Get Used to It: Ep. 89, "Purchasing of Pride?"

(typewriter clacking) (funky upbeat music) - Hi, welcome to Get Used To It. I am Sheila Kuehl, your host. And today, we're going to explore a topic that my guests tell me they don't know exactly what they're going to say about, and so I'm gonna try to set the scene, because I'm not really sure whether this is a problem, or a boon to our community. And what I'm talking about is corporate sponsorship, corporate advertising, corporate underwriting, corporate, corporate, corporate. I mean, have you ever ridden in a bike ride and found out that your T-shirt was a logo for some booze company? Gone to a luncheon or a dinner for our community to raise money for something good, and the walls are plastered with corporate logos, and all the people thanked in a long progression at the dinner all seem to be banks? Makes you wonder about the grassroots movement. So I wanted to explore this with three of the smartest people I know, and fortunately they could all be here at the same time. So let me introduce them. First, in the middle here, Phill Wilson who is the executive director of the African-American AIDS Institute, a member of the John Loyd Foundation board, former member of the Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Forum and all-around activist and good guy. Welcome, Phill. - Thank you, it's good to be here. - Thank you. And to his right, my left, Jon Davidson, who is senior council at Lambda Legal, was on the board of the ACLU, also all-around activist and good guy. Welcome, Jon. - Thank you. - And my third guest, Torie Osborn, one of my fave raves in the whole history of the United States, who is currently the executive director of the Liberty Hill Foundation, which makes grants to grassroots organizing organizations, but was, of course, the executive director of our LA Gay and Lesbian Center, and was the executive director of the Gay and Lesbian taskforce, and has served on a number of boards herself. Welcome, Torie. - And I'm a good guy, too. - And you're a good guy, too. Totally. So let me start with you, Phill. The premise that I set, I mean I said it somewhat humorously, but there really is a question, I think, about why the movement may need this kind of either money or support of some kind, and more importantly, I think kind of what do the corporations think they're getting out of it? It's one thing to give us money, it's another thing to have to have it recognized or emphasized. Is this your experience, too? - Right, well I think that there are three points that are important relative to this issue. One is who actually controls our movement, and how do we make decisions about what we do or what we don't do? Now I always say every time you decide to do something, now by definition you're deciding not to do something else. And so what's in the calculus of determining what you're going to do, and therefore what you're not going to do. And so I think that's one question. And the thing that is potentially troublesome is not so much the conscious decisions that people make, but when the fundraising becomes such an important part of what you do, that it's not even a conscious decision, it's just a subconscious decision. So not only, no longer do you make decisions about what is right or wrong or what's the best thing to do, you make decisions based on what you can fund, what you can raise money around. And is at one level when it happens consciously, I'm actually comfortable with that, because at least people are thinking about it. But what I'm afraid of is that it's such a part of what we do that we not longer consciously make those decisions. So I think that's one issue. The second issue I think is why are we so dependent on corporations to fund our institutions? And the driving question behind that is are we doing our part to build our institutions as individuals, as members of this community. And then the third question actually is kind of the boon part of it, is that maybe corporations are supporting us because we've won them over, that they've joined the team, and since I think particularly gay and lesbian organizing, and quite frankly, AIDS organizing, is organizing, it's important for us to be subversive, but our goal is to change the way things are, and so if what is demonstrated by corporate support is that we are in fact changing the way things are, we're changing status quo, then I think that's a good thing. But if it means that we're not changing the status quo, but we're being co-opted, and we're in fact changing and we're making it more, and then I think that that is a problem in the issue around corporate support. But those are the questions as I see them. - Well one of the things I know that any movement does is a kind of social critique. I mean, you say, hopefully you're a very vibrant movement, you're saying not only what's wrong, but what's right, and trying to get from one place to the other. And we've dealt with discrimination, and disrimination in the workplace, and there are a lot of corporations who were very helpful to us, mostly in getting out of the way. I don't know that many of them really at the highest level, took leadership within the corporation. First there was a league, or a group of gay and lesbian employees, or whatever kind of pushing it, pushing it, pushing it. A number of the corporations look to see oh one of their competitors had done this, and perhaps if they're going to attract the best people to work there, maybe they shouldn't discriminate because they're foreclosing something. And the third thing is really marketing. I mean, it's, and in who you hire, there's a certain marketing aspect, too. Certainly in the women's movement. Suddenly people started advertising at law firms how many women partners they had. And it was kind of like oh, so that others will come here. But it was interesting in your first point, you talked about the choice of activity of a movement. Can you say more? - Well, that particularly in a progressive movement, that there's always the question about how far are you going to go? And one thing that seems to be true is that the group that has the least to lose, the group that is often the most marginalized, is the group that is most willing to go the farthest. And as groups become, groups have more and more to lose, or more and more infrastructure there, they tend to be less likely to push the status quo, or want, because they have an investment in the status quo. The other part of it is defining success. Now when success is