SF PRIDE 2009

Women’s Dance & Performance Pavilion
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Venue Manager: Lisa Williams
Stage Manager: Christine De La Rosa (Miz Chris)
Sponsorship Coordinator: Edaj
Sound Coordinator: Olga Texidor (DJ Olga T)
Performance Coordinator: Krista Smith (Kentucky Fried Woman)
Volunteer Coordinator: Amy Adams (Mz. Amy)

This year, NectArena teamed up with San Francisco Pride and Miz Chris to bring you the Women’s Dance and Performance Pavilion, an exciting and fast-paced showcase of talent within the women’s community. A wide variety of entertainers will take the stage over the course of six hours with live musical performances, burlesque, drag, spoken word and DJs representing a wide array of musical genres. We start the stage with live entertainment and end in a full on block party for woman. Experience the energy of thousands of women together in one place on this very special day.

12pm - 1pm Deejays

1pm - 3pm Performance
Performance by: Amy Adams, Beth Elliott, ButchTap, Carrie Gerendasy, Diamond Daggers, Fella-Fem, Jay Walker, Jen Cross, Jukie Sunshine, Kentucky Fried Woman, King McQueen Royal Revue, Lady Gravity, Lady Monster, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, MOMMA’S BOYZ, Simone de la Getto, Twilight Vixen Revue

3pm - 6pm Dance Party
Dance Party with DJ Calalo, DJ La Coqui, DJ Motive, DJ Ms. Jackson, DJ Olga T, DJ Thonsey

Emcees: Michelle Meow-Swirl Radio, Christie Luv-Wild 94.9, Krista Smith-Kentucky Fried Woman, Erika Rawlins, Michelle Mitchell-Urbanelle and more!

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Women’s Stage - SF Pride 2009

Oh Bay Area how I love thee, let me count the ways.

Since moving here I have been blessed beyond measure with love, friends, opportunities and adventure.  It has been an amazing journey.  If you have an activist heart, like me, the Bay Area offers so many ways in which to do that which you do best… organize!

So a few weeks ago I was approached to take over the programming of the Women’s Stage on Sunday @ SF Pride.  NectArena, which has been running the stage for several years, is taking a sabbatical for 2009, but will be back next year for the 40th anniversary of Pride.

I talked it over with Olga, since my plate definitely runneth over.  We discussed the time and energy it would take to pull off programming for the stage in 45 days.  We discussed if I could pull that many people together in such a short time.  And we discussed what our time both together and individually would look like for Pride month.  We decided that it would be totally overwhelming…. so I took the job :)  It is wonderful to have a supportive partner to encourage you to live your dream.

I know this will be really an amazing experience for me.  I am so very excited.  So this year I will be taking over the programming for the Women’s Stage, putting together a team, volunteers and talent.  I am so FRICKEN excited!!!!!!  You can find us on the SF Pride site under Women’s Dance Stage.

If you would like to help by volunteering for the stage please let me know!  You can drop me a line here facebook.

See you at PRIDE!

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East Bay, My Bay

It was Saturday afternoon, right before Mango, after I had left Velvet set up for the evening festivities and I was driving to my house to go change.  I turned this corner on 580 where the mountains rise up into the sky, full and luscious, like earthen skyscrapers.  My breath caught in my throat at that very moment. I was so incredibly grateful to be here in this place called the East Bay.  I don’t ever want to forget that feeling.

I come from a place where everything is flat.  We don’t have mountains we have hills.  We don’t have the bay, we have lakes.  We don’t have queers….. oh wait we do but not with the freedom that I now enjoy.  I am a Texas girl through and through.  It never occurred to me that I would ever live in California.  It was not in my plan, not even a maybe.  So the fact that I have landed here on the West Coast amazes me every day.

I will always love Texas.  The beautiful culture, the fantastic Mexican food, the big hair and bigger cars.  There is something over the top about Texas that just suits me.  And yet, I can honestly say that I now understand the pull of California, more specifically the East Bay.   If you live pretty much anywhere else in the states (with few exceptions) the freedom of being gay and being here is really unexplainable.  It is a blessing that I don’t take forgranted.

