Anthony Maselli – RI Future

April 19, 2016April 19, 2016

I took a 10-hour bus trip to get arrested, and would do it again

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Riding down to Washington D.C. Friday on the overnight Greyhound bus, the idea of getting arrested loomed as a possibility. By Saturday morning, it was an inevitability.

More than 100 people from all over the country had gathered inside the Lutheran Church of the Reformation for a civil disobedience training just prior to joining thousands more to converge on the Capitol for a mass protest called Democracy Spring, the largest political protest in decades. There were folks from New Jersey, Tennessee, Georgia, and some who drove 24 hours straight from rural Texas just to be there for one day.

Their reasons for coming varied. Whether they were protesting against voter suppression, climate change inaction, racial inequality, or Citizens United, all were there because money is the driving force in American politics, democracy is a farce, and “We, the people” have no voice in our government.

The training facilitators explained the potential outcomes of the arrest process based on our chosen levels of disobedience. Most arrestees through the week had cooperated with the police and were detained only a few hours. Some resisted arrest by refusing to stand and had to be lifted by four officers and carried away to waiting transport vehicles. A dozen very brave activists chained themselves to scaffolding inside the Capitol Building, and are now facing higher charges. I participated in the sit-in on the steps of the Capitol building with about 200 others, where we remained past the officers’ final warning to disperse.

I would be lying if I said it was not rather nerve-wracking for me being on the trespass side of the police line and waiting to see what happens next, but this was no harrowing experience. It is not often one gets arrested non-violently and in the presence of thousands of cheering supporters. It was a privilege for me to be able to put myself in a position where I could be arrested with the expectation that I would not be detained for a significant period of time, seriously injured, or killed. There were so many who wanted to be on the other side of the police barricade with us but could not because of their legal history, medical issues, or other complications. With us was a wheelchair-bound Vietnam veteran who had been arrested over 20 times in similar acts of civil disobedience in his lifetime.

In Washington D.C., there is a special provision enacted by the Supreme Court for people arrested en masse during non-violent protests, allowing for them to pay a small fine and be released, avoiding a court date. As disagreeable as this form of legal extortion is to me, it was the sensible alternative for those who were far from home. After nine hours of combined detainment and wait time, a non-refundable missed return trip (never buy round-trip to a protest!), and a $50 fine, I was free to leave with no future obligations.

The Declaration of Independence asserts that the authority of a government is derived from the consent of the governed, and whenever any form of government becomes destructive, it is the right and duty of the people to alter or abolish it. The classic treatise on this topic is Henry David Thoreau’s “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,” which states that when a person’s conscience and the laws clash, that person must follow his or her conscience. What I did was not an act of bravery by any means; it was a small act of conscience. And though perhaps mostly symbolic, the stress on personal conscience and on the need to act now is briefly sated.

I cannot tell you that we changed the world last week, but I can tell you that every single individual who chanted “A better world is possible” over the course of those eight days truly believed it in their hearts. We still have hope for our future. It was sad to leave a setting like this, where everyone supports one another and shares the same ideal of a just and equitable society. But we go our separate ways knowing that somewhere down the road we will meet again, because we are people who are no longer content to wait passively for an opportunity to vote for justice. Voting for justice is as ineffective as wishing for justice. This is not to say that we all have an obligation to devote our lives to fighting for justice, but we do have an obligation not to commit injustice and not to give injustice our practical support. What we need to do is actually be just.

“It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.” -Assata Shakur

December 30, 2015

LGBTQ community needs to ask, “Who else will be there?”

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A few months ago, Governor Gina Raimondo hosted a meeting for members of the “LGBTQ community” at which no People of Color were present, because no People of Color were invited. Some attendees later reflected on their discomfort sitting in that meeting which was either intentionally or unintentionally (depending on your level of cynicism) racially-exclusive.

Some amount of dialogue emerged from this experience. It was wisely suggested, and I’ll paraphrase, that, “When LGBTQ people are invited to events, we need to start asking ‘Who else will be there?’” (Thank you, Jenn Steinfeld)

Still, in the last several months, organizations within the community continue to plan event after event with no POC participation and this is an trend in mainstream LGBTQ community events and organizations throughout the country.

