Get Used to It: Ep. 176, "An LGBT Place at the Table: Electing Our Own"

(typewriter clacking) (cheerful music) - Hi, welcome to "Get Used To It." I'm Sheila Kuehl, and as always, I will take you through this fascinating hour. I hope you'll stick with us, because today, we're talking about a very current topic, which is, does it make any difference at all if we elect LGBT people to office? What does it mean to have a place at the table? Do we really need to be there? I think, you know how I feel about it. But I'm very fortunate my guest today has had some experience in this area. Jackie Goldberg, who was a member of the L.A Unified School District Board, a member of the Los Angeles City Council, a six-year member of the California Assembly and she's now a faculty advisor at UCLA, preparing teachers to teach in underserved areas in Los Angeles, like Compton, and South L.A. Welcome, Jackie. - [Jackie] Well, always nice to be here. - Of course. Well, you heard the sort of premise, but let's start with a little history. Because you were a first in quite a few places, and then I beat ya in one. But with the school board, what year did you first run for the school board? - I served on the school board from 1983 to 1991. And I was not openly out in the sense that the press would use any referral about me but my partner and I went to all the events together, she stood next to me when I was sworn in. We had a child who was still in the public schools, and-- - [Sheila] And he was going, "Please, mom, don't come out." - He was saying, "You guys can leave and move. I can't leave my school. - [Sheila] Right, right. - I'm stuck here and I'd rather you wait until I finish high school and then you can do whatever you want." Our home had always been a home which everybody who came in knew. We made no pretenses in how we lived our life, but we didn't actually officially use the L word. - Still, you were the first open lesbian or gay person even open with friends, family. - [Jackie] Yes, yes. - Supporters. - [Jackie] Yes. - I mean, anybody who asked really? - Yes, and we had a rule, which is if asked, I would answer honestly. - And certainly your fellow board members knew. - Oh yes, absolutely. - And so I guess my premise is, though we're not completely the only people that ever bring anything that helps the LGBT-- - Oh no, we have allies, thank goodness. - Communities. We have good allies. But at the school board, were there policies in place before you were elected that protected our children or had anything to do with our community? - Well, the first thing I took on that affected our community was the arrested teacher business. - [Sheila] Uh-huh. - I had been visited by an attorney, who I wish I could remember his name, I think he's deceased. But he had been one of the few attorneys in Los Angeles, because his sons were both gay and he was, and one of them was a teacher, and he took almost 100% of the teachers who were being arrested in West Hollywood, and in Hollywood, at bars, in bathrooms. And a lot of it, of course, was completely bogus, it was just entrapment and the people egging you on and then you make a move because they're coming on to you and then they arrest you. - They turn out to be the people arresting you, right? - That's right. And so, he came and he schooled me, he gave me an education in these cases and he gave me documents, he let me see cases that had happened. And most of them ended up with teachers losing their teaching licenses, and losing their jobs, and losing their careers. - So wait but teachers are licensed by the state. - [Jackie] Right. - And they lost their licenses because? - Because it was a moral turpitude. - [Sheila] Oh, I see, of course. - They were fooling around with, even though they were adults, they were fooling around in the bathroom and they got arrested on sex charges. So I got in close session the board to adopt a policy, that said if the only witness to this was the arresting officer, that we would not send it to Sacramento and we would not take any action against the teacher, because it was, he said, he said. It was that one word against another and I got permission to bring in this attorney, who gave a really great pitch. And I don't think it was a unanimous decision but it was pretty close. Almost everybody on the board at that time said, "Yeah, you're right." - But before you were elected? - Well, it came up because a case did come to close session. And I said, "Let me tell you what I've been schooled in by this attorney who does most of these cases. Can I have him come in before we look at this case?" And so what happened in that particular teacher's case was they were not thrown out of their job, and we did not send information to Sacramento to have their licenses removed. - And do you think that you... I mean, everybody on the board knew you were a lesbian? - Oh, yes, oh, yes. - One of the things that I experienced and I'm gonna come back to this each time as we go along, is this sort of this notion of authenticity. Kind of like, "I'm not making this up. - [Jackie] Right, right. - I know what life is like for us. - [Jackie] Right, right. - I know how we're treated and how people think of us and I know what's been going on here." - Our male gay brothers, of course, have a much harder time to hoe, because the society will, even then in the '80s was more accepting of lesbians than it will ever be probably of-- - Well, that's why so many of us buy in first on these-- - Yeah, men giving up their privilege, I mean, for God's sakes, that's what could be worse. - Right, you could understand why we'd wanna be men? - [Jackie] Exactly. (both laughing) - Well, that was what they talking about in the '70s. - I know, exactly. So that was the first thing. - [Sheila] Wow. - And then came the AIDS crisis. And in New York and in Chicago and in Philadelphia and other big city schools, teachers who had any indication that they might have AIDS were simply being let go, which meant they lost their healthcare. - [Sheila] healthcare. - As well as their employment. Students, schools were panicking. I understand the panic because nobody knew yet what was causing it or where it was coming from. For sure how it could be transmitted. Though they were pretty sure it wasn't by casual contact or by breathing or sitting next to someone. - Well, there was a lot of hysteria about that. - But there was a lot of hysteria because people were dying in fairly significant numbers. Not enough hysteria of course, to put any federal money into researching it because they were gay people who were dying. - And you never even heard the president say the word. - That's right. But I went to our board and I said, "We need a policy for this that says that these are people who are ill, that medical science is telling us that while they may not entirely understand it yet, they know how it's not transmitted. So that if you're sitting in a classroom next to a teacher or next to a student that may have the virus, you're not going to get it that way, it's sexually transmitted." And so I said, "I think that one of the things we needed to do was to have a policy, an AIDS policy." And we had hearings and oh my God, what