LGBTs occupying ‘Occupy’

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http://lgbtweekly.com/2011/12/08/lgbts-occupying-occupy/



It’s a Sunday afternoon in mid-November, and I’m walking into downtown’s Civic Center Plaza, renamed Freedom Square by occupiers, members of the larger Occupy Wall Street movement, which is seeking to redress the nation’s economic and political inequality. As I make my way through the jumble of pedestrians, occupiers and police, I find 26-year-old, gay, college student Michael Basillas sitting on a row of stairs, surrounded by a dozen occupiers, speaking through a bull-horn, reading Occupy Wall Street’s “Declaration of the Occupation of New York City,” a list of grievances written by New York occupiers. I turn away, walk a few feet and approach a circle of people sitting near by. Cecile Veillard, 34-year-old, bisexual and president of the San Diego Alliance for Marriage Equality (SAME) is speaking about general Occupy community issues. A few minutes later, I walk to the east side of the square. There I find Michelle “Jersey” Deutsch, 26-year-old, transgender, field director for Canvas for a Cause (CFAC) taking a break from gathering signatures for a petition for the City Council to endorse a space for local occupiers.

Clearly, if anything can be said about this picture, it’s that LGBT individuals are involved in the day-to-day affairs and coordination of the local sect of the Occupy Wall Street movement, known as Occupy San Diego, which began in early October.

“Definitely a high, for me personally, is the LGBT involvement in this movement,” Deutsch said, estimating that approximately 50 percent of the occupiers at the square at any given moment are LGBT (Veillard gives a more conservative figure, guessing that 20-30 percent of occupiers are LGBT).

“It runs very deep,” Veillard said. “There are LGBT people who work at Occupy every day.”

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