Slog News & Arts

Line Out

Music & Nightlife

« Traffic Super Cops | It's All Over »

Thursday, May 3, 2007

Tom Rasmussen and Sally Clark Call SOaP and LGBT Community Center in for Meeting at City Hall

posted by on May 3 at 16:05 PM

Tom Rasmussen and Sally Clark—the two gay members of the Seattle City Council—have invited SOaP, the group planning the downtown pride parade, and Shannon Thomas of the LGBT Community Center, the organization that hoped to move the parade back to Capitol Hill, to City Hall for an early-morning meeting tomorrow morning.

“We decided to get together with the people planning pride events,” Rasmussen told me on the phone a moment ago, “to get updated on what everone’s plans are and hear them out. We want to see whether there is conflict, and then see if we can help resolve any outstanding issues.”

Clark and Rasmussen hope the 8 AM meeting can convince both groups to work together on one event.

“It gets very complicated very quickly, particularly for community groups, when there are two parades or festivals over two different days in two different locations,” says Rasmussen. “They have to get volunteers and materials and staff to two different places, and that’s taxing. Ideally we should have one event. Most communities have one parade. A festival may go over a cople of days, but there’s one parade.”

If Rasmussen and Clark can’t convince the groups to work together on one event—and that seems highly unlikely considering the bad blood between the groups, and the efforts of the LGBT Community Center to undermine SOaP’s events last year—they hope to convince both groups, “to be as supportive as they can of each other’s activities.”

“My goal is to have everyone agree to some set of principles that says they’ll all if not collaborate, then at least not undermine other events,” Sally Clark wrote in an email. “There’s just not that much time left between now and Pride weekend. Time would be best spent putting together a great weekend of events—events that compliment and feed into each other.

What happens in 2008 is another question,” Clark added.

Rasmussen wasn’t a passionate supporter of the SOaP’s decision to move the parade downtown last year.

“When the debate was going on last year I wasn’t sure there would be enough energy or enough of a crowd to be really be impactful,” he says. “But I was there and I was just blown away by the parade on Fourth Avenue. It was fantastic, it was just great.

“I loved having it downtown,” Rasmussen continued. “I thought it was really successful and tons of fun. But the main thing now is that we have a good pride festival and parade wherever it takes place. It would not be a good statement about the community, or a good sign, if we had no parade at all.”

As for SOaP’s debt, Rasmussen has been sounding people out about hosting a fundraiser to help retire some of the debt—with whatever money was collected going directly to Seattle Center, not to SOaP.

“I thought the downtown parade last year and the celebration at Seattle Center were both great events,” he said, “and no one charged me to be in it, and most of the people that participated that day didn’t pay a thing. So now the organization is left with all this debt. It seems only fair that people help pay for something that they participated in and enjoyed.”

RSS icon Comments

1

What? The LGBT Community Center agreed to meet with Tom, Sally, and SOaP off of Capitol Hill? For shame, Shannon, for shame!

Posted by Not Coming This Year | May 3, 2007 4:26 PM
2

What a shockingly reasonable idea.

Posted by Mark Mitchell | May 3, 2007 4:45 PM
3

what's there to negotiate? SOaP does the parade on Sunday followed by other events being planned for afterwards downtown, LGBT Center does Queer Fest on Saturday as they did last year. Seems easy, unless Shannon and the LGBT Center are planning on trying to move to their shit to Sunday in order to further undercut SOaP to benefit her paid position, which she has been trying to do for a while now.

Posted by Frank | May 3, 2007 5:07 PM
4

I support Tom's position: We should have one parade, and one festival. But the parade should be downtown, followed by a SHORT-ish rally at Seattle Center. The festival should be on the hill. And the LGBT Community Discord Generator can have it.

Posted by EXTC | May 3, 2007 5:23 PM
5

I'd pay $50.

Posted by Transit Man | May 3, 2007 6:08 PM
6

Thismeeting downtown is the first piece of news about this debacle that makes sense. Dan grossly underestimates the ability of these two groups to do the right thing.

The Center in not, has never been, the villian here. They were willing to step up when SOAP imploded. Which it did. Which anyone who had any dealings with them could see from miles and miles away from day one. Every bit of wrong in this situation can be traced back to SOAP's incompetencce.

Hopefully this meeting tomorrow can begin to fix things.

Posted by dr. thompkins | May 3, 2007 9:01 PM
7

The LGBT Community Center (or the LGBT Community Discord Generator) did all it could to make sure SOaP would implode this year. They created a rival event and promoted it as such--encouraging people to come to the hill parade and skip the downtown parade. They helped to foster a sense of controversy that scared traditional sponsors away from the parade, making SOaP's financial hole much worse than it would have been otherwise.

