A word about our friends

Most of the blogging I’ve been doing these past few weeks — most of it, really, since opening up business at Henkimaa.com — has been about the Anchorage equal rights ordinance, which if passed would protect LGBT people from discrimination based solely on their sexual orientation or gender identity/expression in jobs, housing, financial practices, and Municipal practices. As you already know, those opposed to the proposed ordinance have come up with all manner of untenable arguments against it, which no matter how ridiculous & repetitive the Assembly has obligated itself to hear.

But this post isn’t actually about that. It’s about our friends.

I mean the nongay/nontrans allies who have stood up for us to testify for tolerance & equality with the Assembly, or have come out & joined in the sign-waving while the Assembly hearings have been going on, or have written letters to the editor or reader comments on the Anchorage Daily News website, or marched with us in last Saturday’s Pride parade, or given us their moral support in emails, on Facebook, on Twitter. Or all of the above.

Thank you. Thank you all.

I also want to add a special word to the Alaska progressive blogger community. They have been tremendous in three ways I can think of right off the top of my head:

A number of them have testified for the ordinance (Linda Kellen Biegel of Celtic Diva’s Blue Oasis & Shannyn Moore come immediately to mind) and/or taken part in some of the other stuff listed above in support of our fight for equal rights.

Bunches of them have written about the ordinance on their blogs. Celtic Diva’s Blue Oasis, Shannyn Moore, Phil Munger of Progressive Alaska; Gryphen of Immoral Minority; AKMuckraker of the Mudflats — to name but a few.  Heather James of SOSAnchorage.net and John Aronno also of SOSAnchorage.net (the good guys version) as well as Alaska Commons, both fairly new to the Alaska progressive blogosphere (as indeed I mainly am too) have been blogging almost wholly so far about the ordinance.  I can’t say how much the work of all these wonderful people has helped those of us bloggers — most prominently me & E. Ross of Bent Alaska — who as LGBT folks ourselves are most directly affected by this fight.  If it had only been us blogging about it, well, we’da been swamped. Not only  information-wise, but also in terms of morale. See my compilation post of last Thursday and my previous one of June 2 for just some of what all the Alaska progressive blogger community has been doing to help us in this battle for tolerance & equality.

They’ve continued meanwhile to do all the important work they do in service of the larger cause of governmental accountability in Alaska and the best interests of all Alaskans.  As important as the fight for LGBT equal rights is, these are important issues too. Please visit their blogs & support our friends in this important work.  Some of the stuff going on now:

• Linda Kellen Biegel at Celtic Diva’s Blue Oasis is fundraising to collect the $5,552.64 fee required by the Palin Administration to be “transparent” — to release records of potentially questionable conversations between the Palin Administration with “preferred” members of the media — like rightwing radio host Eddie Burke and “Alaska Ear” gossip columnist Sheila Toomey.  See Linda’s FAQ about the fundraiser here — & spare her a few bucks.  What a high fee for Sarah Palin’s much-vaunted “transparency,” eh?
• AKMuckraker at the Mudflats (AKMuckraker) is passing on info from Emmonak, where Dennis Zaki is reporting on continued efforts to bring much-needed assistance to Yukon River villages suffering from the a crisis in the Yukon’s king salmon fishery.
• Phil Munger at Progressive Alaska is calling  for support of Linda’s & Dennis’s work, & also writing in-depth about the corruption & mismanagement that led to the crisis on the Y-K Delta in the first place.

Those are only a few of the things going on at these & other progressive blogs.  And I am so grateful that they are doing this work, so that I can both stay informed, & can also be freed to devote my own writing/reporting energies to the ordinance battle right here in Anchorage.

Last week when I was liveblogging the June 16 Assembly meeting, I went out during a break to see what was going on outside the Loussac Library.  I wrote,

Let me tell you, my people know how to have a great time!  My people being not just LGBT but also our fantastic allies….

Since then the feeling has only widened & expanded that my people includes our allies as much as it does members of the LGBT community “proper.”  Thank you, friends & allies, for your unwavering support of equality & economic & civil justice not only for us LGBT folks, but for all Alaskans.