Queer Superheroes Hold First Meeting

Last night I attended the first organizational meeting of the Queer Justice League, where about 100 activists gathered to discuss the purpose, structure, rules and procedures of the group. During an interesting opening exercise, attendees were asked to give their first names, preferred gender pronoun, and a one-word description of their mood about the meeting. Curious, optimistic, hopeful, ready, excited, intrigued, angry, and anxious were the most common responses. Very LiveJournal.

Although the meeting got bogged down in the discussion regarding rules and procedures, including a hearty debate on the nature of Robert's Rules Of Order, the room was alive with a sense of bottled-up impatience, a palpable need to these folks to become part of something bigger than themselves.

Longtime activist Ann Northrop suggested that the meeting was a reflection of "Our need to reclaim our self-respect and our place in the world." Larry Kramer concurred, saying, "There is an enormous amount of interest and energy out there. All eyes are on us." As this was the first meeting, most of the time was eaten by discussion of the purpose of the group, with questions about a mission statement, tactics, structure, outreach to non-activists, and the group's relationship to ACT-UP among those raised.

The next meeting of Queer Justice League takes place Thursday, April 19th at 7pm in the LGBT Community Center.

RELATED: I left the QJL meeting after ninety minutes to catch the end of the New York Boys Of Leather (NYboL) taking place in the basement. The tiny NYboL meeting had decided different tenor than the one upstairs, with discussion about car washes, beach parties, fundraisers, Folsom, IML, and a safer sex conference. Then the boys voted to extend the lease on their basement meeting space because they dug its "dungeon feel."