Date: Fri, 08 Oct 1999 17:58:47 -0700 From: Jean Richter Subject: 10/8/99 P.E.R.S.O.N. Project news 1. MI: Lecture in Muskegon hits chord with gay students 2. Email list for straight allies and questioning youth 3. PA: Urge implementation of Policy 102 =========================================================== MUSGEGON CHRONICLE, September 15, 1999 Box 59,Muskegon,MI,49443 (Fax 616-722-2552)( http://mu.mlive.com/news/news.html ) (E-MAIL: thechronicle@novagate.com ) Gay speaker's message hits responsive chord By Federico Martinez, CHRONICLE STAFF WRITER WITH LOCAL REPORTS A look of terror and desperation overcame the 19-year-old Whitehall woman visiting Muskegon Community College Tuesday night. [Deleted article. filemanager@qrd.org] ================================================================================ Date: Fri, 17 Sep 1999 00:38:07 -0400 From: Jason Hungerford - Youth Guardian Services Subject: Youth Guardian Services Launches Email List for Straight Youth *** PLEASE REPOST FAR AND WIDE *** September 17, 1999 Youth Guardian Services, a youth-run non-profit organization providing support services on the Internet for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning youth has expanded its diversity even more with its newest project, The STR8 Email List. The STR8 List, scheduled to officially launch on Monday, September 20, has been created to provide a safe space for straight and questioning youth who have friends or family members who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered or questioning. The list is a supportive environment catering to the unique needs of straight youth who need to talk to other young people in similar situations. The list is designed to function as a place where heterosexual and questioning youth can discuss and better understand gay-related issues, and their own issues in accepting their gay friends or family members. The STR8 List is restricted to youth 25 years old or younger. If you are 25 or under, self-identify your sexual orientation as heterosexual or questioning, and have friends or family members who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, or questioning, and would like to talk to other straight young people your age, then this is the place for you! To subscribe, send an email message to listproc@youth-guard.org with the message (without the quotes) "subscribe str8 YOUR NAME" With many resources now existing for gay youth on the Internet, Youth Guardian Services discovered that a very important segment of the population had been previously neglected: Our straight allies, friends, and family members. With the STR8 List, Youth Guardian Services hopes to provide the same kind of quality peer support to our straight allies that we have been able to successfully provide to over 3,000 gay youth over the last two years. Whatever the situation may be, each list subscriber can expect to receive a list full of young people ready to offer friendship, advice, or just a kind listening ear. Whether you need to talk about your best friend who just came out to you, your brother who just came out to your, or your girlfriend who just broke up with you because she is a lesbian, or anything else that you want to talk to people your own age in similar situations -- the list will be there for you, listen, and be a friendly supportline that you can count on. To subscribe to the STR8 List: Send email to listproc@youth-guard.org With the message: subscribe str8 YOUR NAME Please note that the subscribe command must be in the body of your email message and NOT the subject line. Replace "YOUR NAME" with your own name or email address. For more information about the STR8 List visit http://www.youth-guard.org/youth/str8/ Youth Guardian Services is a youth-run, non-profit organization that provides support services on the Internet to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, questioning, and straight supportive youth. The organization operates solely on private donations from individuals. For more information about Youth Guardian Services, please visit our website at http://www.youth-guard.org ================================================================================ Subject: ALERT - On Phila. PA Board of Education - Policy 102 Report - Maybe October 12, 1999 and board appointments Contact: Rita Addessa, executive director, plgtf at 215 772-2001 and 724-8244 before 8 am and Addessa @op.net or plgtf@op.net web site www.op.net/plgtf Alert: Issue 1: The Board of Education must act on the Task Force et al June 1998 briefing objectives and Policy 102 implementation recommendations. The Board scheduled and then cancelled its response for September 23, 1999. Its next promised response is OCTOBER 12, 1999 - this Tuesday at 10 am - we expect another delay. Call Floyd Alston, President of the Board of Education in Philadelphia, PA at 215-299-7799 and fax 215-299-7199- and Vice President of the Board Pedro Ramos, Esq. at 215-299-7916 to encourage their responsible and timely response. (Address: 21st and the Parkway, Philadelphia, PA 19103.) ============ Issue 2: While Mayor Ed Rendell will soon be leaving office, he undoubtedly will remain a political operative. Two equally disappointing mayoral candidates (John Street, former city council president (D) and Sam Katz (R) ) have not been asked by electoral political types nor have they addressed the topic of BOARD APPOINTMENTS. Call or write Mayor Ed Rendell and these candidates if you wish to ask if they will appoint highly qualified candidates to the Board of Education who will represent and be