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Comings & Goings
CAMP Rehoboth scholarship honors David Mixner
The Comings & Goings column is about sharing the professional successes of our community. We want to recognize those landing new jobs, new clients for their business, joining boards of organizations and other achievements. Please share your successes with us at: [email protected].
Thanks to David Mixner for lending his name to a scholarship with CAMP Rehoboth. CAMP and Danny Sebright invite you to an intimate evening with trailblazing, LGBTQ+ rights activist, David Mixner for cocktails and hors d’ oeuvres on Friday, Sept. 1, from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at 6 Wade Court, in Canal Corkran. The suggested donation to attend the event is $500. The event is the launch of the David Mixner LGBTQ+ Student Scholarship that will honor the legacy of David Mixner and his long career as an advocate for the LGBTQ+ community. This LGBTQ+ Student Scholarship, an endowed fund, will perpetually offer a student a real-world learning experience interning at CAMP Rehoboth, the only LGBTQ+ Community Center in Delaware.
CAMP Executive Director Kim Leisey said, “CAMP Rehoboth Community Center, a 501 (c)3 is greatly appreciative of Danny Sebright and his willingness to host this event with David Mixner.Ā Davidās trailblazing LGBTQ+ activism will be honored through this scholarship, ensuring that an LGBTQ+ student has financial support for their education.Ā Education is foundational for a sound democracy, aĀ principle Mr. Mixner has exhibited throughout hisĀ career and activism.āĀ Ā
Sebright said, āWhen CAMP told me they wanted to honor David Mixner, I was excited to host this event. David is a lifelong friend and I honor his commitment to pursuing equality, which has been both trailblazing and heroic. This scholarship should inspire young people for years to come to continue fighting for equal rights for the LGBTQ+ community, along with CAMP Rehoboth.ā
Congratulations to Andrew C. Wills on his new position as Senior Vice President for Invenergy. He was most recently Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor, Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response, at the Department of Energy (DOE). Upon leaving DOE and accepting his new position, Wills said, “It was one of my proudest experiences and a distinct honor to serve my fellow Americans by supporting Secretary Granholm and President Biden in advancing a secureĀ energy future. I’m excited to rejoin the country’s largest private clean energy company, Invenergy, as we work to implement recent infrastructure legislation by deploying affordable, clean, and reliable energy to all Americans.”
Prior to working at DOE, Wills served as Director of Federal Affairs at Invernergy, Washington, D.C.; Government Relations Director and Counsel, American Public Power Association (APPA), D.C.; and Associate Counsel, North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), D.C. Prior to that he was a summer associate with Duncan, Weinberg, Genzer, & Pembroke, D.C.; and a legal intern with Georgia Transmission Corporation (GTC), Tucker, GA.
Maryland
Seven Salisbury University students arrested, charged in hate crime investigation
Suspects reportedly used Grindr to target victim
Seven Salisbury University students have been arrested and charged in an alleged attack on a gay man that police are investigating as a hate crime.
Salisbury Police said the seven men, ages 18 to 20, used a social media account to invite a man to an apartment complex near the university on Oct. 15 āunder false pretensesā and then attacked the man, whom they said was targeted for his sexual orientation.
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
District of Columbia
D.C. voters approve controversial Initiative 83
Proponents hope measure will allow more minority votes to be heard
It’s ironic that the city that is home to the federal government gets almost no say in how the federal government is run.
From license plates that display the phrase āNo Taxation Without Representationā to countless ā51st Stateā stickers seen everywhere, the residents of Washington are well aware that their vote carries less weight than other Americans.
Despite this, one group in Washington is attempting to expand residentsā electoral power through Initiative 83. The group āYes On 83ā has been the driving force behind the measure. They have put up signs across the city, handed out flyers, and spoken to people about what the initiative would change. Ā
āInitiative 83 is a two-part ballot initiative,ā said Porter Bowman, the volunteer communications director for Yes On 83. āIt does two things. One, would implement ranked choice voting in primaries and general elections in D.C., as well as let independents vote in the primary of their choosing.ā
On Tuesday after the polls closed, the Yes on 83 team gathered at Crush Dance Bar on 14th Street for an election watch party. There, groups of purple wearing volunteers gathered on the dance floor to celebrate their work and watch election results trickle in.
One of those volunteers is Ruby Coleman, the student engagement coordinator for the Yes On 83 campaign and an American University student who was passionate about the measure. She explained this is a win for Washington voters, regardless of how they voted on the measure.
āIt will hold our politicians accountable,ā Coleman said as her co-volunteers danced behind her. āRanked choice voting will make it easier to vote out politicians who do not work for us, since they need the 50% threshold, it’ll make it a lot easier for us to vote them out.ā
In ranked choice voting, 51% is the golden number. The way ranked choice voting works is voters rank their preferred candidates in order of preference (first, second, third). Then, only the first choices of voters are counted. If a candidate wins more than 50% of the vote they win the race.
