Jimmy Van Bramer, Tom Duane, Christine Quinn & Danny Dromm

When the Working Families Party burst on the scene a decade ago, I was excited to see a new political party in New York that was explicitly committed to pursuing a progressive political agenda. The WFP seemed like a refreshing alternative to politics as usual, especially politics in the borough of Queens, which remains dominated by the Queens County Democratic Party organization, a.k.a., ‘the Queens machine.’

New York is unusual in permitting candidates to run on more than one party line — sometimes called ‘fusion voting‘ — which gives small third parties such as the Conservative Party an influence disproportionate to their size, enabling it to anchor the Republican Party on the right and prevent a drift to the center. Unfortunately, until the formation of the WFP ten years ago, there was no countervailing force on the opposite end of the political spectrum. With the debut of the WFP, there appeared to be  a progressive party capable of influencing public policy through its ability to hold the Democratic Party accountable for its choices of candidates. The Working Families Party’s stated public policy agenda is a progressive one: affordable housing, good jobs at living wages, green jobs and green homes, universal health care, clean elections, and ‘the extension of civil rights to gays and lesbians,’ including marriage equality

Over the years, I have voted for many WFP candidates, including those who ran on both the Democratic and WFP lines, in order to support an alternative to the Democratic Party machine. But no more. November 2009 represented the moment at which the scales fell from my eyes.

Two things happened. First, the WFP has endorsed several candidates who were clearly not the progressive choice in their races. While the party made some very good choices in the 2009 election cycle, endorsing Bill Thompson for mayor of New York (who ultimately lost to incumbent Michael R. Bloomberg) and Richard Aborn for Manhattan District Attorney (who unfortunately lost his primary race in September) as well as Bill de Blasio for New York City Public Advocate and John Liu for City Comptroller (both of whom went on to win both their primary races and the general election), the WFP also endorsed Daniel (‘Danny’) Dromm over incumbent Helen Sears in the 25th Council District in Queens and Jimmy Van Bramer over Deirdre Feerick in the 26th Council District in Queens, as well as Council Speaker Christine Quinn over insurgent Yetta Kurland in the 3rd Council District in Manhattan. Other problematic candidates that the WFP endorsed in 2009 include Elizabeth Crowley (the incumbent Democratic Council Member representing the 30th Council District in Queens) and James Oddo (the incumbent Republican Council Member representing the 30th Council District in Queens).

Second, the WFP set up Data and Field Services, a secretive private company used manage field operations for the party’s endorsed candidates. In early December 2009, City Hall News published “All In The Family,” a five-part investigative series posted to www.cityhallnews.com about the Working Families Party. As City Hall explains, the party has created a web of party organs that work in tandem to help elect its candidates. “There are, in fact, four arms: a political party, a for-profit and two different kinds of non-profits, each of which is separate and distinct under the law,” as Edward-Isaac Dovere explained in part one of the investigative series. “While standing for ethics in government and campaign finance reform, Working Families has non-profits groups and a for-profit entity that lack donation caps, disclosure requirements (in terms of frequency and detail) and other regulations that political parties face. Leading politicians, political operatives and other experts complain that Party-supported candidates are as a result given an unfair advantage over their rivals,” Dovere adds, noting that the WFP’s organizational structure is unprecedented not only in New York state politics but anywhere in the United States.

the Working Families Party structure (courtesy of City Hall News)

The complicated structure of the Working Families Party raises serious questions about its commitment to ‘clean elections,’ as stated in its public policy agenda, rife as it is with potential conflicts of interest. There remain lingering questions about the WFP, as City Hall News editorialized on Dec. 15. “There is legal, and there is right. The Working Families should be living up to both,” City Hall News declared. “And enough people have their doubts about whether the leadership needs to do more than simply pay Skadden Arps to do a private review. There need to be some explanations publicly, and directly from the leadership.” Indeed.

There are implications for the LGBT community as well, since the WFP helped elect the first two openly gay elected officials in Queens, Daniel Dromm and Jimmy Van Bramer, who take office in January as Council Members representing the 25th and 26th Council Districts in Queens, including the district I live in (the 25th). While neither Dromm nor Van Bramer have been charged with any crime or indicted (as of yet), they have both been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors investigating the WFP scandal. And barring unforeseen circumstances, the openly lesbian Chris Quinn will almost certainly be re-elected Speaker by her City Council colleagues, continuing her role as the second most powerful person in New York City government, with its budget of $59.4 billion, which is larger than that of all but two states — California and New York State itself.

