If you weren’t at the Fort Worth City Council meeting last Tuesday, you may want to watch this two-part video before voting in our online poll this week. The video shows Blake Wilkinson and other members of Queer Liberaction being escorted out of the chambers after refusing to back down from their request that public comment be moved up on the agenda. As a veteran of countless city council meetings in various locales, here’s my unbiased assessment: Most mayors would’ve kicked Wilkinson out long before Mike Moncrief did. If only the officers at the Rainbow Lounge would’ve showed this kind of restraint …
WHOA! The gallery remains silent.
Except for you, Tish. All the people that raise their voices were at the City Council meeting itself.
The applause can be heard when Blake was removed. The Mayor was professional and very patient. The “gay” Councilmember asked that Blake be removed.
It was a low moment for gay people and very embarrassing. Let’s hope these childish antics don’t happen again.
Unfortunately, I decided to live my life for one week and go on vacation. Sometimes you have to put the activism hat down. I can’t be at every meeting/rally/protest but for once I’m glad I wasn’t there.
Did anyone get the speaker’s captured from the meeting? I have listened to the whole meeting but would enjoy just having the speaker’s speak. There were some wonderful words spoken in support of the community, dramatic words from witnesses, and moving moments that tell of a community that is angry and frightened.
This is unbelievably unacceptable!!! QL, in particular Blake Wilkinson, ARE NOT helping advance the cause of equality for the GLBT community. If anything this group sets us back. They choose the moment when they have the people at the table, so to speak, who can do something, to go off into a “direct action” frenzy that got them no where….. Except kicked out of the chamber since they couldnt act like grown-ups. Just pitiful. And Rick… you are old enough to know better. Shame on this whole group. Next time, SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP. Or better yet, dont show up. Deejay Johansen did a fabulous job trying to alleviate some of this tension and kudos to the mayor of Fort Worth. All others that couldnt get the point… Shame on you. And quit speaking as if you are doing it on behalf of the community as a whole. YOU DONT SPEAK FOR ME! You accomplish nothing and claim a great deal. The “direct action” non-sense is not best for every situation and I dont know how many more times I have to say it. I suppose I will just continue to say it until QL stops being an out of control lunatic force of accomplish-nothings that cant see their “efforts” are in large part detrimental to our movement.
Shame Shame Shame
Sorry, but there comes a time when direction action tactics are the only thing that works.
Every civil rights movement in history has not seen substantial progress until direct action is used.
Sorry that the world works that way, but it does.
It would be nice to be able to just sit back and have people do the right thing without being pressured into doing the right thing, but sorry, it just won’t happen.
I’m not sure if the people who post here are LGBT or not. If they are LGBT, then they need to remember that the rights they enjoy today were all gained by direction action.
They definitely need to read up on the history of the LGBT civil rights movement and see that eventually there comes a time when direct action is needed.
Remember Stonewall, the Castro riots, the Pride demonstrations, Harvey Milk’s demonstrations, ACT – UP (gosh how many people would be dead if not for their direct actions?)…
Interesting that the mayor would only refer to the GLBT issue as “that issue” never being able to say gay issue. But he had no issue saying homeless issue.
Time for this mayor and police chief to RESIGN
Queer Libations email message:
“All this comes after weeks of street protest and agitation, culminating in the finest celebration of our freedom of speech by taking our grievances as an oppressed people to our elected officials. If there hadn’t been so much noise, history could have well repeated itself by allowing our anger to turn into whispers in the middle of the night.”
It makes me wonder if they’re still in Texas and are writing about local events.
Of the hundreds of people who reacted after the Rainbow Lounge incident, I think the 4 or 5 members of QL and childish behavior hurt, NOT helped the effort to get answers.
How remarkably pathetic most of these comments have been over the past few weeks. If there were at least one thing these little groundlings should thank Queer Liberaction for, it would be for giving them the one thing that they have the balls to rail against. With all of the space that they have to complain about the general distate the city of Fort Worth has for them (or Dallas has, for that matter), they choose to waste it by denigrating their own kind, all the while ironically pissing and moaning about what measures are setting back the gay rights movement.
You know that a society is mired in apathy when so few even take notice when a policeman stomps some queer into an intensive care unit, better yet speaks out in retaliation. Hell, a general disagreement would at least be something.
I hear talk all the time of how there are no true leaders within the gay community, and judging from current circumstances, how could there be? The moment any one of us draws any attention to ourself, we are accused of vanity and disregarded by our own subliminally embarassed allies. It’s bad enough having what a majority of the community sees as a mental illness, but is it necessary for us to throw in Stockholm syndrome for good measure. I fail to understand how these people can be so whipped, without it even being expected of them.
Did it occur to any of you that the reason that such events and consequences happen with impunity is because we are already seen as weaker people, people that don’t have the stones to demonstrate anything more than subtle modesties, and better yet, ire towards gay rights activists.
What cowardice. It’s as though they are operating within some alternate reality, where a group of gays and lesbians kicked a policeman’s ass. Is it possible that these people aren’t interested in equal rights, not simply because they’re weak, but because they don’t want the responsibilty?
Mayor Mike is a very patient man. Everybody book a trip to FW, enjoy a day the Modern and the Kimble, go oogle the cowboys in the stockyards and spend some money. I think FW and Mayor Mike have handled the Rainbow Lounge event very well. Granted, it never should have happened in the first place!