Well it is crazy old truthout, but interesting non the less.
Democracy is messy.
Democracy is messy.
Lots of queers are taking their critiques of the HRC online (see: a zillion Blogspot and Tumblr accounts), into theaters (characters in the film Criminal Queers break into HRC headquarters to find a shrine to Ronald Reagan), and to HRC charity shops (somewhat famously, in 2011, the HRC storefront in DC's Dupont Circle was paint-bombed by a group calling itself "The Right Honorable Wicked Stepmothers' Traveling, Drinking and Debating Society and Men's Auxiliary").
Human Rights Campaign Under Fire in LGBT Community
(Milk's close friend, gay rights activist Cleve Jones, had plenty of negative things to say about the choice of the camera shop for the Action Center, telling the Associated Press that Milk "was not an 'A-Gay' and had no desire to be an A-Gay. He despised those people and they despised him. That, to me, is the crowd HRC represents. Don't try to wrap yourself up in Harvey Milk's mantle and pretend you are one of us.")
In 2007, LAGAI and another San Francisco queer activist collective, Gay Shame, organized their first protest outside the HRC's San Francisco store (in the organization's own lingo, "Action Center"). Here, you can purchase HRC T-shirts, tote bags, and those ubiquitous stickers in the space that used to house gay martyr Harvey Milk's camera shop, which was the setting for much of the 2008 Oscar-winning film Milk.
"Exxon-Mobil, IBM and Gap were getting great ratings [in the Equality Index] at the same time that they were being targeted by other organizations for human rights violations," remembers Raphael. "So we felt like it didn't make any sense for there to be this store in the Castro [district] where people are going thinking that they're supporting something that's good - something that's promoting human rights - when a lot of the kitsch that they sell in the store is being manufactured in sweatshops."
Human Rights Campaign Under Fire in LGBT Community
(Milk's close friend, gay rights activist Cleve Jones, had plenty of negative things to say about the choice of the camera shop for the Action Center, telling the Associated Press that Milk "was not an 'A-Gay' and had no desire to be an A-Gay. He despised those people and they despised him. That, to me, is the crowd HRC represents. Don't try to wrap yourself up in Harvey Milk's mantle and pretend you are one of us.")
In 2007, LAGAI and another San Francisco queer activist collective, Gay Shame, organized their first protest outside the HRC's San Francisco store (in the organization's own lingo, "Action Center"). Here, you can purchase HRC T-shirts, tote bags, and those ubiquitous stickers in the space that used to house gay martyr Harvey Milk's camera shop, which was the setting for much of the 2008 Oscar-winning film Milk.
"Exxon-Mobil, IBM and Gap were getting great ratings [in the Equality Index] at the same time that they were being targeted by other organizations for human rights violations," remembers Raphael. "So we felt like it didn't make any sense for there to be this store in the Castro [district] where people are going thinking that they're supporting something that's good - something that's promoting human rights - when a lot of the kitsch that they sell in the store is being manufactured in sweatshops."