a zoo and a circus. I'm sure somebody still got tapes of those meetings, but it was a zoo, zoo, zoo, zoo. But again, we had a pretty decent board of education, including the Republicans on it, which I give a lot of credit to Roberta Weintraub who at the time, was the wife of a doctor and believed in medicine as an understanding of things-- - [Sheila] And evidence. - As opposed to hysteria. And we put into place a policy that said that students and teachers and classified employees and administrators have the same requirement with AIDS as they have with any other illness. That is, that if it's going to impair their ability to learn or to teach or to be a cafeteria worker or whatever job they had, they needed to come forward and say so, but we weren't going to inquire. Well, oh my God, you should have seen my mail. Holy cow! - I think that's gonna be a refrain all through the show. - [Jackie] Yeah, I think so. - Oh, my God, you should have seen my mail. - Oh, it was really terrible. - [Sheila] Yeah. - And then if that weren't enough, I said that we had an absolute obligation to inform families of children and young adults that were attending our schools about what we did know about AIDS and how it was transmitted. Age appropriate, of course. For little children, we were going to send home a bilingual, multilingual actually, we had it done in several languages, a set of materials that told parents that sitting next to a child was not dangerous. That we didn't know who, if there were children who had AIDS. We didn't think so because most of them are pretty sick and they aren't in school. But we weren't going to do anything to try to find out because once a child is sick, they would be gone. And they weren't going to transmit it by sitting next to each other or frankly, even holding hands on the yard as young children often do. We did it in middle school kind of one. And then we got to the high school one where I said, "I thought this should be the most candid and the most frank." And they kept bringing me versions of it and every version I said, "No, we're not sending that out. No, we're not sending that out." And finally they said, "Well, what do you want us to do?" And I said, "You have to talk about anal sex." And they said, "You have got to be kidding." - To be kidding, right. - On a brochure from L.A Unified, I said, "Well, let's put it this way. Let's say that you're a parent and we don't tell you that that's the way you can get it. And so you don't discuss that with your children and your child gets AIDS. Now, who's really responsible?" We have an obligation to do that. Well, I finally got them to send out a pamphlet to every kid in every high school in all our adult centers that really told people how you got AIDS and how you didn't get AIDS. We didn't have HIV notion yet, we didn't have a virus-- - Right, and now of course, that's the state law, that every child must be educated about this. - Right, and then of course, let's see what else came up during that time. We did, gee, I lost it. I had three things and I only can think of two now. The two around AIDS. - And you already talked about the teachers. - [Jackie] Yeah, and there was a third one. Oh, well. - Well, it'll come to you. And let me ask you this before we talk then about-- - Oh, I know what it was. It was Project 10. - [Sheila] Oh, well. - It started with Virginia Uribe at Fairfax High School here in West Hollywood. And the Republicans had taken over the legislature at this time and they passed a resolution, not really a law, but they passed a resolution saying that L.A Unified would not get another scent of ADA this year, this school year until they got rid of Project 10 and Virginia Uribe at Fairfax High School. - You should probably say what Project 10 was, I'm sure a lot of people know but-- - Project 10 still is, the first probably of its kind in the country, where a counselor, a teacher, a nurse, some adult in the school, volunteers to have a club where kids who think they might be gay, know for sure they are gay can come and talk about problems they're having, whether that's harassment or bullying. Whether it's their parents, whether it's being beaten up, whether it's that they're suicidal and wanna kill themselves or whatever the things were. And it turned out that this science teacher, Virginia Uribe, Dr. Uribe had a lot of experience with psychology and psychological training. Started this one class at lunchtime at Fairfax High School, but she had books and in one of the books was coming out stories. And in one of the coming out stories, one of the high school seniors had an affair with a teacher and the Republicans glomed on that as if we were encouraging teachers to have affairs, homosexual affairs, lesbian affairs with students. And they insisted that Project 10 be stopped by the board of education. And I will say to you, probably one of the proudest moments of my life was a resolution that I brought to the board that was signed by all seven board members and the superintendent that said that we wholeheartedly stand behind the work of Dr. Uribe and Project 10 at Fairfax High School. - Well, L.A Unified has been interesting. L.A Unified has been very good generally, all through the years about it. And I know you would not say had you not been elected, they would not have been as good. But just to sort of keep on the theme and it's simply a theory. I don't know if you and I know what it would be like had we never been somewhere. But it just seems to me that the notion of having attention paid to the real issues of our community has generally happened 98% of the time, because one of us was at the table. - Well, I think some of the things I did might have been done by somebody else, but I don't think anybody would've taken on either the AIDS at that moment or the arrested teacher. They might have supported Dr. Uribe, they really might have, because she was a popular teacher there. She wasn't doing anything wrong. It was at lunch, it was a volunteer group of kids who came in because they were questioning or they already knew they were gay. But I don't think that they would have taken the same positions on immediately, which is what needed to happen on the AIDS thing was to, because right after L.A did it, all kinds of districts stopped being so hysterical. - [Sheila] Right. - Is they figured if the second largest school district in the country feels like it's safe, they're not gonna get sued, they're not gonna... That's what big institutions worry about. - Well, it makes a big difference because it's like a template for other districts. Although the smaller districts are sometimes, the boards are less professional. That's not quite the right word but less experienced and so-- - [Jackie] Yeah, but they're there forever. - They don't know how to make these rules. - That's right, that's right. - [Sheila] Or they don't want to. - Or they don't want to. So I do think it makes a difference. It made a huge difference because most of my colleagues were willing to support what I was doing. I don't know that any of them were willing to be-- - [Sheila] Upfront. - The target of that amount of anger and mail. - Well, it's very