National
Will arrests at White House usher new era of activism?
Gay soldier becomes face of civil disobedience
Lt. Dan Choi, a gay West Point graduate and Arabic linguist who served as an infantry officer in Iraq, was arrested last week after handcuffing himself to the White House fence in protest of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ (DC Agenda photo by Michael Key)
A gay solider who handcuffed himself to the White House fence last week in protest of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has emerged as a national figure who is challenging LGBT rights groups to take a more militant posture in the fight for anti-discrimination bills stalled in Congress.
Lt. Dan Choi, a West Point graduate and Arabic linguist who served as an infantry officer in Iraq, was one of three protesters arrested outside the White House on March 18. Many people see the action as a challenge to gay groups aligned with the Obama administration and Democratic Party leaders in Congress.
“I want to explain why these actions are exactly what we need to be doing as American citizens,” Choi told DC Agenda upon his release from jail March 19. “When there’s a time when our leaders are unable, unwilling to do the right thing, somebody has to step up to the responsibility.”
His arrest — and comments in a Newsweek interview this week criticizing gay rights leaders for being too closely aligned with the Washington political establishment — comes at a time when some activists and donors are complaining that President Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress have not pushed hard enough to advance several LGBT rights bills, including the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
Choi, who is in the process of being discharged from the Army under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” was joined in the White House protest by Jim Pietrangelo, a former Army captain discharged in 2004 for being gay, and Robin McGehee, co-founder of the new LGBT direct action group GetEqual.org.
Pietrangelo also handcuffed himself to the fence while McGehee assisted the two. Police charged all three with refusing to obey a lawful order to disperse, a misdemeanor that carries a maximum penalty of a $1,000 fine.
McGehee agreed to pay a $35 fine to end the case against her in a process known as post and forfeit. But Choi and Pietrangelo pleaded not guilty at an arraignment the following day in D.C. Superior Court after being held overnight in jail. A judge set an April 26 trial date for the two.
Shortly after U.S. Park Police officers arrested Choi and Pietrangelo and uniformed Secret Service officers arrested McGehee, four other protesters affiliated with GetEqual.org were arrested by U.S. Capitol police for staging a sit-in at the Capitol Hill office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Other people were arrested around the same time in Pelosi’s district office in San Francisco. The Washington and San Francisco protesters said they were targeting Pelosi for not moving fast enough to schedule a House vote on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA. The long-stalled legislation calls for banning employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
“We had three simultaneous actions happening at the same time on the same day — with the simple demand that we wanted “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repealed immediately and ENDA to be brought to the floor immediately,” McGehee said.
“And we’ll be back in April,” said McGehee, who lives in Fresno, Calif. “I can’t tell you what we’re going to do, but we’ll be back.”
Asked if future actions would involve LGBT protesters getting arrested, McGehee said, “Yes, absolutely.”
“Some of these will include non-violent civil disobedience that will lead to arrests and some of them will be moments that you’re going to highlight injustice through a creative action idea that doesn’t include an arrest,” she said.
“But what we’re trying to do is create the lunch-counter moment that highlights the injustice and gives the visual imagery that shows we really are in a civil rights battle,” she said.
McGehee said the “lunch-counter moment” was a reference to the famous sit-ins staged by blacks at segregated restaurants and lunch counters in the South during the late the 1950s and early 1960s, when civil rights activists were arrested and jailed.
The non-violent civil disobedience actions organized then by Martin Luther King Jr. and his supporters have been credited with laying the groundwork for Congress to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The act ended segregation by banning discrimination based on race and color in employment, housing and public accommodations.
Gay activists have engaged in civil disobedience actions since the Stonewall riots in New York City ushered in the modern gay rights movement in 1969. Gay and AIDS activists involved with the AIDS protest groups ACT UP engaged in widely publicized civil disobedience actions in the 1980s to challenge inaction on the part of the government to fighting AIDS.
But since the early 1990s, when President Bill Clinton emerged as the first U.S. president to openly support gay rights and gay-supportive Democrats won control of Congress, most of the nation’s LGBT groups chose a path of more traditional lobbying and electioneering to build support for gay rights causes.
McGehee’s reference to the arrest actions by black civil rights activists in the South, where police often treated arrested demonstrators harshly, paralleled Choi’s arrest outside the White House.
According to D.C. gay Democratic activist Paul Yandura, who has served as a spokesperson for Choi and Pietrangelo, Choi recounted a harrowing encounter with a police officer at the city’s Central Cellblock, where the two were taken after their arrest.