Given that Quinn herself is at the heart of a slush fund scandal in which Council staff members have already been indicted for illegal activity, the WFP’s support for her in the September 2009 Democratic primary and November 2009 general election must be accounted one of the most cynical choices in the relatively short history of an increasingly cynical party, whose values seem to be much closer to those of the Queens machine than I ever imagined.

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It is important to point out that neither Cleve Jones nor David Mixner — the unelected, self-appointed leaders of their very own LGBT movement — consulted with a single state or local organization before putting themselves at the head of the parade, as it were; they are now asking (demanding, really) for support for this ill-conceived mess of a ‘march’ that at best will yield no positive results for the community.

It’s also important to point out that Jones & Mixner called this march before securing permits. Given the reputation of the Washington, D.C. police for police brutality, to send youth, seniors, transgendered people and people with disabilities to a non-permitted march and put them in a position of being vulnerable to arrest and imprisonment in my view was simply unethical — all the more so since Jones & Mixner have not been honest about the permit situation or its implications for vulnerable members of our community.

It’s also important to point out that there is no structure for financial accountability for the money being donated to this march, which is so reminiscent of the Millenium March; that event took place in 2000, but there has still been no accounting for the finances for that march a full nine years later. (The Millenium March board was actually investigated by the FBI for fraud, but no one — unfortunately — was prosecuted for it.) I’m going to go out on a limb and make a prediction here: we will never know how the donations now being solicited by Mixner & Jones were actually used, because they will never tell us.

It is an unusual experience for me to be in agreement with Barney Frank, but I have to agree with him on this: this ‘march’ will not accomplish anything positive for the LGBT community. It’s important to point out that no national LGBT march on Washington has ever moved legislation; the inclusive ENDA & federal hate crimes bills are already moving forward, and there are more effective ways of advancing legislation to repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell (DADT).

What the march will do is divert scarce resources from those state and local organizations doing the real work of the movement just at a moment when they most need resources because of the recession. In fact, a lot of state and local organizations already have events planned for Oct 11 — which is National Coming Out Day — and so the scheduling of this march on that day will force many of those organizations to choose between continuing to organize events in their home communities or send members to Washington.

It is the height of arrogance for Jones & Mixner to claim that this march will help organize the community at the state and local level. In fact, there is already a strong infrastructure at the state level — the Equality Federation (formerly, the Federation of Statewide LGBT Advocacy Organizations). At the Equality Federation annual summer meeting in St. Louis earlier this month, representatives of statewide LGBT advocacy organizations from across the country held one meeting specifically to discuss Cleve Jones’ appeal to the Federation to endorse the march; while a few people spoke in favor, the overwhelming majority opposed the march and urged Toni Broaddus (the Federation’s executive director) to issue a statement distancing the Federation from it, which she did in an op-ed in the Washington Blade.

There are serious process issues with this march as well as substantive, stragetic and tactical issues, as indicated by Steve Ault in his op-ed for Gay City News. Steve was co-coordinator of the first National March on Washington for Lesbian & Gay Rights in 1979 (which I participated in), and co-chair of the second in 1987, and his analysis of the march should be carefully considered by anyone thinking about heading to Washington on Oct. 11. 

It is becoming increasingly apparent to me that this non-event will do little if anything to advance marriage equality, transgender rights or any of the other important elements of the LGBT movement’s agenda. If you do want to advance marriage equality, go to Maine. We have the chance to win full marriage rights at the ballot box for the first time in the history of the United States, but that will only come through work in Maine, not from an ill-timed and ill-conceived national march on Washington.

As an openly transgendered woman of color, I feel compelled to point out that the march was called and is being pushed by two gay white men with no consultation whatsoever with members of the community they claim to represent. A ‘march’ that purports to represent the entire LGBT community but whose organizers have excluded youth, women, transgendered and bisexual people and people of color from any significant decision-making role in the planning process is a march that lacks any legitimacy in claiming to represent me, and I cannot support it.

Do not be deceived by the propaganda coming from the head honchos: this ‘march’ is not a grassroots effort in any meaningful sense of the term; this is not a road trip, it’s an ego trip.

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