difficult. - [Jackie] Oh, my goodness. - I mean, and they probably were a target after they voted for something or after even they supported something. But I'm sure you drew-- - I drew a lot of it. - The highest percentage of the ire about it. - [Jackie] Yes, yes. - And was there any support shown? I mean-- - Oh yes, oh yes. Actually the county health department came and testified about this. I mean, I got a lot of help from the medical community. They really wanted the panic to stop because they wanted to be able to figure out who was getting it and what they could do about it, as opposed to having to treat literally thousands of people who were coming in trying to find out if they had AIDS, who had really very unlikely they would've had any contact with anyone who had it, but there was hysteria in the country. And so they were more... In fact, they were pushing us to put out some information about how you get it and don't get it or let them do it and send it out. Well, my board members were not convinced they wanted the medical community just to write it. They wanted it age appropriate for school age children. So we did have a health services group within the bureaucracy in L.A Unified. And they wrote them and only really had trouble with one little problem, that was smelling out that anal sex is a major way that people get it. (chuckles) - I can only imagine that it was opening the pamphlet. - But the interesting thing was, I got almost no negative feedback from parents. I mean, not one. My phone's listed in the phone book at the time, it still is. my phone was listed on all of the material that went out by the board. I had really, the parents were grateful. They were happy to get some information. - Well, that's been an interesting thing I think for all of us, when we first wade into the water of this kind of thing. Because don't really know. I mean, when you're elected, you know a bunch of people but you don't know everybody. - [Jackie] Right. - And there's like a whole bunch of people out there, even those that you represent. - [Jackie] Right. - That you haven't really met in person. - [Jackie] Oh really, that's true. - And you don't really know. And one of the nice things often that happens, is when people are supportive and they're just good people and they want good things to happen, and they understand that it's difficult or that it's hard to talk about. - [Jackie] Yeah. - Schools though, have been really flash points. - [Jackie] Yes. - For so much of this. - [Jackie] It's true. - Because the right wing keeps saying, "Oh, we have to protect the children." Protect them so that they'll all get sick and die. I mean, I don't know what kind of protection they were talking about. - [Jackie] Right. - But I found that schools were the most difficult arena to do stuff around education about our community. And then you went to the city council. - [Jackie] Yeah, yeah. - So how many years were you on the board? - '83 to '91. And then from '91 to '93, I worked halftime at Grant High School. I taught four periods a day, which is really more than half time but that's all they paid you, was halftime for four periods a day. And the other half of the day, I worked for Gloria Molina. Supervisor Molina, as her children's services deputy, which was fascinating because it was another look at what's happening to children in our county in terms of foster care issues, in terms of deadbeat dads and occasionally deadbeat moms, but mostly deadbeat dads. In terms of what effect drugs were having on low income communities. Where there was hunger, where people were not paying any attention to hunger. And so for two years, I did that, which I found really, really interesting. - But then you decided to run, so somebody-- - Well, actually that was the one I wasn't actually interested in running for. That was the one I kinda got talked into running for. - Because somebody was, well, you didn't have... They weren't termed out. - No, no, no. It was, Lou was running for mayor. So it was an open seat, it was an open seat. So first of all, I'd looked at the map and I thought I wasn't in the 13th District, I thought I was in the First, which was sort of downtown and east. And I thought Echo Park was in the First. So at first I said, "I'm not running because I'm not in the district and I ain't about to move." - [Sheila] Right. - But basically, it was women's organizations and some gay and lesbian organizations came to me and said, "Well, there are some gay candidates, it's true." But the women's organization said, "There's only one woman on the city council now. We'd like there to be more." And some of the gay organizations said, "We'd rather you be the first openly gay elected officials." And then I said, "Well, my son was a senior in high school." I said, "I'm not gonna be open until the November election." Because the June Primary, he's still-- - Right before graduation. - Right before he graduates, okay? So it turned out that one of the gay candidates outed me. Because we had, Sharon and I and Brian had the policy, if anybody asked, I wasn't going to deny it. So somebody interviewed one of the two men that were running that were gay and he said, "Well, how do you feel having two gay candidates in this race?" And he said, "Three." And so then they called me and said, "Are you the third?" And I said, "Yes." And it was a funny story because my son was playing varsity basketball at Marshall High School. And the paper came out on Thursday right before a very big game on Friday and I said to Brian, "Are you gonna get harassed?" And he said, "Oh mom, athletes don't read newspapers. (Sheila laughs) They still won't know you're gay." (both laughing) So he was fine with it all along, except for saying I'm captive and I can't leave. And I'd rather not have to fight that battle until I can leave when I want to. - [Sheila] Right. - But I remember him saying that to me. I'm thinking, "Oh, okay hun, that's fine." (both laughing) So I did get elected. And actually the first and second place were me and Tom LaBonge, who is now on the city council. It wasn't either of the two other gay candidates. One finished fourth and one finished fifth. They weren't even even third. So it turned out that people who wanted me to run were right, that I had the better chance of winning. There was already on the city council, a gay member, but he was never going to come out until he ran for mayor and that was Joel Wachs. He had put on the calendar, a domestic partnership registry in the city for city employees, which would get you bereavement leave for your relatives or your partner's relatives. - One of those very early limited kind of- - Yes, that was it. - [Sheila] DP (indistinct). - And he did it without telling anyone formally, publicly that he was gay although I always told him that it was the best kept non-secret in Los Angeles. - Well, Joel and I were friends from the first minute of our freshman year in UCLA. - [Jackie] Right, right. - And I knew his mother and he like many, many in our community, it was kind of like, "Well, everybody else can know but it'll kill my mother." - [Jackie] Yeah. - And of course, your parents know. - [Jackie] Of course. - And yet you