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Walk Without Fear was held on Friday, October 11, 1996, shortly after 7 pm beginning with a rally on Dupont Circle and followed by a march through the neighborhood ending with a candlelight vigil on 17th Street. The marchers numbered about two hundred, and were cheered enthusiastically by passersby and patrons of sidewalk cafes along the route. The following remarks were made at the rally by GLAA President Rick Rosendall. Other speakers included Dee Curry of Transgenders Against Discrimination, recent gay-bashing victims Loron Lavoie and Ken Ludden (who appeared dressed in his popular persona as "Diva"), Megan Per-Lee of the Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League, and former GLAA President and WWF founder Mindy Daniels. At the vigil which concluded the march, the names of gay-bashing victims were read aloud and a moment of silence was observed in memory of all the victims of hate crimes.
Good evening. How many times have we heard public officials say that "public safety comes first"? Yet here in DC — despite the fact that our police and fire departments don't have the equipment and training they need to do their jobs — our government does have the money to go after victimless crimes, and to send ABC Board investigators into gay bars with flashlights and notepads watching out for people fondling each other. So in the 1990s we still have a Morals Division operating under a different name, while basic public safety concerns go wanting. Let me give you an example.
Until a couple of years ago, DC had something called the Civilian Complaint Review Board. It was designed to provide for independent civilian review of complaints of police misconduct. Unfortunately, all the CCRB could do was make recommendations. Repeatedly, CCRB finding were overturned by police trial boards. Adverse personnel actions were almost never taken against the problem officers.
How did the DC Council respond to this problem? Instead of giving the CCRB the teeth it needed to fulfill its mission, Councilmember Bill Lightfoot — with the acquiescence of his Council colleagues — simply abolished it. Over 800 unresolved cases were simply thrown back to the MPD's Internal Affairs Division, thereby completely undermining the whole purpose of independent civilian review.
There is now a bill pending before Lightfoot's Judiciary Committee which will rectify this situation. It is called the Police Conduct Review Board Act of 1995.
Please call or write Councilmember Lightfoot's office and urge him to report the PCRB Act out of his committee this year. And tell him and his colleagues on the Council to get their priorities right and find the money to pay for it. They created this mess, and we hold them accountable for rectifying it. You can use GLAA's letter to Lightfoot as an example — it's on our World Wide Web site, at www.glaa.org.
Relations between the Police Department and the gay community have actually improved in recent years — through sensitivity training and implementation of the Hate Crimes Law. Much of the credit for this goes to Gay Men and Lesbians Opposing Violence, or GLOV, which I'm proud to say was spun off from GLAA's anti-violence project. I'm sorry that GLOV is not with us this evening. We hope they can join us again next year.
We are pleased with the progress that has been made. But we believe that a system of accountability is key to building public trust for the police who are sworn to serve us.
Another part of public safety is firefighting and emergency medical services. Since the death of Tyra Hunter over a year ago, many of us have been working with GLOV to reform the Fire Department. We have received some promises from the Mayor and Fire Chief Latin, but as Ken and Loron will tell you, we are still waiting for the situation on the streets to change.
What we expect as taxpayers is that misconduct by our public safety officers should be punished. There's an election coming up. Let's make it clear to those who seek to govern us that we hold them accountable.
Our numbers and our commitment give us power if we are willing to use it. Our cause is simple. The words are carved above the entrance of the Supreme Court: Equal Justice Under Law. We owe it to Tyra and to all the victims of hate violence and ignorance to accept no less. Those who advocate hatred must be held responsible for its violent consequences. We do this not as victims, but as proud citizens who will not tolerate anything less than the simple respect that we deserve.
The reason why the Radical Religious Right is attacking us so viciously and desperately is because they can see that we are gradually winning the cultural war. The tide of history is with us. But we must choose to ride the tide of history; we must choose to live it. A recent example of people riding that tide is the gay and lesbian employees of a company called IBM. Like many other Fortune 500 companies, IBM has decided to grant domestic partnership benefits — but in this case only to same-sex couples, because heterosexual couples already have the right to get the same benefits by getting married.
IBM granted those benefits not out of pure altruism, but out of a recognition that it was in their interest to do so. And their recognition didn't happen by magic — it happened because their gay and lesbian employees decided they deserved equal treatment. They organized. And they asked, they lobbied, and they pressed for what they wanted.
What those IBM employees learned — and what their counterparts at Disney and AT&T and so many others have learned — we must learn also. Power is not something outside us, that can simply be handed to us. We gain power by recognizing it within ourselves and asserting it. We gain freedom by exercising it. Frank Kameny didn't wait for permission four decades ago to exercise his constitutional rights — he went out and did it, and he never gave up.
Hate crimes and gay bashing do not occur in a social vacuum. Whenever lies and hatred and contempt go unchallenged, whenever we stifle our instinct to speak up, whenever we remain silent and fail to give witness to our lives, we become less safe.
So let us recommit ourselves as brothers and sisters here tonight to supporting one another in all our rich diversity, and to exercising our unalienable rights as human beings — which includes holding our public servants accountable. Unwavering self respect is a powerful political act. Perhaps it was said best by Rabbi Hillel two thousand years ago:
If I am not for myself, who will be?
But if I am for myself alone, what am I?
And if not now, when?