Last month, The Gentlemen's Foundation and Gentlemen's Ball co-founder, Gee Sessions-Smalls reported a dress code posted at Blake's On The Park in Midtown which detailed a laundry list of prohibited items suggestive of urban/hip hop attire. This caught the attention of The Georgia Voice which stirred a lively debate surrounding race discrimination at our favorite community venues.: Read full story here. The discussion continued on WABE.
Blake’s On The Park has since removed the sign and have moved on with business as usual, but not so with Atlanta's Black Gay citizens. Indignation is strong and leading toward a resolution of complete withdrawal of Black Gay fellowship and participation within the established overarching LGBT community structure in Atlanta. Bifurcating LGBT Atlanta along racial lines ahead of several important agendas led by Georgia Equality would be disastrous in addition to being charged with hypocrisy when it comes to challenging homophobic discrimination in RFRA Round 3 and disunity on our other shared interests. This would create an environment of racially charged animosity during what should be a high watermark Atlanta Pride season this year on the heels of the Marriage Equality victory. These are all very real possibilities if this is not handled wisely over the next few weeks before a certain reprisal of attention during Black Gay Pride, Labor Day Weekend.
For this concern, there needs to be leadership taken up on all sides of this story to address the roots of the issue and develop practical solutions and action plans to facilitate the healing of cultural divisions within our community and galvanize a multicultural union in support of our shared interests. This is not something we hope to get solved in one meeting, but certainly we can begin this work with a series of quarterly meetings. The purpose of this meeting will be to begin planning and producing a community forum where we can engage our community in a sort of family therapy style dialogue on a community scale for the intentions of facilitating catharsis, awareness, understanding, and accountability for the problematic elements in our community in regards to race relations. This discussion can be steered toward think tanking solutions to implement for the particular problems discovered therein. Your answers to this questionnaire will serve as a reference point for those willing to engage in these efforts and the time you are willing to give to this will be greatly appreciated.
To access the survey click on this Link:
If you wish to be able to offer an informed opinion, I invite you to brief yourself and objectively consider the material given below.
Though LGBT Atlanta has probably the best potential at being one of the most powerful LGBT communities in the world, our interests are often ignored, dismissed and we are pushed around on the state level. Why is that?
Let's take stock of our potential power:
For good reasons, the LGBT Agenda falls under the umbrella of the Progressive Agenda which is about expanding rights, opportunities and equality to those often left out of the American Dream to no fault of their own. This draws the LGBT Agenda in force with Racial Equality, Gender Equality, Immigration Equality and Economic Justice, all factors which have some direct impact on the LGBT community, for we are everybody. So let's measure ourselves up with this.
Lastly: A talkback by Miko Evans of Meak Productions Inc. on Facebook
For good reasons, the LGBT Agenda falls under the umbrella of the Progressive Agenda which is about expanding rights, opportunities and equality to those often left out of the American Dream to no fault of their own. This draws the LGBT Agenda in force with Racial Equality, Gender Equality, Immigration Equality and Economic Justice, all factors which have some direct impact on the LGBT community, for we are everybody. So let's measure ourselves up with this.
- Atlanta population 6,162,195 in perspective to Georgia population 10,097,343. Atlanta holds 61% of the states population which should make our city a Super Power when it comes to state politics.
- Georgia is worth $403 billion. Atlanta is responsible for $304 billion of that, controlling 75% of the states purse strings. How are we stacking up as share holders?
- Atlanta is 54% Black, and has not had a White mayor in over 45 years which testifies to the local political strength of Black Atlanta. Not to be ignored. Atlanta was recorded as the nation's fourth largest majority Black City, and the city has long been known as a center of African American political power, education, and culture, often called a Black Mecca.
- There are more Black Millionaires in Atlanta per capita than anywhere else in the world.
- The state of Georgia is 30% Black, more than twice the national average and then a numerically powerful and significant minority.
- Being home to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Atlanta is often seen as the Crown Jewel of the African American Civil Rights Movement.
- Georgia has a foreign born population of 9.7% Almost 1 in 10 Georgians.
- Even though the LGBT community is much harder to track, An estimated 4.2 percent of metro Atlanta’s population identify themselves as gay or lesbian, placing the region in the top half of a list of 50 metropolitan areas, according to a Gallup analysis that percentagewise, metro Atlanta has a larger LGBT population than New York!
- For this reason, those who are Black and Gay and living in Atlanta, are sitting on the cross streets of two powerful yet oppressed communities, which gives them a unique role in Progressive Politics in the state in bringing these two communities into true alliance with one another. If we can solve our failings on race relations, this state is OURS for the taking! We can be a tremendous force to be reckoned with, such that if we don't, it's us to blame, not them.
Lastly: A talkback by Miko Evans of Meak Productions Inc. on Facebook