think, "Oh well, I don't want them to have to face it." And that's really what was going on with Joel-- - [Jackie] Well, with my mother-in-law. - All along. - Yeah, with my mother-in-law, we never actually used the words but we stayed in the same bed in the same bedroom in her house when we visited Chicago. So it wasn't like she could miss it. - Well, they do know. I mean, we find out. - She knew, she knew. But Sharon also felt that there was no reason to make her have to confront her Irish Catholic upbringing when she accepted me and we were, and our son were welcome in her home. And that's all we really we needed, was acceptance. We got that, so I understand the nuances. But anyway, I had told Stonewall and I had told Harvey Milk, both of which still existed clubs that I was going to, in my first term, try to do something about equal benefits. Complete equal benefits. - So when you say that Joel put it on the calendar, what does that mean? - I mean, he started the ball rolling. There was a registry, nobody registered in it because if all you could-- - So it actually existed at the time? - [Jackie] Existed, for just-- - But only for bereavement. - [Jackie] Only for bereavement. That was it. - Hospital visits? - [Jackie] No, no. - No, no. - Because we didn't have any control over that. - Oh, right. Right of course. - It was the city's bereavement policy. It was our employees, it was city bereavement policy. Okay, so we had no control over visitations in hospitals, that was hospital policy and nobody signed up for it. I went and looked at the registry. I think there were like 12 people on it and he had done it years before I was elected. Because if you don't get anything out of it to take a risk of being out to people who may not like you if you're out, seemed like too big a risk, I suspect. I didn't actually get an interview. So I had been in office for about less than a year and-- - And now you were really out. I mean-- - Oh, no, I ran out. No, no, I ran out because I'd been outed. I ran in the June Primary out. I mean, I ran out. - [Sheila] Right. - I was out in June, I was out in November. I mean, I was gonna wait till November but I didn't have a choice so there we go. And so in a staff meeting, one of my staff members who was not gay said, "Well, this is a time to be looking at the things that you said you were going to do to various groups that you were interviewed by." And so we began going through them in the staff meeting and we came to the benefits, equal benefits for city workers. And I said, "Well, I should go test the water, who knows?" It was a pretty liberal city council. Why don't I go find out who would do it? So I started and I just went through each council office and I asked everybody would they vote for this? And immediately without argument or convincing on my part, really, I got 10 yeses, which is like two thirds of the council. I got only one no or maybe two no's. But I got one no for sure and one, I thought said, he wasn't sure what he was gonna do. So that's 12, I was 13 and two others kind of were hedging their bets a little bit too, but they didn't say no, I only got one no. And I remember saying when I was in one of the offices, one of the members who'd been on the city council a really long time, looked me right in the eye and said, "That's long overdue." And I thought, "Well, you've been here forever. Why didn't you bring it?" But I didn't say it, I wanted his vote. So of course I said, "Yeah, I think it's long overdue too." And I got kind of that reaction from several long time members who said-- - Well, that sort of goes along with this question in a way. - [Jackie] Yes, exactly. - But sometimes I wonder, well, they can't have been deferring to the gay person because there was no gay person. - [Jackie] That's right. - And they could have done it. - They could have done it. Several of them who immediately said yes and it turned out one of them had a sister who was gay. I mean, I didn't know any of that at the time and a couple of 'em who kept saying, "Oh, I'm glad you're doing it. We should have done this long ago." And I remember actually sitting there thinking, I'm happy that they're gonna vote for this. I'm happy we're gonna get this done in my first year when I thought it would be like year three or four of my first term but why didn't they do it? And I suspect that it wasn't high enough on their agenda. They weren't opposed to it, they had other things they were gonna do first. Maybe if there had been a whole bunch of LGBT groups that kept coming to them and saying, "Do this, do this, do this." They might have but none of them could. All of them could have, none of them would've I think, for a significant time yet. And so I put it up and it got like 13 votes or 12 votes or something and bango, bango, it was done. Now, it didn't happen as immediately as that, because we had to do a, because it revolved pensions as well. - [Sheila] Right. - So we had to wait for all of this other stuff. But I remember making the call to the guy who was in charge of the benefits section at the personnel department. And I said to him, "I don't know if anybody's asked you to ever look into this yet but maybe they have, so why should we start from scratch? If I wanted to do equal benefits, healthcare and dental care and pensions and leaves of absences for spousal or whatever. If I wanna do that, do we have any kind of cost analysis?" He says, "I'll be in your office in five minutes." This guy was gay, had been collecting this information for years and so we got it done very quickly because all we had to wait, was the actuarial, which was the only piece we had to do for the pensions. Everything else, he had already had all the information. I thought, "This is wonderful. Who knew? Who knew?" - So you have domestic partners now for the city employees only. - [Jackie] Right. - And a sense that you kinda had to be there to get this ball rolling? Even though people support us. - They were all supportive. I mean, really. I think we got one no vote and everybody else who didn't vote yes, abstained. I mean, it was near unanimity. And people were talking about how this was an important thing to do. - Well, it is sort of the diversity thing. - [Jackie] Yes. - I mean, when you serve on a thing, it doesn't come to mind right away. - [Jackie] Right. - Because you don't really understand the day to day lives of people-- - [Jackie] Right, exactly. - Who are not you. - [Jackie] Exactly. - You don't understand the day to day lives of immigrants. You don't understand the day to day lives of African Americans. You don't, I mean, if you're me. And so where's the authenticity? - [Jackie] Yeah. - But as soon as someone's says to me, "This is what's happening in this community and this is how we need to address it." - [Jackie] Right. - I would say, "I'm there." - [Jackie] Right. - But again, this is why I think they talk about a place at the table. It's not just, "Oh, I have a nice little card with my name on it." - My life, in my opinion, absolutely is the perfect example of that. Because I think that all of the things that I did probably would've been done eventually. But it would've taken a lot longer, a