Queer Nation and RUSA LGBT Take Times Square!
More than 100 LGBT protestors and supporters braved the pouring rain to take to the streets in New York’s Times Square.
Protestors dumped cans and bottles of Coca-Cola into the sewer and crushed Coke cans to demand that The Coca-Cola Company end its sponsorship of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi.
Click the arrows on either side of the current photo to see more photos in the photo gallery.
MEDIA RELEASE
For Immediate Release: August 27, 2013
Contact:
Queer Nation NY
RUSA LGBT
LGBT Groups Demand that Coca-Cola End Sponsorship
of Olympic Games in Russia
New York, NY (August 27, 2013) — LGBT groups and supporters will stage a demonstration in Times Square on August 28, 2013 at 12:00 PM (noon) EDT (at West 46th Street and Broadway) to protest The Coca-Cola Company’s sponsorship of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi.
Gay groups charge the beverage giant of sponsoring hate and will dump Coke into the street and will crush Coke cans to protest of the company’s continuing silence on Russia’s anti-LGBT law and to demand that it immediately withdraw its corporate sponsorship of the Games. Protestors will use the hashtag #DumpCoke on all social media channels.
“By sponsoring the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Coca-Cola is associating its brands with state-sanctioned gay-bashing,” said Queer Nation co-founder Alan Klein. “Coca-Cola is sacrificing the safety and security of Russian LGBT people for profit – a position that opposes fundamental Olympic principles, runs counter to the International Olympic Committee charter, and that will tarnish its global image for decades to come.”
In June, the Russian government enacted its “anti-gay propaganda” law that bans any pro-LGBT statement or demonstration in public or private and on the Internet. The law makes being openly LGBT or being supportive of LGBT people a crime and caused a sharp rise in hate crimes in Russia. Brutal beatings of people perceived as gay have been widely reported as well.
Foreign nationals, including Olympic athletes and spectators, charged under the “anti-gay propaganda” law are subject to arrest, 15 days in jail, fines, and deportation. Russian authorities have already arrested and fined both citizens and visitors. Worldwide protests and boycotts of Russian products and of the Games were launched in response.
“Nations compete for the privilege of hosting the Games and Russia has squandered that privilege by targeting LGBT Russians for discrimination and violence,” said RUSA LGBT founder and co-president Yelena Goltsman, “With its sponsorship of the Games, Coca-Cola supports the Russian government’s LGBT discrimination.”
Queer Nation’s Klein added, “Sponsoring the Games gives legitimacy to the host nation and that is exactly what Coca-Cola did when it sponsored the 1936 Games in Nazi Germany. We hope that Coca-Cola does not ignore its own history and does the right thing by refusing to support another regime that targets groups for hatred.”
In addition to ending Coca-Cola’s sponsorship of the Games, LGBT groups demand that Coca-Cola implement the same employment non-discrimination policies and benefits packages that protect LGBT workers in the United States, in Russia. Activists further demand that Coca-Cola publish these policies not only in English, but also in Russian, and in the native languages of every country in which the company operates.
LGBT groups are issuing the following Statement of Demands to The Coca-Cola Company:
Coca-Cola must:
RUSA LGBT is a Russian-Speaking American LGBTQ association formed in 2008 to establish a network for those who identify with Russian-speaking and LGBTQ cultures. RUSA LGBT fights for social justice, human and civil rights for LGBTQ people in the United States and in the former Soviet Union. Website: www.rusalgbt.com Twitter: @RUSALGBT. Facebook.com/RUSA.LGBT.
Queer Nation is a direct action group dedicated to ending discrimination, violence and repression against the LGBT community. Website: www.queernationny.org.Twitter: @QueerNationNY. Facebook.com/qn.newyork.
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Protest Coke in Times Square!
Coke: Don’t Sponsor Hate!
The Coca-Cola Company is sponsoring Russian government hate at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. In June, Russia enacted its anti-gay propaganda law that bans any pro-LGBT statement in public or private and on the Internet. The Russian government has made being out and proud a crime.
Coke is a World Partner and a major sponsor of the Games.
Join Queer Nation NY and RUSA LGBT:
When: 12:00 noon, Wednesday, August 28
Where: Times Square, NYC. (At West 46th Street and Broadway.)
Follow us on Twitter for more information: @QueerNationNY
Tell Coke to stop supporting hate!
Hashtag: #DumpCoke
Facebook Event Page: Click here.
(Graphics by Ken Kidd, Gilbert Baker and Memeographs.)
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A look into LGBT life in Russia
Russian LGBT journalist and activist Masha Gessen on All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC.
Who: BoycottRussianVodka.com and Gays Without Borders
What: Picket line and speak out
Where: St Nicholas Cathedral
Location: 2005-15th Street, between Church and Market Streets
Date: Sunday, August 25, 2013
When: 11:00 AM
Protesters will peaceably challenge the Russian Orthodox Church in San Francisco over its support for Russia’s anti-homosexual propaganda law that has led to rising violence and anti-LGBT bigotry in that country.
