Hey Cathedral of Hope folks. H4PJ needs your help! Our “ministry” does not receive direct support for our non-profit endeavors. That means we have to raise the money separately to do what we do. What we as a board have elected to do is hire one full time and one part time staffer to conduct the day-to-day work that a volunteer board assists with so our efforts aren’t 100% dependent on an already over-burdened volunteer population. Well, the money is about gone and we’re about to be faced with a very serious decision--similar to what many of us will painfully remember happening a while back. We have Cleve Jones—C L E V E J O N E S—coming to Dallas. Unfortunately, our membership is only slightly more interested in this than the Dallas LGBT community is. To date, we have TWENTY-FIVE people—7 of them board members and the executive director—who have paid to attend the reception. Only slightly more are coming to the free afternoon event. (Of course we assume everyone will show up for church on Sunday—yea!—and participate in the love offering. A contemporary and mantle-bearer of Harvey Milk, Cleve Jones represents one of the foundational people in the modern gay rights—even Human Rights—struggle. A lot of us involved in activism and modern justice work with an LGBT flavor today—the HRC, RCD, and H4PJ to name a few—owe much of what we are and who we are to Cleve and his contemporaries. And what we’re NOT being and doing we owe to the fact that we have not paid near enough attention to Cleve and the lessons he and his generation have to teach. Many of you lived through the AIDS crisis; many of us did not. Some of you remember the fear of efforts like the Briggs Initiative; many of us, though our jobs technically are at risk, do not have the same fears about our jobs. And most of us are grateful that day-by-day, we march closer to the day that we’re treated less like second-class citizens. Where we are today is a direct result of the passion and work of women and men like Cleve Jones. What a rich legacy of activism and compassion we have in this generation! We brought Cleve here, to CoH and to Dallas, Texas, so that we could thank him. So that we could learn from him. So we could re-ignite the flame of activism toward efforts much greater than the mere comfortable lifestyles we lead now. I confidently predicted “if we bring him, people will most definitely come.” So far, it appears I was wrong. There is MUCH work yet to do! And there is so much around us—LTBTQ-identifying children and teenagers, survivors living with AIDS, the fight for equality, aging LGBT folks, the economically disadvantaged—in need of justice! I’m asking you to work with us to fill up the IPC with people engaged in the work of justice in our community, state, and country and show him that Dallas gets it and the people of CoH are leading the way. Please attend one or more events this weekend. Attend in body and attend with your pocketbook. Yes, $40 is a lot of money. But perhaps we could wait and go to the fair another day in the next pay-period, eat at home next week (LOL that’s what we’re having to do!), put off buying that bow tie til the next paycheck (dangit), or skip the bars for a week (or a night haha). The work of H4PJ will go on whether or not we run out of money, even if we have to lay off our employees. But is that how you want it to happen? ___________ This post is not sanctioned by CoH or H4PJ and represents merely my own opinion and passion.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Oct 2013 17:21:51 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015