Tuesday, April 20, 2010

My thoughts on GetEQUAL's protest


So after I thought about it, I realized the GetEQUAL protest may have done more harm than good yesterday.

I'll explain bullet point style:
  • There were not enough folks representing GetEQUAL. However, there were many LGBT fam at the event, supporting Obama and Sen. Boxer.
  • The heckling at Obama sent many messages that hurt GetEQUAL's credibility. The crowd labeled GetEQUAL as a Tea Party group, misinformed party and a secret GOP group. I'm sure that wasn't GetEQUAL's intentions, but that's the message they sent.
  • This was not a LGBT event, so people viewed this as a myopic rant. The message people got was (what I was told) DADT must be the only issue around. I corrected that, but I believed the damage was already done.
  • This protest was poorly planned, again look at the pics I posted.
  • Obama is NOT the enemy! Please attack the true villains of DADT.
  • When the crowd drowned out the DADT chants, GetEQUAL should've took the hint.
  • The onlookers were members of South Central community (mostly Black and Latino). This didn't help the major issues between these communities at all.
  • Perhaps if GetEQUAL gathered other speakers and orgs, a clear, stronger message could've been sent.
I urge GetEQUAL to rethink their protest strategy. This protest didn't really move them in a strong place. They were dismissed as teabaggers.

I also encourage GetEQUAL to work with others and actually plan stuff out. This broke version of protesting is, well, broke. Get it together and try again.

Oh, and get more people.

1 comment:

Kyle Leach said...

V, I agree with you 100% on this. People need to follow appropriate modes of decorum and really think strategies through. As you stated this was very poorly planned and probably resulted in publicity which doesn't work to our favor. We don't need that.

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Viktor is a small town southern boy living in Los Angeles. You can find him on Twitter, writing about pop culture, politics, and comics. He’s the creator of the graphic novel StrangeLore and currently getting back into screenwriting.