accountable to the lesbian and gay community; as well as the Asian and the Disabled communities which remain completely UNREPRESENTED on the nine member Board of Education. Rendell's number is still 215-686-2180. The Mayor's home address is 3425 Warden Street, Philadelphia, PA 19129. The Message: Refocus, re-center, and implement fully Policy 102 (Multiracial-Multicultural-Gender Education) adopted by the Board in January 1994. Respond to the briefing and implemenetation recommendations proferred by the Lesbian and Gay Task Force in conjunction with diverse community-based leaders as promised. The 70 plus community leaders, with board, and with key school district staff who originally shaped this fundamental and critical policy continue to hope for the Board's explicit direction and full, not token implementation, of the policy. Keep the promise to our children, each and every one. Brief History Note: For a micro-synopsis of established and affirmative education policies at the local and state level, and for the June 1998 briefing objectives and 102 implementation recommendations profferred to the Board, please go to our web site www.op.net/plgtf. The full text of 102 is available only through mail or fax. Letter Excerpt from a recent letter to the President who is personally supportive, but who rules an uncaring board appointed by an uncaring mayor and a system headed by a southern christian named David Hornbeck trained as a lawyer and as a minister. Hornbeck was hired 6 months after the adoption of 102 and has failed to follow its spirit or its mandate, particularly around gay and lesbian issues. This is more complicated than I can summarize here - please call for details. ......The Board's adoption of 102 in its entirety in 1994, after several years of discussion under your direction, Mr. Alston, represented a promise to all of our youth, a promise that remains unfulfilled, for some more than others, each, nevertheless, diminished by the Board's failure to focus its political and moral will on the social construction of an clearly articulated 102 mission as the fundamental philosophical basis that will guide all education reform efforts, including but not limited to curricula. It is hard to imagine after all these years that the Policy 102 six-page document inclusive of its history, content, and conceptual model has not yet been distributed to all principals and teachers in the system. It is even more difficult to believe that curricula, assessment/testing, library acquisitions, human resources, professional development and accountability mechanisms still fail to reflect an overarching commitment to the philosophy, the principles, and the actualization of 102, at more than a token level, and even then, sporadically (see the June 10, 1998report to you). You were kind enough, Mr. Alston, with a diverse range of community leaders and religious, to lift your voice and to use the power of your position, to speak against the more egregious and visible symptoms of hatred and ignorance [note 3]. Murder is clearly an extreme form of violence; it is the slow deaths of our children that derives from the District's failure to implement (center) 102 that I speak about again today. Each of our children, of all colors, both gay and non-gay, continues to suffer for a range of complex social and economic reasons. The District has the power to make one very significant step to empower our children, and we ask you, again, and your appointed Board to do that. Your collective response to the explicit meeting objectives (with necessarily revised timelines), and to the structural and content recommendations contained within the June 10, 1998 report would be appreciated, now.......### excerpt ____ C: Board Members Ramos, Farnese, James-Brown, LeVan, Lurie, Mills, Parks, Rush, Keinman, Popchuk; Ingram, Chief of Staff and Sparkman, General Counsel; June 10 1998 Briefing Participants Cassidy, Gross, Gym, Jones, Richardson, Waters and Addessa; Funders including the William Penn Foundation, and selected education-related others C: Mayor Ed Rendell, Senator Vincent Fumo, Representative Dwight Evans - do nothings! [1] The Task Force began its education equity advocacy program in February 1984. Chronologies of correspondence, documents, memoranda, etc. are available. The goal then and now remains the construction of a system-wide structural and pedagogical framework grounded in a commitment to multiracial-cultural-gender knowledge and representation, inclusively defined. The 1992-1994 School District sponsored 102 work team, under your direction, developed more fully and thoroughly this critical goal. [2] A copy of the bound report entitled Policy 102 Implementation Recommendations (June 10, 1998) provided to the Board on June 10, 1998 is hereby provided for your convenience. [3] The Task Force convened October 1998 vigil in honor of Matt Shepherd, the young man who was so brutally murdered in Wyoming. That murder followed the brutal murder one-year earlier of James Byrd in Texas. In 1999, a California gay couple was found murdered by white supremacists, and in Philadelphia three gay men (1 white and 2 African American) were most likely murdered within a three week period June 14 through July 3, 1999. ###### =================================================================================== Jean Richter -- richter@eecs.berkeley.edu The P.E.R.S.O.N. Project (Public Education Regarding Sexual Orientation Nationally) These messages are archived by state on our information-loaded free web site: http://www.youth.org/loco/PERSONProject/