Fighting to Serve by Alexander Nicholson

Author:Alexander Nicholson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2012-06-15T16:00:00+00:00

12

OLD PARTNERSHIPS

The growing restlessness within the progressive community in the spring of 2010 put a whole new level of pressure on HRC, which up to then had only been substantively involved in the repeal movement to the extent that Jarrod and I could wrestle a few thousand dollars from them here and there. But now, as the need for action grew critical, that level of participation looked wholly inadequate, especially since GetEqual was doing far more to push the issue forward than the largest LGBT lobbying group in the country.

HRC had a major board meeting scheduled for that spring, and the organization knew it would need a field plan to do more on the DADT issue in order to appease its board members. Since that plan did not exist, David Smith asked HRC’s national field director, Marty Rouse, to come up with one on short notice. Marty then turned to Jarrod and asked for help, making clear that if he provided it, a more extensive and thoughtful plan could be created later. So the “plan” was hastily thrown together about a week before their board members began arriving in Washington. After making it through the board meeting, HRC didn’t give the field plan much more thought or attention, and the final plan ended up being not much different from the thrown-together original.

HRC’s efforts took the form of yet another tour in coordination with Servicemembers United, Voices of Honor II, at which both Jarrod and I rolled our eyes, then readily agreed to execute. As with Voices of Honor I, we took HRC’s money to do a set number of events around the country and stretched it much further by scaling back on the typical HRC extravagance. We returned to all of the key target states that were the homes of the moderate members of the Senate Armed Services Committee and hit them hard with events, publicity, local vet recruiting, and extensive lobbying both locally and back in DC.

SU’s work in these key states over the past few years had started to pay dividends, especially in the numbers of both gay and straight veterans we were able to recruit who were then willing to get active locally during the Voices of Honor II campaign. Their support was critically important; it was one thing for gay and lesbian Americans who had no connection to the defense world to call and write and scream and yell for senators in these conservative states to support repeal of DADT, but when those who had actually been in the military made those same demands, they became much more credible and influential in the minds of moderate and conservative senators and representatives.

As more public attention focused on our efforts, HRC also invested significant sums of money in branding the work that Jarrod and I were doing around the country—with the HRC label, of course. But what we found quite hilarious was that their new slogan for the issue, “Repeal DADT Now,” was the opposite of what they were pushing behind the scenes with the White House and even at times on Capitol Hill.

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