I went to two community meetings in the last week.

The one in Dartmouth MA dealt with the increase of hate crimes and hate speech in the area and what might be done to keep the Red Wave from becoming a South Coast Tsunami with book bans, newly resurrected anti minority and Gay hate speech, politicians who want to return the country to the 1950s, and what we as a a community can do to nip it in the bud before it has a chance to take root or combat any attempts presently being made in this regard.

The meeting in New Bedford was a little different as it was called by the ADL and the city’s Human Rights Commission in response to what worried people in Dartmouth, signs of which have been seen in the city. At this meeting the two sponsoring groups gave presentations and named resources and  ways to contact them, and the FBI was present to clear up such things as what is illegal hate speech as oppose someone just being a jerk so that we can concentrate on the real threats and not get distracted by things we may not like but are not illegal. This was important.

At both meetings there was a good crowd with the New Bedford meeting spilling into the hallway from the main public library’s third floor meeting room.

The present climate was explained and members of the sponsoring organizations as well as the District Attorney, an agent from the FBI’s regional office, and a police liaison took part in a panel, answering questions from those in attendance most of which dealt with clarifications between what is real and what is urban legend about relevant laws and what can locals do.

After the meeting, I met a young woman who had asked the panel about what young people could do. She was an African American, female, high school student and she wanted to form some sort of group at the high school to combat hate, not an easy thing when dealing not just with wrong thinking, but peer pressure. Although I do have some notoriety in the political and social justice realm, I am realistic to have learned over the years that doing well in one area does not confer doing well in all, so I introduced her to someone potentially more useful for her purposes.

But she was alone.

In the spring, a social justice organization got the high school LGBT students all riled when the wrong candidate won, and used the kids as pawns leading them to believe protesting the election results was a realistic approach. The reason for the useful student action was the election of a city council candidate who a few years earlier had posted puerile Trans jokes on his private social media page that this group hoped would scuttle his election when these posts were made public two weeks before the election.

When using the social media posts did not work, the group turned to using the kids.

If this group and others had been sincere in what they were doing, they would have made sure that the students had organized since the action of the previous May to not only monitor this council member’s performance to see if anything anti-Trans were to come up and to monitor the whole city for the actions and attitudes that would bring hate to the wider community. Although assured by the area’s LGBT organization that  things were done since that event, I.E. a once a month counselor because only troubled Gays need attention, the rest can find guidance and answers on their own, I guess, there has been no publicly visible LGBT students presence at political events.

This one high school kid was not the representative of all the others nor should that burden be placed on her. She was there, no one else was.

There was no visible Gay presence in the room, something that struck me as odd since there is an organization that is supposed to protect the community and there is the high school thing. However, as in the previous meeting, those most likely to be objects of hate actions and speech were not there in the audience or up on the dais explaining the impact on their community.

The audience was an multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-gendered gathering of concerned older people in the majority with a sprinkling of those under forty and a mere soupcon of those under 30, and only one high school student, Black student, and female student, all the same person.

Mattacine: WWII Vets

Women’s right to Bodily Autonomy. WWII Vets and Boomers.

Stonewall Rebellion. WWII Vets and Boomers.

1989 Massachusetts Equality act. Boomers, 

Title IX. Boomers.

End to school bullying. Boomers plus pre-Millennials

End of Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell. Boomers plus pre Millennials

Marriage Equality. Boomers and pre-Millennials

Rights of all LGBT+ students in Oklahoma City. Boomer

National Marriage Equality. Boomers

See, we have been there and are still here fighting to keep what we won and got to experience for a small while, so that those for whom we won those things could have them from now on.

The people of color like most others in that library room were older, quite a few of an age that would dismiss them as targets of white supremacist hate speech now, and few of the whites would be likely to go to the “White Side” as they would already be rather set in their ways and the time and energy wasted on them could be better spent influencing impressionable youth.

I sat next to a twenty something couple and did see someone I knew who was young, but that was pretty much it.

Another room filled with older people concerned about what the world is becoming while those who would be living in that world were not present.

Other than me, there was no one there representing me or the community of which I am a member. I wore my rainbow color shirt to announce my presence and to see if any fellow travelers might be in the room. There may have been some, but of the familiar faces I saw in the room having attended rallies, meetings, and other activities with most of them and I am often their unspoken Gay token, I saw no one in the audience nor on the dais.

Yet the DA referenced Sexual Orientation based hate in his noting what crimes have been committed in the past but not so much now, if only because they were not among the reported numbers 

So it’s two-for-two, but who’s counting?

Me.

Being called a part of the problem because I choose to be called Gay and not the name being reassigned whether I like it or not, Queer.

Being told that as an old man who has had my rights I do not know what it is to be without them like the young kids who do not care to show up will be.

Being told I do not understand the hurt when someone uses a derogatory term about your humanity which I can only assume makes being called “homogenized”, “sissie”, or “Queer”  not count.

We older people just do not care I am told as I sit in rooms filled with those who do while those who should be there have an explanation why it was too inconvenient to show up at a meeting or have a representative there if you are a politico or an organization.

ADL and the Human Rights Commission called the meeting. It was introduced by my friend and local Imam, and ended with a prayer by another friend, also older. So religion, at least the Abrahamic ones, were there. I saw an atheist friend a few rows over and back, and there was at least one Gay man and one high school student.

Representation should not be our burden.

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