Marching for union rights for the Box Tree Inn NYC, 1993

My taking issue with problems surrounding me go way back. As a child I saw the effects of racism around me which included the race riots in Columbus in 1968 to Martin Luther King’s assassination to everything since, including the latest rash of killings of unarmed black men by police. As someone who was bullied I fought against that. Being my Mother was the victim of physical abuse I have taken very personally women’s issues, in particular violence towards women. As a worker who’s felt the short end of the stick and seen the abuses of workers by their employers I am passionate about the little guy. As a homosexual who has been beat in the streets and bullied and marginalized, I have fought for the rights for myself and my fellow humans in regard to human rights. Given my early teaching in regard to personal standards of ethics and decency, taught to me by my vaunted maternal Grandparents and their daughter, my Mother, with regard to the behaviors of those in charge of the citizen’s government, I take exception with those who would handle the people’s affairs in scurrilous fashions. I have marched in Washington D.C. for Women’s Rights, I have marched in MLK Day parades singing, arm in arm, ‘We Shall Overcome’. I have marched in Gay Pride parades in Columbus and NYC and in Columbus long ago when they were slightly attended and fearsome afterwards when you had to walk back to your car in the desolate downtown where bullies in cars driving by would hurl epithets and worse at you. I have belonged to two Unions, a restaurant union in NYC, H.E.R.E 100, where I was a shop steward at the Sea Grill restaurant at Rockefeller Center and the actor’s union, SAG-AFTRA.

My union buttons from NYC, with my Shop Steward button in the center, that which caused me nothing but grief from the restaurant management but which I wore proudly and in defiance of their anti-union actions toward the staff.

I have marched alone and in groups with like-minded fighters against those that would cause harm or subjugate their fellow human beings. We’re all children of God and nothing gives us the right to lord it over those of our fellow brothers and sisters. I am pro-women, anti-racism, pro-union, pro-Constitution, anti-authoritarian and pro-human rights. Period. Unapologetically.