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Muriel Bowser for mayor

After so many successes, she has earned a third term

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D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (Blade file photo by Michael Key)

(Editor’s note: This is the opinion of the author and not an official Washington Blade endorsement.)

Endorsing Muriel Bowser for a third term is an easy call. There is no logical reason I have heard from anyone that would lead the good people of the District of Columbia to not reelect a strong, smart, savvy, African-American woman who has led us effectively for the past seven years. She worked tirelessly, 24/7, to keep us safe during the pandemic. Bowser has stood strong for every resident in our city. Be they LGBTQ, Latino, African American, Asian, white or immigrant, they are heard and represented in the diverse administration she has led effectively. 

Some might remember when Mayor Bowser was first elected there were those who questioned her ability and readiness to lead and manage the government. Those questions were quickly put to rest when it became evident she was more than prepared to do so, and has done so with grace. 

Bowser is a respected national figure. She stood up to Donald Trump and has the respect of Joe Biden whom she now works with. She won the respect of many in Congress making more progress fighting for statehood than any mayor before her. For seven years she has balanced D.C.’s budgets, maintained our high bond ratings, and helped D.C. thrive in so many ways. 

Is everything perfect? Of course not. Are there areas for improvement? The answer in any government is yes. The District, like the rest of the country, is seeing increasingly higher rates of crime. Homicides are up as are car jackings, and people are afraid. But rational thinking tells us this is not a situation we can lay at the feet of the mayor, though that is sometimes the easy answer, especially for someone who is running against her. Like other mayors, Bowser is working hard to try everything possible to make our city safer for all of us. She is working with Police Chief Contee and forming coalitions with neighboring governments trying every possible way to keep residents safer. 

It is my hope the Council, rather than attack her, will support the mayor’s 2023 budget, which has earmarked $1.7 billion of the proposed $19.5 billion budget for public safety and justice. Many will remember instead of supporting her last budget, the Council, including her current challengers, thought the thing to do was vote to cut the police budget. Even then, the mayor understood cutting the budget wasn’t the way to go. Rather, she proposed adding every other tactic to increase public safety to a strong MPD was the right thing to do. Bowser has funded initiatives, including violence disrupters, gun violence prevention initiatives and Family Success Centers to help empower communities and families in this fight for our neighborhoods. She always understood we must have a strong MPD, never calling to defund it, rather calling for better training for its members. Her initiatives are now adding 200 new MPD officers and enhancing the MPD cadet program with 150 more cadets in 2022. In addition, the mayor has called for adding many more women officers to the MPD.

The mayor has always been clear about her goals: to guarantee every person in the District a decent home, a good education, a good job, all leading to a fair and equal shot at success, while living in a safe community. 

To that end, Bowser has made good on many of her commitments. She has built more affordable housing in the District, including both rental housing and giving residents more opportunity to buy their own home. The District now has funding for first time homebuyers and for renovations in existing homes. There are more than 50 different resources available to current and future homeowners. The success of the Bowser administration is clear. Overall homelessness is down 38%, family homelessness down 73% and veterans’ homelessness down 47%. These statistics mean something real to the people of the District. 

When it comes to education, Mayor Bowser has invested heavily. We know during the pandemic, while education was virtual, our children, particularly those from lower socio-economic backgrounds, suffered greatly. The mayor has now reopened our schools and added millions of dollars to the school budget to bring our children back to where they were prior to the pandemic and allow them to move forward. She has invested in early childhood education knowing the crucial time in a child’s life is from birth to 3 when synapses connect. The mayor added more than 1,240 infant and toddler child care seats in the District. There will be new pre-K classrooms and a child development center opening in the Old Randle school this year. For our older children there are now 50 technical education programs across DCPS and the budget includes millions more to re-imagine work-based learning. The 2023 budget proposes a new middle school in Shaw and new high school in Palisades to relieve overcrowding at Woodrow Wilson High School.

In addition to children suffering from the pandemic our business community took a huge hit, as did businesses across the nation. To help restaurants and their employees the mayor worked to allow more than 300 eateries to open across D.C. and they have changed the restaurant dynamic in the District, likely forever. Money for main streets and grants to invest in recurring outdoor activations such as markets, co-working spaces, festivals, cultural events and seasonal activities all helped to keep our city open and now moving forward. Added to that are new bike lanes and re-imagined pedestrian-friendly open streets, new bike share stations, and outdoor trails including the Metropolitan Branch Trail. D.C. continues to win awards as a healthy, greener, resilient city. 

