No doubt about it. In today's world, given what's happened, the decline of the public sector, decline of government, the reality is philanthropy and the nonprofit sector are public service. They are to this era, if you will, what expanding and exciting government programs or just good utilitarian public service public programs were in the '60, '70s, and even into the '80s before they all got slashed. You know, the Republican agenda, and it isn't just the Republicans because Clinton did it as well. The last 30, 40 years has been slash and burn of the New Deal, the Great Society, and beyond. Those were the places where people went, many people went into government in order to do good in the world, to be of service, to do public service. Well, the nonprofit sector and philanthropy in a sense meet those needs for those people, whether they're coming out of law school, or whether they're coming out of college, or whether they are coming out of high school. - But that's a choice of a person to go. I guess my question also went to are there more open doors there, and maybe still a little bit more closed? - [Torie] To GLBT people? - Yeah. - Yes. No, everything is well, yes. And I also think the particular training, you know, when you're trained in the crucible of the AIDS epidemic and of the right-wing attack on the GLBT community. Remember, in 1986, which is not only 20, 19 years ago, when we did, I always think about this, when I worked for David Mixner on No On 64 campaign, the LaRouche initiative, the quarantine people with AIDS initiative. I mean, it's hard to remember, it was only 19 years ago. We could raise no money from anybody but the gay community, except for there were, you know, Peg Yorkin and Ted Field were like the only Hollywood people, and Bud Yorkin, literally, we could not get any Hollywood money except for from the gay community to support it. And we couldn't get the endorsement of people for the American way. The ACLU Southern California was the only mainstream progressive organization that endorsed this. And this was not a gay initiative, this was AIDS. This was a heinous, fascist initiative. How far we have come in 20 years. My point is the gay community had to do for itself. It had to do for itself. It had to build those service organizations to take care of people with AIDS, who were gay men mostly, and it expanded over time, had to build that those services. We had to build our own institutional institutions to build the infrastructure of the GLBT movement. Okay, it's built. Lambda's doing great. HRC's doing great. GLADS' doing great. We have lost, because of the shakeout, we have lost many of the smaller organizations, particularly the organizations serving people of color communities, breaks my heart. I mean in Los Angeles there were seven or eight that don't exist anymore, National Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership forum, you know, and more. So there's been a shakeout that has privileged, you know, the kind of the bigger, more mainstream, more Anglo organizations, but still and all we have an infrastructure for those movements. Now, I think, you know, you combine the natural arc of people saying, okay, been there, done that, gotta move aside, let somebody in, come in and take on that organization. Where am I going to go next? Have cut my teeth in the nonprofit sector, that's what I know, where do I go? You go into philanthropy, you go to another nonprofit organization. And, you know what? We're in a different time. And, I mean, I think people, you know, to use your often cited idea about a Martian anthropologist, if a Martian anthropologist looks now, I really think what you're seeing is you're seeing the next phase where the organizations that are growing or that are requiring talent, gay or non-gay, are progressive organizations, are the organizations that are moving, that are connecting the dots. You know, the campaign that we're waging right now is, you know, I know this is gonna be after the election when this shows, when this airs, but we're now in an election moment in California and with Governor Schwarzenegger's election. And, I mean, I have never seen the linkage between the labor unions and the GLBT community that I am seeing now. Now people have worked very hard to make those linkage. It didn't come out of the sky. There's been organizing and relationships building, but there's a commonality of interest, there's a community of interest. - And there's nothing gay on the initiative ballot that is November, 2005. - There is nothing gay on the initiative ballot, and, I mean, I heard a field organizer tell me that in some of the non-urban areas that the staffing for the Union Phone Banks is coming from the GLBT community. That the worker bees, the people that are showing up at those phone banks are, you know, the gays and lesbians who are pissed off at the governor for vetoing the marriage bill. And it was Dolores Huerta and the UFW that delivered the 41st vote in the assembly for the bill that the governor, the marriage bill that he vetoed. And something's happening at another level which is not just building, you know, the infrastructure of this movement, building that movement over there, there's something new being born. And that's where I think