Yandura noted that Choi and Pietrangelo wore their military uniforms to the protest and remained dressed in their uniforms during their overnight stay at the cellblock. He said Choi told him an officer at the cellblock ordered him to stand before him at attention and “violently” ripped several cloth insignias, including an American flag insignia, from Choi’s uniform.
One by one, the officer ripped off the flag insignia, cloth stripes indicating Choi’s rank and a cloth U.S. Army insignia, so as “to humiliate him,” Yandura said.
Shortly after being asked about the incident by DC Agenda, Assistant D.C. Police Chief Diane Groomes said she looked into the matter and confirmed that a Park Police officer removed the insignias from both Choi and Pietrangelo’s uniforms at a Park Police holding facility.
She said the incident occurred before the two men were taken to the Central Cellblock, which is operated by D.C. police.
“[D.C. police] were not involved in said matter,” Groomes told DC Agenda in an e-mail. She said Park Police Lt. Phil Beck confirmed to her that an officer with the Park Police removed the two gay men’s uniform insignias, but she did not know why.
A Park Police spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment.
Choi challenges HRC
Choi appeared to take a swipe at established LGBT rights groups, including the Human Rights Campaign, in an interview this week with Newsweek, which raised eyebrows among some activists.
“Within the gay community, so many leaders want acceptance from polite society,” he said in the interview. “I think there’s been a betrayal of what is down inside of us in order to achieve what looks popular, what look enviable.
“The movement seems to be centered around how to become an elite,” he said. “I would say to them: You do not represent us if all you are looking for is a ladder in to elite society.”
He also told Newsweek he believes a “deep schism” exists within the LGBT rights movement, with many gay and transgender youth becoming alienated from the more establishment-oriented groups.
Choi’s own plans for the White House protest last week were announced about a half hour before it began during a noon rally in Freedom Plaza that HRC organized jointly with comedienne Kathy Griffin in support of efforts to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
Choi was not a scheduled speaker at the rally. In a statement, HRC spokesperson Trevor Thomas said Choi first asked HRC President Joe Solmonese if the soldier could have a speaking role at the event.
“Joe explained that it wasn’t his sole decision to make on the spot given that there was already an established program that included Kathy Griffin, other organizations and veterans,” Thomas said.
But Thomas and others familiar with the rally said Griffin later invited Choi to speak during her allotted time period on the rally stage.
Once on stage, Choi urged rally attendees to march with him to the White House to send a message to “repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ — not next year, not tomorrow, but now. Now is the time.”
He made no mention of his plans to handcuff himself to the White House fence, saying only, “I’m going to the White House right now. I want you all to take out your cell phones and any recording devices and document this moment right now as we together make history.”
He then turned to Griffin and Solmonese and asked if they would join him in a march to the White House. Griffin said, “Of course,” and Solmonese gave him a thumbs-up signal. But the two later said that they chose to remain at the rally to continue to push for lobbying efforts to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
About 200 people followed Choi and Pietrangelo for the four-block walk from Freedom Plaza to the White House. HRC said more than 1,000 people attended the Freedom Plaza rally.
Phil Attey, a gay D.C. activist and volunteer coordinator for the Obama for president campaign was among those who attended the Freedom Plaza rally. He expressed distaste over Choi’s march to the White House, calling it “politically unsophisticated beyond belief.”
“It’s a shame that our community needs to be educated about the political process and they don’t get it,” he said. “They don’t understand that Congress needs to be moved on this issue and that people across the country have the power to do that. And if they’re going to get them to yell and scream at the president, we’re going to fail, we’re going to lose.”
But Choi and McGehee said later that Obama isn’t pushing hard enough to prod Congress to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The two said their arrest action was aimed, in part, at pushing the president into including language to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in his 2010 Department of Defense authorization bill, which could enable the repeal to take place this year.
While saying he has great respect for Griffin, a popular comedienne with a large gay following, Choi said he questioned HRC’s decision to team up with a comedienne for a rally addressing discrimination against gays in the military.
“’Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ is not a laughing matter,” he said in the Newsweek interview.
HRC says differing
tactics no ‘schism’
Solmonese and two local activists involved in lobbying for D.C.’s same-sex marriage law took exception to some of Choi’s comments.
“Any healthy and diverse social movement will have a diversity of voices and opinions,” Solmonese told DC Agenda. “Individuals and groups will take different approaches based on their ideology, life experience and other sincerely and deeply held beliefs about the political process. This is not indicative of a schism, but rather a sign of vibrant engagement.”
And D.C. gay activist Bob Summersgill, who coordinated strategy for lobbying the City Council for approval of a same-sex marriage law, called Choi’s criticism of HRC off base.