Everyday there is something new to learn, witness, experience, enjoy.  In some ways I feel guilty to have this beautiful freedom while my counterparts in places like Texas continue to fight the good fight in less than welcoming environments.  I want the freedom of living in California to extend to my fellow gay folks in Texas and Utah and Wisconsin and everywhere else.  I want to know how we are going to do that?  California is cool, but not everyone can live in Cali and we shouldn’t have to migrate to either coast to enjoy our rights.

The differences in being gay between Texas and California are so significant that I can’t believe I haven’t always wanted to live here.  As hard as Prop 8 was on the collective California consciousness, it is an amazing feat that gay marriage was so close that they had make a bill to shut us down.  Texas doesn’t need a bill, we have never been that close for them to worry about us.  But now, I have hope that there will come a time in my life that it will be that close in Texas.  I want to know what can we in California do for our brothers and sisters in different places, that don’t have the same access and/or freedom we do?

I don’t have any answers, these are just questions I keep asking myself every day that I live in this beautiful place.  20 years of being gay in the South vs. 9 months in California, I can’t even explain the difference.  It is so overwhelming.  I know I won’t forget where I came from, as I move forward, I have to look back.

So I drive through the mountains, across the bay into the city, around Lake Merritt, to the LGBT center, to Velvet and my life is forever changed by this place called the East Bay.  And can I just say…Wow.

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Keys Returned

Today I did the final walk through for my tiny apartment in Oakland.   I lived and loved there for eight and a half months.  It was the perfect little spot for me.  Leaving my beloved Texas for California was an incredible leap of faith on my part.  Although I have a wonderful support system here in the Bay Area, it is still strange to leave the place you have lived all your life.  I remember the day I was leaving Dallas, knowing I was driving into my future with no clue what that future would hold.  It was all about expectation and hope and new beginnings.  Such is California for so many people who migrate west. 

When I got to my furnished apartment I promptly put all that stuff in storage and went about setting up my tiny space for me.  I made it “chris” comfortable.  It was not the most beautiful place but that isn’t why I got it.  I got it for the balconey.  Every night I fell asleep to the twinkling lights of the Oakland downtown skyline and every morning I woke up to the beauty that is Lake Merritt.   What a way to live.  I spent many nights wrapped up in a blanket staring out over the view.  I contemplated, had deep thoughts, gabbed on the phone, chit chatted with my friends, had parties, shared intimate moments, told truths and mourned losses all on that balconey.  And no matter what was going on… there was the view, that beautiful view.  I never took forgranted my blessing to live in such an amazing place, in a wonderful location, in a fabulous city.

This afternoon I took one more long look at the view.  I said a tiny prayer that whomever stayed there next would have as good a time as I had.  I closed the door, hearing the lock click for the last time.  I knew that my time in transition was over.  My future is waiting for me in my new home, where new curtains will be hung, rooms painted, meals cooked, friends gathered, love given and laughter, tons of laughter will abound.  It is time to move on into the next chapter of my life.  I am ready.

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Home Sweet Home

It would be impossible to explain the road that has led me to this very moment in my life. I have seen too much. I have heard too much. I have felt too much. Sometimes it has been overwhelming just to live the life that has been given to me. There have been days when I didn’t know if I could put one foot in front of the other, yet here I stand.

The last few years have been a road back to myself. I did not choose an easy road, definitely the road less traveled. There were casualties, sometimes I could count myself among those, but every step, every, single, gotdamn step was worth it.

