The Human Rights Campaign today was the last group to issue an apology for what they referred to as “two unfortunate incidents at the United for Marriage event at the Supreme Court last week.”
“In the midst of a tremendously historic week for our community, two unfortunate incidents at the United for Marriage event at the Supreme Court last week have caused pain in the community,” HRC’s Fred Sainz, Vice President, Communications and Marketing, wrote in HRC statement:
In one case, a trans activist was asked to remove the trans pride flag from behind the podium, and in another, a queer undocumented speaker was asked to remove reference to his immigration status in his remarks.
HRC joined in a coalition statement on Friday apologizing for these incidents and the individuals involved have personally offered their apologies to those affected. But to be perfectly clear, HRC regrets the incidents and offers our apologies to those who were hurt by our actions. We failed to live up to the high standard to which we hold ourselves accountable and we will strive to do better in the future. Through both our legislative and programmatic work, HRC remains committed to making transgender equality a reality.
HRC’s statement came after an apology from the United for Marriage Coalition and a statement from GetEQUAL. Initially, HRC denied any wrongdoing, but Matt Comer at Q Notes quotes several parties that in fact say the group was actually responsible for at least one of the incidents.
Towleroad.com also points out the statements from the gay rights groups only came after the blog Transition Transmission demanded an apology for the flag removal incident. The Queer Undocumented Immigrant Project (QUIP) later posted a video calling for an apology as well.
Okay, so what do you intend to do to really include these people in your campaign or is this some PR lipservice
(it is)?
Showing posts tagged immigration
HRC Apologizes for Mistreating Trans and Immigrant Activists
Things like this are why I roll my eyes at everyone changing their Facebook picture to the HRC logo. What a shitty organization they are. Corporate cash and cocktail parties isn’t actually activism, guys.
For those of you wondering what the fuss is all about with the SCOTUS decision over SB-1070, below is an infographic (courtesy of ACLU Nationwide) explaining the four separate components of the legislation, as well as which one was upheld and which ones were struck down.
via Presente.org
It’s worth noting that although the police can demand proof of citizenship, they can only alert the federal immigration authorities, not make an arrest themselves. And the Supreme Court, I believe, only denied the stay on that provision, allowing it to go into effect, and be challenged later, for example if it is used in a discriminatory manner. I’ve seen speculation that Roberts joined the majority (5–3, with Kagan recusing herself; a 4–4 split would have left the Appeals Court ruling striking down the law intact) to persuade them to move in a bit more of a conservative direction from what they would have otherwise.
JF, at The Economist’s Democracy in America blog, on Alabama’s anti-immigrant law. Which seems to have had exactly the effect that we all knew it would, even if the bill’s author claims that it’s just coincidence.
And I’ll just observe that once again, the moneyed interests in this country, through their lackeys in the Republican Party, have the working class fighting to keep the working class down. It’s literally the oldest trick in their book.
Jose Antonio Vargas and the Politics of Compassion - Timothy B. Lee
Well, this just isn’t the sort of opinion you often hear in debates about immigration:
The same basic dynamic is at work in modern immigration debate. Hardly anyone considers himself an anti-immigrant bigot, but a large majority of Americans tacitly endorse ridiculous, discriminatory immigration laws that make it virtually impossible for people like Jose Antonio Vargas to become full-fledged members of our society. They demand a level of law abidingness from undocumented immigrants (even those who have been here since childhood) that they would never tolerate if applied to themselves.
Eradicating racism from polite society wasn’t simply a matter of evidence and argument. Rather, it was accomplished through a consciously ideological project to stigmatize bigotry. Making prejudicial comments about black people doesn’t just get you a strong counter-argument, it can lose you friends and even your job. A similar ideological project, typified bySeinfeld‘s “not that there’s anything wrong with that,” is making rapid progress on the gay rights front.
The whole thing is in response to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas’s New York Times article admitting that he’s been living illegally in the US since childhood, which I haven’t read yet, but has gotten a good bit of press today.
