Thursday, March 01, 2007

What a fractured community looks like

What is the gay community in Seattle doing? They had an enormous quarrel last year about where to have the pride parade and festival. Two factions formed, Seattle Out and Proud who decided to move the festival from Capitol Hill to downtown and a grassroots organization that wanted to keep it on the hill.

Apparently, a number of sponsors pulled away from both events because of the contentious back-biting and bickering among people who should share the same values and have the maturity to work together. What mission do they accomplish by dividing forces and pointing fingers at each other? The first mission to defeat an enemy is to divide its forces. Who needs the religious right and social conservatives when you have a bunch of egocentric homo's running the show?

Year-old debt puts gay-pride event in jeopardy

Moving Seattle's gay pride parade and festival downtown from Capitol Hill last year was supposed to make it bigger and better. But debt stemming from the 2006 festival has raised questions about this year's event.

The Seattle Center says organizers of the annual parade and festival still haven't paid the $96,000 owed to the Center for last year's three-day fest, and Center officials told organizers Seattle Out and Proud in February that they won't work on this year's festival until the bill is paid.

The event's financial problems came after a contentious decision last summer to move the parade after 26 years from Broadway and the festival from Volunteer Park on Capitol Hill. Instead, the parade traveled along Fourth Avenue from Westlake Mall to the Seattle Center, partly because of the symbolism of marching through downtown to the civic heart of the city.

But many residents and business people on Capitol Hill, considered the city's gay neighborhood for the past three decades, say the move abandoned the gay community's roots.


We must take away from the Seattle experience an admonition of what happens when our egos get in the way of the best interests of our community. We are strongest when we act together, as a cohesive unit, with a single goal, a single purpose. The failures in Seattle is a lesson for all of us in what it means to be a community. Remember it.

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