Eisenhower first thanks the broadcast networks for the opportunity to address the nation, ever mindful that the air time they gave him took away from Dobie Gillis and Ozzie and Harriet, which surely cost them money.  Then he makes clear that the United States is under very real threat, and although he never uses the word communist, no one listening to the speech was uncertain about his meaning:

We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily, the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration.

What the speech is truly about is holding fast to our values during a crisis, and not hoping for some miraculous or sweeping change to save us from the perils that our nation will face.  At a time like now when each fresh news report or disaster brings sweeping calls for new laws that might have protected us against each crisis, it is striking to hear his words:

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties…

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs, balance between the private and the public economy, balance between the cost and hoped for advantages, balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable, balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual, balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future.

In the wake of the BP Gulf oil spill, it is worth listening Ike say

As we peer into society’s future, we — you and I, and our government — must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage.

And of course, the armaments industry:

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States cooperations — corporations…

Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

As the 50th anniversary of this speech falls on Martin Luther King, Jr Day, just days after a member of the Defense Department suggested that Martin Luther King, Jr, would have understood and approved of our military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.  But just six years after Eisenhower’s farewell speech, Dr King said,

I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube.

We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.

These commemorations come at a time when our Vice President has called Julian Assange a “high-tech terrorist,” for publishing documents alongside The New York Times that contribute to what Eisenhower called “an alert and knowledgeable citizenry.”

These commemorations come at a time when a Member of our Congress lies in a hospital room with half of her skull sawed off, recovering from a bullet wound that every talking head on TV refuses to link to the anti-government speech of one of our political parties, or to the armaments industry that Eisenhower warned us of.

It comes at a time when birds are falling out of the sky and fish are washing up on shores with mysterious illnesses, and scientists point to “indigestion” and “stress,” as possible causes but never dare to bring up the toxic dispersant used to clean up the BP oil spill that is known to cause disfigurement and death to marine and human life.

As we mark this occasion today, let us honor Dr. King’s legacy and heed President Eisenhower’s warning.  We must recognize that our struggles are the same as they were fifty years ago, and while many things are better, many things are also worse.  We must not allow Eisenhower’s or King’s words to be oversimplified, taken out of context and obscured.  And we must remember to demand that our core American values, now marginalized as “far-left,” were once so pervasive as to be embraced by the Right.

Read/Listen to the speeches:

President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address, January 17, 1961

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Beyond Vietnam – A Time to Break Silence, April 4, 1967

At a defining moment of a new equality movement, in a nation rediscovering democracy, certain values have brought us to the unmistakable need for action.  Here is one articulation of a path towards change.

CORE BELIEFS:

We believe that all human beings, and all consensual loving relationships between them, should be honored equally under the law, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, national origin or legal status.

We have discovered that the laws which discriminate against us have not kept pace with the times, and that we now have the social power to change the laws to protect ourselves and others from state-sponsored discrimination.

The path ahead has many forks but all roads lead to gay marriage. The question before us, as we work to secure that right, is how high are our hopes for this movement, this moment, and our country? Who are we and what else are we fighting for?

Proposition 8 was a catalyst and a new beginning. Although it is the first time that the right of gays and lesbians to marry has been eliminated by a bare majority vote, this right will soon enough be regained in California. We must recognize that this was the spark that lit a powder keg, and that California is at the center of a movement that is not just about marriage, and it takes place in the middle of a part of a democratic renaissance in our nation’s and that is not limited to gays and lesbians. We are at the heart of defining rights and freedoms for ourselves but that many others want to help and need our help. There is power in organizing our own communities for change, and we must build the society that we want to live in and ask ourselves what we’re willing to do to get us there.

A CALL TO ACTION:

• Convene a group of ten of your friends. Lead or participate in your own “cell,” and together we will make up the organs of our movement.

• Come together and express your common values and identify shared goals. We are many people with many views – there is not one gay community, we do not speak with one voice. Shake out into groups of ten people who share your values and goals. Don’t consider this group of ten a fixed group, people who don’t share your goals should be encouraged to find ten who do, and if your group starts to hit 15, break off and make more groups! Focus on what you agree on.

• Set rules for your meeting. Decide how long meetings will last, how they will be run and how often you will meet.