defined by how large your budget is, or how much you can bring in on any event, as opposed to let's say, how many individual folks are supportive of your issue. Then, I mean, even our activism, we get lazy on our activism. That the goal is to have 500 people at a dinner where they pay $1000 apiece. And maybe that's good or bad, and I'm not making a commentary about that, but when that is done to the sacrifice of having 500,000 people who are mobilized and energized around your activity, then I think that's a problem. And when so much of what we do is around raising money around those 500 people, around that one corporation, or what have you, then again, it goes back to who's making the decisions around what it means to be a part of this movement, or where this movement is going. - Well I don't know how many of our organizations really define themselves as activist. I mean, in a funny way, we grew up a lot as a service-oriented movement, taking care of our own. And there were some areas of grassroots activism, but some of it was, a lot of it, was organized around getting services to us. I mean, in the AIDS movement, there was a, you tell me, I mean there was a growing recognition of the issue. There was no help from anybody else. Weren't we taking care of our own before we were kind of-- - No, no, no. We were definitely taking care of our own, but a critical part, from the very, very beginning and to today is a part of the advocacy and the activism, and quite frankly, in the beginning, because in some very real ways, there was nothing to do in the taking care of, and so all we could do was to be activists and advocates. And a critical part, I mean certainly in the work that we do at the institute, a critical part of the service delivery is about advocacy. It's about helping people to be empowered to stand up to the table and enjoy the full complement of their citizenry. - Well, I certainly noticed a huge increase in the number of pharmaceutical companies that are interested in our community. And I'm sure that's appropriate because we're unfortunately a growing body of end users of pharmaceuticals. But do you see any conflicts there, or is that just all a good thing? - Oh, I don't think that it's all a good thing. I think that there are reasons to be concerned. But I do think that the burden around whether or not it's good or bad is up to us. And by that, accepting money from corporations is not a bad thing by itself. But how we allow that to influence what we do, and what we do with the money that we get, that can be good or bad. And also, I think that it's important for us not to be naive about why corporations give, particularly I think in this climate. I think there was a period of time when there was a part of corporate America that wanted to be good neighbors, good corporate neighbors, and they gave because it was the right thing to do. But I think increasingly, that kind of separation between the corporate foundation and the marketing department, that wall has fallen down, and often the people that you're going to ask to donate money are the people who are responsible for marketing, and particularly in the last two years, I have not had a meeting with a corporation where they have not talked about the return on their investment, or the impact on their bottom line. And since many of the corporations I work with are pharmaceutical companies, we know that the bottom line is how many people are taking this pill or that pill. As a treatment advocate, I'm very glad that more people are taking some pill. I'm not necessarily so committed to which pill that might be, or which pills that might be, using the right language. But so it is absolutely imperative that we are disciplined now to understand there are no free rides, I would use Jenny Apozo's quote but I won't, but there are no free rides. We'll talk about it off camera. And so the corporations want something, and it's our responsibility to make sure that we don't lose the integrity of our missions in that process. - Lambda has an interesting sort of history of suing, essentially, not only individuals or governments, but also businesses that have exhibited disrimination against us. And of course you also honor businesses at the Lambda dinners along with hopefully worthy individuals. Do you see any conflict, Jon? - I don't think there's a necessary conflict there, because I think that those are actually both tools that you can use. What you have to be focused on is what is your mission, and what are the multiple ways you can accomplish that. You can try to change the behavior of people who are hurting our community, by suing them, by creating bad press for them, by getting people to not patronize them, or you can try to direct positive attention toward people who are doing the right thing, which helps encourage their competitors to do that as well so that they might get that. But one of the things I think that's critical is that organizations keep their program work, their activist work, in our case our legal work and our educational work, really separate from their development work. And we've done that by having United Airlines be a Lambda national sponsor, and by filing friend of the court briefs in suits directly opposed to United Airlines' position. By actually having Wells Fargo gives us money, and us using that money in part to support a lawsuit against them, so they were giving us money while we were suing them. And so it's really important that you not allow there to be strings that skew or limit your work. Now, you have to be very conscious about that, and one of the things I think that's important that we recognize is it's not just corporations that this is true of. I mean, people who are dependent on government money through all sorts of government grants and programs, I think we've seen this definitely with AIDS organizations that are dependent on Ryan White funds, who have been reluctant to criticize government positions because they're afraid that their funding maybe get cut. We've seen it as well with wealthy donors, and what can you say when they're then also giving to some other organization, other cause that you don't approve of? I think we should not forget that this country, there are creations of wealth in lots of different kinds of institutions in this country, and we need to think of what are the ways we can use that, we can have it fund the work that we need to do without us being compromised, and that can either be compromised by there being ties, by there being strings, and