Can we say how proud we are to know Lisa Powell? We met her at the very first Camp Courage for Courage Campaign in West Hollywood last January. It feels like a thousand years ago—seems like we’ve been through so much trudging this crazy equality road together. She is one of our mentors, a co-conspirator, and frankly just one helluva funny sista. We’ve shed many tears together through laughter.
Lisa has an extraordinarily rare gift of keeping the peace, bringing the calm, fostering the trust and moving forward in steady progress the whole time. She is indeed part community activist, part parent, part therapist, part drama killer, part visionary, part comedian, part sentinel—and all black woman. Truly she is a gift to not just the local African American LGBT community—but to the entire LGBT community here on the West Coast. Rick Jacobs ought to get on his hands and knees thanking the good Lord everyday for her association with the Courage Campaign. We jus’ sayin.
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Manifest Equality’s Yosi Sargent. Photo courtesy of Darius Twin
So why are we promoting the Manifest Equality art show when we’ve just recently severed all ties with Courage Campaign?
Two words: Yosi Sargent. Bottom line—- he’s hot as hell.
There. We said it.
We fully admit to one and all that we have an inexplicable weakness for scruffy looking straight Jewish men who have high geek appeal and a blessed touch of unapologetic nerdiness about them. Drives us crazy. Always has. It started back in Chicago in the early ‘90s—Mark Swartz was his name. Grad student at the University of Chicago. We met in a used bookstore on Milwaukee Ave. in Wicker Park on an over-cast Sunday afternoon in November. The experience ranks as one of the most torrid, tempestuous and addictive affairs we’ve ever had. He was a genius, emotionally unstable and a hot insatiable nerdy freak.
The memories. Le sigh…
So obviously when it comes to such things our politics are tossed completely out the window. Certainly there must be a few folks reading this who can relate to an inconsistency in one’s character here and there.
That said, we encourage our readers to go to the opening of Manifest Equality this week on Wednesday—-if only to see Yosi. We’d actually planned on promoting this art show for equality high and low—-until we started receiving these bizarre “Disneyfied” Courage Campaign endorsements about the event every 5 minutes. We just don’t get it. How the hell do you strip the testicles, grit and umphff from something by just simply promoting it ? Yea, well, leave it to Courage. They’ll find a way—and they did.
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Due to communication with blogger and community activist Jasmyne Cannick we will cease commentary on speaker Karen Bass and Long Beach City Council candidate Steven Neal.
This doesn’t mean we take back any of what we’ve said so far about anyone else. However we have received detailed insight from Miss Cannick today and highly respect her point of view on the matter in relationship to the African American community, the local political landscape and LGBT rights.
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NOTE: We wrote this post before thoroughly reading the “invite.” It’s not an invite. It’s an announcement. Invites are free. We know cause we checked the Webster Dictionary definition of an invite. This isn’t one. It’s $100.00 a pop. If we can go see Elizabeth Taylor and James Earle Jones for free with front row seats and la Liz herself winking playfully at us every time she flubbed a line, we’re hardly droppin’ that kinda’ coin to listen to two local politicians talk shop. Our unemployment disbursements don’t cover such exciting political excursions anyway. But if you got it like that be sure and read the following because if you can pay a hundred bucks to go see these two you then you should be entitled to interrupt the conversation at will with some questions and thoughts of your own, we think.
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We admit we’re not really all that up on Lady GaGa. Maybe that’s cause we’re from the Madonna generation. There’s only room for one insane bottle blond in our world. But we have to give Lady GaGa props where props are due. Her most recent effort in terms of standing tall for gays underscores Lady GaGa’s commitment. Pairing up with Virgin Mobile, the pop superstar launched RE*Generation which supports homeless gay youth. According to the Virgin Mobile Web site, over two million youth (between the ages of 12 and 24) will experience at least one episode of homelessness each year and over 100,000 youth sleep on the street for 6 months or more in America.
In raising awareness and creating stronger advocacy for homeless youth through her fundraising efforts, Lady GaGa has created a special message on how you can also make a difference. Check it out:
For more information on RE*Generation go here.
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With the Prop 8 trial coming up on Monday RENWL is running a special edition this week so that we can accomodate our regular features while covering up-to-date developments with the Prop 8 trial. So starting this Sunday (tomorrow) instead of featuring 5 posts daily we’ll be featuring eight. Yeah, that’s a lotta reading. And a helluva lotta work on our behalf. But we feel we’d be letting you down (snicker) if we cut short on the Prop 8 coverage or made it all about Prop 8 and neglected other stuff.
We’ll say one thing: we’re quite okay with NOT being at the trial and feel more than blessed that we have folks tweeting the blow by blow back to us. Trials in and of themselves are boring as hell. For a second there we pondered on how to get our hands on a ticket. But then we thought about it and realized we’d probably get kicked outta court for snoring.
If you’d ever been on a jury we know you can most certainly relate. While this ain’t a jury trial it’s still a court case. We’ll pass on the front row and happily settle for the highlights via twitter. And of course we’ll pass on the good stuff to you.
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