Then there are the bigger projects either completed or underway. The beautiful new Frederick Douglas Bridge opened early. The advances at St. Elizabeth’s East include the new soccer stadium and the groundbreaking for the long planned and desperately needed new hospital, named the Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center. Mayor Bowser has overseen the groundbreaking of the long-promised innovations at Skyland Town Center in Ward 7 including a new grocery store, restaurants, and residences, and the completion of phase one of the Wharf in Ward 6, now a showplace and destination for both D.C. residents and tourists.  

This is just part of Bowser’s record of success and one any mayor should be proud of. But Mayor Bowser understands there is more to be done, which is why she is running for a third term. No announced competitor can realistically compare their promises to all the real accomplishments of Mayor Muriel Bowser. 

The District has come through the pandemic in a healthy state. But the past two years have highlighted some issues that need to be worked on and the mayor is ready to do that. One crucial area is technology and the District must upgrade its capabilities. There were issues that became clear, such as lagging unemployment checks and other grant checks. While people did get what they were promised and needed, we know it can be done better. We have seen other tech issues recently such as when the Health Department’s program to let people get information on their vaccination history didn’t initially work. There are other longstanding issues. The mayor is committed to undertaking a large and needed reengineering of the District’s technology. Bowser is committed to making the District a leader in this area and based on her successes in so many other areas residents can feel confident she will succeed. 

What is clear is we don’t need to change our mayor; we need to join with her and together keep moving our city forward. Muriel Bowser has proven what so many of us have always known — that women make great leaders. She has proven herself a visionary and a successful leader. Muriel Bowser has earned my vote for a third term. 

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Let love and compassion guide our response to Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis

Former president is diminished, but he and family deserve love and prayers

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(Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

When I heard Joe Biden had serious prostate cancer, I felt immediate compassion for him and his family. I am a prostate cancer survivor myself. Then I heard how Trump, and some of his MAGA Republicans, responded and was amazed at how they are able to constantly sink to new lows. Trump’s son posted on X “What I want to know is how did Dr. Jill Biden miss stage five metastatic cancer or is this yet another cover-up???” Clearly, they will never give up on being vile human beings. 

The equally disgusting Joe Scarborough had on a doctor who declared he positively knows Biden must have known about his cancer years ago, although he knows nothing about the case. The reality, coming from many specialists, is at this time only Biden’s doctors know when he was diagnosed, and whether he even had regular PSA tests done, and when. Based on the latest research, the American Urological Association (AUA) age guidelines are that they do not recommend routine PSA screening for men 70 or older. This is because prostate cancer is normally very slow growing, and if you were to be diagnosed after 70, you will likely die of something else. Then you had the felon in the White House talking about “stage nine” cancer. Is he really so dumb? Guess he is as he tries to prove it nearly every time he opens his mouth. Talk about diminished. 

Now is Biden diminished from what he was years ago? It is clear he is. Should the people around him have tried to hide that in order to have him run again, no! But the-then president’s hiding health issues is nothing new. Wilson was severely impaired and it is said his wife Edith ran the country for his last year in office. The same was said about Nancy Reagan when they hid Reagan’s Alzheimer’s. Kennedy hid his Addison’s disease and other infirmities, and Trump hid how sick he was from COVID, when being helicoptered to the hospital. Is it wrong to hide these things from the American public, yes, but clearly not unusual. Actually, the media is often complicit in this, which many said they were in Biden’s case. Then you have a guy like Jake Tapper who is happy to be complicit, so he can now write a book about it and make loads of money. Very sad.

I think the time has come in the case of Joe Biden, for us to just offer him and his family some love and prayers, and the hope he will be able to manage his cancer and live a long life. Then turn the page and deal with the things that will matter more to the lives of the American people today. 

Those are the things the felon in the White House, and his Nazi sympathizing co-president, along with the MAGA Congress, are trying to do to them. Things like taking away their healthcare, and thereby also causing the closure of some rural hospitals. Things like the mass firings of federal workers, including thousands of veterans. Things like making it harder for our veterans to access their healthcare by cutting services at the Veterans hospitals. Things like increasing costs for groceries, and other items, due to the felon’s ineffective use of tariffs. Things like seeing college costs go up, as foreign students who pay the full fare at most schools, are sent home or denied visas. Things like making it harder to file for social security by closing so many offices, and pretending to lower drug prices, but not really doing it. Things like cutting research looking for cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s, MS, HIV/AIDS, and a host of other diseases, which will hurt people for decades to come. Things like creating havoc in the world, and bowing down to dictators. Things like walking away from our allies and making the world a less safe place for all of us, including abandoning Ukraine, and cozying up to his friend Putin. I always believed Putin has some dirt on him. Trump said Zelenskyy would be responsible for WW III. But it’s Trump who will be, if it happens. Then we must put a focus on the idiot who is secretary of HHS, RFK Jr., and whether he will allow the flu and covid vaccines, being readied for the fall, to be available in a timely manner. Will he continue to disparage all vaccines, and by doing so, cause deaths here, and around the world. Things like abandoning the fight against climate change and thereby screwing the planet and future generations. 