I think in rare cases, that simply the association with certain corporations or other institutions that are actively anti-gay, that have hurt our community, is something to question. That is, I know this is an issue for a number of women's groups, when Playboy Foundation wanted to give money to women's groups, and to use the fact that they'd given that money to say see, we're not anti-women, when in fact they were continuing to do things that were hurting women. - But it's also, though, I think a question of who in our community and beyond allies of our community that care about our community knows about this or that? What is the impression that they have of a particular product or organization, based on the fact that they are a sponsor? For instance, American Airlines has been honored by a number of organizations in our community as having a very good program, this and that. They are sponsors of organizations, they send their gay liaison to dinners, and yet, Lambda is suing them. Okay, good for Lambda, because what they did in the case of the man who's a partner of someone who died in a 911 crash, and wasn't treated equally with other families, what they did deserved the suit. And I hope it works out. And I hope American is a good citizen and it all works out. But the impression our community has is primarily very positive about this airline, because it's been advertising, it's been marketing, I mean, like crazy to us, and yet, what do they know about this suit? - Well, first of all, we haven't sued them yet. - [Sheila] Okay, sorry. Sorry. - We're in negotiations with them. - [Sheila] Negotiations, okay. - But I do want to say that the fact that they want to be seen as friendly to the gay community is something that we are able to use in our negotiations with them. I think the fact that there are ties is not in and of itself a bad thing. The question is how can we use them as opposed to having them use us? And we can say to them, look you have put a big investment in trying to be seen as gay friendly, because you want gay people to fly American Airlines, and you want to attract gay and lesbian employees, and so that means you have to follow through on the promises that you've made, and the impression that you've created. So again, I think we have to recognize that corporations are major institutions in this country, and they also are major employers in this country, and we should not, we need to have grassroots organizations. We also need to have organizations that reflect the maturing of our community and the multiple ways in which we can achieve positive change in this country, and I don't think that comes from insisting that we will not take certain kinds of money, except in rare instances. I guess the question is how many hands does money have to go through before it suddenly becomes clean? - And I would never suggest that we not take all the money. I'm a politician. I'll take from anybody but tobacco and Enron. And that's, there's quite a few people that I will take from. The question though is, two things, I think. One is when people give me money, they don't necessarily say gee, I'd sure like to see my name on something. They just want me to know, because that's where they think the advantage is. In our community events, they really want their name on something. - But is that different than major donors who want their name on a building? - I guess major donors aren't wanting me to buy something, aren't trying to cultivate my friendship so that I'll go out and buy their vodka, their beer, it's always interesting to me how many alcohol companies have fastened on our community, and the black community, and the Latino community, and every minority community, that I suppose either has a drinking problem or will. If they buy all this stuff. Just how interesting it was. I mean, GLAD is a good example as well. They're critical of shows. They praise shows. They sell tables at the GLAD awards, but as soon as they were working against Dr. Laura, they sent back the contribution from Paramount, even though they were honoring a Paramount show at their dinner. I mean, I'm hearing what you're saying. I'm not saying that we're doing a bad thing. It's just interesting to me how out in the general community, non-activist community, they'll get a good impression of a product because of this. - I do think it's important to be conscious, and to try to make people understand that just because a corporation is giving $25,000 to some organization and getting their logo up at their dinner, doesn't mean that everything that everything that corporation does is wonderful. And it's complicated because we get barraged by so much advertising, and so many messages, it's how much information can people really process? But I guess I feel that in the long run, the question is not that one should celebrate how much money you raise, but in looking at how can we get the work done that needs to be done, and that that should be our primary focus, and when you look at Lambda for example, last 10 years, we've gone from 21 employees with offices in two cities to now 85 employees with offices in five cities, which means the ability to do just a tremendous magnitude more work, but that takes paying people their salaries, and paying rent, and funding lawsuits that we bring, and all sorts of other work, and that money has to come from somewhere, and to not take it from corporations based on some general anti-corporate view, I think is irresponsible. But at the same time, one has to be conscious as is that skewing what you're doing, either consciously or unconsciously? Really to examine your integrity about really fulfilling your mission? - Torie, you were at the Center for six years. You opened that beautiful new building. Had to raise a lot of money, capital money, other kind of money. You were at the taskforce, and now you're at a foundation that really specializes in funding activism and grassroots organizing. I know that you're not interested in corporate bashing because we've had this talk, but do you see any concern in what we've raised here, that sort of? - Well, I think this is a really particularly complex conversation about some very contradictory issues. And we're having it at a very high level. Phill's first point about what in my business training, my MBA training, we would call the opportunity cost, or the opportunity losses. I want to go back to. Because every hour, and we raise money. I run a foundation, but we're a public charity, so we raise money like any other