we are. The Martian anthropologist would say, you know, this is a bigger transition, which is why I think the topic of transition makes sense. I really, really think that even though the right-wing is in power, and there's huge destructive forces unleashed, we have war, and we have, you know, environmental destruction, and we have this economic devastation that is destroying the middle class in this country. I mean, you know, destroying the middle class, and more poverty, and all of these sort of horrific things, what happened in the Gulf Coast that was just horrible, it was a nightmare. That there's something else happening in this country that will have, you know, more possibility to be actualized in terms of policy and vision in Los Angeles because of a leader like Antonio, because of some of the leadership in the state, you know, you can see some of it coming through kind of official electoral channels, but this is something else that's happening. And because we are the movement that has been the largest, most successful movement. And it's trained a lot of people, it's engaged a lot of people. Well, they're not gonna all stay at Lambda forever. You know, at some point people are gonna say, well, let me go bring my chops to work on environmental justice, or let's go work on economic justice, or let's go see what it's like working for a union, or let's go see what it's like, you know, working in philanthropy. - Well, part of the transition really has been the barriers coming down. And I don't mean that they ever were totally expressed by boards of directors or unions or whatever, but it seems like with any community, whether it's people of color or the women's community or our community or others, that if you just don't discriminate and just hire on talent, it doesn't necessarily mean you get more gay people because they're more talented, but you get more gay people because they were being shut out before. And now they're just competing, they're just bringing their experience, they're just really moving into, you know, a larger segment of the community. And if you don't say no to them just because they're gay, it's just the way any anti-discrimination work goes. You simply get more talent in because you were shutting them all out before. - Or you were keeping them in a closet. I mean, I think there were a lot of gay people. I just, I was struck, there was a recent obituary of a guy who was one of my idols or heroes named Greg Calvert, who was a field organizer for Students for a Democratic Society, SDS, in the late '60s, and he spoke at my college. And, you know, I can practically tell you every word that he said, it had such an impact on me. It was one of those lectures that made me know that my life work was going to be an organizer. And he was a traveling organizer, and he talked about it. And I can remember where I sat and I can remember every word he said. He just died recently, and his obituary, I can't remember where I saw it, whether it was the Gay Press or not, but he was gay. Well, I didn't know he was gay. He certainly wasn't out in 1970 when I heard him, but we have always been in social movements, we're now out about it. I mean, and what's happened is as the mainstream GLBT movement has become outer and prouder and bolder and more visible, it sends a signal to people whose primary movement has not been the gay movement. I mean, I've seen it at Liberty Hill. In the eight years that I have been there, I don't think there are more gay people working at, you know, ACORN or AGENDA, and these are the acronyms of organizations that do low income communities of color organizing in Los Angeles and nationally, or the Community Coalition, or AGENDA, or, you know, these environmental justice groups. I think that it's just that these organizers are more out now. So it goes both ways. It's a question of a movement reaching a critical mass where people who would have stayed closeted or semi-closeted, they just wouldn't be wearing the I'm a big old queer button, are a signal that they can be out. There is just the barriers, the homophobia is melting away in institutions all over and on the progressive side, and at the same time there are more trained leaders or activists who then want a place to express their activism. - But you know there may, well, let me ask you the question about whether there may be a downside. As you know, there's practically a war on nonprofits by the Federal government. Every six months there's another proposal to say you may not do this and you may not do that. And the most recent one that you sent around in an email that you may not work on voter registration even if it's nonpartisan voter registration as a non-profit, because they are starting to understand the connection between just registering poor people and perhaps a threat to the right-wing. But I wonder if there's a connection in terms of their hostility to nonprofits, by seeing that they're being headed up by gay people, by feminists, by people of color. Because I think, although that's not the whole group, that there's a larger percentage of people of color, women, and gay people running non-profits than running the Fortune 500 or 1000 or 2000. - I think that's exactly right. - So do you think that leads to the