STRANGLEHOLD BULLYING POLITICS

      This year’s Philadelphia Fight AIDS Education Month opening reception and award ceremony at the Independence Visitor Center was a special event for many reasons.

       Philadelphia Fight, which offers primary care and research on potential treatments and vaccines, has been in operation since 1990. Philadelphia Fight was there when the AIDS crises in the city was at its height, and it has weathered—as Philadelphia Fight CEO Jane Shull commented in her opening remarks—a number of less than friendly United States presidents, from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush. Shull added that Fight will even survive the term(s) of the current U.S. president.   

       While my political opinions may be different than Jane Shull’s, what she says has merit. The message of Philadelphia Fight cannot be lauded enough. This was made evidently clear at the organization’s annual award ceremony when the Kiyoshi Kuromiya Award for Prevention, Treatment, and Justice, went to Elvis Rosado, a case manager for Prevention Point Philadelphia. Rosado shared this year’s award with Lee Carson, the current Director of the Philadelphia Area Sexual Health Initiative (PASHI).

   Rosado, on accepting the award, seemed close to tears and said to him it was like winning the Pulitzer Prize. I had heard Rosado speak about Prevention Point Philadelphia last year at a presentation at the Port Richmond Library. His   talk at that time was robust and motivational.

           Shull began the proceedings with a detailed account of Kiyoshi Kuromiya’s life. Kuromiya was a polymath/activist, an extraordinary communicator and founder of Critical Path, which provided free access to the Internet to scores of people living with HIV in Philadelphia. He was also a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front-Philadelphia. GLF Philadelphia was much more than an organization dedicated to fighting for gay rights but its extended umbrella included outreach to welfare mothers and black civil rights issues. Kuromiya gave the first national speech on gay liberation at the September 1970 Black Panther Convention held in Philadelphia.

         This was no small task, because in those days the Gay Liberation Front was not embraced by most in the Black Panther party.

          As a young GLF Boston activist, I traveled to Washington DC for the follow up BPP Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention in November 1970 and witnessed first hand the divisiveness among the radical groups in attendance. GLF may have been embraced by Huey Newton, the BPP Minister of Defense, but Newton was only one Panther among many. The Washington DC convention was deemed a failure because it did not ratify the proposals worked out in Philadelphia

     Shull’s talk about Kuromiya reminded me of stories I heard about him through the years, like how good he was at reading Tarot cards. There seemed to be nothing that this Japanese American could not do. Kuromiya even joined a group of activists who attempted to levitate the Pentagon during the 1968 Democratic Convention. I also learned that he stood directly behind Martin Luther King when the latter delivered his “I have a dream” speech.

      Jane Shull’s talk did something else: it reminded me of the 2017 attack on her and Philadelphia Fight by a former Fight outreach worker who called on Shull to resign. The outreach worker sent an email to Fight employees on her last day of work accusing Shull of cultivating a “culture of intimidation” when it came to people of color. The worker charged the organization with denying pay raises and promotions to people of color.

         I tried to piece together these accusations with what I saw at the ceremony, and nothing fit. The grassroots, over the top racially diverse Fight reception could have been a movie prop for a leftist progressive utopia. It just doesn’t get any better than Philadelphia Fight when it comes to racial diversity, the polar opposite of the image Fight’s accuser attempted to conjure up.

           The heat against Shull in 2017 was so nasty that a small band of angry activists spotted her in the street and then followed (or chased) her into the lobby of a building where they then confronted her with bullhorn rhetoric and public shaming.

      The stunned look on Shull’s face spoke volumes—it was the picture of someone being bullied and harassed. After reports of the bullying attack went viral, critics of the gay and lesbian movement wasted no time in rhapsodizing: “Look how the LGBTQ community cannibalizes itself!”

     

        I felt even more empathy for former Philadelphia Director of LGBT Affairs Nellie Fitzpatrick when she was forced to resign after an event she attended at the Hard Rock Café was raided by the same activist group that approached Jane Shull.

         A You Tube video of that assault shows a startled and emotionally demolished Fitzpatrick trying to make sense of the encounter, as if she was trying to decipher the language of space aliens who had just kidnapped her.  Fitzpatrick was at the Café to receive an award as a trailblazer when the group, twenty strong with bullhorns, urged her to resign over a “lack of credibility.”

           “It’s a new political era,” one man screamed, meaning of course, if you don’t do as we say or believe what we believe, we will shut you down.

           Just shut you down and walk away. That’s the language of bullies.

           But shut down Fitzpatrick they did because in no time she resigned as Director of LGBT Affairs. The thugs got their way. This was one of the most shameful moments in LGBT Philadelphia history. Instead of sticking by Fitzpatrick, the “hidden” powers that be at City Hall arranged for her resignation. Fitzpatrick said during an interview:      

          

“It was not my decision, but I was very happy to move on. My tenure with the office has come to its natural conclusion, and I am excited to return to the practice of law, which was always my intent, and to continue serving the LGBT community through new ventures. “

     Where were Fitzpatrick’s allies? Why didn’t the bulk of the gay and lesbian community (who had no problem with Fitzpatrick) stand up and defend her? Pulverized into silence (for fear of being called a bad name), the community was largely silent, afraid to speak up against a clear cut case of harassment and bullying.   

          

    The group that attacked Shull and forced Fitzpatrick to resign was nowhere near the unified and harmonious Philadelphia Fight festivities that took place at the Independence Visitor Center.  Whatever beef this group had with Philadelphia Fight had apparently dissipated like last year’s dirty runoff sewer water.   

       When Shull made the remark that Philadelphia Fight has survived several “hostile” U.S. presidents, she could also have added, “And it also survived one hostile LGBT activist group.”

          Yes, I think it’s more certain than ever that Philadelphia Fight will survive them all.

         ---From The Philadelphia Free Press, June 13, 2018

                          City Safari by Thom Nickels