The Faces Missing from 'The Gay Rights Movement'

via HuffPost Gay Voices, by Zach Stafford

I am a gay, multiracial male who grew up in Tennessee. When I was little I felt like an outsider, like many gay folks, but my "outsider" position was not just because I was gay; it was much more complicated.

I was one of the only people of color in my school, and I was the most effeminate little boy there, as well, which pegged me immediately as a "faggot."

I also was pudgy, not very athletic, and liked video games too much, but those are all minor aspects of why I didn't fit in. Needless to say, no one around me was like me, the puggy, effeminate, brown boy living in the South -- and that was lonely.

As I grew up and got to high school, a few gay kids did start coming out, and I did make some gay friends, but these kids, due to being in a white suburb, were all white.

So my race and my gayness then began to work together, making me feel different, making me feel hopeless, making me unable to consider that it could get better.

When I watched some of my favorite gay-friendly TV shows, like Will & Grace, I would see gay folks having fun, being gay, and enjoying life in a city, most of the time.

This gave me my first insight into what being gay was, and my first suspicion that gay was not like me -- it was wealthy, it was white, and it didn't bother to have people who looked like me for me to look up to, or even begin to understand what my experience was like as a gay person of color.

After graduating from high school, moving to Chicago, and reaching drinking age, I went to the famous Boystown neighborhood and soaked in the abundance of gay bars, restaurants, centers, and anything you can imagine.

However, I felt out of place, like I didn't belong; I remember looking around and noticing that most of the men looked like Abercrombie models, or at least tried to look like them, and were mainly white.
I got very little attention there, and the little attention I got was due to my exoticism, because when one is brown, that could mean one is Brazilian, Egyptian, Puerto Rican... the list goes on. Gay had a look, and I wasn't that look.

So as I watched the YouTube Video "The Gay Rights Movement," which has recently gone viral, I got progressively sadder as the video played through footage of what the gay community seems to consider milestones.

Lots of familiar faces rolled by, and happy emotions did rise inside me, but I still felt hints of sadness, a sadness that was familiar, that wasn't new, and I knew exactly what it was: I, and a lot of other people within the gay community, were not there.

It's not like we weren't ever there; there have been tons of queer folks of color who have done amazing things in America.

For instance, the video shows Martin Luther King Jr., but not his advisor and one of the main powers behind him, Bayard Rustin, a gay black man.

The video shows Ellen Degeneres over and over talking about suicides, but not another famous lesbian who is black, Wanda Sykes.

It shows coverage of the suicides of gay male youths, but not the countless suicides of transgender people, which happen yearly and go quite unnoticed, just like the faces of trans people in the video.

It doesn't show a lot.


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As tensions in Lakeview increase, community groups step up efforts

via Windy City Times, Kate Sosin

Many "Take Back Boystown" members aimed to clarify that they are not advocating for racial profiling in Lakeview, and comments on that page appeared considerably less controversial than in recent weeks, with few blaming youth of color outright for neighborhood crimes.

LGBT organizations stepped forward and offered their resources for mediating those discussions. Both Taskforce Prevention and Community Services, a West Side HIV-service organization, and Center on Halsted announced initiatives to deal both with crime and with LGBT youth issues.

Center on Halsted has taken heat in recent weeks from residents who claim that the organization attracts youth who loiter and commit crimes to the neighborhood. Modesto "Tico" Valle, CEO of the Center, had said the Center was helping the situation, not making it worse. Making good on that promise, Valle announced a new taskforce "to build a safer and more welcoming community" as well as new self-defense and conflict mediation classes for the community.

"These are challenging times for our community," said Valle in the July 15 announcement. "Now is the time to work together again so we can build a safer and more welcoming environment for all people."

Sitraka Andriamanantenasoa, the Center's new community relations director, also spent much of the week meeting with community members about their concerns and hopes for the Center.

Taskforce Prevention and Community Services announced its own taskforce for addressing similar issues.

Read more.

Queer advocacy group says youth being "scapegoated" for Boystown crime

 via GoPride.com

Young black man claims officer told him to go back to the south side....

A new video by a queer rights advocacy group, asserts that youth, particularly young people of color, are being "scapegoated" for the recent increase of reported crimes in Boystown. 

Video Action League says that homeless gay youth have been unfairly blamed for the "purported increase in crime" and that they wanted to give youth a space to "express themselves without the threat of being silenced."

"All the youth that hang around here are getting blamed for it," 24-year-old Cat, a lesbian who is homeless, said of the increased crime in Boystown.

