Feb. 11, San Diego has the opportunity to join world class cities like New York City in electing a truly progressive and inclusive mayor. However, some LGBT “leaders” want to go backwards to business as usual politics.
Last year Robert Reich released Inequality for All, a documentary about income inequality destroying the American dream. Newly elected Mayor of New York City Bill de Blasio and Sen. Elizabeth Warren are building a national following as outspoken liberals and fierce critics of the excesses of Wall Street. The millenial generation has become the most liberal generation since the baby boomers. The Supreme Court declared DOMA unconsitutional. Change is in the air.
If you are a woman who wants to control her own body; an LGBT person who simply wants the rights and responsibilities of citizenship; if you are unable to find work due to the economic meltdown caused by Wall Street greed and corruption; or an American taxpayer shouldering the burden of years of corporate welfare – the Republican Party left you long ago.
Americans are sick of an economic system that rewards capitalist avarice, not honest productive labor. Voters are abandoning the party of government shut-downs, sequestration, vaginal probes, voter suppression and, oh yes, the never ending demonization of the LGBT community.
A slow, but powerful awakening is transforming our country. When McDonalds and Wal-Mart instruct their employees to apply for government assistance because their billionaire owners refuse to pay a living wage; when Warren Buffet and Bill Gates tell us the system is rigged against the middle class; when someone attempting to register people to vote on a public square is arrested and abused by our city police – as Dylan said, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
Rev. King told us that the arc of history bends toward justice. If this is so it is because the joined hands of a coalition of the willing – LGBT folk, neighbors, women and workers – push back against the forces of greed and intolerance.
San Diego is at the center of these historic political currents. Feb. 11 we can build on this national wave of progress and inclusion by electing David Alvarez as our next mayor. Or we can take a giant step backward and become the only one of the twelve largest cities in the U.S. to choose the party of exclusion and homophobia.
Given the clear choice of moving forward or falling backward, it is disappointing that some “leaders” in the LGBT community support a Republican candidate who embodies the tired failure of governance by the entitled.
I think I understand why.
When your position in San Diego politics was secured by ingratiating yourself to the predominantly Republican establishment, that was then. David Alvarez is now. He isn’t a Democrat of convenience. He is the real deal. He has a great set of values, a phenomenal work ethic and the backbone to do what he thinks is right without regard for expedience.
He doesn’t need to curry favor with the establishment because he has chosen a different path – his own path.
I understand that these “leaders” are just looking out for their main chance. When you make your mark by being cozy with the folks who ran this city for years, you’re gonna “dance with the one who brung ya’.” It advanced careers, if not community, in the past, so I get it, but that was then.
Now, honesty and common decency require clarification on a couple of points:
1. Don’t say you represent Democrats or the LGBT community. In endorsing a right wing Republican over a true and tested progressive Democrat you most certainly don’t represent the interests or values of a LGBT community that voted more than 70 percent for progressives in 2012.
2. Don’t use Harvey Milk’s name to advance the campaign of a right wing Republican. The name of the gay, labor and neighborhood activist icon who told us “ya gotta give ‘em hope” should not be used to support the party that has fanned the flames of homophobia for years.
In the past it may have been useful to align with people who worked constantly against our interests. But that was then. Demographics and perceptions have changed. “Then” is gone, and good riddance.
This is now.
