GetEqual gets arrested
John Wright of The Dallas Voice, who caught the live stream of the committee hearing, reports the following:
Activists from GetEQUAL interrupted a House committee hearing this morning to demand a markup of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. The activists approached Chairman George Miller, D-California, and attempted to hand him a magic marker.
“I don’t know if it’s because of the recession that you guys you can’t afford markers, or whatever the issue us, but in our community there are people being fired because they are lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender.”
Mitchell refused to take the marker but told the activists that the committee plans to take action on ENDA soon. “We’re working on it as expeditiously as we can,” Miller said. Another unidentified committee member could be heard voicing opposition to ENDA. “This is the problem with this. There’s no end to it. You’re never going to satisfy them all,” the lawmaker said.
The audio on a live stream of the committee hearing then cut out for a few minutes. When it returned, Mitchell explained to the audience that the interruption was related to ENDA. “It’s not an easy piece of legislation,” Miller said. “It’s a really complicated piece of legislation. We want to get it right, but we expect to have it before this committee in the very near future.”
This is the third such action from GetEqual this week. First, GetEqual disrupted the President’s speech at the Barbara Boxer fundraiser on Monday. Then, Dan Choi, Jim Pietrangelo and Autumn Sandeen joined three other veterans chaining themselves to the White House Fence on Tuesday.
GetEQUAL has our attention–now what?
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2 Comments
Comments
I so hope that they are going to make this an all week thing that would be wonderful.
my only fear is that these politicians are going to get fed up with these interruptions and just group GetEqual into the “crazy obnoxious people” category and ignore what they have to say…or just arrest/remove them on the spot when they show up to a hearing…
Crazy people do not get ignored- look how much press the Tea Party gets.
yeah but what the Tea Party says say isn’t going to effect any lawmaking unless the folks in the White House are retarded….GetEqual is making a fuss over something important..if they get get brushed off because they are seen as being nothing more than annoyance that isn’t really helping the cause to get these important laws made….
of course GetEqual is only one group and their interruptions haven’t been too extreme…..yet.
@ Chickengirl- That doesn’t make any sense- the squeaky wheel gets the grease. They aren’t going to get brushed off.
The politicians are smart. They can delineate between GetEqual and the whole community. I am sure they understand that not every gay was in the room there with them. At the same time, they might not be aware of how personal SOME of us take this. Therefore, its a great idea to get in their faces with these actions. We need to stay visible and be a bit of a nuisance so that they don’t forget about us… again!
It worked for PETA, it’s gonna work for us! You keep screaming, GetEqual! The only thing I would be afraid of is that in the midst of trying to get attention they loose sigh of the message. It’s easy to do when you do things like chain yourself to a structure. I like interrupting meetings though, gets that whole “If you wont listen we’ll come to you” kind of vibe. Love it!