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Tuesday, October 19, 2010

President Obama's Broken Promises

By Steven Phipps, Jocelyn Lober, Lauren Green, Nikki Ouellette, Heather Curley and Jerilyn Sawyer

This event is being orchestrated not as an anti-Obama protest...not even close. This event is being scheduled to hold President Obama accountable for his promises he made to the GLBT community. He said so himself, "We must form grass-root structures that would hold me and other elected officials more accountable for their actions," and Queer Action of Rhode Island plans to do that.

President Obama will travel to Providence on Oct. 25 to raise money for the Democratic congressional campaign and for other Democratic candidates for the U.S. House. Queer Action of Rhode Island will be there! The Presidential appearance - including a high-dollar dinner with Mr. Obama at the home of a prominent Providence developer (tickets are $7500 a head to dine with President Obama and $500 dollars a head to hear him speak at the convention center) - will take place between 5 and 7pm. We encourage anyone who plans to attend our event to please meet at the corner of the Providence Place Mall (in front of the CVS) for a briefing at 3pm. We will then walk over to the RI Convention Center at 3:30 and commence the sign and banner holding.

This event will be professional, poignant and non-aggressive. We will provide signs that reflect the message that Queer Action wishes President Obama to hear or see, there will be absolutely no hate-speech or anti-Obama rhetoric tolerated - we all know what the other choice would be like. We simply want to let President Obama know that we're watching and we're waiting for him to do the right thing. With that said, Queer Action is not in the business of censorship; there is plenty of sidewalk for you to stand on.

We will be holding a very large yellow banner that states "Equality Delayed = Equality Denied, We're Dieing" surrounded by other signs that reflect the same message. The philosophy behind those words are simple: the longer members of the GLBT community are treated as non-equals and second-class citizens, the longer we will be victims of hate-crimes and homophobia. If, however, you feel that your sign or banner is on point and would convey a message concerning broken promises, homophobia or an issue concerning the GLBT community, we absolutely encourage you to bring it!

If you're tired of waiting for your civil rights to be granted to you from the bureaucracy of our Government, we encourage you to attend our event. If you just want to express your distaste for the President in general, and for issues not concerning the GLBT community, this is probably not the event for you to attend.

Also, just to help us have a general idea of who is attending, roughly how many signs to make and to assign people to different responsibilities - please only confirm your attendance if you truly believe you will be attending. Although the "in-spirit" attending confirmations are inspiring and encouraging for the cause, we ask that you only confirm if your physical body will be present.

Hope to see you all there! 


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