• Air your grievances. This is healthy and people need to be heard! POST-GAME ANALYSIS IS PRE-GAME STRATEGY. A lot of people in California worked very hard to fight Prop 8, and are feeling very attacked by the anger that has erupted from a grassroots level at the way the campaign was run. This is healthy, and it shouldn’t be personal! Analyzing the campaign and trying to understand what was done and what went wrong is not a bad thing – we will continue to make mistakes and we must use them all as learning experiences.

• Make a commitment. Say what you are willing to do and to give to make change.

• Equality for all also means equality for whom else? What are you willing to do for others? How will we step outside of ourselves and our own communities? What kinds of people unlike ourselves are we willing to lend a hand to help in exchange for their support of us?

• Understand the big picture and work to find your place within the movement. Look at the leadership, funding and structure for the fight on all levels.

• Study the issues. Gather information and educate yourselves about what other people are doing and how you can help. Understand the complexity of the issues and learn what you can and cannot accomplish.

STUDY TOPICS:

NATIONAL POLICY

• Legislative

Do my Congressperson and my Senators support the repeal of DOMA?

• Executive

What policies can the Obama Administration change by executive order and what constituency is going to pressure that agency to make those changes?

• Judicial

What is happening in the federal courts that could alter the rights of individual states to provide unequal protection to its citizens?

STATE POLICY
What is happening with the fight over Prop 8 in the California courts?
How do we use our resources to reframe the battle over hateful anti-family laws like the adoption/foster parents initiative that passed in Arkansas?
How do we provide support and our resources to equality movements in all 50 states?

PUBLIC OPINION
How can we move public opinion towards greater support of equality?
How do we reach out to our neighbors who are not yet our allies?
How can we use our own role in the media industry to impact the messages of equality for a mass audience?
How do we harness the power of the internet and community media to tell our stories and re-frame the debate?

LOCAL COMMUNITIES
What role can local government initiatives and laws play in increasing equality?
Do we want to run for office? How do we make our local elected officials more responsive to citizen’s concerns rather than business concerns?
What community groups can we participate in that are already set up to address concerns like ours and get things done.

A FEW LAST NOTES:

Don’t hate. Building a community and a movement is hard work and can be frustrating. Always remember that you are all there to make a difference. The political left in the United States has been at war with itself longer than it has been at war with the right. One key reason for this is the battle between moderates and radicals who insist that the other is the reason for their overall failure. MODERATES NEED RADICALS and RADICALS NEED MODERATES! Radical actions are not “unhelpful” or “counter-productive” – civil disobedience and political anger are essential to social movements. People who “work within the system” or who aren’t “thinking big enough” are on the frontlines too. DO NOT SPEND ANY OF YOUR TIME OR ENERGY FIGHTING YOUR OWN SIDE OF THE ARGUMENT. Engage in actions and organizations that share your values and win the battle by accomplishing your agenda. We will never speak with one voice and that is our strength.

Respect our history. There is so much to be learned from the generations of LGBTQ activists who have come before us. From Stonewall to Harvey Milk, from ACT UP to HRC, many people have come before us and it only makes us better to learn our history and honor our elders.

“WHAT IS THE POINT OF ALL THESE PROTESTS? THESE ORGANIZERS SUCK. WE SHOULD BE DOING X, Y AND Z!”
The protests that are erupting all over the United States are the spontaneous result of a group of people who are angry and now demanding change. They are achieving three concrete results!

• Visibility on the streets and in the media and ongoing attention to the injustice committed against us.

• Tremendous validation and solidarity for the community –seeing people like yourself, who feel like you do and are willing to go to the streets for it, builds a strong foundation for a community and a movement.

• New leadership and new organizations are being created right now. We are witnessing the birth of a new movement, and leaders are being born in the streets at the very moment that other people are listening to and following them.

“I WISH THOSE OTHER PEOPLE WOULD GO AWAY!“
Political movements are only successful if they are coalitions of different people. Where there is political energy (a rare thing in this country) it will attract idealists of all stripes. People with differing agendas are ALWAYS a part of EVERY movement. Remember that these people have SHOWN UP and they care. Embrace them as allies, do not think of them as parasitic. If they succeed in overshadowing you momentarily, consider it a lesson in helping you find your “A” game – and next time do it better! Gain control over your message and how it is disseminated. DO NOT HATE! This cannot be stressed enough. Check yourself, and check others for attacking our own flanks, no matter how “crazy” or “fringe” they might seem to you.