Of course they were willing to "step up" when SOaP looked to be imploding. It was their intent all along to off SOaP and take over. Did you see the email Dan Savage posted? Case flipping closed.

I used to write checks to the LGBT Community Center. Never again. I think Shannon Thomas has behaved shamefully. And I don't see how SOaP can "work with" an organization lead by someone that worked so hard to destroy SOaP.

Posted by Not Coming This Year | May 3, 2007 9:17 PM
8

Brilliant.

The parade has always been a bit of a mishmash, and the behind the scenes politicizing and bickering has been a hallmark of Pride planning for decades. But this intense rivalry between SOaP and the LGBT Community center has raised the level of discord to truly stupid and self destructive levels. The LGBT Community Center's efforts to actively sabotage the downtown parade last year, and their nearly gleeful pouncing on SOaP's corpse before the body was even dead last week are appalling.

Yeah, yeah, Shannon, we get that you want the parade on Capitol Hill. But that issue is settled. It is going to be downtown. If you don't want to participate, fine. But do you run the LGBT Center for the benefit of all of Seattle, or solely for the queers and bars on Capitol Hill? If you purport to be working for the benefit of all the queers in the city, then the least you could do is not sabotage the efforts of SOaP.

Sadly, of course, she won't listen to me. I'm nobody. Just one homo that doesn't live on the hill, so I'm irrelevant.

So I'm glad that Rasmussen and Clark are going to sit both parties down. They seem like the only people with enough power and influence to knock some sense into both parties.

Posted by SDA in SEA | May 3, 2007 9:42 PM
9

That's insane.

Deflecting blame from SOAP is just crazy. There is no one to blame for SOAP's ineptitude but SOAP itself.

The Center responded to a significant portion of the community that wanted a parade on Broadway. That event was not "pathetic", it was a packed street full of happy queers celebrating Pride. The difference is that the center didn't leave behind $100,00+ in debt, they didn't leave small vendors in the lurch, they didn't disgrace themselves and the gay and lesbian population of Seattle.

SOAP has created strife, chaos and disunity. Their actions got us here. And theirs alone.

Posted by dr. thompkins | May 4, 2007 5:58 AM
10

No, that's bullshit, Dr. T. SOaP had problems, no question. And the LGBT Community Discord Generator, which is a nice name and I hope it sticks, did all it could to make them worse.

And I at the Saturday night event last year. It was a pathetic, poorly-attended mess. It was also grafted on to the Dyke Parade, which was dishonest -- and par for the course. The difference between SOaP's event last year and the pathetic Queer Fest/Temper Tantrum was that the downtown events were, like Tom Rasmussen said, a huge success.

SOaP had a vision. LGBT Discord Center had an agenda. SOaP, like every committee that has ever run the pride parade, screwed up. But the Discord Center worked like hell to make sure the damage was worse than it needed to be.

Posted by Not Coming This Year | May 4, 2007 7:24 AM
11

Actually # 9 if you look at this OBJECTIVELY then you'll see that there's two sides to every story, SOAP's and LGBT's... and there's plenty of blame to go around. I say support them both, enjoy PRIDE and stop trying to place blame.

Posted by Stewie | May 4, 2007 7:30 AM
12

Actually # 9 if you look at this OBJECTIVELY then you'll see that there's two sides to every story, SOAP's and LGBT's... and there's plenty of blame to go around. I say support them both, enjoy PRIDE and stop trying to place blame.

Posted by Stewie | May 4, 2007 7:30 AM
13

I'm so disillusioned... before I came out, I believed the gay community to be an entity that supported it's own, and stands united against oppression and intolerance. Instead, I find bitchy queens that would slit each other's throats at the drop of a hat.

"Homosexual Agenda" indeed.

Posted by Colin | May 4, 2007 9:20 AM
14

uh, yeah...

ALL sides are at fault here.

SoAP handeled the transition from Cap Hill to DT, POORLY and then were fiscally irresponsible and naive.

The Center/SGN/Cap Hill business interests helped turn this into an us versus them situation.

The lgbt community is at fault for not supporting the community with their time and money and focusing too much on back-biting and bitchery.

Posted by smithers | May 4, 2007 9:25 AM
15

pay card debts credit

Posted by credit card debts settle | May 12, 2007 8:37 AM
16

pay card debts credit

Posted by credit card debts settle | May 12, 2007 8:37 AM

Comments Closed

In order to combat spam, we are no longer accepting comments on this post (or any post more than 14 days old).