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PRIDE AT CITY HALL
by Jefferson Siegel   Gay City News  6/21/2007
On Wednesday night over 500 people filled the City Council chamber for a celebration of "LGBT Pride and the Journey to End Violence and Hate." Among those honored were NYPD Detective Kevin Czartoryski, the Rashawn Brazell Memorial Fund, established in recognition of the brutal 2005 murder of a 19-year-old gay man from Brooklyn, and the Gay-Straight Alliance at Port Richmond High School in Staten Island.

Tony-winning actor Stephen Spinella opened the evening, and Speaker Christine Quinn, the first openly lesbian or gay leader of the Council, flanked in the front row by her partner, Kim Catullo, and her father Lawrence, recalled the city's decades-long struggle to achieve gay rights.

In the midst of her speech, half a dozen protesters from ACT UP and the Radical Homosexual Agenda unfurled protest banners from the balcony. They were criticizing a new police regulation requiring groups of 50 or more to first obtain a police permit. "You've criminalized the Dyke March and the Drag March," Tim Doody (pictured with Nina Resnick) of ACT UP yelled. Quinn allowed the protesters to have their say [for one minute], after which they were escorted from the building. There were no arrests.

Councilwoman Rosie Mendez, the chamber's other out lesbian member, who has been a vocal critic of the regulation, spoke up on Quinn's behalf. "My speaker cannot do anything until the Council is behind her," Mendez told the chamber.    
   -- Jefferson Siegel   Gay City News



With Quinn On Wider Stage, Critics Emerge
   by Duncan Osborne   Gay City News    6/28/2007

Since becoming City Council speaker 16 months ago, Christine Quinn has delivered city budgets that have included tax cuts for homeowners in cordial negotiations with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

Other accomplishments, such as improved bullet-proof vests for city cops and legislation requiring property owners to keep firefighters informed of ongoing work in their buildings, have pleased some of the city's more traditionalist constituencies. Still more, such as additional day care slots and opening city libraries for an extra day each week, will reach the hearts of liberal voters.

And among other efforts, Quinn has rewarded the queer community with cash for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center and continuing funds for anti-crystal campaigns.

But Quinn, a Democrat who represents Chelsea, is also seeing some tension with her queer constituents. While a fight over naming a Brooklyn street for Sonny Carson, a black nationalist, is probably the hottest issue Quinn has faced, her disputes with some in the gay community follow close behind.

The first struggle came over her proposal to require bars and nightclubs to install video cameras at exits and entrances and use scanners to check customers' identification.

"It certainly has had an effect in the nightlife community," said Allen Roskoff, president of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, a gay political group. "Many owners of gay nightlife I think are quite angry... She also has the largest district of gay men and I think this is an issue that the gay nightlife people are going to bring up."

Roskoff and William K. Dobbs, an attorney and civil libertarian, were the leading gay opponents of the measures saying they would effectively create lists and compile images of who is going to city gay bars and clubs.

Whether her position has caused widespread damage to her reputation among gay men and lesbians is a question. Quinn likely still enjoys great support there.

"Because she is a lesbian I think the majority of people in the community find her very important and vital, but other people feel that civil liberties are being trampled," Roskoff said. Dobbs said that the view of Quinn was contingent, to a degree, on knowledge of her actions.

"To the extent that these issues are getting raised, yes I do think it's hurting her," he said. "To the extent that there are people thinking about and confronting these issues they've got to be saying whose side is Chris Quinn on."

More recently, Quinn has knocked heads with Housing Works over that AIDS organization's efforts to pass city legislation that would allow New Yorkers who are HIV-positive, but do not have clinically defined AIDS to access services provided by the city's HIV/AIDS Services Administration. Quinn opposes that.

Housing Works, which is known for its aggressive advocacy, has chastised Quinn in Gay City News, and during the city's June 24 Pride March the group distributed fans with Quinn's picture and text that read, "Proud to do nothing?"

In an interview before she joined the march, Quinn said, "There is no elected official from any community who is going to agree with every member of their community all the time. I think what communities ask of their elected officials is that they work hard, that they make decisions that are best for the city, and they do that based on what they think is best not based on what is politically expedient and they stay in communication with the people they agree with and the people that they don't agree with."