"Our Youth Belong In Boystown," which was posted to YouTube on July 12, 2011, includes interviews with Cat and two African-American men, who have also been shunned by their family and community after coming out gay. 

"When people constantly call the police on me and harass me, it makes me feel less than a person," said Tyrone Strickland, who has been staying in Boystown since leaving his South Side neighborhood when he was 15 years-old.

."It's so important that we advocate for safe spaces for youth that aren't 21 so they have a community they can go to," Lindsey Dietzler, co-founder of the Video Action League, said at the end of the 7 minute video.

Read more.

Boystown needs a reality check

via Redeye, By Lenox Magee

As a gay man from the South Side, I understand the plight of the youth who are congregating in Boystown.

We have no place to go on the South or West sides where we can be ourselves. Boystown is the one place where we can be "us" without looking over our shoulders, worried about whether we'll be verbally or physically attacked.

I don't visit Boystown as often these days, but it wasn't that long ago that I was that gay black teenager going to the North Side to walk around Halsted, take in the openly gay atmosphere and mingle with the locals. My friends and I used the neighborhood as meeting spots to talk and laugh in ways that just wouldn't be possible on the West or South sides.

But we didn't always get a warm reception. I vividly remember the strange looks from the locals that made us feel unwelcome in the one part of the city where we most wanted to belong. At the restaurants, service would be extra slow—even when the place was empty. It wasn't overt racism, but the message was clear: We weren't always welcome.

Read more.

Nervous days come to Boystown

via Chicago Sun-Times, By Laura Washington

Last week, a YouTube video of a mob brawl and stabbing went viral, creating widespread outrage and ubiquitous headlines.

Over the July 4 weekend, a midnight street brawl among a dozen or so young people hospitalized a 25-year-old man and fed fear and outrage among community residents and business owners. It was the third violent attack in the area in recent weeks, according to news reports.

It’s been a long time coming. For years, the neighborhood has been plagued by security concerns, racial antipathies, transgender intolerance, economic divides, business consequences, political gamesmanship and dysfunctional behaviors.

In Chicago, street crime is a growing and complex phenomenon. In Boystown, it is overlaid by a clarion call for diversity, personified by the Center on Halsted. When the nationally recognized LGBT oasis opened in 2007, the community came.

Those LGBT youths who came farthest — from the city’s South and West sides — had nowhere else to go, being pariahs in their own homes. Insidious and rampant homophobia in African-American communities sent them scrambling for the “safe” confines of Boystown. The Center offered an exhaustive and alluring smorgasbord of services. And an open door.

They came in droves and rainbow colors, looking for excitement, adventure, acceptance. Some — gay and straight — were looking for trouble.

Read more.

Diversity is Welcome - Crime is Not

Thank Goddess for young people. And thanks to Gay Chicago Magazine for taking and sharing this pic below.

Community activist Ed Negron (one of LifeLube's very BFFs) shot a ton of pics from the CAPS meeting last night in Lakeview, held to address the recent spate of violence in the neighborhood.

Check them out here on Facebook. And check out Windy City Times coverage of the event.

VIEWS Boystown Is Burning: Prejudice takes root in the community

via Windy City Times, Keith Ecker

Watch out Boystown! The Blacks are coming to get you! At least that's the message that some in the community seem to be broadcasting.

In response to violent criminal incidents in the gayborhood, Facebook users launched a page on June 28 called "Take Back Boystown." In one day, the group garnered more than 700 members. While some are thinking progressively by lobbying for increased citizen-led patrols and communication with police, others seem to be capitalizing on this issue to voice their racial prejudices.

For example, one fan of the page writes, "It's all of us innocent people that are being attacked by the blacks." Another echoes the words of many by placing blame on the Black GLBT youths that seek services at the Center on Halsted, posting that "We have a center full of 'kids' who don't live in the neighborhood just wandering around the streets because they lack the funds and/or age required to get into bars. So, what happens then? Well, I think we've all seen what happens..."

This ignorance reflects a growing schism that has taken root in Chicago's gay community. On one side are the mainstream gays. We are those who are portrayed in the mass and GLBT media and serve as the target audience for Lady Gaga and Glee. Politicians court us, and businesses cater to us.

On the other side are the disenfranchised gay Black youths. These young adults have no public platform. Many come from extraordinarily intolerant communities. Some are homeless. Few have much money to their names. For the mainstreams, it gets better. For the others, not so much.

Read more.

VIDEO: THIRD (?!) Stabbing in Three Weeks in Chicago's Boystown

This happened last night..... What the F is going on?