I am blessed. I thank the universe every day for all the blessings that come to me on a daily basis. But sometimes the universe just kicks it into high gear. And boy was she on fire this weekend. O and I went out on Sunday morning to start looking for places to live. We hadn’t planned to do that. We had planned to stay home and sleep as the weekend @ Velvet was brutal (in a GREAT way). But we got up and I just had this buzz in my tummy, the kinda buzz I get when I know something is going to happen. We decided to head out in search of our house. But first, chicken & waffles @ Lake Merritt! When we got there I took out my trusty Blackberry Storm and hit Craigslist. We headed out and saw the first house on our list. It was NOT IMPRESSIVE. We were in and out in less than five minutes. We were heading out of the area when I did another search on Craigslist, just to be sure there was nothing else we might want to see when this little treasure popped up. We happened to be pretty close to it. We drove up to the front door and I said “this is our house”. O jumped out of the car and looked at me and said “this is our house.” We hadn’t even seen the inside yet. We called the number and made an appointment for 6pm that evening. It was noon. For six hours we looked at houses, apartments, duplexes in Oakland and Alameda, but our hearts just were not in it. We had already decided that was our house.

We wanted that house so bad, but we had no idea, NO IDEA, how bad we would want it after we saw the inside. Before O and I ever went looking for a house we had a list of all the things we needed/wished for in our first home together. Never in a million, trillion, gazillion years did we think we would get it all…. until we walked into this house. It was everything we had dreamed and more. Hardwood floors, built-ins, formal dining room, office for me, sound studio for her, doggie door for Anya, plenty of sun for Maggie, a guest room, a gazebo (!!!!!) in the backyard, totally fenced, really, I mean REALLY! We filled out the application, wrote the checks right there and then and then with fingers and toes crossed, we drove away.

It has been two EXCRUCIATING days of waiting for the decision. Literally O and I have been at the apartment decorating the house in our heads, doing imaginary packing, and pacing the floor. In wishful thinking mode, I called and booked movers, O called and set up an appointment with Comcast. I was so distracted today I got almost NOTHING done though I worked all damned day. Finally @ 7 this evening I told Olga we needed to get out of the apartment. She said where do you want to go. I said to our house, let’s check out our neighborhood. We packed up Anya and Maggie in the car and off we went. We were half way there when we got the news. It was a moment, our moment.

Our New Home in Cali

Our New Home in Cali

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Whew! We are back!

Hello, hello, hello!

We are back.  And when I say we I mean WE.  About four weeks ago the server that houses this website, plus the Femme Collective Website, the Continental Gin Website, the ButchFemmeDating website and a SLEW of other websites was SEVERELY hacked.  They deleted all the websites (including this one), then infected the server where this server was running scam websites and sending out fake emails.  It was HORRIFIC.  It took me THREE weeks working with both our server hosting company FastServers.net and their abuse service company LayeredTech to clean the server.  We literally had to take it offline and rebuild it from scratch.  I am slowly but surely rebuilding each website one by painstaking one.  It is a long and arduous process. 

Thanks to everybody for being so patient!  The Femme Collective Website is the next on my list to fix.  I know many folx have been asking me about it.  I am aware of the issue, but am trying to fix this stuph as I have time.  I have to send a shout out to our hosting company for spending hours and hours on the phone with me and not charging me too much! 

See you all on the flip side.

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Fundraiser for Richmond Hate Crime Victim

Hello!

About two weeks ago my friend Tee called to me to tell me about a Richmond woman who had been targeted, raped and beaten specifically because of her sexual orientation by four men.  At the time I had not heard anything about this terrible and horrific crime.  You can read about the details here

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/20/BAV714SBA1.DTL

As the community at large has become aware of this incident we have wanted to reach out to Jane Doe as she is being referred to both in the media and by the Richmond Police.  Tallon, who was pivotal in organizing the No on Prop 8 campaign in the East Bay, and DJ Luna came to myself and Olga to see if Velvet in Oakland would be able to host a fundraiser for our fellow sister.  The answer was ABSOLUTELY YES!

In case you may not have heard I have taken over the management of Velvet as of Jan. 1st.  As a woman, lesbian, Femme committed to reaching out, engaging, helping and providing for our LGBTQQA community this fundraiser is to let Jane Doe know she is not alone and that we as a community will support and stand by her in any way that feels safe for her. 