lot longer in some cases. I mean, I have no idea when they would've ever gotten around to doing it in the city. I mean, really some of these guys... I came in the first class that was gonna be term limited. So except for my class, everybody had been there a while and some, a long while and they must have voted for Joel's motion to create the registry. - But they wouldn't say why don't we go further? - [Jackie] No, they didn't. - Or they didn't, anyway. - They didn't, they could have but they didn't. - And were there other issues in the council that were adopted while you were there? - Well, there was the beginnings of the notion of some state benefits, okay? But you needed to be in a registry and I don't believe there was a state registry yet, or maybe there was, I don't think so. So I went over to the county and because of the people I had gotten to know while I was working for Molina, got them to start a county registry, okay? Which they did, which they voted on it. - [Sheila] Because you went over there? - And Edelman voted on it and I think Molina of course, carried it. So the three of them started reg... That meant now that anybody working for anybody in L.A County could sign up and as a result of signing up, it would entitle them to hospital visitations. It would entitle them to certain things, not yet benefits like your spouse's or your partner's medical benefits. That came a little later. And I was a perfect example because my back went out. I was in Cedars and down the street here and I said to the doctor or the nurse just after I was admitted, "Now of course, you know Sharon's my partner and if anything you need, if I'm not able to make decisions, she can make decisions." He said, "Do you have documentation of that?" I said, "Why would I need documentation of that?" I mean, so it actually happened to me. - [Sheila] Sure. - And they said, "Well, no, you have to have a-- - [Sheila] Power of attorney. - Power of attorney. So I said, "Fine, let's write out something and we'll sign." He says, "No actually-- - [Sheila] There's a form. - "There's a form. Plus, plus," here's the best part, "Nobody in the hospital can witness it, be the witnesses because if they work for the hospital, there might be a conflict of interest." - [Sheila] Do you have to grab somebody in the waiting room? - So we had to find people. (both laughing) - I'm sure walking down the hall. - Who were not employees to come and witness this power of attorney. - Oh, I remember because I did the same thing. - [Jackie] Yeah. - I mean, it's very important. - And someone said to me, "Well, gee, you were a smart person, an educated person. Why didn't you had to have that?" I said, "Well, you don't think if anybody ever needed it. - We didn't know. I mean, all we had in our community was, somebody would have a marriage license, one piece of paper and we would have a major who used to do these trainings. Here's what you need, you gotta protect yourself. - I still have a true case because of course, we had a child. - [Sheila] Right. - And we tried to have Sharon be a legal parent of Brian when he was a little boy. And they said, "Of course, she can be his legal parent. All you have to do is renounce your parenthood. - [Sheila] Exactly, one mother at a time. - I said, "Now hold it, hold it, hold it. Why would I have to give a.." "Well, that's the way it works unless you're married." So there's a lot of stuff that people may have forgotten. - Well, and it's kind of evolved over time. And I think it's evolved not 100% because we carried this stuff. - No, I don't ever want to ever downgrade. - No, no, no. Because allies, well, for instance. - [Jackie] Who voted for the things I put on. - When I was elected in '94, there had already been a bill passed and put on the governor's desk and vetoed by Governor Wilson to protect us in the employment code, somewhat limited fashion, but still to add us there. And our allies in the Senate and the assembly at that time in the early '90s had gotten this through. - [Jackie] Yeah. - And some of them, a couple in the closet but they were not out and people were very good about it. But nothing had actually made it into law. - [Jackie] Yeah. - And when I got up there as I was alone for a while, I was the only out person until Carole Migden-- - [Jackie] Table for one. - Right. (both laughing) The gay and lesbian caucus has its first lunch, Kuehl, party of one. Yeah, it was a great cartoon. Until Carole Migden was elected. And I decided that I wanted to work as you know, on the Dignity For All Students Act to protect students because we were getting so many stories at that time that it was our kids who were the most vulnerable, not the only ones because we were getting beat up out in the community too. But it was horrible for them in a almost a prison lockdown environment, which is a school, they couldn't get out. But no one had thought to address this issue. It was very controversial. There had been protections enacted in some of the school districts, a little but nothing statewide. And it was completely smacked down in the first year that I brought it, didn't even make it out of committee education committee. And then when I brought it back two years later, Migden was there. She had taken Willie Brown's seat when he left and ran for mayor. And it was just interesting because actually there was a funny dynamic on the floor, because I was the speaker protem. My seat was way in the back because I was hardly ever in it, Migden's seat was way in the front. And so there would be this kind of feeling of, I don't know, energy that connected us. And Migden used to say, "If we wanted a complete hush on the floor, all we had to do was hug." Because everybody would just about break their necks looking. (Jackie laughs) But it was, I mean, people were very supportive, who were supportive. But as you say, no one had thought to do it. - [Jackie] Yeah. - No one had wanted that to do it. - That's the key, that's the key. - And then when Migden was the one who did the domestic partner registry for the state, it was really the same thing. - [Jackie] Right. - At that time, it was just the two of us who were out before you and Kehoe got there. And it was, I never thought for a minute, "Oh, I have to do gay bill." - Yeah, no, I didn't either, I didn't either. - Because it was one of 50 bills that I did in the first two years. - [Jackie] Right. - Although ,one of the ones that I'm most proud of, but it was apparent to me that there were places that needed us to be added in. - [Jackie] Yeah. - We were not seen as a beleaguered minority. - [Jackie] Right. - And yet we were, in just very much the same way as others. - [Jackie] Right, right. - So it was interesting to be at that table and your experience when you got there, I don't actually know. I know you said to me, you never cried so much in any job in your life. - [Jackie] Yeah, it's true. It was very incredible. - I hope that you laughed too. - I thought, "Oh my God, I'm this marshmallow, everybody thinks I'm such a toughie." - Well, it's so emotional. - [Jackie] Yeah, it is. - I've never been on such an emotional job in my life and not just because it's personal. - [Jackie] Right. - Because