nonprofit. So for every hour that I'm spending fundraising from any source is an hour I'm not spending doing something else. And I do think that, I do think that there is a subtle way that, and again, it could be government, it could be wealthy individuals, or it could be corporations, that the energy that it takes doing your fundraising, and whoever is biting, whoever you're cultivating, whoever you're working with, does have an impact on the organization, or the organization culture, or how you market. Now, just a couple of statistics. In terms of all the nonprofit moneys that are raised in the world, in this country anyway, 85% comes from individuals, five percent comes from corporations, and it's roughly maintained constant over the last 20 or 25 years. In the gay community, it may be a little bit broader, or there may be organizations that have figured out how to do corporate fundraising. There are certainly some civil rights organizations, even outside the gay community that I know have gotten very good at it. And I think, so corporations don't own the nonprofit sector, period, end of story. It's individuals. It's mostly individuals. It's about 10% foundations, it's five percent corporations, basically. That's what it breaks down to. So we're talking, in the grand scheme of the nonprofit sector, a small amount of money. But they do insist, they're very smart. They insist on visibility that's quite disproportionate to the dollars that are actually invested. And what Phill said is really important to realize, and this is a trend across time. And it's actually coincides with the monopolization, the transitions in the business sector in general, where there's fewer and fewer, larger and larger multinational corporations that have the bigger and bigger and bigger piece of market share. Here in Los Angeles, the model of corporate citizenship was the ARCO corporation. They had ARCO corporation gave a tremendous amount of money on a lot of unpopular issues over a long period of time, then the giving started to come out of the marketing sector of ARCO, and then BP bought ARCO, and they shut down all corporate giving in Los Angeles. And that's the trend internationally. So corporations demand in return, it's completely what Phill said. I mean, this is not a narrow view. This is actually the full picture. It's all connected to the bottom line, it's all connected to building a market, and corporations are not stupid. They see the gay and lesbian community, they see certainly partly because of how we've portrayed ourselves, not because it's necessarily true, but they perceive a lot of disposable income, and they're not stupid. They're looking at a market, and they're playing to the market, and the booze and Philip Morris and everybody else who's marketed to us is, so. But here's what I really think. And it's just, maybe this is just my particular perspective now where I really believe that the issue of our time is the prosperity gap. It's the gap between rich and poor that's grown in this country. 40% of Americans who live at or near poverty and the one percent at the top that 20 years ago had 17% of the wealth, and now have close to 50% of the wealth, in 20 years, in one generation, and that internationally, you have the same thing, and you combine that with the global corporatization of the world, and the decline of any other economic system besides capitalism as a model for how society could be organized. I mean, when I was a kid, we thought maybe socialism was viable. Now, I was a radical, and part of the New Left, and that's not even a conversation. It's even a conversation about what's sort of, so anyway. So what I'm saying is I think the hegemony of capitalism as an economic system, of the business model, it is like smog. It is in every single facet of our lives, and you can't see it. And also in the last 20 years, under the right wing control of a political agenda, and I'm not gonna talk about the politics piece of it, but I'm talking about the values piece of it. Wealth and money and materialism and commercialism have been elevated as values way beyond where they were 20, 25, 30 years ago. So I know I'm talking abstractly, but that's what really bothers me. The commercialism doesn't bother me quite so much. I mean yeah, the corporate logos, yeah, I go to the Sparks games, and and. Or I go to a GLAD dinner, or whatever. And maybe it's because we're so used to it I go on AOL and it pops up. You can't get away from it. People are now being paid $300 to have their car painted with some logo. I mean, corporations are taking over. The market economy is taking over everything. It deserves mentioning that it is at exactly the same time as the right wing is in control, and as government is shrinking, so that if you're the fundraiser, I'm an executive director, my responsibility is to my organization. I gotta raise the money wherever I can, so I totally get, and I think this is an honest conversation, I think this is a good faith conversation, I think there are contradictions, and I think savvy visionary leaders can navigate it, and can figure out, Lambda can figure out how to sue their butts while taking their money, and more power to them. I think there are other organizations that aren't as savvy as Lambda. That I see when the Coors sign goes up, that is giving Coors a lot more mileage than it is the $15,000 that's funding that particular arts festival, or whatever. I mean, I really think the equation, it depends on who's in charge, who's calling the shots, and when you have John Davidson, Kevin Gafcar, Jenny Pizer, and the Lambda people there like, woe to any corporation who thinks they're gonna outthink those guys. But I think there are lots of struggling organizations that get used. Now, but that's not really my beef. For me, I think the conversation is sort of about values that the way that when I say just the fundraising, and I'm a fundraiser, and so I'm saying this as partly in a self-critical way, for every hour that I spend doing this, is an hour I'm not spending doing that. And what I see is some of the best leaders in our movement having to become salespeople. What I see is some of the, and I know, I'm one of them, what I see is a conversation that should be about building a movement, being about oh my god, how are we gonna fund this program? Because another government program has been cut, because the public will, because people don't see what's happened, first of all, in the last 20 years. I mean, they may get that proposition 13 have robbed