Chance, timely meeting with leader from black civil rights movement serves as reminder that struggle for equality may never really end
For most of the last 10 months, and twice a month since March, you’d find me many Tuesday afternoons at the downtown headquarters of Dallas Area Rapid Transit. Since last August, DART has been pondering whether or not they should offer domestic partner benefits to their LGBT employees.
At this week’s meeting, I was reminded how the struggle for progress is endless — and even when facing a setback, the only thing you can do is go forward, boldly and confidently. A chance meeting with someone from my past reminded me of that.
Board members have heard cost estimates and endured presentation on top of presentation. Since March, they’ve heard from around two dozen members of the LGBT community on why DART board members should approve the benefits.
Some of the speakers on partner benefits have been calm, rational and appealed to the board’s heart. Others have excoriated the board for not using their heads and choosing to postpone the discussion until after this week’s Supreme Court marriage rulings. This should mean that DART will take up the benefits issue at their next meeting, July 9th.
So, about that chance meeting — in the 1990s, the DFW-area radio station I worked at aired a Saturday evening talk show hosted by civil rights activist the Rev. Peter Johnson. He came to Dallas in the late 1960s to head the local office of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Before that, he marched through the South alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — and Johnson still carries the scars and injuries he suffered in the “Bloody Sunday” march on a Selma, Ala. bridge in March 1965.
I hadn’t seen him in nearly 20 years, until Tuesday’s DART board meeting. On the day that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a major portion of the Voting Rights Act — an act Johnson and countless others helped work for with shoe leather and bodily sacrifice — he and a half-dozen other people addressed board members. They spoke about a program to hire ex-cons to clear unused DART right-of-way tracks, in exchange for keeping the scrap metal and railroad ties for resale. The program would cost DART nothing, yet the agency has delayed implementing it for TWO YEARS. Remember, the board has only been kicking around partner benefits for 10 months.
After the board meeting wrapped up, Johnson came over to congratulate the four speakers on partner benefits, and said, “This is an issue of justice, and I stand with you.” We briefly spoke, and I was surprised he recognized me after nearly 20 years. Then he and his group of speakers went to discuss the parolee issue further with DART staffers.
This week’s Supreme Court rulings on marriage may finally spur DART to act on partner benefits, but since the rulings don’t affect Texas law it’s not clear how the board will decide.
What about other issues of importance to the LGBT community? It will still be legal to fire someone who is LGBT in over half the U.S. It doesn’t help protect our youngest community members enduring bullying, nor our oldest members forced back into the closet to live in a nursing home. It doesn’t help our transgender sisters and brothers, whose rights to vote are threatened by an I.D. law that went into effect hours after the Supreme Court ruled on the Voting Rights Act.
There’s no easy way to put this — it’s been a challenging Pride Month. We’ve endured the debacle over the equality resolutions at Dallas City Hall, shenanigans in Austin over women’s rights and Tuesday’s Supreme Court gutting a major piece of civil rights legislation like a fish. Our marriage victories serve as a sweet counterpoint to the earlier events, and remind us that we have work to do for LGBT people to be equal in the Lone Star State.
Johnson’s presence at the DART board meeting reminded me that the quest for civil rights — regardless of skin color, who you are and who you love — is never-ending and requires eternal vigilance, even on your worst days. You might think you’ve won a particular battle, but the truth is some battles are never truly won. Even on your best day, there are still people to defend and causes to champion. So celebrate and cheer what the LGBT community has achieved on marriage … but there are many, many struggles ahead before we are equal in the eyes of the law.
Rafael McDonnell is communications and advocacy manager, Resource Center Dallas. He can be reached at RMcDonnell@rcdallas.org.
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition June 28, 2013.