“Direct action is a very good tactic,” he said. “But it’s most effective when you do it in conjunction with standard lobbying. This past week, Dan Choi had a dual message to pass ENDA and repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” but also to attack HRC at the same time.”
Summersgill disputed Choi’s assertion that national lobbying groups like HRC are more interested in seeking an elitist status than in passing laws.
“HRC is a federal lobbying organization,” he said. “To pass laws, you have to talk to and build relationships with members of Congress.”
Jose Zuniga, who was among the first to challenge “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 1993 as a sergeant in the Army, noted that civil disobedience has an important place in civil rights endeavors, including in the LGBT community.
“I respect Dan Choi’s passion and, although I wish he had not engaged in civil disobedience while dressed in an Army uniform, I personally understand, as someone who was discharged from the U.S. Army … because I am a gay man, the frustration he and our community rightly feel,” Zuniga said.
Like Summersgill and Solmonese, Zuniga said civil disobedience should be carefully coordinated with legislative advocacy efforts.
National
How data helps — and hurts — LGBTQ communities
‘Even when we prove we exist, we don’t get the resources we need’
When Scotland voted to add questions about sexuality and transgender status to its census, and clarified the definition of “sex,” it was so controversial it led to a court case.
It got so heated that the director of Fair Play for Women, a gender-critical organization, argued: “Extreme gender ideology is deeply embedded within the Scottish Government, and promoted at the highest levels including the First Minister.”
Data, like the census, “is often presented as being objective, being quantitative, being something that’s above politics,” says Kevin Guyan, author of “Queer Data.”
Listening to the deliberations in parliament breaks that illusion entirely. “There’s a lot of political power at play here,” says Guyan, “It’s very much shaped by who’s in the room making these decisions.”
Great Britain has been a ‘hotspot’ for the gender-critical movement. “You just really revealed the politics of what was happening at the time, particularly in association with an expanded anti-trans movement,” explains Guyan.
Ultimately, the LGBTQ community was counted in Scotland, which was heralded as a historic win.
This makes sense, says Amelia Dogan, a research affiliate in the Data plus Feminism Lab at MIT. “People want to prove that we exist.”
Plus, there are practical reasons. “To convince people with power, especially resource allocation power, you need to have data,” says Catherine D’Ignazio, MIT professor and co-author of the book “Data Feminism.”
When data isn’t collected, problems can be ignored. In short, D’Ignazio says, “What’s counted counts.” But, being counted is neither neutral nor a silver bullet. “Even when we do prove we exist, we don’t get the resources that we need,” says Dogan.
“There are a lot of reasons for not wanting to be counted. Counting is not always a good thing” they say. D’Ignazio points to how data has repeatedly been weaponized. “The U.S. literally used census data to intern Japanese people in the 1940s.”
Nell Gaither, president of the Trans Pride Initiative, faces that paradox each day as she gathers and shares data about incarcerated LGBTQ people in Texas.
“Data can be harmful in some ways or used in a harmful way,” she says, “they can use [the data] against us too.” She points to those using numbers of incarcerated transgender people to stoke fears around the danger of trans women, even though it’s trans women who face disproportionate risk in prison.
This is one of the many wrinkles the LGBTQ community and other minority communities face when working with or being represented by data.
There is a belief by some data scientists that limited knowledge of the subject is OK. D’Ignazio describes this as the “hubris of data science” where researchers believe they can make conclusions solely off a data set, regardless of background knowledge or previous bodies of knowledge.
“In order to be able to read the output of a data analysis process, you need background knowledge,” D’Ignazio emphasizes.
Community members, on the other hand, are often primed to interpret data about their communities. “That proximity gives us a shared vocabulary,” explains Nikki Stephens, a postdoctoral researcher in D’Ignazio’s Data plus Feminism lab.
It can also make more rich data. When Stephens was interviewing other members of the transgender community about Transgender Day of Remembrance, they realized we “think more complicated and more meaningful thoughts, because we’re in community around it.”
Community members are also primed to know what to even begin to look for.
A community may know about a widely known problem or need in their community, but they are invisible to institutions. “It’s like unknown to them because they haven’t cared to look,” says D’Ignazio.
That is how Gaither got involved in tracking data about incarcerated LGBTQ people in Texas in the first place.
Gaither received her first letter from an incarcerated person in 2013. As president of the Trans Pride Initiative, Gaither had predominately focused on housing and healthcare for trans people. The pivot to supporting the LGBTQ incarcerated community came out of need—trans prisoners were not given access to constitutionally mandated healthcare.
Gaither sought a legal organization to help, but no one stepped in—they didn’t have expertise. So, Gaither figured it out herself.
