I didn't get to attend Creating Change this year (and I'm OK with that). But I do receive the daily updates via e-mail. I'm reproducing the following summary of the closing plenary speech in its entirety. I couldn't agree more with Ms. Ross. All emphases mine:

Creating Change 2006 closed out today with a passionate plenary speech by Loretta Ross, national coordinator and co-founder of SisterSong Reproductive Health Collective, who called on activists to work together to build a human rights movement.

Ross chastised both the right and the left for moving conversations about sex off the radar screen and espoused the need to “talk about the human right to sexual pleasure,” saying, “What does this whole concept of sexual rights mean? I’m not sure we’ve had that conversation yet in this country.” Noting that the first rape crisis center formed in 1972, she said that, in a very short period of time, we’ve changed the whole world: “Now we’ve got to do it again, but bigger.”

Ross expressed concern that we are “indulging in the excesses of identity politics” and engaging in separate and parallel social justice movements.

She said, “When people think many different ideas and move in one direction, that’s a movement. When people think the same idea and move in the same direction, that’s a cult. So we are building a movement or are we building cults?”

Continuing, Ross said, “While we’re fighting each other in our own Oppression Olympics, the neofascists and neoliberals are kicking our asses. They’re killing us. And only a united movement for all of our human rights will save us.”

She said when we fail to embrace a human rights framework, we ultimately cannot succeed.

Ross listed the eight categories of guaranteed human rights and pointed out how political developments such as the war in Iraq and the English-only movement directly violate them, saying that widespread ignorance of our human rights serves only those who already have power over us: “As long as [the government] can treat us as the undeserving people claiming things that aren’t ours, they can defang us our struggle.”

Ross insisted that we share one struggle despite our individual causes and said, “To the extent that you allow other people’s human rights to be violated, yours will be diminished too,” elaborating that we cannot do work against homophobia in a racist way, we cannot do antiracist work in a homophobic way, and so on.

Challenging us to “do what hasn’t been done before,” Ross urged everyone to “create change by building a new movement and calling it the human rights movement of America.”

Labels: Creating Change, human rights, LGBT, movement-building

Jan Brewer is still furiously counting absentee and provisional ballots in a futile attempt to close the gap on Prop 107, but the margin actually continues to expand the more ballots they tally. Poor Cathi Herrod...couldn't get a homophobic ballot initiative passed in Arizona...there goes that federal judgeship!

As the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force convenes their annual Creating Change conference this week, I was thinking about the incredible sense of camaraderie (not to mention infrastructure) that was built over the past two years working to defeat Prop 107 AND defeat the most noxious and hateful of the Congressional Republicans.

This would have been more appropriate a week ago, but a week ago I was neck deep in event planning. The following is one of my favorite speeches in all of Shakespeare's canon (the histories always have the best speeches - my audition monologue is one of Richard II's). A little trite, perhaps, but the spirit I think perfectly reflects the week we just had. We had some major wins and some painful losses (Props 100, 102, 103 and 300 are disgusting and I'm ashamed of Arizona voters for passing them and passing them by such wide margins), but we won and lost together. We will long hereafter look back on November 7, 2006, for better or worse, with a sense of pride about what we accomplished and what we set the stage to accomplish in the future.

Take it away, King Henry:

O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart. His passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse.
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say, "To-morrow is Saint Crispian."
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say, "These wounds I had on Crispian's day."
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words,
Harry the King, Bedford, and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered,
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Labels: CAP, Creating Change, LGBT, Prop 107, Shakespeare, Task Force