May 1, 2014 Edition of the Bay Area Reporter

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East Bay car dealership sued

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Local man behind Uganda flag action

ARTS

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SFIFF, week 2

The

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Serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities since 1971

SJ Pride rebrands itself by Heather Cassell

I

t’s a new day for San Jose Pride as the organization changes its name to Silicon Valley Pride for a more inclusive South Bay focus. There hasn’t been a big splashy affair to roll out the rebranding of the South Bay’s Jo-Lynn Otto Pride festival, but Silicon Valley Pride there are big changes board President afoot within the orga- Thaddeus Campbell nization. The Gay Pride Celebration Committee of San Jose Inc., commonly known as San Jose Pride, officially filed its legal name change to Silicon Valley Pride with the Santa Clara County Registrar’s Office in January, according to the registrar’s office. A new board has been actively engaged in developing the new branding of Silicon Valley Pride, while planning events and gearing up for the 39th annual celebration. This year’s festival will take place Sunday, August 17 at Discovery Meadow in San Jose, the same venue as previous festivals. A theme for this year has not yet been selected. “We want to take a different direction and a new approach and get more community involvement and more community input,” said interim Pride board President Thaddeus Campbell, a 58-year-old gay man who is serving his first year on the board. “We want to be more inclusive of the other cities around San Jose. We have to reach out and bring in the cities that surround us. “We don’t all live and play exclusively in San Jose,” Campbell added. There was an air of excitement around the table at the Billy De Frank LGBT Center as six of the seven new Silicon Valley Pride board members and several community members deftly maneuvered through a business meeting in early April. The board has been meeting weekly since the beginning of the year to fill positions and ramp up and revive the South Bay’s Pride festival. As in recent years, August’s festival will be a one-day event. There hasn’t been a Pride parade in San Jose since 2009.

Troubled past

The rebranding effort is also seen as a fresh start by the organization. Former San Jose Pride board President Nathan Svoboda, who took over leadership of the organization in 2011 and termed out October 31, 2013, had a rocky tenure as the group dealt with fallout from the economic crisis, high board turnover, and accusations See page 6 >>

Vol. 44 • No. 18 • May 1-7, 2014

Tenants seek support for tax measure by David-Elijah Nahmod

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ed up with high rents and the uptick in evictions, about 150 housing activists and tenants gathered across the street from San Francisco City Hall last weekend to kick off a campaign for a planned November ballot measure that would tax real estate speculators. Senior residents, including LGBTs, were well represented, along with members of the Latino and Asian communities. These groups, particularly in the Mission District and Chinatown, have seen an ongoing spike in Ellis Act evictions across their neighborhoods. LGBT people from the Castro and Lower Haight neighborhoods were also out in force. There was anger, tears, and a fierce determination in the faces and voices of the protesters, who were there to advocate placing an anti-speculator tax on the November ballot. It is not clear whether advocates will gather signatures to qualify the measure for the ballot or if members of the Board of Supervisors will place it on the ballot. The measure would impose a tax on the profits of those who sell buildings immediately after buying them. The sooner after purchasing a building and then selling it, the higher the tax would be. Buildings sold within two years of purchase could face a 50 percent tax on their profits. The purpose of the measure

Alison Wright, part of a lesbian couple being evicted, points to the location of her home on a map of Ellis Act evictions. Jane Philomen Cleland

is to help stem the tide of Ellis Act evictions. Passed in 1985, the Ellis Act is a state law that allows landlords to get out of the rental business and evict tenants. The tenants receive some compensation; new legislation by Supervisor David Campos would see that compensation increase substantially. In recent years, housing advocates have accused some out of town real estate developers of purchasing multiple buildings, then invoking the Ellis Act in order to evict tenants. Then they often resell the buildings for huge profits. Housing activists argue that these devel-

opers were never in the rental business at all. These evictions, many say, unfairly target seniors, the disabled, people of color and people living with HIV/AIDS, many of whom are on fixed incomes and have nowhere else to go. “Stopping speculation is the most important thing we can do to help stop the evictions and gentrification,” said Tommi Avicolli Mecca of the Housing Rights Committee. “If it becomes non-profitable to evict people and flip buildings, then hopefully we have a chance to preserve our neighborhoods and our city.” See page 9 >>

Lesbian teacher fights for her job back by Matthew S. Bajko

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hen Julia Frost applied for a teaching position with the Hesperia Unified School District, she figured it would be a perfect place to work. The district’s Sultana High School was only 25 miles from her home in Wrightwood, nestled in southern California’s San Gabriel Mountains. “It was close to home and I was familiar with the area,” said Frost. “I had no idea of the problems at the school.” Her first inkling after being hired to teach English in August 2011 came when Frost revealed she had a female partner to a co-worker and within days was called to the principal’s office for a meeting. “He couldn’t say the word partner. He stuttered through it,” Frost, 42, recalled during an interview last week with the Bay Area Reporter. “It was really, really uncomfortable and degrading.” Asked by a straight co-worker to help advise the school’s gay-straight alliance, Frost was soon being approached by students who complained of being bullied and harassed by other teachers and school administrators. Their complaints included teachers using “that’s so gay” in class and harassing a lesbian gender-nonconforming student elected homecoming queen. When they tried to file official complaints about the abusive behavior, the students were rebuffed, they said, by school administrators and sought Frost’s assistance. She in turn

Bill Wilson

Teacher Julia Frost

reached out to the teacher’s union and met with school officials in the fall of 2012 to discuss the matter and what steps needed to be taken to protect LGBT students as required under California law. “My legal responsibility was to provide them a classroom free of harassment and to intervene because of Seth’s Law in incidents of harassment or bullying,” said Frost, who was in San Francisco to address attendees at an April 25 fundraiser for the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. Yet the anti-gay comments and policies at

Sultana High persisted, according to Frost, who continued to assist students’ efforts to file complaints about the homophobic behaviors. In return, school administrators accused her of “teaching homosexuality,” said Frost. Then in February 2013 Frost, who had been hired on a probationary-status with the expectation of obtaining tenure within two years, was informed her teaching contract would not be renewed. “I was told my contract was not being renewed, and knowing exactly why that was, was the worst moment,” said Frost. “Not because of anything other than the fact they are completely repulsed by having a lesbian at their school. It was nothing to do with a professional matter but who you are and how you were born. It was shocking.” The anti-gay atmosphere at the school led the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California and the law firm of Nixon Peabody LLP to become involved in March of last year. By August 2013 the school district and the legal groups announced a series of steps that would be taken at Hesperia’s various school sites to foster a more welcoming environment for LGBT and gender non-conforming students. Last November Frost, who remains unemployed, sued the Hesperia school district in San Bernardino Superior Court with the assistance of Lambda Legal and Pasadena law firm Traber and Voorhees in order to get her job back. See page 10 >>

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