every day you're kind of like living out your values. - [Jackie] Yeah, really. - And you throw up your mic, make a speech on the floor about justice. I mean it's a fabulous job in a way. - [Jackie] Yeah. - And yet pierce your... Oops, sorry about that. Pierce your heart. (Jackie laughs) I just hit the mic, I really apologize. - [Jackie] Yeah. - Pierce your heart every minute. - [Jackie] Yeah. - But you were the one who carried the big-- - The big bill. - (indistinct) tell me me a little about that. - Well, I had sort of thought that Carol Migden and others were doing most of the heavy lifting. And I had said to her when I first got there, how grateful I was that she was doing that. But that I had wanted to do something and the next piece seemed to be a biggie. Did we wanna do it together or whatever and really unlike most legislators, she said, "No, you go ahead, this is fine. I've done a lot of this stuff, you can go ahead and do it." So I thought we would maybe do it jointly or something like that. So I sat down with my staff and said, "Here's what we need. We need this many in the assembly and this many in the Senate and let's start counting noses and finding out who's where and who's what." - Now, saying for a minute, because I'm sure not everyone is familiar with what 205. - 205 was the Domestic Partner Bill, which basically boils down to, except for on income tax, which came later, every place in any code of state government that talks about spouse, spouse now included domestic partners who had signed up in the state's domestic partner registry. - So child custody, all of those. - Adoption, workplace, wherever you had to sign a spouse's name for anything. - Pick up the kids at school. - [Jackie] Pick up the kids at school. - Healthcare decisions, everything. - Sign their report cards, whatever. And I will say and I will say this quite repeatedly over and over again, Grey Davis' office was a big help. And lots of times when the man himself may have gotten a little concerned at how far this was going, his staff was able to help him understand where we were taking as much precaution as possible. He asked only one thing when we started down this path, he wanted to be able to say it was cost neutral to the government. And that's why we left out the income tax that you could file jointly, which was done subsequently, I think by Migden, yeah. - [Sheila] Right. - But he asked me to leave that out and we debated it, but we figured that it probably wouldn't help too many people all at once anyway. - [Sheila] Right. - Because you have to go through a lot of rigmarole to decide whether to file jointly or not. - Well, and sometimes it's an advantage to married people and sometimes it isn't depending on things that can be changing. - The income of each of you. But also we also found out that the major way that people's IRS forms are audited, is as if they disagree with what happened at the state level. Because they send tapes of the state ones to feds and the feds send tapes to the states and they match them because of your social security numbers on this or an employer ID or whatever it is. And so we thought, "Well, okay, so we don't have a hassle of people filing married jointly in California and single in the fed." And the feds start knocking out all these gay and lesbian couples. - [Sheila] Because they didn't match. - Because they didn't match and now for audit, I thought that would be a really positive thing. - We wouldn't have done anything really nice for them. - [Jackie] Right. - Right, but it was a big thing, that bill. - It was a very big bill. - I mean, it's really all of the benefits and all the responsibilities-- - [Jackie] Absolutely, that was the part-- - Of marriage. - And actually we did an odd thing. We delayed the implementation for a full year because a lot of people who had signed up on the registry, had signed up on the registry to get each other's healthcare benefits but not the responsibility for each other's kids. - It was much more limited. Well, we had actually a notice that had to go out to current partner. - [Jackie] Yes, absolutely. - Saying, "You better watch out." - Yeah, get off the registry if this is not what you're looking for. - [Sheila] Right. - Get off the registry if this is not what you intended. - Well, and it's funny too, because I think all of these steps as people understood that all the benefits that we were talking about we had, it made, to some extent, it made marriage a little less scary unless you were purely doing it from a religious point of view. - [Jackie] Right, right. - In which case, we weren't having a religious marriage in the state anyway. And although we still don't have marriage in California because of Prop 8. - [Jackie] No, I'm married. - Yes, 18,000 couples are married in California and probably more that have moved here. But it was a very, very big step and there were a number of big steps. Chris Kehoe carried the bills. And then when Laird and Leno were elected in the next round and we had our first guys up there, they were carrying a number of bills. I think with the exception of Antonio's bill that actually did amend the employment code and finally got it signed again, by Grey. I mean, Grey signed so many good bills. - [Jackie] Yeah, he did. - For us. I think it's been primarily our little caucus. - [Jackie] Yeah, I think so too. - And not so little, I mean six people, and then seven at its high point. So let me ask you as we, we're not quite winding down yet. But term limits in the city council, attrition in the school board, do they have term limits? - [Jackie] They do now. - And probably in a lot of city councils around the state, boards of supervisors, we have term limits now in L.A County and certainly in the legislature, means to me, means a bench, you have to develop a bench. - [Jackie] Yeah. - Because people will term out and you will not have LGBT people-- - [Jackie] You're absolutely right. - Being elected to office. - [Jackie] You're absolutely right. - And I've been talking about how important that is. - No, I tried when I left the assembly to get a lesbian woman. I was looking for either a gay man or a lesbian woman. I had to get a lesbian woman who lived in the community, who was a Latina, who would represent both the Latina population and women and lesbians and the gay community elected. But unfortunately, the politics of the time were that somebody else was being groomed by the powers that be in my own party. And they put a fortune in electing a straight Latino male instead of... Who never lived in the district, who still doesn't live in the district. Instead of a person who lived in the district, was from the district, grew up in the district and who would've represented more than one community. - Well, it's interesting too, because sometimes people in our own community don't support the gay or lesbian candidate. - [Jackie] I know, I know. - It's like, that's not the only thing you should go on. There's no question. - No, but all things being equal, right? - But come on, you know what I mean? - [Jackie] Yeah. - But I do think that part of it comes from the fact that people do not quite get how important it is