BELIEVE IN YOUR OWN POWER! This is your movement and you are going to change America.

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When I came of age in the early 1990s, the gay and lesbian movement was just coming out of the ACT UP years, marching on Washington for the first time, and looking beyond the AIDS crisis for the first time, trying to figure out how best to fight discrimination and attain equality. Marriage was not a cause any of my friends or I embraced at the time, why would we squander our political power fighting for the right to participate in an oppressive heterosexual institution? We were a large and disparate community, made up of many races, many genders and mostly outside of the mainstream. But a funny thing happened as we achieved visibility and political success on a wide scale: we went mainstream. As more people came out all over the country they came of age in a period where there wasn’t as much to struggle against and it became widely seen as okay to be gay. Certainly I do not mean to suggest that it became easy, but I have met so many gay boys and girls who had the freedom to decide who they were at a very young age, and came out into a world where they could see themselves on TV, in magazines, and in a popular culture that validated their choices.

As time went on, the scrappy grassroots gay organizations that had formed in the early years turned into institutions, and shifted their focus from activism to fundraising, targeting and servicing the wealthiest of our community, who tended to be white men. Gay men in popular culture quickly assumed the fastest path to mainstream acceptance: becoming early adopters and hyper-consumers, using their innate “queer eye” to be the arbiters of taste for a society that was told the most patriotic act it could perform was to go shopping. Gay events became a parade of corporate sponsorship, with audiences dressed up in designer clothes to applaud the latest corporations to lend their logos and a few dollars to try to win loyalty from gay consumers. Gay media sprung up, magazines, blogs, festivals and television networks, and struggled to find their voice and relevance.

The gay and lesbian community became complacent. When a landmark non-discrimination bill came up in Congress last year, the community divided on the inclusion of transgender protection in the bill, even though neither version (with or without trans-inclusion) was ever going to become law. The uneasy coalition began to fracture – activism was messy and impolite and the privileged white gay men I knew didn’t want to tie their fortunes to people they didn’t think they had anything in common with. We lost our way in politics; we stood alone and insisted that it was our way or the highway. A prominent gay media figure publicly proclaimed that he “tore up his check” to Obama when the candidate refused to back gay marriage. This typifies the gay community’s lack of understanding of politics. We can’t go this alone, and if we don’t reach out and build these bridges, nobody is going to build them for us.

We were rudely awakened by a brilliant campaign against us. Being right, just, and moral does not win elections. Money, hard work, organization, and coalition-building win elections. The “No on Prop 8” group ran a poor campaign, with bad messaging, bad advertising, ineffective organization and a baffling focus on our own community. The “Yes on 8” campaign ran a brilliant campaign with simple, poll-tested messaging, an energized base, powerful fundraising and brilliantly effective outreach and organizing to communities all around the state. They almost deserved to win.

This is a very important lesson in politics and democracy for the gay community. Our anger is a gift, use it the right way and we will get what we work for. Use it the wrong way and we will make long-term enemies and prolong our own struggle. We are not victims! Our anger must not become hatred for other minority groups that have been divided from us in our common struggle. We must not attack the Mormon Church but understand that religion is playing too large a role in our civic life and work for the repeal of tax-exempt status for churches that engage in political campaigns. We must not get angry at black churches and assume that CHANGE means the same thing to them that it does to us. We must understand that we are divided by forces which profit from our division. We must understand the common struggles that we share with everyone who faces challenges and discrimination from the state. We must look past ourselves and frame the debate in a way that includes other people. We must stop whining for our rights and organize to secure them. We must not be afraid of our enemies but we must win the argument with them. We must find our common purpose and change this country together. Civil and human rights and liberties have never been automatic in the United States, nor have they ever been under such attack. Our constitution guarantees us the chance to fight for them, it is not a blanket guarantee that they will never be trampled.

It is time to turn anger into action, to build bridges and to go work for the changes we want. Welcome back to the struggle.

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