social services, but people don't understand what's going on, that the beast has been starved very consciously by an organized right wing that has made all these nonprofit organizations not just do advocacy or social change, but have to do services that are the government's job. That the government should be doing. So what I'm saying is a couple of things. I would like the conversation to shift around are corporations bad guys, they are amoral. They have absolutely, they are doing their job. And also, by the way, corporations have been ahead of government on disrimination issues, and we need to always see, you know, for gay and lesbian people, and it's really important to say thank you to those leaders at Apple and other corporations that just for so many reasons you mentioned earlier, right, John Sculley and so forth, but so, one thing is to suddenly, and I really do see this, and I know how this happens because I've been there. Suddenly the people or the companies that give you the money to buy that building are more important than the clients you're serving or than the staff people who worked for 20 years at that organization. I mean I, don't get me started. There is a value shift, and it didn't exist 20 years ago. And it didn't exist 15 years ago, and it exists now, and there is no conversation about what matters, what really matters. Does the kid who you're, whose life is transformed, or I'll talk about the staff people. The unbelievable staff people who put in 10, 20, 50, 30 years at the Gay and Lesbian Center. There's no building named after them. It only matters how much money you give. And to me, this is a subtle reflection of a social shift, where money matters more than social change. When I was coming up, that wasn't true. And I will say the other side of it is I went to get an MBA because I wanted to demystify capitalism, and I wanted to be able to work inside the system, and I wanted to be able to understand it all, you know, the green berets of capitalism, were my classmates in my MBA school. And I believe that it's not a good or bad. It's not black or white. It's, we needed to get smart about fundraising. We did have to learn to be better executive directors. We did have to learn to be instant, I believe in building institutions. Let me just say, for the long haul. But those institutions should be infrastructure for movements and not infrastructure for corporate advertising, or for wealthy people. - I want to come back and talk to you about Gabe. And naming that building after him-- - [Torie] But do you have any idea-- - But both Phill and Jon are going ah, ah, ah. - [Torie] But wait-- - I wanted it to be a conversation. Go ahead, everybody jump in. - [Phill] When Torie mentioned the thing about-- - Do you have any idea what a struggle that was? - Oh yeah. - Do you have any idea? - Well yeah, and I thought about that when you mentioned that, and when you talked about naming it after-- - Well people don't know what that was about. - Well, the fact that now the youth services at the gay and lesbian community services center was named after two people who had worked in that, and who had done that work. And then over time, that got changed and named after someone who gave money. And that's an example of the point that Torie's making. I think it's a critical example, and I think that you did a very remarkably and heroic thing in insisting at that particular point in time, since the center was in the middle of a capital campaign, and I'm sure that youth services was very marketable, that it should be named after Gabe and Jergen. But two things that Torie said that struck me, one is actually on the notion of thanking the corporations for being ahead of government on the issue of disrimination in the workplace. Actually, I think they should be congratulated and not thanked, because I think that you're right by saying they're amoral. The only reason they're ahead of government is because it was good business to deal with disrimination. It wasn't necessarily in most cases about, again, the right thing to do. So I would say congratulations rather than being thanked, because I don't think they did us a favor quite frankly, I think we do them a favor everyday by providing talent and skills and brainpower and all that kind of stuff. But I think on the question of loss of opportunity, and again, this is an opportunity for us to not point fingers out, but also look at what we're doing, and I would have to say for one, that 10 years ago, if I were in a room of folks the discussion in that room, the discussion that we are having were about the movement. Today, I spend 95% of my time raising money. I don't have a lot of discussions about the content of my work, because the rooms where I am, the places where I spend my time, are not about the content of my work. They're about getting the resources to do the content of my work. - You've moved up too high. (all laughing) I mean I would just say-- - Jon's been smart. - I've been lucky, and I've consciously chosen not to take one of those ED type positions, and at least in my organization, the lawyers are able to do the lawyering and the public education work, and I don't get involved in any of the fundraising. And I'm grateful about that, but because it's easier to keep separate the two parts of it, but then it does raise some issues even within Lambda that I sometimes ask, of okay how many people do we have doing the fundraising versus doing the work, and how many people do we have actually trying to get volunteers, and trying to get people out there to carry forth this work in other ways that doesn't require getting money to pay somebody for it, when we were all struggling a lot more? That was the way we got things done. It wasn't so much through money. It was through time. It was through numbers. And I think we need that at the same time that we also need to have some things that only come through having some money, and we need to, in each of our organizations, look at the balance there of where are we putting our time, and are our best and brightest really being diverted from the work from the organizing, from the thinking, instead to just raising money? - Well also when you raise money, you're getting friends. I mean, the way all of you, well not you, Jon, as you just said. - [Torie] Well, I think of it as organizing. I mean, money, raising money-- - Yeah, I mean that's the way too at Liberty Hill when you call people to give money or when I call to give people money to my campaign because I'm a sort