HIV is insidious. It mutates. It “hides” in the body and as soon as it mutates around a retro-viral…or as soon as many stop taking drugs……it quickly rears itself again. It took ~50 years to cure polio, another awful virus. I continue to hope for the HIV cure, but remain realistic.

Young people should talk to the middle aged set to understand the issues associated from long term drug use.

Jeff – you and your loved ones and everyone who is touched by this are in my thoughts today and all days.

Ours was August 29th.

Please come again and bring all your sexy barbershop boys with you!

XoXo
Summer

The sleeve is pretty awesome.

This is in response to Yes! on Equality’s questions about Equality California’s paid canvassing effort.

We are indeed working with Grassroots Campaigns Inc. GCI is a canvassing company that employs primarily college students and works with many progressive causes, like MoveOn.org, ACORN and the ACLU. The primary goal of their canvassing is to identify and expand the base of supporters and activists — or, in other words, to create a sustainable base for our work going forward. In their canvassing work, they seek to sign up volunteers to support our field efforts as well as ask for
contributions to support our work to win marriage back. GCI’s canvassers have helped us to identify 16,000 volunteers, which is an incredible asset for doing the hard work we all need to do to win marriage back.

GCI canvassers were specifically and repeatedly told not to mention a particular year for a ballot initiative. We have heard of about a dozen cases where canvassers have not followed this directive, and we have immediately gotten in touch with GCI to correct the error. GCI has repeatedly told its canvassers to focus on the issue and not discuss the
year in which we would return to the ballot box. If anyone on this list has been asked to donate for 2010, we are very sorry. These canvassers were not following the explicit instructions they were given.

“Becky” is a volunteer, not a director at GCI. She’s been helping to answer phones for several weeks. She has been trained to use a phone script and has no recollection of straying from the phone script using the phrase “to restore marriage equality in 2010 or 2012.”

Best,

Marc

:::: ::::

Marc Solomon
Marriage Director
Equality California :: Equality California Institute

As to infighting, the interesting thing here is that much of the infighting has been led by the “prepare to prevail” folks. So let’s not point fingers. We all need to work together for 2010, not 2012, but others need to lead. If this our issue, then know we cannot wait 3 years to get what we deserve. Thanx.

Given what happened last year, the LGBT community (especially the grass roots) and many large donors are very, very nervous about EQCA having a major role in another campaign. I think EQCA can be helpful in some role but not a major role.

The best thing EQCA can do at this point is announce that they will support any decision made about when to go back to the ballot and step aside and let others make that decision. We all want to be unified moving forward.

I’d like to know who your sources are, too. Dolores Huerta is on Equality California’s board. Mayor Villaraigosa spoke at events during fall 2008 and made a generous donation to the No on 8 campaign at the request of EQCA. He did not approach EQCA to get involved with the campaign, but he may have approached one of the other 60+ organizations that were a part of Equality for All, the coalition of organizations that ran the No on 8 campaign. EQCA was a member of Equality for All.

The reality is that EQCA is already doing the hard work to win marriage back. We have 18 full-time field organizers across the state who are on the ground in areas where we need to win votes. Half of them are people of color, and we deliberately hired people who were already active in their local communities as organizers. These organizers are leading teams of volunteers to go door-to-door in neighborhoods that voted 50-60% yes on 8. These teams are talking one-on-one with voters to change hearts and minds. They have already knocked on thousands of doors.

We are not going it alone. We are working with and listening to organizations that support a number of different timelines and ways to go back to the ballot box. We think it’s important to listen to the organizations, like those who signed the Prepare to Prevail statement, that are working in communities of color; they know their communities best. We are also attending this Sunday’s summit in South Los Angeles, which was organized by a group that wants to return to the ballot box in 2010. We are happy to work with anyone who is committed to restoring marriage equality.

We really appreciate your passion and drive to overturn Prop 8. We share it. Rather than focusing our energy on infighting, I hope we’d focus on building a strong, winning movement. It’s going to take a lot of dedicated people and organizations to win at the ballot box.

Kind Regards,

Jay Davis, Online Community Director
Equality California

Oh, I know you weren’t questioning my work ethic. I didn’t take it that way. No worries. I just realized that my comment, “If you can unite the community and actually get them to make such a commitment, I’m there,” may have sounded like if they couldn’t succeed in swaying the whole community to proceed, then I wouldn’t help. I didn’t want to give the impression that I wasn’t going to commit. I was just clarifying my own words.