With that being said Velvet will be hosting a Fundraiser on January 9th. 
There is a $5-$20 suggested donation @ the door all of which will be going to the trust fund set up for Jane Doe through the

Community Violence Solutions
Attention: Ms. Jo Ann Douglas
Community Violence Solutions
2101 Van Ness Avenue
San Pablo, CA 94806

You may also write a check to Community Violence Solutions that night and we will make sure it gets to her trust fund.

I know there have been several groups who have expressed interest in performing or DJing that night to help raise funds, please contact me so I can put you on the schedule.  As the details tighten up I will send out more information.

Please distribute widely to all your friends, lists or via word of mouth!

Thank you
Miz Chris

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The War at Home

We are at war, make no mistake about it. We are being attacked from every side both covertly and overtly. The time for action is NOW.

If you are GAY in this country at this moment in history, then you are at war even if you don’t know it or want to believe it. President-Elect Obama’s pick of Rick Warren was a slap in the face to all LGBTQIA persons who worked for his campaign and who voted for him. That includes me. It is apparent to me now more than ever that I am a 2nd class citizen (AGAIN) with less rights that most people in the United States simply because I am GAY. The Obama machine is so incredibly full of themselves that they REALLY THINK that the gay community is an acceptable casualty when courting the evangelical right. What kind of self-righteous bullshit is that? I swear I want to know what idiot is counseling Obama because he/she needs to be FIRED.

This morning I wake up to read that now the Prop 8 people are trying to get the 18,000 marriages that happened pre-Prop 8 nullified in California. So it is in this climate that Obama and his advisors decide that it is a GOOD IDEA to ask Rick Warren to give the invocation. Rick Warren who has

- compared being gay to child molestors and incest
- banned unrepentant homosexuals to join his church
- stated that being gay is curable and runs a program at his church to cure us

Seriously. SERIOUSLY Obama. This is the fool you want to give your invocation on a day when history is being made. The first black President of the United States is being sworn into office and a prejudiced white guy who is candidly and openly for denying an entire group of people their CIVIL RIGHTS is giving the invocation. I mean the IRONY is overwhelming. I voted for CHANGE, but apparently I voted for change for everybody else EXCEPT myself and my gay brothers and sisters. I am disgusted with your actions. I am disgusted with your arrogance. I am disgusted with your administration and you haven’t even been sworn in yet.

Unfortunately you have managed in less than a month and a half to disillusion me and thousands of other people who believed in your campaign of change. I needed for you to step up not sit down. .But since you chose the latter of the two then I and everyone else will have to step up for you. The LGBTQIA is NOT an acceptable casualty. I recognize that this action by you is a call to arms. We as an entire community of gay people and their allies will rise up and answer that call.   

The White House Phone Number: (202) 456-1414

Send a letter to: Parag Mehta is Obama’s LGBT liaison on the transition team - parag.mehta@ptt.gov.

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WE ARE AFFECTED

Hello friends! 

My friend Jessica Eve  and I have been talking about how really personally painful the Prop 8 stuff has been, and also about what we can *DO* in response to such hurtful shit.  Both of us worked on Obama stuff as out queers, and we know that so many queers put aside our me-specific issues in order to work on an election that was about the greater good, for a candidate who was willing to acknowledge that we are a *part* of that greater good.  But we also know how difficult it is for candidates to remember that us queers ate a lot of shit in this election cycle (as we always do) to get them elected once they’re in office looking at pressure from groups who are organized and powerful.

We’ve also been talking about how we really want to do queer organizing in a way that doesn’t require large donations or rely on the HRC or even NGLTF or really any large organization.  Something that is a powerful statement and also creates an opportunity to use the internet in a smart way to organize and push on the folks we put in office, in a way that is pointed but not attacking.  We want to remind those we helped elect that we don’t expect overnight miracles, but that we are organizing ourselves and we are going to hold people accountable.  Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell is NOT going to work this time.  Our human rights are important and that THIS particular fix is one that isn’t going to *cost* anything.  Recognizing queer relationships doesn’t require a budget increase, it doesn’t require new buildings or infrastructure.  MA has established that recognizing queer relationships doesn’t cause a state’s budget to crumble or infrastructure to buckle or even any brimstone flashes.

