___________________________________________________ PRESS RELEASE -- AND JUSTICE FOR ALL Contact: David King, Communications Director Felicity Boyd, Advisory Board Coordinator Phone: (202) 298-9362 Internet address: justice@clark.net America Online: AndJst4All@AOL.com Address: P.O. Box 53079 Washington, D.C. 20009 WWW: http://www.vive.com/connect/aja/home.htm ___________________________________________________
Activists Don Davis and Rev. Meg Riley to Serve as Co-Chairs
WASHINGTON, DC--And Justice for All, a new nonprofit organization dedicated to achieving equality for everyone without regard to sexual orientation and to engaging heterosexuals in the bisexual, gay, lesbian and transgender rights (b/g/l/t) movement today announced the formation of an advisory board.
Long time activists Don Davis and the Rev. Meg Riley will serve as the first co-chairs.
A native of Lumberton, North Carolina, Don Davis has been a grassroots activist in North Carolina and Virginia for the past 15 years. Having lived in small towns in the South his entire life, Davis' experience lies almost exclusively in small communities. Currently, Davis serves on the boards of director of OUR OWN Community Press (the Virginia statewide lesbigay newspaper), the Williamsburg AIDS Network, and the Peninsula AIDS Foundation, as well as the alumni board of the Historic Triangle Leadership Institute. A founding member of Lavender Light of the Virginia Peninsula, he remains active in that organization. In January, 1995, Davis was appointed to the board of directors of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.
For the past seven years, he has served as the chief of comprehensive planning for James City County, Virginia, and remains the only openly gay member of the county's staff.
"I have enthusiastically agreed to serve as national co-chair of And Justice for All because I believe that the continued success of our movement depends on our ability to increase communications with our heterosexual allies and to help involve them directly in our struggle for equal rights," said Davis. "I believe that AJA is timely, valid, and will ultimately help bring important new players to our movement."
The Rev. Meg A. Riley is a community based Unitarian Universalist minister who currently serves as director of the Unitarian Universalist Association's (UUA) Office of Lesbian, Bisexual and Gay Concerns. As Radical Right groups have made homophobia one of their central focuses, Riley has made the Radical Right one of hers. She travels extensively throughout the U.S., building coalitions to lift up a vision of plurality, democracy and hope.
Riley is a graduate of the United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. She served three Minnesota congregations as a religious educator before beginning work at UUA headquarters in 1989. She has recently relocated to Washington, DC, with her partner, visual artist Kendrick Wronski.
"As we work to eradicate heterosexism and homophobia, I could care less about whom people sleep with but I care passionately whom they stand with! In my work with Unitarian Universalists across the country, I have frequently seen that it is heterosexuals who have energy to make justice: often those of us who are b/g/l/t are using up our energy just trying to survive," said Riley. "I am particularly excited that And Justice for All is actively recruiting young adults to be leaders--at this time in history, we are in dire need of young, creative thinking to solve old, dull problems."
"In our first year, one of our primary goals will be to establish legitimacy within the b/g/l/t rights movement," said Executive Director Jonathan Zucker. "We felt it important to have a gay man and a lesbian as our co-chairs. I believe Don and Meg will be strong advocates for the organization and am very pleased that they have agreed to serve."
And Justice for All seeks bisexual, gay, lesbian, straight and transgendered activists with experience in coalition building, membership recruitment and fundraising for its advisory board. Interested parties should contact the organization at (202) 298-9362.