animosity or do you think they just have animosity anyway 'cause it's about poor people? - Well, I think that the attack on the nonprofit sector, which is only just beginning, and it's going to be a tsunami over the coming years, is primarily an economic attack because they're expanding the war and they're, you know, continuing policies that basically move money up to the wealthy and don't provide services. And if you keep up the deficit payment on the debt in this country, and you keep up the war, and there's no plans to end it that I know of, and you keep up the taxes that benefit the rich, the tax cuts that benefit the rich, essentially by the year 2010 there will be zero money, zero Federal dollars flowing to anything, including, you know, Ryan White, any of the major initiatives other than entitlements. And they're already chipping away at entitlements to pay for Katrina. So what is gonna happen in the nonprofit sector? First of all, it's gonna be an economic crisis in five or seven years of, you know, unprecedented proportions. But even, there is already, it's already difficult. We're already experiencing, the nonprofit sector, kind of a speed up, you know, less money, more work, more need, huge human services needs, and then even in organizing and advocacy, more and more need, less money, people working harder for the same or less money. So, you already have a crisis in the nonprofit sector that's gonna only get worse. And then in addition to that, you have the recognition by the right-wing that in an odd kind of a way, and one could argue that this nonprofit infrastructure that has by necessity risen up as government funding has declined for kind of official government programs, that it is in some ways the progressive counterpart to the 26,000 evangelical churches that remain the base infrastructure of the radical right. To some extent the next new deal, or the next left, or the next, let's call it the pro-democracy movement on the, you know, some people don't identify with left, but the progressive side, the pro-democracy movement, the infrastructure, because it represents the people that are not in power and that are not the base of those in power. It's low income people, it's immigrants, it's people of color, it's gay and lesbians, it's anybody who, you know, has some need for some kind of service or some need to organize on behalf of a point of view that's not represented in policy. So it's organizing, advocacy, and services. That sector, that gorgeous variegated sort of anarchistic, 'cause it ain't organized, and often very siloed and fragmented sector called the nonprofit sector is beginning to recognize that they are in touch with the non-voter. Now it is the non-voter in America who by abdicating basic voting out of alienation, or not knowing that you can vote if you're a recently naturalized citizen, or whatever the reason is, just feeling not a part of the country, or disgusted at how money buys politics, whatever the reason is, it is the non-voter that allows the right-wing to control the Republican Party and to control this country's agenda. The minute the non-voter starts to vote is how quickly the right-wing will be out of power because they do not represent the majority of Americans. So that's what is at stake here. And the non-profit sector, by being an organic community-based link to multiple marginalized communities, has an enormous potential through just nonpartisan. I'm not talking about anything that's connected to the Democratic Party. By just nonpartisan voter registration, given the demographics of the two parties these days and the trends, has an enormous potential for revitalizing democracy and changing politics. So that's why they're attacking it because they know it can topple their regime. - Well, it's interesting, 'cause I think there is some influence by the people who have gone from various of our movements, not only the LGBT movement, but others into the larger nonprofit, the economic democracy movements, they do have an influence on the agenda, I think. But as at Liberty Hill and at some of the nonprofits, it's really much more bottom up. So what you're saying is there is such a potential for organizing through these organizations, that that's really the threat to the right-wing. - Even clinics. And, I mean, I'm not talking about, Liberty Hill funds activist organizations, the Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates, the Gay-Straight Alliance network. I mean, they're the groups that are about organizing and about empowering that have an advocacy agenda and are about progressive change. That's what Liberty Hill funds. But beyond that, there's a world of social services, the Clinica Oscar Romeros of the world, the legal clinics, that where thousands of people, the Central American Resource Center, where thousands of people walk through the doors who are new immigrants, who are poor people, who are people who are lost for one reason or another. The human services organizations, which is the bulk of the nonprofit sector, which those organizations, which they don't even often know that they could advocate on behalf of their constituency, they don't even exercise their current, you know, legal rights. And so there's a whole education that needs to be