Wednesday, May 28, 2008

If women ruled the world and the collaborative model.

I recently finished readind If Women Ruled the World. The point of the book was to get people thinking about power, what it means to them, and why women don't hold a lot of power in our current political structure. I think part of why women don't hold conventional power is that our cultural model for power is not intuitive for women. Some of this is certainly nurture, just read Odd Girl Out to get a frightening picture of the ways in which we are taught that being female means being nice. And being nice means NEVER saying what you mean or anything confrontational. But I also think some of it is hardwired into our pysche. We live with a biological reality that fosters a desire to collaborate and build community. We know there will be times we are vulnerable or in need and we work to build support structures to manage that effectively.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

I am not a democrat.

I am not a republican. I am an American. As Utah Phillips says, "Loyalty to the country always, loyalty to the government when it deserves it." My government has made choices that do not represent my values. I dislike the concept of pre-emptive war, torture of any kind, holding people without due process, and politics in the name of religion. But I love the variety of the american people. I love the chemistry of a good debate between passionate believers. I believe that our differences make us stronger, our diversity is a challenge that forces us out of our comfort zone and into bigger worlds and better places.


There is a lot of rhetoric around the upcoming election. Rhetoric that tries to draw unswerving lines between liberal and conservative, republican and democrat. This rhetoric is often about fear, their fear of losing power, and less often about what we actually need, which is leadership that will look beyond the limits of dogma and remember that when the election is over, we are all americans.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Practices of highly effective Non Profits

The Stanford Social Innovation Review published an article in 2007 about how non-profits make can really make a difference by reviewing 12 high-impact organizations to really understand why they were so successful. What was really surprising was how much conventional wisdom did NOT play a part in their ability to achieve their mission in unbelievably effective ways. While I highly recommend that you read the entire article here, I'll cover some of it for you, because it's definitely worthwhile.

The first point that I really got out of the article was success comes from knowing you are and what you want to accomplish. This may sound like a simple concept, but if you are working to feed the hungry then getting caught up in how to make your internal structures perfect, you need to be looking at creative partnerships to get food to hungry people, to discover why people are hungry, and how to change that. A lot of times we get really focused on the minutia of our organizations functionality when what we really need to do is start cooking.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Bathrooms, smashrooms.

Sometimes I use the men's room, at least when they are single user bathrooms. It's my own silent protest against gendering these single user bathrooms. I mean, really, what's the point? Does anyone honestly care if the person who used the bathroom before you was male or female or some variation on the spectrum? My mom wasn't really an activist, but she was a pragmatist. And whenever we would go out somewhere, she'd use whatever room was available, and encourage me to do the same. Even with that upbringing, I still hesitate when I walk up to the men's room door. I have no boi in me, so I feel somehow like I am intruding on someone else's space. Space they aren't using, admittedly, but still, if I have a choice, I feel mildly obligated to use the women's room. I know I don't really belong in the men's room. I doubt anyone notices besides me, but it reminds me of the privileges I have. The rooms I can enter because I was born in the body that fits my identity. The ways in which the world has already shaped itself to my needs. And the ways in which I can work to help reshape this world to fit more people than it does.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Why marriage?

This afternoon the news that the California Supreme court declared leaving same-sex couples out of marriage was illegal and flat out wrong came across my computer. Unlike Massachusetts, they have already shown a strong support, being the first state in the country to have marriage pass in the legislature in 2005. So now it goes to the voters in the fall to decide whether or not fairness has a place in their state.

Sometimes people ask why we queers care about marriage, really? The divorce rate in our country is over 65%, it's a patriarchal institution with a history of devaluing women, and it doesn't actually help level the playing field for many LGBT folks for whom marriage would not automatically open the door to benefits like health care. So what does it matter?

My ex-wife and I were together for 9 years. In the first years of our relationship her (mormon) parents preferred to refer to me as her roommate. Despite the fact that we owned a home together, raised children together, and had been together for significant period of time. We held a commitment ceremony to which none of our mormon parents came (I have a couple of them myself) and it made no difference. Then, in September of 2003, we went to Canada and got married. On the phone with her mother, she mentioned this, expecting the normal negative reaction. Instead her mother said, "You can do that?" Yep. "What's Aicila's birthday?", she then asked, and proceeded to enter me into the family genealogy. What 7 years, children, a house, and mutual caretaking could not accomplish, this slip of paper from Canada made possible. Suddenly, our relationship was acceptable.

So while marriage in many ways will not change the work we need to do towards equal access to health care or fair treatment by employers, I believe it will make a difference in how we are able to build our lives together. It will help end some of the isolation we face from our families and within society. It will help us be more connected to the larger community in which we live.

Read more at: this website

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Why Smokefree?

Boulder Pride has invested itself into the Smokefree movement vigorously. We all know smoking is bad for us. Smokers don't need us to teach them that, anymore than I need someone to teach me that my not-so-minor chocolate addiction is unhealthy. I know I shouldn't, but I still do it. So while our smokefree activism is partially inspired by a desire to help individuals in our community achieve better health, it is not the main inspiration for our passion.

Let's start out with some basic facts. Queer folks are twice as likely to be uninsured as straights. And people who are uninsured are less likely to go to the doctor and therefore less likely to catch life threatening illnesses when they are in the early stages and more easily treated. Queer people are also more likely to smoke at high rates and drink to excess. Smokefree GLBT has a laundry list of some fairly frightening facts. One study done by the Praxis Project indicated that bisexual women are three times more likely to drink to get drunk than straight or lesbian women. So encouraging an active, healthy lifestyle for our community is an important role we can play.

But even more so, smoking is a social justice issue. It's a social justice issue because people who smoke are typically low income and oppressed. Because tobacco companies market to the queer community as consumers but do not respect them as people. Because when we buy tobacco products, we are indirectly funding campaigns and candidates that do not have our best interests at heart.

I attended an anti-smoking conference a few years ago where a native american group presented on the issues of tobacco and it really hit me for the first time what the tobacco companies have done to our country. For many native american groups, tobacco was a sacred herb, used to treat certain ailments in animals and smoked as a community building experience. Big Tobacco took that sacred and personal experience and poured various chemical additives into it to make it more addictive and more profitable. The queer community is just one of the many groups that have been targeted and used by the tobacco industry in their quest for money.

Things to watch for:
June 20 is the Smokefree Cruiser Ride 4 Pride Join with other queers and allies in a bike ride across town, ending at the Saloon and Steakhouse where participants will be taking turns on the mechanical bull!

Monday, May 5, 2008

Working together for change.

My last for-profit job was 10 years ago, as the business manager for a local comedy troupe. It was fun work and it honestly prepared me to work for a small non-profit in terms of skills acquired. But it didn't prepare me for the non-profit mentality. In the for-profit world, if someone does what you do, they are a competitor. You need to find a way to convince your target market that you can provide what they are looking for at a better value.

In the non-profit world, it is exactly the opposite. If someone else does what you do, they are your partner. As someone with an interest in serving the same population, you can assume certain things in common and find ways to limit overlap and increase effectiveness, thereby getting even more done for the people you are working to serve. The for-profit world is ultimately concerned with its bottom line, but the non-profit world is ultimately concerned with its values. In some ways I think teaching this mentality by living it, is one of the things that non-profit sector can really do to make this world a better place in all the ways that we desire it to be so.