to have a place at the table. I mean, I don't know how else to put it. - I think because there are a number of people who are good on our issues who are not from our community. I think people do actually believe that allies will do what you will do if you were there, and I don't believe that. My own experience has definitely not been that. Anywhere I've been actually, anywhere I've been. - Right, there's this, as I said, it's an authenticity issue. And of course, if we compare it to something else, in the old days, they were only men in the legislature. - [Jackie] Yeah, right. - And they would assure, even in the days of fighting for women's suffrage, they would assure the women, the good guys, "Don't worry, we'll take care of you. We've got your best interest at heart. You don't need to be in the rough and tumble of all of this grease, we'll take care of you." - It's pretty crude after all. - And yet just being there, even if you don't go up as the first woman, if you're Rose Vuich in the State Senate in California, for instance, had a little bell on her desk. And whenever the person chairing the floor would say, "Gentlemen of the Senate." She would very quietly ring this little bell to remind them that they weren't all gentlemen in the Senate, there was a lady and there was no bathroom for her. - [Jackie] I know, I visited her bathroom. The Rose bathroom. - Right, now it's the Rose room. (both laughing) But still, I think it was always bogus. - [Jackie] Yeah. - To say to us, "Don't worry girls. We're your allies and we can do it." And I don't see any difference there. - I don't either, I don't either. It's the same thing with African Americans or Native Americans or Latinos. I mean, you need to have people who are from that community, who've lived that, lived and walked that walk in order to be able to represent those interests. Which doesn't mean that even though I was a Anglo representing a Latino community, I felt often that, and it is part of why I didn't run for the Senate. I felt that it should be a Latino representative because I would've won the seat but I just felt that it was important that it be a Latino. - Well, I think, and it's more than diversity though. - [Jackie] Yes. - I know that some of the people watching this show-- - [Jackie] Oh yeah, no. It isn't only that because when I ran for-- - Are saying, "The is just political correctness. - No, no, because when I ran for the assembly in that same Latino district, the people running for the assembly, some of whom were Latino were not ready for prime time, In my opinion. Now, that's my opinion but I didn't have any trouble running in that race. Because the people who were running in that race were not particularly, they hadn't done the things that I had already done. I was going to be able to do in six years more than they were gonna be able to do in six years. Not because I'm smarter but I had already had other elected experience and I'd had the experience that would make it easier for me to transition to Sacramento. I didn't feel that way about the Senate race. I did not feel that way about the Senate race. - Well, I was sorry that you didn't personally because you were a great legislator-- - Yeah, but I did feel like there were other people who could do it. - Well, that's because we understand. - [Jackie] Yes. - I mean, you understand what it means to be there. - [Jackie] Yes. - I mean, I remember the stories that were told. We would have sort of a nothing bill that we were all fighting over about whether you could use leaf blowers or not. - [Jackie] Yes. - And all the people would show up going, "Oh, they're waking me up at seven in the morning and they're horrible." And then Tony Cardenas and others would stand up on the floor and say, "My grandfather and my father were and are gardeners. And do you know what it takes to rake and rake and rake and rake and what that means to the body?" And I'm thinking, "I don't know if I even agree with him because of course, I got woken up at seven in the morning." But it was different. It was something being said where people say, "This is a real life here." - [Jackie] Right, right. - "We need to hear this real life." - [Jackie] Right. - And it's the same with us, nobody knows what our lives are at, really. - [Jackie] I know, I know. No, they don't, they don't. - What it feels like not to be able to marry. - Well, it's the notion of walking a mile in someone else's moccasin. It's a very old saying but it's a very good saying and it's why people have to be at the table. They just have to be. And obviously, if I had a LGBT person who was reactionary running, and a straight white male who had progressive politics, I'm with the straight white male. So I'm not saying you don't take into consideration all things but if you don't take in consideration also the need that people have to be represented, have their voices actually heard, who can stand up in a legislature and talk about their own experience and their own family's experiences, then I think you've missed something really important about diversity in America. - Also the difficulty of climbing that ladder. - [Jackie] Yeah. - Makes you kind of a scrappy person in the legislature. - [Jackie] Yeah. - Because virtually everybody there from our community are progressive or are very close to progressives. - [Jackie] Yeah. - And it is interesting because I'm doing some consulting with Planned Parenthood now and they wanna run a bill next year. And they were looking, I was sitting, listening to their conversation. They were looking at who they might want for authors and every single one they named was a gay or lesbian person. And it was interesting to me because this wasn't a gay bill and it wasn't because they were gay or lesbian. - [Jackie] No. - But the fact of needing to do the fight, I watch Holly Mitchell, for instance, who's an African American member of the assembly now, if you don't know her. And her scrappiness and her commitment, it's something very important in the life experience of people who've had to fight for stuff. - Yeah, well, if you're not automatically a part of the mainstream, you do get a kind of a, "I'm prepared to take on real adversity because whether I choose to or not, it's coming to me anyways. So it might as well be on my terms." At least that's how I look at it. - Well, and also you're not so go along and get along either. I mean, we're not saying everybody in our community who's ever been elected. But I do think when I was there, the people that I knew from our little caucus, we wouldn't always just automatically go, "You say jump, I say, how high." - [Jackie] Right. - We were asking questions. - [Jackie] Right. - I mean, I never forget you running that education committee. Questions are asked and it was very, very important. - [Jackie] Yeah. - Well, the Victory Fund is a national organization that helps support gay and lesbian people running for-- - [Jackie] And they helped me. - State office. And it is a big help, I think. - Yes, they helped me. They helped me, the amount of money I got wasn't spectacular. But it was money I didn't have to go out and get. - [Sheila] Right. - And it was always when I would talk to my