See this week’s print edition of San Diego LGBT Weekly for in-depth coverage – out Thursday.
Equality California Executive Director Roland Palencia’s resignation, which was announced earlier today, comes in the wake of the organization’s decision to stand down from its mission to repeal Proposition 8 – and, according to insiders staffing cuts will soon follow.
“The decision about going or not (going) back to the ballot to overturn Proposition 8 was a gut-wrenching one,” Palencia told independent journalist, Rex Wockner. “Ultimately, I believed that initiating a signature drive could ignite something powerful in our movement here in California.
This needs to be balanced with the responsibility of raising close to $2 million by December 2011 for the signature gathering alone; and maybe over $40 million to win this campaign by November 2012. Not a small task. Given the pending federal lawsuit, the economy, critical support among the base and a number of other factors, not winning this campaign could be a very disempowering experience.”
Executive Director Roland Palencia’s resignation, which was announced earlier today, comes in the wake of the organization’s decision to stand down from its mission to repeal Proposition 8 – and, according to insiders staffing cuts will soon follow.
According to San Diego LGBT Weekly sources, reaction to the EQCA Board of Directors’ narrow vote to abandon marriage equality as a 2012 election cause was significant and decidedly negative. In fact, sources close to the issue (speaking under condition of anonymity) say major contributors to Equality California intend to, or have pulled financial support. Sources also say EQCA will begin laying off staff in coming weeks because of funding losses.
However, the organization’s communications director, Rebekah Orr, strongly denied the claim.
“No one is being laid off (as a result of policy positions),” Orr said during a telephone interview. “While some layoffs and layoff decisions were already made prior to Roland’s decision and prior to the announcement that we would be shifting gears from a ballot initiative to educating people about our community, none of those have anything at all to do with either decision. Those rumors are completely wrong.”
See this week’s print edition of San Diego LGBT Weekly for in-depth coverage – out Thursday.
Equality California’s decision not to sponsor an initiative to repeal Proposition 8 in 2012 was merely bowing to the inevitable. Once the radical Right announced plans to mount a ballot campaign to repeal SB 48, the law that would require the role and contributions of Queer people to be taught in public schools, any attempt to go back to the ballot against Proposition 8 died because this community simply does not have the resources to run two electoral campaigns at the same time. I still think EQCA is the wrong organization to run ballot campaigns — they’re a great lobbying group but, as I wrote in Zenger’s Newsmagazine, asking them to run an electoral campaign is like asking the world’s greatest auto mechanic to do your open-heart surgery. And I would hate to see community disappointment over the Prop. 8 decision lead to lower contributions to EQCA and cutbacks in the lobbying work they do well.
1) There is nothing inevitable about overturning Prop 8, including EQCA’s decision not to get involved. EQCA, as a leader in proposing SB48, had to have considered that a repeal effort was a possibility, if not likely.
2) If a ballot campaign on SB48 was the obstacle, I think that EQCA could have waited 4 business days to see whether the effort qualified, rather than announcing the non-fight last week.
Therefore, your first two sentences don’t mesh with the realities of the situation.
I completely agrree that EQCA isn’t the right group to lead — you NEED a proven California campaign expert to lead. You also need to be willing to trust your campaign expert. I think you make a convincing argument at the end as well — unfortunately, for three years, EQCA has neither led nor gotten out of the way, and as a result we’re left with our fingers crossed that the trial works out in our favor.
EQCA clearly could have waited a couple days. And so what if the money is limited? I’d still rather lose than not even bother to try. How embarrassing! Shame on us! We’ve let a slew of elections pass us by without so much as a peep, and let’s not forget that EQCA and HRC were opposed to the idea of a federal challenge to Prop 8. They thought it was too soon, but Olsen and Boies ignored them. Two heterosexual men had to step up to show us how to run this so-called civil rights movement. (And the gays who claim to care so much about equality–what have we done since? Followed the trial on TV? Commented furiously on comment boards? We don’t deserve equality if we’re not willing to take a stand for it because losing is a bummer.)
EQCA has about enough money in the bank to pay themselves salaries for the next four years. Expect them to do that, and nothing more. We’ll just have to hope another heterosexual group is kind enough to gather signatures for us so someday we might be equal again…