Building to Win: Creating Change in Kalamazoo
Dec.21.2009 
By Dan Hawes, Director of Organizing & Training, December 18, 4:28 pm
November 3, 2009. It’s election day in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where voters would decide whether to pass an anti-discrimination ordinance inclusive of LGBT people.
Sarah and Trystan, two of my Task Force colleagues who are part of the local campaign leadership team, are joining an impressive army of over 200 volunteers to talk with voters one last time in front of polling places across the city. It is their last chance to remind every voter to: “Vote Yes for Fairness and Equality – Vote Yes on ordinance 1856.”
That Tuesday capped a four-month, hard-fought, campaign by One Kalamazoo to pass the anti-discrimination ordinance. Since July, right-wing forces led by the American Family Association had waged an ugly, hateful, and hurtful campaign against the LGBT community to repeal the law. After qualifying an anti-LGBT initiative for the November ballot, they rallied anti-LGBT pastors to campaign against us from the pulpit. They sent volunteers out to campaign door-to-door against us with misleading campaign lit reading: “Say No to Special Rights Discrimination”. Worst of all, they sent thousands of mail pieces to Kalamazoo voters with grainy photos of Michigan transgender leaders, singling them out as public targets of their hate. They were stopping at nothing to mislead and misinform voters about the real impact of ordinance 1856, which was simply to protect LGBT people from discrimination on the job, at home, and in their communities.
Yet despite the other sides best efforts, we prevailed, and handily. Ordinance 1856 passed by a resounding margin of 62% – 38%. This victory wasn’t due to luck – it was due to the disciplined, vigorous, organizing of One Kalamazoo to make sure that fair-minded voters turned out to vote on election day. But to get our supporters to the polls, we first had to know who they were. That meant we had to talk to Kalamazoo voters – one-person at a time – about the ordinance and actually ask every voter were they stood.
For the four months prior to the election day, this was among the most important work One Kalamazoo did to win. Under the direction of Jon Hoadley, the campaign manager, and Task Force organizer Trystan Reese, who served as the field director, One Kalamazoo recruited and trained over 300 volunteers to go door-to-door to talk with Kalamazoo voters about the ordinance, ask where every voter stood, and record the supporters’ names, addresses, and phone numbers on a list that was eventually entered into a database. By election day, the campaign had amassed a list of 8,104 voters who supported non-discrimination protections for LGBT people.
As election day approached, our strategy shifted to turning out these supporters to vote. Hundreds of volunteers called and doorknocked each of our 8,104 supporters to remind them vote. The goal of each conversation was to inject our supporters with a supreme sense of urgency about voting and to teach how each and every vote for ordinance 1856 would make a difference in protecting LGBT people from discrimination. In the end, our hard work paid off as we won with 7,671 yes votes.
Building a big field operation like this wasn’t easy, and none of it could have happened without the 300 volunteers who stepped up and gave time to campaign with voters. In the end, it was this army of organized people that helped us prevail on election day. (Trystan and Sarah could have gone door-to-door by themselves, 24 hours per day for four months, and they would never talk with enough voters to make a difference.) But these volunteers didn’t just show-up on their own – they came to help because someone asked them. Through conversations with passersby on busy street corners, or with congregants during coffee hour after a church service, or with college students in class, we had to ask people directly to join with us if we were to count on their help.
In the end, the Kalamazoo victory was possible because our side organized more people and more money than the right-wing. In public life, size does matter. We need people power to campaign with voters and educate the public about why our cause is just, and we need financial power to pay for all of the things that only money can buy, like TV airtime, radio ads, and mail pieces.
Building political power is hard work that requires commitment, tenacity and perseverance; and, it’s not rocket science! At the National Conference for LGBT Equality: Creating Change, the Academy for Leadership and Action will feature in-depth trainings on how to organize people and money for any issue you care about. If you’re tired of being bullied by the right-wing, and if you want to win more concrete victories to improve the lives of LGBT people, join us for Academy trainings at Creating Change. We’ll teach you how to organize, fight back, and win!