We want to try to figure out a way to remind those we elected that they have a responsibility to all the queers and allies who stood behind them, all of us who voted down-ballot, all of us who worked our tails off, all of us who care about issues outside our own personal interest and fight for them ALSO want our issues (particularly those that are such an easy fix) to be addressed.  We want to remind folks that many of their core constituency, many of the people who sent in $25 or $10 or $5 again and again are affected by this particular injustice.  We want to get this thing fucking done so that we can focus on the next thing without feeling betrayed and abandoned.  I have healthcare.  I have really fucking good healthcare.  I want EVERYONE in this country to have good healthcare, and I want us to be able to work on that together.  It is hard to focus when I’m breaking into tears because my beloved will not be recognized *as* my beloved in the event I die tomorrow.  And it should not be a choice of queer unions or healthcare.  That’s a false fucking division.

So, we are starting a website called http://www.weareaffected.com/ which we hope to populate with pictures of queers and allies all over the US (and also the world) who are affected by the US government’s refusal to recognize queer relationships.  We hope to have pictures showing that those of us denied this very simple and basic thing are a large and vocal part of the movement for change, pictures which demonstrate visually that are holding our fellow changers accountable.  Think immigration rights, health care coverage, hospital visits, adoption rights, parenting rights, and many other human rights that come along with legal recognition of a partnership.  We want to put up pictures of queers and allies who worked on electing our new president and down-ticket candidates in hopes of seeing some change.  We want to remind folks that it is an unfair and unconscionable thing to ask people to choose the parts of themselves that matter.  We want to put up pictures that visually demonstrate that the “we” here are people of color, working class people, women, children, disabled folks, old, young, middle class, short, tall, fat, thin, outrageous and mainstream people.  We serve in the military and serve you your coffee.  We administer your 401K and administer your flu shot.  We are progressives and liberals and moderates.  We are conservatives.  We are everywhere and we are ALL affected by this because an injustice to ONE of us is an injustice to ALL of us.  We are people in relationships spanning decades and people who were only just born. 

The rules for the site are simple:

1.  Make a sign saying “I am affected” or “We are affected” or “My Mom is affected” or “My best friend is affected” or “my neighbor down the street who I don’t really know all that well is affected”

2.  Take a picture of yourself or your friend or your neighbor or your student or your lovers holding the sign (if you have Obama gear or worked on a local campaign or sported a bumper sticker or wore a political  t-shirt during this election, wear the gear or stand by the bumper sticker or do something to make the visual clear).  Families can take pictures together!  Kids can take pictures

3.  Send your pictures, along with your zip code, to weareaffected@gmail.com (the zip code is because we want to plot every picture we get on a map, and once the map is populated enough, have that as an image showing how many of us there are all over the red/blue split and why this CANNOT simply be allowed to be a state’s decision)

We need pictures!  We hope to get pictures from alla you amazing people to populate the blog.  Since the nation-wide protest is happening this Saturday, we are hoping some of y’all would be willing to make ‘we are affected’ signs and get pictures of people all over the country holding those signs.

We want to build organizing content and tools too.  So, we’re looking for people to write essays about why this matters and about local-action/allyship-building strategies we can use, even if you don’t want to get legally hitched now or ever.  Initially the main part of the site will simply be a photo-blog, but we’re also looking to  build resources of the powerful-reading kind AND the “how can I take action and build allyship locally” kind.  If you’re interested in writing, just send us an email and let us know.

We’re hoping this project will be something that is accessible to lots of people across borders amongst us, so if you have ideas about how to do that?  PLEASE let us know!  Shoot us an email!

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Protest Rally @ Dolores Park in SF

It was amazing, inspiring and moving.  But the question for me still is what are going to do about it? 

The crowd as they move into the park.

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

The speaker Pollo Del Mar, who was quite moving

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

 Olga playing for the crowd as they marched back through the streets to civic center.

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

This was the only crowd shot I could get until the overran me.  The people flooded in for several minutes after this shot.  It was simply one of the greatest experiences of my life.

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