Last night, about 100 people gathered at New York’s LGBT Community Center to talk about strategies for fighting Russia’s new law against “homosexual propaganda” — a measure that bans most forms of gay public expression. Attending the event, convened by the groups RUSA LGBT and Queer Nation, were about a dozen LGBT Russian New Yorkers, including both longtime residents and recent arrivals. With their American supporters, they discussed ideas ranging from vodka pour-outs to marches in front of New York’s Russian Orthodox churches — church leaders in Russia support the law — to campaigns against U.S. corporations, such as Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, that have a large presence in Russia and are sponsoring the upcoming Winter Olympics in Sochi.
We checked in with some of the Russian attendees to see how they feel about their country’s new crackdown on gays, what should be done about it, and where to get the best Russian food in New York City.
Read more by clicking here.
More than 150 people, including many Russians and Eastern European emigres engaged in this issue, gathered at The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center to discuss the Russian government’s continuing attacks on LGBT Russians and to plan a response to those attacks.
The August 14 meeting, which will be followed by an August 21 meeting at The Center, was organized by Queer Nation NY and opened with comments by Ann Northrop, a Queer Nation NY member, followed by presentations from Nina Long, the co-president of RUSA LGBT, a Russian-Speaking American LGBTQ association, and Roman Mamonov, a Russian TV anchor who was fired from his job after coming out. Mamonov left Russia in 2012 after receiving death threats and has applied for asylum in the U.S. Nancy Goldstein, who wrote “Sticking It to Sochi: Russian LGBT Activists on What Works” in The American Prospect, read a statement of support from Alexei Davydov, a gay Russian activist. Two videos that demonstrated the violence that LGBT Russians are enduring and the global response were shown.
Video 1: Euronews: Moscow gays assaulted during kissing protest
Video 2: CBS Evening News: Russia’s anti-gay laws spark backlash ahead of Olympics
The attendees included such community stalwarts as longtime gay and AIDS activist Andy Velez, journalist Andy Humm and Randy Wicker, who has been fighting for the community since before Stonewall, and much younger community members including a young Russian man who has been in the U.S. for just three weeks and a young Bostonian who recently returned from a trip to Ukraine. Brad Hoylman, the openly-gay state senator who represents the district that runs from 72nd Street to the West Village and from river to river in Manhattan, and Tom Duane, who held that seat for 14 years before Hoylman, were at the event. Also attending were longtime gay and AIDS activists Jamie Bauer and Ira Manhoff, attorney Joan Gibbs, and Michael Lucas of Lucas Entertainment, a film studio.
Following the presentations, attendees had a wide-ranging discussion about how the community should respond. There was support for a continuing boycott of Russian products, including Russian vodka, and the 2014 Winter Olympic Games at Sochi. Other ideas included pressing the New York City mayoral candidates to oppose the recently enacted Russian law that bans any pro-gay statements in public or private and on the Internet to pressing Andrew Cuomo, New York’s governor, to offer Lake Placid, the site of the 1980 Winter Olympic Games, as an alternative to Russia where the 2014 Games are scheduled to be held.
Other proposals included picketing the September 23 Opening Night Gala at the The Metropolitan Opera. The performers that evening will include soprano Anna Netrebko and conductor Valery Gergiev, both are supporters of Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president and a champion of the anti-gay law. Attendees also suggested denying U.S. travel visas to anti-gay Russian politicians and funneling money and support to LGBT activists in Russia. Duane proposed that he and a group travel to Russia to directly confront the anti-gay law. People also proposed targeting the sponsors of the 2014 Games.
After this discussion, attendees decided that they would produce an action following Queer Nation NY’s August 21 meeting, which will also be held at The Center and will feature author and journalist Masha Gessen, who is leaving Russia after 20 years because of the threats to her and her family.
Natalya Tsymbalova (right foreground) leads a march by the Alliance of Heterosexuals for LGBT Equality in St. Petersburg.
by Tom Balmforth
(Moscow - August 15, 2013) — As a heterosexual former army medic in the tough tank-producing town of Nizhny Tagil, Valentin Degteryov never imagined he’d be risking his life to champion gay rights.
But that all changed this year after he saw a series of videos, made by a local nationalist gang, showing gay men being bullied and tormented.
Degteryov, 43, launched an online campaign to shame the group that made the videos. He appealed repeatedly for the police to arrest them. He sent images of the abuse to international gay rights groups to rally support abroad.
His outspoken stance earned him threatening phone calls and nationalists have offered to pay a bounty to anyone who beats him up. But Degteryov wasn’t deterred. If anything, he became more vocal.