of ideological candidate, unlike some others, people think they're investing in something that they believe in, and it's really wonderful. I had an event just last night, and people, it's like they're going please do something good with my money. Phoebe Snow sang, she was so fabulous. - [Torie] Sheila Kuehl sang. - But Torie, in your organization, I mean it is about identifying those gaps that you were talking about. It is about empowering people. It's about taking money, and making those things happen. It's a transformational thing. But still, there must be a sort of bottom line where you won't go, about how much corporations could use? - Well, in a sense, I'm luckier than Phill is, because there aren't that many corporations that are interested in Liberty Hill. I mean, honestly-- - Ah, but why not, we wonder? - Because we work on economic justice and racial justice, and we, and a number of the organizations that we fund are fighting corporations. I mean, I had one grant from, I mean, there's certain sectors. Let's be really clear. I do mainly race and poverty related issues, urban issues, is what Liberty Hill does. We have a gay and lesbian fund, but primarily it's not gay related stuff, and not that there aren't gay people there, but it's primarily about empowering low income communities of color in Los Angeles to fight back, and it might be fighting back the company, it might be fighting a government agency, and it might be just empowering the neighborhood to change public opinion. And there's certain sectors that will invest in that. Banks have certain requirements. In fact, the finance sector is very good, or better than other sectors. And the public utilities, or the utilities, not so public, less and less public. And one very good corporate giving public utility that shall remain nameless gave us a grant, like the first corporate grant that Liberty Hill had gotten, except for from Rhino Records, which is this incredibly progressive, well now they're owned by Time Warner, we'll actually see what happens to Rhino's giving. - But Lambda's honoring AOL Time Warner, so clearly they're gonna be good on all these things. - And you can use that. That's good, we like that. I've learned from Jon. Because the leverage of Lambda honoring Time Warner to leverage more money to progressive things. But you know, and this was like a $15,000 grant, this guy pulls me aside, and says you know, we're gonna give you this grant, but could you try to get your guy down at communities for better environment to lay off fighting us on this toxic issue? He doesn't know what he's talking about. I said we do not tell our grantees what to do. And if you have to take your money back, you have to take your money back. So we're sort of lucky, because we kind of know that there are very few corporations that are gonna invest in us. I think it's tougher when you're not in that position. I mean, I think it's easier for me in this position, because in a sense, we're forced to organize individuals and to get more savvy and try to get Liberty Hill's name known to more and more individuals, because we just know the corporations are not gonna be that interested in us. The one place that we do get corporate support, again, besides Rhino, is at our dinner, because there's recognition involved, or actually Sweet Honey in the Rock concert has got some corporate sponsors, and again, it's the public recognition. That's what they're in for. There's gonna be 2000 people at this concert. They know what demographics they're gonna reach, and so they want their name out there, on the banner, or the program, and the dinner is the same thing. And it's mainly some of the Hollywood companies, support our dinner because we have a strong Hollywood base, or if one of their people's being honored, it's kind of a quid pro quo thing. But I mean, I really think the issue is back to what really matters. And I don't know how, in this world, when the political space is narrowing, with a permanent war economy, with a widening, where a shrinking government sector, where you even see advocacy. We fund social change. We don't fund social services. So if you do direct social services and that's all you do, we won't fund you. But if you do policy work or organizing, I'll tell you something. A lot more of our grantees who were doing exclusively policy or community organizing are doing more and more services-- - [Sheila] Sure, because the government's not. - Because the government's not, and there's more and more people needing them, so of course, if your constituency is immigrants, and even if you were just doing immigration policy, if people are banging on your door, and they need help, you're gonna help them. And so I see, it's like more and more people are being forced for a smaller and smaller amount of the pie to compete with more and more nonprofits, and more and more nonprofits are coming up. There's a boom in nonprofit organizations, so it's like a veritable entrepreneurial boon because people see these needs. And I don't know where this is gonna lead. I hope, frankly, it leads to revolution. I mean, I hope there's a rebuilding, and I don't mean violent revolution, but I mean a values revolution. - No, I know, but I mean I think that it makes it harder and harder. I mean, one of the things that Phill and I were talking about before the show had to do with, I think as you put it, who you choose to shout at. - [Phill] That's right. - And whether the issue of critique, I mean, a part of revolution comes out of a recognition, I think, that there needs to be change, and we can help bring change along. If it's a big radical change, or reform, we wouldn't call it revolution. But do you still-- - Well, basically, what's interesting that Torie said that in some ways, we're lucky. Well the truth of the matter is that since we don't do events, really, that we actually are so lucky. Basically, corporations give us money for one or of two reasons. One is that they really buy what we're doing. Because we don't do dinners, we don't do these big events to give them that opportunity. And by and large, we don't allow any of our activities to be branded, and almost by mission, if we are going to partner with a pharmaceutical company, for example, there have to be other pharmaceutical partners at the table so that even to protect us from even the illusion of being biased around a company. So either they have to say that doing this work is a good thing, or quite frankly, what they are investing in, is if we quote unquote like