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Task Force announces diverse lineup of speakers for 22nd National Creating Change Conference in Dallas TX in February 2010
December 17, 2009
MEDIA CONTACT:
Inga Sarda-Sorensen
Director of Communications
The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
(Office) 646.358.1463
(Cell) 202.641.5592
isorensen@theTaskForce.org
WASHINGTON, Dec. 17 — The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force announces a diverse lineup of keynote speakers at the 22nd National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change, Feb. 3–7 in Dallas, Texas. Two thousand lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights advocates will converge to strategize and organize for the critical year ahead.
On opening night, Friday, Feb. 4, Thomas Saenz, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) president and general counsel, will address the conference. On Feb. 5, Task Force Executive Director Rea Carey will give the annual “State of the Movement” address. On Feb. 6, Kai Wright, a noted social critic and political commentator, will host a panel of LGBT youth of color that brings forward the stories of experiences of our tough-minded and articulate young leaders. Vogue Evolution, contestants on America’s Best Dance Crew in summer 2009, will perform at the closing plenary on Feb. 7. All plenary sessions will be emceed by the incomparable comic and social commentator Kate Clinton.
“LGBT rights advocates from across the country will be gathering in Dallas to strategize and plan for 2010 and beyond. It’s the largest convening of LGBT activists and is not to be missed,” says Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. “Creating Change is a ‘can’t miss/got to be there’ opportunity for our movement activists and leaders to learn from each other and to be inspired by our featured speakers.”
More about the keynote speakers
Thomas A. Saenz is president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), a national organization whose mission is to promote the civil rights of Latinos in the United States. In August 2005, Saenz became counsel to the mayor of Los Angeles, where he served as a member of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s four-member executive team and provided legal and policy advice to the mayor. Previously, Saenz practiced civil rights litigation at MALDEF where he served as vice president of litigation. As vice president, Saenz oversaw MALDEF’s efforts nationwide to pursue civil rights litigation in the areas of education, employment, political access, immigrants’ rights and public resource equity. He currently serves on the Los Angeles County Board of Education, and he previously served on the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations.
Kai Wright is a writer and editor in Brooklyn, N.Y., whose work explores the politics of sex, race and health. He is senior writer for TheRoot.com. Wright has reported from all over the world for independent and community-based media, ranging from Mother Jones to Essence magazines, and is the author of Drifting Toward Love: Black, Brown, Gay and Coming of Age on the Streets of New York. He also writes and edits a series of monographs exploring the AIDS epidemic among African Americans, published by the Black AIDS Institute. In addition to his independent work, Wright has served as a senior editor for City Limits magazine, a staff reporter for the Washington Blade newspaper, an editorial assistant for Foreign Policy magazine and a desk assistant for PBS’ NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. He has been publications editor at the Black AIDS Institute since 2000.
Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, is a dynamic voice for equality and justice. She has worked for LGBT rights for 20 years and has worked extensively in nonprofit start-up, HIV/AIDS prevention and in the LGBT community as one of the co-founders of Gay Men and Lesbians Opposing Violence and the founding executive director of the National Youth Advocacy Coalition. In 1999, the Advocate named Carey one of its “Best and Brightest” for individual contributions to the LGBT rights movement. Carey will present the annual “State of the Movement” address.
For more information about the conference and to register, please visit http://www.CreatingChange.org/.
For media credentials, please contact Pedro Julio Serrano at pserrano@theTaskForce.org.
To learn more about the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, follow us on Twitter: @TheTaskForce.
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The mission of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is to build the grassroots power of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. We do this by training activists, equipping state and local organizations with the skills needed to organize broad-based campaigns to defeat anti-LGBT referenda and advance pro-LGBT legislation, and building the organizational capacity of our movement. Our Policy Institute, the movement’s premier think tank, provides research and policy analysis to support the struggle for complete equality and to counter right-wing lies. As part of a broader social justice movement, we work to create a nation that respects the diversity of human expression and identity and creates opportunity for all. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., we also have offices in New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis and Cambridge.