If no candidate reaches that 51% threshold, then the person with the least number of votes is eliminated and everyone who voted for the now eliminated candidate has their second option vote counted. This process of eliminating the lowest supported candidate continues until one of the candidates reaches above 50% of the vote.
This in theory encourages voters to research all the potential candidates’ platforms and ideas, as well as provide more balanced voting by eliminating āspoilerā votes where similar candidates split the vote causing neither to win.
In addition to ranked choice voting, Initiative 83 also allows for independents, or those not registered to any party, to vote in Washington’s primary elections. Washington has formerly only allowed registered partisan voters to partake in primary votes. Ā
There are many reasons why residents may not register under a major party. Some people feel party platforms donāt reflect their ideas, others, like journalists and high-level federal workers, may not register to avoid appearing partisan.
At about 10:15 p.m. on Tuesday, the Yes On 83 group celebrated a premature victory. At this point, approximately 55% of Washingtonians’ votes had been counted. The ‘Yes’ vote for Initiative 83 held a strong lead, with 72% in favor, while the ‘No’ vote trailed at less than 30%.
Lisa D. T. Rice, the proposer of the initiative, was beaming on Crushās stage as she addressed the volunteers on the dance floor.Ā
āAfter a full, tiring, but momentous day, I’m especially proud and looking over the sea of faces, I know what an amazing team we have here,ā Rice said to start her nearly eight-minute-long speech. āAs a native Washingtonian woman of persistence, I proposed Initiative 83 here in my hometown to put voters first. I love this city, and I think we deserve a political system where politicians have to work harder to earn our votes.ā
Proponents of Initiative 83 have said the ranked choice system will allow for more voices to be heard, including those of the LGBTQ community.
āIn ranked choice voting, you have the opportunity to vote based on your values and not necessarily strategically,ā Coleman told the Blade. āThat means that you can vote for someone who you want to win over someone who you think is going to win.ā
āA very easy example of this is if you’re looking at the presidential election and you want to vote third party, but you think the Democratic candidate might win, you can still vote third party first and put the Democratic candidate second,ā Coleman continued. āYou’re not losing any votes. You’re not wasting your votes. And so that’s the same minority candidates, including LGBTQ candidates. Studies have shown that ranked choice voting elects women, minority candidates, and candidates of color at a higher rate because people are not afraid to vote for them, to put them first.ā
Opponents of ranked choice voting have said the process is too complicated and will lead to voter confusion, a longer counting process, and may not reflect the true majority preference.
Despite this opposition, Washington has approved the initiative; 186,277 (or around 72%) of Washington voters said yes to the initiative, while 70,045 (27%) voters said no.
āRanked choice voting is a proven system to hold politicians accountable to a majority of voters, and letting independents like me, independents like me, vote in these taxpayer funded primaries, is just the right thing to do,ā Rice continued in her victory speech. āWe built a strong coalition of voters across the district, all wards, backgrounds, races, classes and political ideologies, who realized it’s time to make politicians work harder for us. Thank you to those who believed in us and joined us on this journey.ā
District of Columbia
Juvenile arrested in case of anti-gay attack at 14th & U McDonaldās
Move comes on same day D.C. police released photos of suspects
D.C. police on Nov. 6 announced they had arrested one day earlier a 16-year-old juvenile male in connection with the Oct. 27 incident in which as many as 15 men and women allegedly assaulted a gay man at the McDonaldās restaurant at 14th and U Streets, N.W., with some of them shouting an anti-gay slur.
A police statement says the 16-year-old, a resident of Northwest D.C., was arrested Nov. 5 and charged with Assault With Significant Bodily Injury.
Under longstanding law enforcement policy, police do not release the names of juveniles under the age of 18 who are arrested unless a decision is made by prosecutors to charge the juvenile as an adult.
The arrest came several hours after police on the same day released photos of seven suspects linked to the McDonaldās incident. Police said they obtained the photos from one or more video security cameras at or near the McDonaldās.
But the brief police statement announcing the arrest does not say whether the juvenile was identified by someone who recognized him from one of the photos of suspects released that day. However, the statement announcing the arrest includes the photos of the seven suspects and urges anyone who can identify one or more of them to contact police.
āAnyone who can identify these suspects or who has knowledge of this incident should take no action but call police at 202-727-9099 or text your tip to the Departmentās TEXT TIP LINE at 50411,ā the statement says.
The victim in the McDonaldās attack, 22-year-old Sebastian Thomas Robles Lascarro, was taken by ambulance to a hospital for treatment of serious but non-life-threatening injuries on the night of the attack before being released the next day. His husband, Stuart West, said Lascarro had been at two gay bars in the 14th and U Street area and stopped at the McDonaldās on his way home.
He told police, who have listed the incident as a suspected hate crime, that the multiple assaults began inside the McDonaldās when one of the female attackers criticized him for not saying āexcuse meā when he walked past her.
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