As TPI continued to support incarcerated, queer Texans, the letters kept rolling in. Gaither quickly realized her correspondences told a story: definable instances of assault, misconduct, or abuse.
With permission from those she corresponded with and help from volunteers, Gaither started tracking it. “We’re hearing from people reporting violence to us,” says Gaither, “we ought to log these.” TPI also tracks demographic information alongside instances of abuse and violence, all of which are publicly accessible.
“It started off as just a spreadsheet, and then it eventually grew over the years into a database,” says Gaither, who constructed the MySQL database for the project.
Gaither’s work especially focuses on the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), which ostensibly includes specific protections for transgender people.
To be compliant with PREA, prisons must be audited once every three years. Numerous investigations have shown that these audits are often not effective. TPI has filed numerous complaints with the PREA Resource Center, demonstrating inaccuracies or bias, in addition to tracking thousands of PREA-related incidents.
“We are trying to use our data to show the audits are ineffective,” says Gaither.
Gaither has been thinking about data since she was a teenager. She describes using a computer for the first time in the 1970s and being bored with everything except for dBASE, one of the first database management systems.
“Ever since then, I’ve been fascinated with how you can use data and databases to understand what your work with data,” Gaither says. She went on to get a master’s in Library and Information Sciences and built Resource Center Dallas’s client database for transgender health.
But gathering, let alone analyzing, and disseminating data about queer people imprisoned in Texas has proven a challenge.
Some participants fear retaliation for sharing their experiences, while others face health problems that make pinpointing exact dates or times of assaults difficult.
And, despite being cited by The National PREA Resource Center and Human Rights Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law, Gaither still faces those who think her data “doesn’t seem to have as much legitimacy.”
Stephens lauds Gaither’s data collection methods. “TPI collect their data totally consensually. They write to them first and then turn that data into data legible to the state and in the service of community care.”
This is a stark contrast to the current status quo of data collection, says Dogan, “people, and all of our data, regardless of who you are, is getting scraped.” Data scraping refers to when information is imported from websites – like personal social media pages – and used as data.
AI has accelerated this, says D’Ignazio, “it’s like a massive vacuum cleaning of data across the entire internet. It’s this whole new level and scale of non-consensual technology.”
Gaither’s method of building relationships and direct correspondence is a far cry from data scraping. Volunteers read, respond to, and input information from every letter.
Gaither has become close to some of the people with whom she’s corresponded. Referring to a letter she received in 2013, Gaither says: “I still write to her. We’ve known each other for a long time. I consider her to be my friend.”
Her data is queer not simply in its content, but in how she chooses to keep the queer community centered in the process. “I feel very close to her so that makes the data more meaningful. It has a human component behind it,” says Gaither.
Guyan says that data can be seen as a “currency” since it has power. But he emphasizes that “people’s lives are messy, they’re complicated, they’re nuanced, they’re caveated, and a data exercise that relies on only ones and zeros can’t necessarily capture the full complexity and diversity of these lives.”
While Gaither tallies and sorts the incidents of violence, so it is legible as this “currency,” she also grapples with the nuance of the situations behind the scenes. “It’s my family that I’m working with. I think it makes it more significant from a personal level,” says Gaither.
Guyan explains that queer data is not just about the content, but the methods. “You can adopt a queer lens in terms of thinking critically about the method you use when collecting, analyzing, and presenting all types of data.”
(This story is part of the Digital Equity Local Voices Fellowship lab through News is Out. The lab initiative is made possible with support from Comcast NBCUniversal.)
National
New twice-a-year HIV prevention drug found highly effective
Gilead announces 99.9% of participants in trial were HIV negative
The U.S. pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences announced on Sept. 12 the findings of its most recent Phase 3 clinical trial for its twice-yearly injectable HIV prevention drug Lenacapavir show the drug is highly effective in preventing HIV infections, even more so than the current HIV prevention or PrEP drugs in the form of a pill taken once a day.
There were just two cases of someone testing HIV positive among 2,180 participants in the drug study for the twice-yearly Lenacapavir, amounting to a 99.9 percent rate of effectiveness, the Gilead announcement says.
The announcement says the trial reached out to individuals considered at risk for HIV, including “cisgender men, transgender men, transgender women, and gender non-binary individuals in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, South Africa, Thailand and the United States who have sex with partners assigned male at birth.”
“With such remarkable outcomes across two Phase 3 studies, Lenacapavir has demonstrated the potential to transform the prevention of HIV and help to end the epidemic,” Daniel O’Day, chair and CEO of Gilead Sciences said in the announcement.