“In reality, strength lies with the people who don’t fear the fascists and the scum in this country — with people who will fight for the rights of any person,” he says. “Homosexuals are people too, just like me.”
Degteryov’s activism did not end the group’s abuse of gay men. But his unlikely stand for gay rights in his rough-and-tumble industrial hometown in Russia’s Urals region is significant in itself at a time when homophobia is on the rise across the country.
Russia is witnessing a 15-year high in homophobia and an uptick in violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) groups, according to sociologists who point the blame at controversial new legislation such as the law imposing hefty fines for exposing minors to so-called “gay propaganda.”
Straight activists like Degteryov are the other side of the story. They show how even in the conservative heartland, gay rights are gaining some traction among straight Russians.
‘Two Sides To The Coin’
Another example is Natalya Tsymbalova, 36, who works in public relations in St. Petersburg and founded the Alliance of Heterosexuals for LGBT Equality out of solidarity with her gay and lesbian friends.
Tsymbalova believes that recent “antigay” legislation has conversely spawned a fledgling movement of straights campaigning for gay rights.
“There are two sides to the coin,” she says. “Two processes that have happened in parallel. On the one hand, the homophobic state policy has hardened homophobic attitudes in society. The polls show more negative attitudes toward gays and lesbians. On the other hand, this wave of antigay legislation has provoked protest from socially active people who are liberal and tolerant.”
Tsymbalova points to her own group, which she founded in June last year, shortly after a local law outlawing “gay propaganda” was passed by the St. Petersburg legislature.
A few dozen of the group’s heterosexual activists coordinate gay-rights protests in the city for its almost 10,000 social-network members.
The organization is now spreading to Moscow through people like Ivan Simochkin, a freelance computer programmer in the capital. Like many group members, Simochkin became interested in LGBT rights after he made friends with a gay Muscovite who takes part in gay-pride marches.
“When I first met him, I didn’t know about the existing problems,” he says. “Gradually, I began to take an interest and I saw just how insane and unjust the situation was. I couldn’t stand by. I wanted to help somehow. And all this time I dreamed that there would be an organization where it wouldn’t be just gays and lesbians defending themselves, but one in which heterosexuals also acted in solidarity with them and helped defend and protect them.”
Pages on social networks like Facebook and VKontakte have also been set up to express straight solidarity with gays.
Spike In Homophobia
Maria Plotko of the Levada Center said that recent legislation on homosexuals has made Russians who were previously indifferent about LGBT issues hostile to them.
If in 2005, more than half of Russians believed that lesbians, gays, bisexual, or transgender people deserve the same rights as straights, now only 39 percent do, according to the Levada Center’s most recent poll.
In May the pollster found that 35 percent of Russians believe homosexuality to be a disease, while 43 percent see it as resulting from a lack of discipline or simply as a bad habit, the highest level in the center’s 15 years of polling.
An overwhelming majority of Russians support the law against gay propaganda and even opposition figures are reluctant to take up the issue.
Significantly, none of the six candidates competing in the September 8 Moscow mayoral elections have broached the issue of gay rights, except in a pejorative sense. Mikhail Degtyaryov of the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia suggested polygraphing mayoral candidates in order to screen them for homosexuality, “betrayal of the motherland,” drug-taking, or soliciting bribes.
Tsymbalova is under no illusions of the battle she is signing up for. She sees her alliance as the first step in a long tussle that has a long way to go.
“Now this law has gone deeper — now that it has been passed on a federal level there is a whole wave of homophobia from the state,” she says. “I don’t know how it will end and what it will bring. I think we are just at the beginning of our journey.”
# # #
(via home-dumprussianvodka)
Queer Nation Demands 2014 Winter Games in Sochi Be Moved
New York, NY (August 12, 2013) — Today RIA Novosti, Russia’s official news agency, reported that Russia’s Interior Ministry will enforce a recently enacted law that bars any pro-gay statements in public, private or on the Internet during the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. Queer Nation demands that the law be repealed or that the Games be moved.
With this statement, Russian authorities have removed all doubt that this law will be enforced during the Games. All participants — athletes and spectators alike — at the Games will be subject to arrest, fines and deportation if they make any pro-gay statements or engage in any pro-gay demonstrations.
“If an athlete wears a rainbow pin, that athlete will be arrested, fined and deported,” said Alan Klein, a co-founder of Queer Nation. “If a lesbian couple hold hands in Sochi, they will be arrested, fined and deported. If a gay male couple post a picture of themselves holding hands on Facebook or any social media site, they will be arrested, fined and deported.”
Klein continued, “The Russian government has done nothing to curb the continuing violence perpetrated against LGBT people in Russia and sanctions such violence by its inaction. Any athlete or spectator at the Games could also be subject to brutal attacks.”
Queer Nation is a direct action group dedicated to ending discrimination, violence and repression against the LGBT community.
Contact us at info [at] queernationny.org.
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