dgreen@ucla-cs.UUCP (10/02/84)
Long ago, I promised an article on politics in Los Angeles. Being busy with other things has prevented me from even looking at net.motss. I got back so late, I have missed all of the responses (UCLA dumps them after a month, I think). Now I'm back for several months. In Los Angeles, the political diversity is extreme and many organizations are quite active. I'll try to encapsulate some information about the ones I'm familiar with: CHRISTOPHER STREET WEST This organization puts on the annual Christopher Street West parade and festival in July. The organizers are mainly representatives of the gay bar owners and gay-oriented shopkeepers in West Hollywood, and the parade and festival take on the expected air. The parade is filled with floats from different gay bars, dating services, and so forth. Political groups and activity-oriented groups are very poorly represented in both the parade and the festival. This is partially due to the high price tag of participation, and perhaps partially due to the biases of the organizers. The CSW board of directors is quite inbred. While most community groups are run by the people that attend meetings regularly, in order to serve on the CSW board you must be elected by the board itself. The process involved in getting on the board takes approximately one year of meeting attendence, plus making lots of friends on the board. Once you have been elected to the board, you can be booted off by an election of the board (and this has been done a number of times). A leading member of CSW, George Piazzi, seems to be extremely conservative. He is running for a position on the West Hollywood city council. There was almost nothing oriented toward gay rights in this year's parade and festival. The reason, unfortunately, is quite apparent. SUNSET JUNCTION STREET FAIR In sharp contrast to CSW, the people who organize the Sunset Junction Street Fair (held in late August) are very community-oriented. Situated in the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles, Sunset Junction attempts to bring in all segments of the community. Silver Lake is populated by gays, latins, and a few orientals. Sunset Junction incorporates all these elements, with music, food, and entertainment from each. There were many political groups represented at Sunset Junction, including Gay/Lesbian Latinos Unidos, Log Cabin Club, Harvey Milk, ad nauseum. The theme seems to be diversity. Unfortunately, I have no idea how the organization functions. Probably more egalitarianly than CSW. GAY/LESBIAN LATINOS UNIDOS This group has a number of community-oriented events during the year. The one I attended most recently was their annual dinner/dance, where they install their new officers (elected by vote of members). It was quite fun. The food was excellent and spicy. I got to sit across the table from Steve Schulte and his lover, who both appear on the front cover of the late September Advocate. Steve Schulte is running for West Hollywood city council, and will probably be the mayor. He is also an ex-Colt model (politics makes strange bedfellows). GLLU also has participated in several political events, including the SurvivalFest held August 5th in central Los Angeles. They seem to be quite left-wing, sporting such slogans as "CIA out of Nicaragua," and the like. GLLU, as far as I know, is a fairly new group, but its membership has grown rapidly. I don't know much more about it. GAY AND LESBIAN ASSOCIATION (GALA) GALA is the local campus (UCLA) organization. Its primary purpose, as with most campus organizations, is to assist in the process of "coming out." Thus, GALA activities tend to be social, rather than political. They have regular "rap sessions," regular meetings with speakers on different aspects of gay life (from AIDS to the Gay Archives), and occasional "quasi-political" events. One such event was the Western Region Gay and Lesbian Conference, held at UCLA. This drew people from the UC campuses, as well as political heavies from Sacramento (California's capitol city). In addition, they organized a letter-writing campaign for AB-1 (California's gay rights bill). Because they are a special interest group on campus, with a big campus budget and an office, they are generally prohibited from doing anything visibly political, like rallies. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA There is nothing (political or social) going on here, as far as I know. Strange, since I know several gays on campus there. I think the administration might be homophobic. SUMMARY This has been kind of sketchy, but perhaps it gives you a flavor of the kinds of activities in Los Angeles. There are several groups I didn't describe, mostly because I know very little about them. These include: the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center, Harvey Milk Gay Democratic Club, the Stonewall Democratic Club, the Log Cabin Club (a group of very confused gays ... they are Republicans), Great Outdoors (a hiking group). PROCEDURAL NOTE: Some of us prefer to avoid reading Arndt/Bronson flames. Please do your best to mention their names in your titles so that we may quickly hit the "n" key. Thank you. I would also like to express my appreciation to those that have submitted useful articles. They are the ones pushing us forward as a group.