Quinn also took a hit from activists over a police department regulation requiring gatherings of 50 people or more to get a permit from police. Members of ACT UP and the Radical Homosexual Agenda protested at Quinn's June 20 gay pride celebration held at City Hall.

Protestors believe that Quinn participated in creating the regulation by getting police to increase the crowd threshold from 30 to 50 and they want the City Council to void the regulation, which it can do. Dobbs, who was not involved in the City Hall protest, said the frustration arises from those looking for an effective counter to the mayor.

"This thing about the freedom to assemble, we have a mayor who has made it impossible to gather a large crowd at all," he said.

Gay political operatives were of two minds on Quinn's recent actions. "I don't think they've hurt her standing in the gay community or the broader public," said Gary Parker, co-president of the Lambda Independent Democrats, a Brooklyn gay political group. "I think if anything it demonstrates that she is able to take a stand on issues that she believes in that aren't always popular among different constituent groups."

Jon Winkleman, a longtime gay activist involved in Democratic Party politics, said any harm was "minimal" and most people understood any elected official's need to balance the concerns of many groups.

"I think when LGBT people get into positions of power, they have to represent a lot more than their community," he said. "I think most people do recognize that the legislative process is complex."

A longtime political observer who would only comment anonymously said Quinn had hurt herself among community activists as she laid the ground for an expected run for mayor with the need to appeal to a range of voters.

"I don't think it's benefited her with the community, but this kind of stuff tends to benefit her in the broader electorate," the observer said. "Chris has done a number of things to signal she's not parochial, that she is the speaker for all the city... I think she has bent over backwards to show she is a citywide official and not a Chelsea lesbian."   GayCityNews

Reader Comments

Quinn blind to police violence.  When queer activists, myself included, interrupted Speaker Quinn at her LGBT Pride celebration in the City Council chambers last month, she was in the middle of praising what she called “the new NYPD.” Let’s look at what the new NYPD has been up to in May and June of this year:

• The Audre Lorde Project had to take the NYPD to court before they could get a permit for the Trans Day of Action.

• Dozens of youth of color in Bushwick were rounded up and arrested on their way to a friend’s wake. They were carrying permission slips from their high school.

• Hundreds of Latinos were arrested at the National Puerto Rican Day Parade for illegal assembly. (How do you assemble illegally when you’re watching a parade?)

• A prominent African-American civil rights attorney and his wife were arrested and beaten when he objected to the NYPD beating of a handcuffed African-American youth.

• African-American State Senator Velmanette Montgomery (I am proud to be her constituent) spoke of her fear every time her son goes out that he might be shot by the NYPD for accidentally moving his car during a police stop.

• An African-American student at a prestigious private school was arrested on his way to take exams—NYPD officers didn’t believe he was enrolled where he said he was enrolled.

• Two Bronx high school teachers won their multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the NYPD. Fed up with the way NYPD School Safety Agents treat their students of color, they had objected to the handcuffing and arrest of one of their students…and were themselves arrested.

• And all this barely six months since the NYPD killing of unarmed African-American Sean Bell.

What “new” NYPD was Quinn talking about? How grateful should we be that they no longer raid queer bars, busy as they are besieging our city’s majority—New Yorkers of color—queer and straight alike?

Quinn’s so-called parade permit law is an outrage. New Yorkers shouldn’t have to ask for advance permission from the police before gathering in a group of more than fifty. Activist Chris Quinn, City Councilmember Chris Quinn, the Quinn who was in the streets, shoulder to shoulder with social justice activists whenever she was needed, would never have allowed the police to legislate away our freedom of assembly. City Councilmembers of conscience, from the Rosie Mendez to my district’s own Bill de Blasio, understand that. One wonders who this Speaker Quinn is, and what she’s done with the old Chris Quinn we all relied on.

But the list of recent NYPD outrages clearly shows that the problem goes way beyond the parade permit law. It’s not about “any elected official's need to balance the concerns of many groups,” as the National Stonewall Democrats’ Jon Winkleman said to Gay City News. It’s about taking sides. Is our City Council Speaker going to stand with New York’s communities of color in their ongoing struggle for freedom from police violence? Or is our Speaker going to pander to those white New Yorkers, the mayor, the police commissioner, and most of our district attorneys among them, who want to make sure the NYPD keeps “those people” in their place? It seems she’s chosen the latter.

     Steve Quester, Brooklyn, NY  Saturday June 30, 2007   

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