New LGBTQ Alliance Forms
ASHEVILLE, NC - The meeting to discuss the Saturday nighttime assault of an anonymous gay male en route to O’ Henry’s on Haywood Street drew nearly 100 people to Firestorm Cafe and Books and led to the formation of a community action group, to be tentatively called the Safe Street Asheville Project, or SSAP.
The meeting was called in response not only to the Saturday incident, but to the e-mail response detailing similar attacks against other members of the Asheville LGBTQ community. Organizers of the event said the high turnout exceeded their expectations.
“There’s a good cross section of people from all different philosophical backgrounds here,” said Louise Newton, co-founder of Tranzmission and one of two members who e-mailed word of the meeting to the community. “Three days of e-mailing and 90 people show up? That’s great.”
Topics of discussion ranged from police discrimination and the absence of a city ordinance on hate crimes, to self-defense classes and setting up a 211 phone bank as a support system for survivors of hate-based crime.
“We should have any call go directly to the police, have it become a record,” said Michael Harney, Prevention Educator for the Western North Carolina Aids Project. “That way, if the call comes through as an LGBTQ hate crime report, the operator can really ask, ‘What do you need?’”
The meeting lasted more than two hours, collected at least $50 in contributions, and resulted in naming the group SSAP and the formation of focus groups to address specific aspects of the needs of the LGBTQ community.
“It’s most important to hit this issue from all angles,” Newton said. “I don’t think one tactic is more valuable than another.”
Newton said there was a definite need for a support group of this nature, considering having received at least an e-mail a day since the initial e-mail, each one describing a similar event to the Saturday attack. Newton said that many people were skeptical of the report of the Saturday incident and questioned whether it actually happened, and said that highlighted an even further need to educate people on the nature of these crimes.
“It’s why they put women on a jury in a rape case,” Newton said. “No one wants to believe it can happen to you.”
Among the groups represented at the meeting were Tranzmission, PFLAG, the WNC Leathermen, CLOSER, Sean’s Last Wish, WNCAP, the Matthew Shepard Foundation, Our Voice Rape Crisis Center and others, in addition to local media groups Out in Asheville, the Mountain Xpress, and the Asheville Citizen-Times.
Out in Asheville will be donating its services as hosts to the SSAP blog in the coming weeks on www.outinasheville.com, which will provide updates to members of the groups on developments and meeting times.
You can contact SSAP at safestreetsasheville@gmail.com for more information about the group