them, we won't yell at them. And so those are the two, and so the one, I think, is good. The other is not. And with the other, we have to be very strategic. We have to understand, and we have to think about it, and we have to be self-critical. Who's giving us money because they don't want us to yell at them? And that's the part that in the beginning when I talked about being conscious, that we may not, we are vulnerable, we may not consciously not yell at them, but we may subconsciously not yell at them. - I don't want you to be spending 95% of your time fundraising. This really bothers me. - Let's invest in a fundraiser for him. (Phill laughing) - That just really bothers me. One of our great leaders. - Bothers me. - I know. Well, it is an interesting thing. People ask me a lot, because they hear that the governor spends all of his time raising money, and they want to know if I think that's a terrible thing. And first of all, he doesn't spend all of his time raising money, but he doesn't have any of his own, unlike rich candidates, so you do have to do a little more. And I enjoy my fundraising responsibilities because every person I talk to, pretty much, is a constituent, and we have two people called me at home this morning to talk to me about issues in their neighborhood, because I'm listed. Not my work number, they call. Me, no at home. - [Jon] And now you let everybody know that. (all laughing) - If you can find me, I won't tell you the city. But it's, I guess the part of the question is it's like you said, Torie. It's like smog. We accept that selling products and getting us to buy them, is the basis of America. That's really what it is. We used to talk about the working stiff as the average guy. Now we talk about Joe consumer. The consumer is the average guy. Not the earner, but the buyer. I mean, I have a piece of art on my wall in my living room that shows the differing definitions of consumer before 1975 and after 1975 in the same dictionary. The first one is a much more critical definition. Someone who uses up or wastes something. After that, it's like someone who purchases something for their own use rather than being a producer. And I just think that it's another way that they also keep us from accruing wealth, you know, one of the answers to poverty. Everybody's saying well maybe we should teach everybody to save a little bit, like my mom and dad used to. No, they don't want you to do that, which is another reason for advertising. So I guess the issue of how much time we spend at this is one thing. The issue of whether our mission is subverted is another thing. I don't know if there are other concerns that you've seen, or that you think don't need to be raised, for instance. The issue of what we choose to do. Are there people that don't get sued, Jon? - Well, I think you have to look at each organization as to that. I mean, certainly we have, I think, done a good job of not allowing the financial concerns affect what we decide to do. On the other hand, I think there's, in any situation, you think about what is the impact here? I think there's probably more concern about when our nonprofit organizations do something wrong. Does Lambda want to go and sue some other gay and lesbian community organization who did the wrong thing? I think I've had more conversations about that. But, and that's because well there's an organization that we care about, and what's gonna be the impact of them being embroiled in litigation? But I do think that at the same time that we've got these concerns, we've also got to think about how we can use the fact that the corporations want to be associated with us. And that's something that's new. I don't think that even 10, 20 years ago there was this interest in being associated with that. And so at the same time that we're concerned about what's the impact on us, let's not forget that these corporations are places where there are wealth, and that there's to some extent, there's this artificial distinction between corporations and people. A lot of those corporations are run by people. Some of them are gay and lesbian people, or have gay and lesbian friendly people, people have gay and lesbian people in their lives that they care about who want to support us. I know people who are corporate giving officers for pharmaceutical companies, and for other entities who have some power to direct where that money goes, and do direct it toward organizations that they think are valuable. And I think that's great that we have people at the table at those powerful institutions and that we should use that to do the work that we know that's important to do, and to try to get their competitors to see maybe they should be doing a little of that, too so that we need to be smart about using the system that's out there. At the same time, yeah. There are big issues about the corporatization of America, generally, and about the way in which wealth has really been redistributed in this country over the last 50 years-- - 20. - 20 years. - 20. - Well, it's been continuous. - No. 20. - But, the, I guess I feel like, I have a primary mission, which is working on lesbian and gay bisexual transgender equality, and some measure of decent treatment of people with HIV and AIDS in this country, and so I need to think primarily how can I use the resources that are out there to do that work without being affected by it in bad ways? But I hope there are other people looking at those other issues. - And also, as we spend more and more time in those rooms, where we did not have access to not too very long ago, the question is when we leave those rooms, are we more like them, or are they more like us? (Torie laughing) So going back to my subversive, I hope that they're more like us, and Torie talks about fundraising as an organizing tool, and so in that organizing tool, as we spend more time with them, I guess it's my wish that we rub off on them more than they rub off on us, if we're gonna use this paradigm, and Jon is right, that it's not always a them and us, that's not a fair characterization, but to the degree that we can use that for the purpose of this show, I would say that. - But Torie also talks about, and I hope is about to again, because I want to direct you back to it. The level of acceptance that is gained. And I don't mean by an individual business that brands on our events, but just at the notion that the pooling of resources in this country is going more and more and more into corporations who have merged and merged and merged into