GLOV Meeting Recap

Last night, the newly re-formed queer anti-violence group, GLOV, held its second meeting. I’ll try to capture some of the points that really stood out for me, please add anything missed.

At their first meeting two weeks ago, about eight or ten individuals got together to brainstorm a community-led initiative to respond to recent violent attacks on members of the GLBTQ community in D.C. The facilitators admitted they weren’t prepared for last night’s turnout of maybe fifty or more community members, elected officials (Jack Evans, David Catania, Phil Mendelson), and Metro Police Sergeants (Parsons, Bell, Mejia).

I think it’s hard enough to bring together a group as diverse as the D.C. queer community--rainbows don’t necessarily make for the best umbrellas--but I have to give the GLOV folks extra props for running a meeting where seemingly a quarter of the attendees are city officials. While it’s great that violence against queers is on the radar of council members, it did definitely divert the conversation from grassroots, community-led strategies, to more bureaucratic channels which take a long time to go into effect (Catania talked about the council’s long road to getting increased police presence in certain areas), and are admittedly not always tied to direct results.

The meeting ran in sort of two parts--reporting back on the action items assigned at the first meeting, and then, comments and concerns from attendees, which were partly fielded and directed toward the MPD Sergeants.

The two action items I can remember being reported were 1) opportunities for community outreach around homophobia and violence against the GLBTQ community, and 2) reporting statistical data on violence against GLBTQ people in D.C. as compared to other major cities and states.

The outreach angle I really picked up on involved working with D.C. public schools (DCPS), the thinking being that negative attitudes and actions toward GLBTQs start at a young age, and are possibly reinforced by homophobic school cultures. During the stats part of the reporting back, this link was made clearer--students perceived to be queer are about twice as likely as their straight peers to be bullied or harassed at school (30.6% vs. 16.8%). I didn’t catch which report the presenter was citing, but SMYAL’s “Confronting the Crisis” is a pretty good resource for this kind of data. A couple other points about stats on violence against queers in D.C.:

• D.C.’s the only major city without a group solely dedicated to dealing with violence against the GLBTQ community.

• 19 hate crimes reported in D.C. in the past year (up to July); I think 12 were officially processed as hate crimes. Of these cases, 85% remain unsolved.

• DCPS does not currently centralize data on school violence

• Important to compare D.C. stats to other major cities, not states

• D.C. has a higher level of reporting hate crimes than some areas (presenter cited states like Mississippi and Alabama that report one or no hate crimes for an entire year), but that the upshot is D.C. citizens might feel more empowered to report hate crimes (whereas MS and AL are obviously underreporting).

• Stats can only show so much of the picture. Underreporting, how crimes are eventually classified, and general perception of community safety are some of the independent variables that statistics fail to capture.

A stat not related to queers specifically, but that was a real eye opener--39 robberies (up 30%) in the last month, in Columbia Heights. Yikes. After the report backs, and some input from MPD, the floor generally opened to questions and comments from attendees. Here’s what stood out to me:

• Is the perception that gays are targeted because of homophobia and because they seem like weak targets? (I think we need to add to this list the perception of wealth.)

• What community groups should we be networking with? Us Helping Us, SMYAL, H.I.P.S., Different Avenues, INCITE!, Visions to Peace . . . ?

• An audience member who identified himself as a defense attorney suggested establishing “Hate Free Zones”, similar to Drug Free Zones around schools. Any crimes committed within a designated radius of a queer establishment would be considered a hate crime, and come with stiffer penalties.

• An attendee asked if our community is truly served by putting our efforts into more hate crime legislation and more police presence, implying that we’ve assumed cops, prison, and legislation would be effective deterrents when apparently they haven’t been.

• A representative from Us Helping Us called for a truly diverse approach to confronting GLBTQ violence. Earlier in the evening, Sergeant Parsons suggested that community members approach their neighborhood cops, invite them out of their cars & engage them in conversation. The guy from UHU said, “No offense Sergeant Parsons, but I cannot go up to a cop and tell him anything but my social security number. I can’t go back to my members, all black men, and tell them something like that. We need approaches we can all use.”

• My pal Rebecca suggested partnering with neighborhood businesses, especially those that are open late, to establish “Safe Spaces”. So if you’re walking around and feel unsafe, you can duck into one of these businesses and hang out until you feel safer or call the cops.

The next GLOV meeting is in two weeks--organizers stressed that they want to work toward more community-based interventions, with the implicit (if not explicit) support of the officials that seemed to dominate this meeting. Also noted last night, there will be another gathering to mourn Hunter’s death this Sunday, from 6-7 p.m. at the MCC Church.

Meanwhile, go to the GLOV section on The Center's site to sign up for their email list or join their Google group. And as always, feel free to share your feedback here or at stopthehate@thenewgay.net.