These are the things the American public really needs to know about, and care about. It may have been wrong to hide Biden’s being diminished, but he is no longer in office, and he no longer impacts people’s lives on a daily basis. The felon in the WH does, and that is where the focus must be. 

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Frank Kameny’s legacy lives on

May 21 marks pioneering activist’s 100th birthday

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May 21 would have been Frank Kameny's 100th birthday. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

A first generation American from Queens, N.Y., Kameny was a decorated WWII veteran. With a prodigious 148 I.Q., he earned a Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard University. In 1957 he was recruited by the Army Map Service, a pioneering agency in space exploration. 

In 1953 in the wake of McCarthyism, President Eisenhower issued Executive Order 10450 that prohibited homosexuals from military or civilian employment. Having nothing to do with workplace conduct, the Army learned that Kameny might be a homosexual. When confronted, he equivocated and was terminated. Unlike then thousands of other homosexuals terminated from government employment, Kameny fought back.

He took on the military and Civil Service Commission including being the first openly gay man to file an appeal about gay rights to the U.S. Supreme Court. He helped co-found and chair the Mattachine Society of Washington, the first gay rights organization in the nation’s capital.

He wrote letters to, among others, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. He founded and chaired the Eastern Conference of Homophile Organization, the nation’s first regional gay organization.

In the 1960s homosexuality, even with a consenting adult in the privacy of one’s bedroom was criminal. The police entrapped and extorted gay men. The American Psychiatric Association classified homosexuality as a mental illness. A bar could lose its license if there was more than one homosexual in their establishment. Homosexuals were considered dangerous, deviant and demented.

Kameny coined the phrase “Gay Is Good.” He organized picketing called Annual Reminders each July 4 from 1965 to 1969 at Independence Hall. The picketers were the first to call for gay equality. The 1965 Annual Reminder had 39 activists making it then the largest demonstration for gay rights. In the mid-1960s the country had an estimated 300 gay and lesbian activists.

He published a newsletter that became the Washington Blade, now the nation’s oldest LGBTQ weekly newspaper. Kameny and Barbara Gittings, the mother of the movement that demonstrated for the right to be heard at the 1971 American Psychiatric Association meeting. Their panel at the 1972 meeting with a masked psychiatrist using a pseudonym and voice modulator was so impactful that the APA created a panel to determine if homosexuality as a mental illness was based on science or discrimination. In 1973, that classification was removed.

He advised gays and lesbians who were the subject of discharge from federal government service. He identified test cases and referred them to the ACLU, Lambda Legal and other counsel. Slowly, but surely those cases began a process for LGBTQ equality.

His efforts led D.C. to be the first city to overturn its sodomy criminal laws. He helped found the first national LGBTQ organization, the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations. His efforts laid the groundwork for HRC and National LGBTQ Task Force.

After Stonewall in June 1969, he chaired a meeting of NY, Philadelphia and D.C. activists that authorized and helped organize to help remember Stonewall the first New York Pride Parade. He believed that Stonewall could be the movement’s Boston Tea Party. He marched in that 1970 parade holding a picket emblazoned with “Gay Is Good.”

He was the first out person to run for Congress as the D.C. delegate. Money left over from his campaign was used to fund the first gay rights television commercial. In July 1975, he was the first to be advised by the Civil Service Commission that it would eliminate homosexuality as a basis for not hiring or for firing a federal civilian employee. In 1977, he attended the White House’s first meeting with gays and lesbians.

Kameny died on Oct. 11, 2011, National Coming Out Day. He lived to see marriage equality approved in several states. He attended the signing by President Obama of the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which enabled gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military. Kameny is buried in the Congressional Cemetery. On his tombstone is inscribed “Gay Is Good.” Over 70,000 of his documents are in the Library of Congress and picket signs from the pioneering demonstrations are housed in the Smithsonian Institution.

On May 21 LGBTQ national organizations gather in front of the Supreme Court. One hundred activists will each hold a candle for his 100th birthday. Fifteen national leaders will engage in picketing similar to the 1965 picketing at the White House and Independence Hall. They will honor Frank Kameny; celebrate the 10th anniversary of marriage equality (Obergefell v Hodges, 2015); and push back on those who would attempt to render us invisible, deny our history and undermine our equality. We will remember the nation’s loss when it fired a Harvard Ph.D. in astronomy because of his status as a homosexual. History repeats itself. This month the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the federal government to terminate transgender servicemembers solely because of their sexual orientation. How far we have come. How much farther we have to travel.