multinational corporations. - Well let's just be clear. It's going to the people at the top of the corporations. It's not going to the people, the workers or the employees. - I understand, but it makes them more acceptable, and if they're more acceptable in a way, we're just saying look, that's how it is, we need to deal with it so that we can use it, and make that money work, but the first part of that sentence is that's just the way it is. And in a way, I wonder whether it doesn't lead, maybe our community never was very revolutionary. Maybe it just wanted its own equality, and screw all the rest, really. And certainly in the beginning, it was a racist community. Maybe it still is. Tried to deal with its racism, you know what I mean. It's not naturally radical. - Well, wait a minute. Let's just be really clear about this. I actually just spent some time preparing for a lecture at UCLA where I was asked to speak about the founding of the Gay and Lesbian Center in Los Angeles, and in the course of it, it was just really interesting to be brought back to those heady days in 1971, and to realize that the lavender banners were at the Black Panther solidarity rallies. The Black Panther solidarity banners were at the gay rallies. There was, in fact, although the lavender stripe then individuated, and went on to build its own movement, that in fact it was a time where lots and lots of people were having lots and lots of quite contentious but quite broad conversation about social reform that went from reform to revolution, and there was a lot of wild-eyed idealism, and a lot of silliness. And I was part of the silliness. But there was a mass movement in this country that was dedicated to some form of deep social reform. And the same people who were going to gay liberation kiss-ins in Griffith Park were also people who were marching against the war in Vietnam. Now the set of services that the gay and lesbian center had in the very beginning, there was a gay counseling hotline, there was a food bank, and a drop-in shelter. There was a draft counseling program. And there was a prisoner's rights program. And then there was a program that was basically about linking up with other social movements so that when Morris Kight would go and fight Dow Chemical for building napalm, there was a kind of, I don't know what you would call it, but sort of like organizing for different issues of the day. I mean, it was very much a part of the movements of the time, it was its own space, but it was within the context of a broad social movement. And I was part, I wasn't here in Los Angeles, but I was part of that time. Now I don't think one is just simply being nostalgic for a time when the movement meant a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And I do have an MBA, and I am 30 years older, or whatever, and I do think that one has to respect, I have a lot of respect for business. Let me just be really clear about this. Anything I say is not anti-business. I think businesses are vibrant engines of empowerment, I believe in the market economy, I am no longer a socialist, alas, sometimes I mourn that, but I'm not. I believe that this is a very vibrant economic system. I think the problem is the concentration of power. The concentration of wealth, and the fact that the rules have changed, because those in power have carefully changed them over the last 20 years, so that tax policies, income policies, every economic policy you could mention has not kept up with in any way redistributing opportunity. Let's not talk about redistributing wealth. Let's talk about redistributing opportunity so that education system, affirmative action programs, government programs that usually redistribute wealth, so I think these are bigger issues here's what I'm saying, is that I'm not trying to get away from the gay issue, or something. I think that we exist in a world that the gay and lesbian community, and I frankly think that the banging around, and the visionless-ness, and some of the questions that people are having about leadership and direction, and all that stuff within the gay movement, present company excepted, there's a lot of grousing out there. What's happening to the direction of our institutions, are they being this, or where are they going, what does it mean, is not a question that's exclusive to the queer communities. It's a question about vision for human beings, and for democracy. - Well I guess then the question really is, and with only three minutes left, well, for three people who weren't sure they had anything to say about this topic, let me just say, I think all I'd have to do is say astronomy, and you would have a lot to say about anything, because you're all so smart. But I guess the question is whether our community, which viewed itself originally as a revolutionary, or at least somewhat radical community, gets lulled by some of this, necessity to grow up. - But I think there are more people who identify as being part of our community now than there were then. That is, I think that yes there were radical activists who were doing a lot of the work, but there weren't that many of them. And there are people involved now and involved in different ways, and I think that reflects a maturing of our movement. I worry that we don't have as many of the radicals, as we had, and that brings a particular kind of social change, and a particular kind of thinking that is critical to not being lulled into complacency. At the same time, there is something in the numbers of people that support, and the numbers of organizations they support that didn't exist before that has helped make various kinds of other social change possible. - [Torie] That's true. - But I do think that a lot of our movement today is not about building a broad progressive movement. I think it is about our individual survival, our individual happiness, our individual rights now. And we have lost the connection to the relationship, to dealing with finding ways to celebrate all of our humanity. - You know, I'm so pleased that the three of you showed up today, because it's just so much fun for me to say let's have three of my smartest friends come and talk about whatever. But this was a very important topic to me to explore. And I hope to you as well. I hope you forgive us if we don't tell you what to think about things, or come to conclusions for you. Because we're kind of in the business of trying to think about what we're doing as well as just doing it. So might as well just get used to it. (upbeat music)