done in the nonprofit sector, but there's also just plain voter registration. I mean, that's why that right-wing bill targeted, it was housing groups and it was connected to Hurricane Katrina. It was basically if you're gonna get government money you have to abdicate your right to do nonpartisan. It's gonna be thrown out in accordance. - [Sheila] Nonpartisan voting registration. - Nonpartisan voting registration, completely unconstitutional. But the point is there's huge potential resource for reaching with trusted community-based organizations. If you are the Central American Resource Center in Pico Rivera, which is the densest part of LA City. It's been an immigrant home for many generations of immigrants. It's currently the Central American kind of gateway. It's the MacArthur Park, Pico-Union area, it's a part of Los Angeles. It's highly dense in terms of population. If you are going to, and the Central American Resource Center which started out as a fairly, you know, outspoken, almost a radical refugee center for people who came to this country because of US policy in Central America. But it's become really a flagship community-based organization, does services, ESL classes, lots of, you know, organizing as well as services. Thousands of people come through their doors. If you register all those people, and you empower them, and they're more likely to vote because you tell them it's a good idea if you're a CARECEN, than if you're a union who just drops in every four years or a Democratic Party, Republican Party for that matter that drops in every four years. So the power of community-based voter engagement is limitless. - And, you know, we're down to four minutes, believe it or not. I just wanna let you know because you're good at figuring this time out too. I think the new configuration of organizations like MoveOn and others that are different from foundations, that are different from nonprofit service centers, but themselves are providing leadership and direction and organizing. I think we've also seen people from our community moving into those, and even starting those kinds of organizations that counterweight. - [Torie] Courage Campaign. - Right, the Courage Campaign, for instance. - There's the, you know, Rick Jacobs in Los Angeles, or Speak Out California. Speak Out California, Courage Campaign, these kind of web-based campaign style message organizing, you know, meet up using all of the technology of the last election. And I think you're gonna find, I mean, partly just 'cause, you know, the GLBT folks are very much in the high tech world. - [Sheila] That's true too, yeah. - And also have had to from our isolation. I mean, lots of people have learned, have explored their gay identity and found friends through the internet who are gay. And it's, you know, there's a whole connection I think. And we haven't even talked about the GLBT Youth Movement, which is the future of America. - Providing leadership. - Absolutely. The organizing, the vibrancy of it, the training, the Gay-Straight Alliance networks, the work that GLSEN is doing. I mean, amazing leadership Development. - And not just for gay student organizations, you're talking about in neighborhood organizations of youth, the same kind of taking leadership in non-gay organizations, but being out, that's. - Being out and seeing themselves as organizers, and seeing themselves not just attached to an organization or a community, but to a progressive cause that links them outside of their individual issue or identity to something larger than themselves. That's the moment that we're in. That's the transitional moment that we're in. And I think there's no question, we're gonna see more and more leadership from our community. - Then my last question to you is, and I guess it's kind of a personal one, but doesn't necessarily have to only be linked to your own transition. Transition itself, good or bad? - Part of life. - Yes. - I mean, I believe transition moments are the toughest. I've actually been thinking a lot about this because I'm in one. I'm saying goodbye to a phase of my life, I don't believe I'll ever be an executive director again. And so there's some grief there, there's some sadness. There's always anxiety when you don't know. Transitions are about anxiety, a little fear, a little grief. I don't think this culture does grief well. I think that's actually why after 9/11 we were so easily manipulated as a people into war because people... - [Sheila] Didn't know what to do with it. - Didn't know what to do with it. And if as a country we had been able to grieve and then move through it to the next emotion, I just think, anyway. So I think transitions have a lot of grief attached to them and sadness, we tend to repress it. But if you can just stay there and sort of reach out, I don't think there's any question but that then the next horizon feels much more, you know, exciting and much more, I don't know, it beckons bigger. - Torie, thank you so much. I always think that they must be wrong. The hour can't have gone by that fast. I always love talking with you and listening to you. Thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for being with us. And I think as Torie said, transition is a part of life, so get used to it. (upbeat music)