Date: 24 May 96 02:56:02 EDT From: Cristel Amiss <100010.2311@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Endorsement Letter for Publication/Circulation URGENT . . . URGENT . . . URGENT . . . WAGES DUE LESBIANS IS CIRCULATING THE FOLLOWING LETTER TO PROTEST THE DATE CHOSEN FOR THE "CALIFORNIA WOMEN'S AGENDA, BRINGING THE BEIJING PLATFORM FOR WOMEN TO THE GRASSROOTS" CONFERENCE IN SAN FRANCISCO. JUNE 28 TO 30 IS THE SAME WEEKEND AS LESBIAN GAY BISEXUAL TRANSGENDER FREEDOM DAY ACTIVITIES AND MARCH. PLEASE ENDORSE THIS LETTER ON BEHALF OF AN ORGANIZATION OR AS AN INDIVIDUAL AND RETURN CONFIRMATION OF ENDORSEMENT TO: 104270.277@compuserve.com May 20, 1996 Marilyn Fowler, Coordinator Women's Intercultural Network 1950 Hayes Street, Suite Two San Francisco, CA 94117 Dear Marilyn Fowler, We are writing to express our concern about your plans to hold a statewide conference -- "The California Women's Agenda, Bringing the Beijing Platform to the Grassroots of California"-- in San Francisco June 28 to 30. You are no doubt aware that this weekend is the same weekend as Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Freedom Day in San Francisco. Your event conflicts not only with the March on Sunday, a major event which each year draws many thousands of people, but also with the many conferences, rallies and other events held every year in conjunction with this weekend, including the Second National "Pride at Work" Labor Conference being held in San Francisco on June 28 and 29. As you must know, many lesbian women participate in and are instrumental in organizing Pride events each year. Many lesbian women also went to Beijing and/or keenly followed the process and outcome of the conference and are determined to ensure we are not left out as policies are proposed to implement the Beijing decisions. Holding your conference over this weekend puts us in the impossible position of being forced to choose, and will in effect exclude from your event many lesbian women, as well as many bisexual and non-lesbian women who attend Pride events every year. As a result our participation and input will be missing from a conference which is supposed to formulate an agenda representing all California women. It is particularly disturbing that a women's conference on the Beijing Platform is discouraging the participation of lesbian women in this way rather than promoting it. The experience of Beijing is still fresh in our minds, and what is happening now is reminiscent of the uphill battle lesbian women faced every step of the way. We had to fight to be part of the Beijing process, to get into the conference, for lesbian organizations to be officially accredited, to be on the agenda and for lesbian issues to be heard. In spite of unprecedented international attention and debate, sexual orientation was in the end dropped by governments from the Platform for Action. Governments would not agree even to acknowledge, let alone to address, discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and there is no direct reference to lesbian women in the Platform for Action. Given this history, surely every attempt should be made in planning a post-Beijing conference to ensure that the presence, visibility and input of grassroots lesbian women is integral to the process and outcome. To do otherwise is to reinforce the marginalization lesbian women experienced in the Beijing process. We wonder what input lesbian and other grassroots women have had in the planning of this conference, and in shaping the California Women's Agenda and priorities for implementing the Platform for Action. Wages Due Lesbians sent an international delegation to Beijing and was one of only five international lesbian organizations accredited to the government conference. We raised the issue of lesbian visibility at official US regional preparatory meetings including two in California. We spoke at workshops at the NGO Forum on many issues including measuring and valuing women's unwaged work, racism, immigration, violence, health and structural adjustment policies, and we held a Speakout in the Lesbian Tent. Since then we have been working on disseminating information about what happened in Beijing to lesbian women, and on implementation of the Platform. Yet we have not been invited to any planning meetings for this conference, nor have we been contacted to participate and/or present at the conference. As part of the International Women Count Network, we also wonder how your conference plans to address the issue of implementing the decision made in Beijing that governments should measure and value unwaged work in satellite accounts of GDP. As you may know this decision won in Beijing by the IWCN is considered by many to be one of the most far-reaching to come out of the conference and was highlighted by a number of governments at the recent meeting of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (March 11-22) which focused on implementation of the Platform. This issue is important to lesbian women who fought hard for it and whose work and contributions to society and economies are often unrecognized. We are concerned that the International Women Count Network has not been contacted to participate in the planning of this conference nor invited to share its experience of working together across national boundaries to successfully influence government decisions, an experience which many women would want to hear about and from which many practical lessons for future organizing could be drawn. We hope you will consider the issues we have raised. We would have raised our concerns sooner had we known about the conference. On behalf of lesbian women, we urge you to change the dates for this conference so that we will not have to choose between participating in Pride events and being part of the post-Beijing process in California. We await your response. Sincerely, Lori Nairne, for International Wages Due Lesbians, San Francisco