In her book White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness, author Ruth Frankenberg sought to examine this issue within the feminist community by posing the question, “What are the social processes through which white women are created as social actors primed to reproduce racism within the feminist movement?”

What if we rework that question to address the same issue in the LGBTQ community?

What are the social processes through which white members of the LGBTQ community are created as social actors primed to reproduce racism within the LGBTQ movement?

A major social process through which the LGBTQ community interacts is performance events such as musical events, comedy reviews, drag shows, annual festivals, etc. Surely there will be instances where it is impossible to incorporate an accurate cross-section of the community.

Sometimes interest is low and organizers have to book whatever performers they can get. Sometimes the number of performers is so limited that the ideal racial representation is not possible. These things are understandable. But when we see organizers of large-scale, mainstream events continue racial exclusivity year after year, we, as writer Aaron Talley put it, “continually swallow the complexities of being black and queer in this country into their narratives of restrictively safe whiteness.”

I am often reminded of the words of long-time Rhode Island Pride President Rodney Davis, “As we look around, noticing all the people who are with us, we must also ask ourselves, ‘Who is missing?'”

We are living in a time when racial awareness and social consciousness have been elevated to levels we haven’t seen in a generation. Let’s not wait until damage is done and people are left out to ask ourselves, “Who is missing?” Instead, let’s remind ourselves and each other to start asking “Who else will be there?” and let that inform our decisions as to what events we attend.

June 7, 2015June 7, 2015

Anthony Maselli’s Pride flag raising speech

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When I think of the millions of people around this country, and around the world who have put in countless hours of effort to bring the right to marry to queer people, I am thoughtful of the possibilities of what can be accomplished when oppressed humans and their allies come together to effect change.

When I think about our state, and the 30+ thousand people who will come here for Rhode Island Pride weekend, I feel overwhelmed and personally grateful that a lonely and isolated gay boy from a violent, fundamentalist household in Newington, Connecticut, could move to a city only 80 miles east, and find a home here with people who love and support me. For most of my life, I had no sense of connection to the terms “community” or “family”. It was a long and intense struggle, but finally, I have been able to find those things here.

For every one of me though, there are so many more who will never have that opportunity.

There’s a transgender girl out there living in darkness and depression, who will commit suicide before she can graduate high school, because her parents and her church will tell her that that which she has no control over is an abomination, and her classmates and teachers will convince her that she is a freak and a mistake.

There’s a queer Black young man out there who, unable to find intersectional support in a society of singular identity politics, has already given up on planning a future because the concurrence of being a racial and sexual minority places him in multiple zones of peril that frustrate any hope of achievement.

These are not isolated cases; and these are not hypothetical situations- these are American realities.

We have some questions we must ask ourselves:

How could we continue to advocate for marriage equality and LGBTQ inclusion in general, but remain afraid to discuss issues of gender and race within our own community?

How can a dialogue about the experiences of LGBTQ people of color inform our work within the larger queer communities?

How can our successes in advancing LGBTQ inclusion enhance our advocacy for racial and gender equity?

How can arguments for LGBTQ inclusion be used to shift our discussions about race and gender in creative and more effective directions?

By attending to these questions framed by intersectionality, we shift the dialogue to move beyond single labels for us all, and better advance a true and inclusive diversity agenda.

When I suggested the term “Indivisible” for this year’s Pride theme, I meant for it not simply to promote a sense of unity, but to really challenge us to ask these questions, to allow a conceptualization of diversity that moves beyond binary dimensions, and expands to include a three-dimensional sense of self and community.

In closing, I’m going to share with you one of my favorite quotes by Sir Winston Churchill as the rainbow pride flag is unfurled down these steps, but I first want to acknowledge all of the effort that has been made, and that will continue to be made, by some of the people here today.

At times we can become discouraged and lose hope at the slow speed of progress despite our fullest investment. Sometimes, we can put all of our energy behind a cause and still not be rewarded with visible change in our lifetime. But we continue to do it anyway. And it is words like these that encourage us to keep going:

What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone? How else can we put ourselves in harmonious relation with the great verities and consolations of the infinite and eternal? And I avow my faith that we are marching toward better days. Humanity will not be cast down. We are going on swinging bravely forward along the grand high road, and already behind the distant mountains is the promise of the sun.”