treasure, she'd say, "Oh, and you got a little something from the Victory Fund this week." And it was like a little boost, it's a little boost. I know in some races they raise spectacular amounts of money, but mine wasn't one of those. Although, they raised money for me, don't misunderstand me and I was very grateful. But it was also the boost and knowing that there was sort of somebody who was out there kind of helping you, that you didn't have to actually expend your own personal energy to go get, it makes a big difference. - Well I was thinking too, when you were talking about the school board, how the right wing has really made it a- - [Jackie] Unbelievable. - Guiding strategy to try to take over at that level, I shouldn't say take over. But certainly enter those races in order to be elected, understanding how important it is. I think they're thinking, to control education, is to control the next generation. - [Jackie] That's right. - That's the way they're thinking. And frankly, it's not so far off. - Oh, it's definitely not so far off. I think one of the things that's interesting, is is that they very often run stealth campaigns. That is to say the people running, don't say what they believe in when they run, you find out after you got them, which I think is the crappiest thing that anybody in a democracy can do but nonetheless, it's not illegal. - On the other hand with us, you pretty much know what you're getting. (Jackie laughs) - [Jackie] You know whether-- - Like my story of the guy who came over to me when I was first running and said, he pounded on the table and he said, "Sheila, I hate all politicians, I hate them. I can't stand them. They all lie, they dissemble, they won't tell you the truth. They don't give you a straight answer. I hate 'em all except for you." - [Jackie] Yeah. - And I said, "Well, thank you very much, but why me?" And he said, "Well, you already told us the worst thing about yourself." (Jackie laughs) Meaning I had come out. Why would you lie about anything else? (Jackie laughs) - That's a wonderful story. - Well, but it taught me something. - [Jackie] Yeah. - Because you think it's all terrible adversity and "Oh, I'm struggling." And, "Oh, what if they hate me?" And then you forget that it's seen as courage and honesty. - [Jackie] Yeah. - If you're out. - [Jackie] Yeah. - Because it's not that easy to be out. Certainly not to run out. - [Jackie] Right, that's for sure. - And I think there is an aspect to that of being courageous and being honest simply by saying, "This is who I am. And now can we talk about what I'd like to do?" - [Jackie] Yeah. - So if you were advising here in the last five minutes of the show, anybody thinking of running and they're members of our community, a transgender person not yet elected to state office here in California, although a member of parliament in New Zealand. - [Jackie] Yeah, I saw. - Yeah, pretty cool. - [Jackie] Yeah. - What would you advise people thinking of running for something? - Well, I always say first find a community that you plan to set down some roots in and stay in. Because even though people do, if they have enough money, elect people who move into your community, and they do. This is it, sometimes they win. People do prefer people who have got a history in a neighborhood, in a community and they do, they do. I mean, it was a big boon to me that I had lived there all those years, that my son went to school there all those years, it was a big, big part of why people-- - Well, again, it's an identity thing. People think, "Well, they understand me because they've been living here." - And they've seen me in the grocery market. They've seen me at the cleaners, they've seen me at the local coffee shop, all of which we utilize in our neighborhoods. So you become a part of the community. And the second thing I would say is get involved in local struggles first. So we were in a struggle for a library branch in our neighborhood. We were in a struggle for a public swimming pool in our neighborhood. We stopped a freeway, we stopped the two freeway from knocking down all these houses that were the last affordable houses in Los Angeles at the time. And so again, we saved the Elysian Park from further en corrosion after the Dodgers and the police department took a good part of it away. But we stopped that. Not a single foot's been lost since that Save Elysian Park group got started. So people had seen me around. So I tell people, anybody who wants to run for office from any community, establish yourself as a person who is defending the rights of others, establish yourself as a person who is honest, who is not just the talker at the meeting, raising their hand all the time. But when it came time to volunteer, "Who's gonna go down to city hall and bring the petitions? Who's gonna help start the childcare center we need in Echo Park? Who's going to get the Echo Park pool built?" You volunteer, people notice that. Now, not everybody notices that because only a fraction of the people are even involved in any of those things. But those people are people who care about their community and they do talk to their neighbors and their family and their friends and that's your best stuff, no matter what you put in the mail and no matter how many precincts you want, the best stuff are the people who've seen you do things to make the community better and who will tell their friends about it. In my first race for city council, I think we had, no for school board. I think we had 65 coffees. - [Jackie] Yep. - And people said, "How did you even know 65 people that have coffees?" Because a lot of people don't, even though they've lived there a while, because they've never been involved with any of the organizations. And I found that when people saw that I was active, saw that I kept coming back, that I volunteered to do my share of the work, not just the talking, that when I decided to run, I immediately had a bunch of people who said, "Yes, I wanna help." Some were gay, most of them were not. - [Sheila] Right. - A lot of them were Latinos, some were white. Some were Asian, a lot of Filipinos, why? Because on the school board, I had been champion of the notion that we had to tell the difference between the Mexicans and the Filipinos when we were doing bilingual education. Because they were all getting put into Spanish, English bilingual classes and they were speaking Tagalog. - [Jackie] Right. - So what I'm saying is, if you do things, people do remember that. - Well, it's a coalition issue too. - [Jackie] Yes, it is. In this city-- - Hardly anyone's done it better than you, Jackie. - Well, thank you. It's all a coalition. - Anyway, we're out of time. - Oh, good, so sad. - But we always could talk for a whole other hour. - [Jackie] I know. - I love. Really, I do this for myself because it's kinda like-- - Oh, thank you. - "Oh, I can talk to Jackie for an hour." Thank you so much-- - It's always a pleasure. - For being with us and thank you for being with us. "Gay and Lesbian, Transgendered, Bisexual People at The Table: Elected to Office." Need to have more and more and more coming along with term limits so that we can get used to it. (soft music)