Malcolm Lazin is the national chair, Kameny 100. He is the executive director, LGBT History Month and executive producer of three LGBTQ documentaries including Gay Pioneers. He was an adjunct professor of LGBT History and Rights at New College of Florida. www.kameny100.org

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Returning to Alcatraz: Memory through a queer lens

Trump would like to ‘rebuilt and reopen’ notorious island prison

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Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay (Photo courtesy of Estuardo Cifuentes)

When I arrived at Alcatraz Island, what I felt wasn’t curiosity — it was discomfort. Standing before such a photogenic landscape, something felt off. As if the place was trying to erase what it truly was: a mechanism of punishment, a machine built to control and define who should be excluded. I couldn’t walk those corridors without thinking about what this place represents for so many of us: a symbol of how the state has decided, time and again, that some lives matter less.

As a queer person, what struck me wasn’t just the past Alcatraz holds — but how that past is still alive in today’s policies. As I looked into the empty cells, I thought about the many LGBTQIA+ people who have been punished simply for existing. People like Frank Lucas Bolt, the first prisoner of Alcatraz — not convicted for violence, but for “sodomy,” a label the legal system used to persecute gay men.

He was not the only one. For decades, being gay or trans was enough to end up in a federal prison or a psychiatric hospital. Not for a crime, but for defying the norm. The legal and medical systems worked hand in hand to suppress any deviation from prescribed gender and sexuality. In prisons, queer people were subjected to physical punishment, solitary confinement, and even conversion therapy. Alcatraz was not an exception — it was one of the system’s most brutal epicenters.

But the queer memory of this place isn’t found in tourist brochures. To uncover it, you have to read between the lines, search through archives that are never taught in schools, and listen to those who still carry the scars. Walking among those walls, I realized that remembering isn’t enough — we have to contest the meaning of memory itself. What isn’t told, is repeated.

That’s why, when a few weeks ago President Trump said he’d like to “rebuild and reopen Alcatraz,” I didn’t take it as just another symbolic gesture. I took it as a warning. In times of crisis, punishment becomes an easy offer: lock them up, expel them, make them disappear. And in that narrative, queer, migrant, and racialized bodies are always the first to be targeted.

The danger isn’t just in the idea of a reopened prison, but in what it represents: The longing to return to a social order that was already deeply unjust. The nostalgia for “tough-on-crime” prisons is the same one that criminalizes unhoused people, persecutes migrants, and stigmatizes queer and trans youth in public spaces. Anyone who dreams of locking up more people isn’t thinking about justice — they’re thinking about control.

In 1969, a group of Native American activists occupied Alcatraz for over a year. They did it to denounce land theft and the government’s betrayal of treaties. During their occupation, they painted a message on the island’s water tower: “Peace and Freedom. Home of the Free Indian Land.” That gesture was a radical reclamation of space, a way of saying: this island can also be a place of resistance.

Alcatraz holds many layers. It was a high-security prison, yes, but it also became the stage for one of the most powerful acts of civil disobedience in the 20th century. That tension still lingers. The question is not just what happened at Alcatraz, but what we want it to represent today. A renewed model of punishment — or a site of memory that helps us prevent more harm?

As I walked its halls, I couldn’t stop thinking about the migrant detention centers that are still full today. About trans people held in inhumane conditions. About arbitrary detentions. About those of us who, like me, crossed borders just to survive. The distance between that Alcatraz and our present is not as wide as we’d like to believe. The walls may change, but punishment still operates on the same bodies.

Standing before the empty cells, I felt what many must have felt there: the weight of abandonment, the state’s mark upon their body, the feeling that their existence was a problem. But I also felt something else: conviction. The certainty that we will no longer walk into those spaces in silence. That we will not let ourselves be labeled as “mistakes” or “deviants.” That if they try to lock us up again, they will find us organized, with memory, with dignity.

Alcatraz does not need to be rebuilt. It needs to be understood. And we — queer, racialized, migrant communities — need to transform that understanding into action: to push back against hateful rhetoric, to protect those still living under threat, and to tell our full stories. Let no one be punished again for being who they are. Let history not become a locked cell once more.

The views expressed in this article are solely my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer, colleagues, or any affiliated organization. They are shared from a personal perspective shaped by lived experience and advocacy work.

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