many other folks have a hard time accepting is that a group of
individuals can join together and form a political party and
perate under any rules they want to agree to." As Eva well knows,
in order for any chartered DFL Party organization to use the
name "DFL" in their name, they must not work against the Party's
endorsed candidates.
I'm a former Board member of the DFL Feminist Caucus and
as I recall, we always asked the "endorsement question" too. I
think they still do. Chartered party organizations like the Feminist
Caucus and Stonewall DFL don't purport to represent all
feminists or all glbt & glbt friends: their constituency is the
members
of these groups that identify as DFLers. Did the Feminist Caucus
endorse anti-choice DFLers? Nope. Sometimes we took a pass,
when the Party endorsed candidates whose positions we disagreed
with on important issues differed from ours. We worked like hell to
get our candidates endorsed, and if they were not, we took a
second look at the candidate the Party backed. Sometimes that
candidate's views were acceptable enough to us that we could
then endorse them. Other times we took a pass and worked on
other races. The same is true of Stonewall (of which I'm a member,
albeit not an active one). That's the nice thing about electoral
politics -- there's always another race to work on.
Eva Young has repeatedly referred to "being thrown out of the
DFL." I'd like to set the record straight.
At the time Arne Carlson was running for Governor, I chaired
the 60th District DFL Central Committee (now the 61st District).
Eva was a Director of the organization.
Several members of our Central Committee witnessed Eva and
her friend Vicki Oace campaigning for Arne Carlson literature.
They were understandably taken aback, and requested that I ask
for her resignation from her position as a party officer. This was
clearly a no-brainer: party officers just don't campaign for the
election of candidates of other political parties. (As an aside: this
is the same Vicki Oace whom Eva quotes as not thinking that
Stonewall should ask candidates if they'll abide by the party's
endorsement. Obviously Ms. Oace, with her track record of
supporting Republicans, is not a credible source on the matter of
how DFL-chartered organizations should run themselves.)
In terms of Eva's current affiliation with the Republicans: it seems
to me that there are so many problems in the Republican Party in
Minneapolis (IS there a Republican Party in Minneapolis?) that
trying to build any type of organization would keep even someone
with Eva's incredible energy and vast talents busy. I mean that
sincerely, having worked on several campaigns with Eva in the
past. Eva, if you are dissatisfied with your venture into Republic-
anism, come on back to a party that actually values the contribu-
tions of ALL people, including glbt ones. But it's a lot harder to
work on building a party, be it the nearly-nonexistent Minneapolis
Republican Party or the thriving Minneapolis DFL, than it is to
stand outside and throw stones at it.
I'm glad that there's so much discussion of Stonewall's practices:
it shows that this crucial organization is thriving!
Michele St. Martin
Bryant Neighborhood, 61B
