Our Mission
Our mission is right there in our name: We want to give a VOICE to our community, the LGBT (and Q and A) community of Dallas, and beyond.
To that end, each Friday we publish our weekly newsmagazine, Dallas Voice. And each day, we update our website, primarily the blog section of our website, which is called Instant TEA.
We use our Instant TEA blog in a variety of ways. We post breaking news stories there. We post photos and videos of events — like parades and concerts and fundraisers — on the blog. And sometimes, we use the blog as a forum to express our opinions in a way that we can’t — or won’t — do in news stories. We can use our blog to entertain and inform and, most importantly, create positive change.
Recently, DV staff writer David Taffet posted a series of entries on our blog regarding Ugandan President Yaweri Museveni, who backed legislation in his country punishing LGBT people simply for being LGBT, and his plans to hold an event at the Irving Convention Center during which he planned to promote tourism to his country and talk about “investment opportunities” there.
David — alerted by Ugandans living in DFW after being forced to flee their home country because of Museveni and his regime — began contacting city officials in Irving. He talked to Convention Center officials, to police officials, to folks at the hotel where Museveni planned to stay. David’s calls and his posts on Instant TEA resulted in the Irving hotel canceling Museveni’s reservations and the convention center canceling his event. Those posts also helped convince officials at the Gaylord Texan hotel in Grapevine not to accept Museveni as a guest or to host his event.
Museveni eventually had to hold his event at a private venue outside Allen, and during his speech there the Uganda president acknowledged the power of the LGBT community (and David’s blog posts). Although he initially threatened, in veiled terms, to make the LGBT people of Uganda pay for what happened to him here in North Texas, since returning home, Museveni has decided that perhaps persecuting the LGBT people of his country is not in Uganda’s best economic interests.
All because of a little (Instant) TEA and the power of the LGBT voice.
We here at Dallas Voice strive, constantly, to be a voice for and give voice to our community, to your community. But we also know that our community is so large and so varied that we can never hope to accurately reflect its full and beautiful diversity on our own.
That’s why we have created CommuniTEA, this new page on our website is devoted to being a blog for and by the people of our LGBT community.
Do you have something to say? This is where you can say it. Do you have a voice that has gone unheard? This is where you can be heard. CommuniTEA is for your VOICE.
As managing editor of Dallas Voice and Voice Publishing, I have already been talking to several people who have agreed to help populate this CommuniTEA page. But it is important to me that you all know that you are all welcome to submit contributions, too. We can’t offer any financial compensation, just the chance for you to be heard.
Please understand that, as editor, it is my job to make sure that nothing gets posted that can get Dallas Voice, Voice Publishing Co. or you, the writers, in any kind of legal trouble. And we do want to keep the blog focused on the LGBT community and issues relevant to our community. And we reserve the right to edit (for grammar, spelling, etc., but not content or intent) submissions, and to refuse submissions when necessary. Other than that, I’m not limiting the topics.
Submitting a blog post to CommuniTEA is easy. Just email it to me at nash@dallasvoice.com, and put CommuniTEA in the subject line.
“Your life. Your news. Your voice.” That’s our Dallas Voice slogan. Help us truly be the Voice of the community by sharing your Voice with CommuniTEA.
– Tammye Nash