“Now that we have a comprehensive dataset across multiple study populations, Gilead will work urgently with regulatory, government, public health, and community partners to ensure that, if approved, we can deliver twice-yearly Lenacapavir for PrEP worldwide for all those who want or need it,” he said.
Carl Schmid, executive director of the D.C.-based HIV+ Hepatitis Policy Institute, called Lenacapavir a “miracle drug” based on the latest studies, saying the optimistic findings pave the way for the potential approval of the drug by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2025.
“The goal now must be to ensure that people who have a reason to be on PrEP are able to access this miracle drug,” Schmid said in a Sept. 12 press release. “Thanks to the ACA [U.S. Affordable Care Act], insurers must cover PrEP without cost sharing as a preventive service,” he said.
“Insurers should not be given the choice to cover just daily oral PrEP, particularly given these remarkable results,” Schmid said in the release. “The Biden-Harris administration should immediately make that clear. To date, they have yet to do that for the first long-acting PrEP drug that new plans must cover,” he said.
Schmid, through the HIV+ Hepatitis Policy Institute, has helped to put together a coalition of national and local HIV/AIDS organizations advocating for full coverage of HIV treatment and prevention medication by health insurance companies.
A statement by Gilead says that if approved by regulatory agencies, “Lenacapavir for PrEP would be the first and only twice-yearly HIV prevention choice for people who need or want PrEP. The approval could transform the HIV prevention landscape for multiple populations in regions around the world and help end the epidemic.”
National
Thousands expected to participate in Gender Liberation March in D.C.
Participants will protest outside US Supreme Court, Heritage Foundation on Saturday
Thousands of people are expected to protest outside of the U.S. Supreme Court and the Heritage Foundation headquarters on Saturday as part of the first Gender Liberation March.
The march will unite abortion rights, transgender, LGBTQ, and feminist advocates to demand bodily autonomy and self-determination.
The Gender Liberation March follows the National Trans Liberation March that took place in D.C. in late August, and is organized by a collective of gender justice based groups that includes the organizers behind the Women’s Marches and the Brooklyn Liberation Marches. One of the core organizers, writer and activist Raquel Willis, explained the march will highlight assaults on abortion access and gender-affirming care by the Republican Party and right-wing groups as broader attacks on freedoms.
“The aim for us was really to bring together the energies of the fight for abortion access, IVF access, and reproductive justice with the fight for gender-affirming care, and this larger kind of queer and trans liberation,” Willis said. “All of our liberation is bound up in each other’s. And so if you think that the attacks on trans people’s access to health care don’t include you, you are grossly mistaken. We all deserve to make decisions about our bodies and our destinies.”
The march targets the Heritage Foundation, the far-right think tank behind Project 2025, a blueprint to overhaul the federal government and attack trans and abortion rights under a potential second Trump administration. Protesters will also march on the Supreme Court, which is set to hear U.S. v. Skrmetti, a case with wide-reaching implications for medical treatment of trans youth, in October.
“This Supreme Court case could set precedent to further erode the rights around accessing this life-saving medical care. And we know that there are ramifications of this case that could also go beyond young people, and that’s exactly what the right wing apparatus that are pushing these bans want,” Eliel Cruz, another core organizer, said.
According to the Human Rights Campaign, 70 anti-LGBTQ laws have been enacted this year so far, of which 15 ban gender-affirming care for trans youth.
The march will kick off at noon with an opening ceremony at Columbus Circle in front of Union Station. Trans rights icon Miss Major, and the actor and activist Elliot Page are among the scheduled speakers of the event. People from across the country are expected to turn out; buses are scheduled to bring participants to D.C. from at least nine cities, including as far away as Chattanooga, Tenn.
At 1 p.m. marchers will begin moving toward the Heritage Foundation and the Supreme Court, before returning to Columbus Circle at 3 p.m. for a rally and festival featuring a variety of activities, as well as performances by artists.
Banned books will be distributed for free, and a youth area will host a drag queen story hour along with arts and crafts. The LGBTQ health organization FOLX will have a table to connect attendees to its HRT fund, and a voter engagement area will offer information on registering and participating in the upcoming election. A memorial space will honor those lost to anti-trans and gender-based violence.
Cruz noted that the relentless ongoing attacks on the LGBTQ community and on fundamental rights can take a toll, and emphasized that the march offers a chance for people to come together.
“I’m really excited about putting our spin on this rally and making it a place that is both political, but also has levity and there’s fun and joy involved, because we can’t, you know, we can’t just only think about all the kind of massive amount of work and attacks that we’re facing, but also remember that together, we can get through it,” Cruz said.
Sign up for the march here. Bus tickets to the rally can be booked here.
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