Tommi Avicolli Mecca's Open Salon Blog

When it comes to spying, Obama is Bush

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 11:06:35 -0400

Spying has come a very long way since I was a kid.

Back then, we had Bella who lived a few doors down from us. All of five-foot tall with a mouth the size of the Grand Canyon, she knew everything about everybody in our South Philly Italian neighborhood. Not to mention everything that went on for blocks around. She didn’t need high-tech listening devices or infra-red cameras. She had the eyes of an eagle and the ears of a bat.

Bella spent her mornings relaying, in Italian, the intelligence she had gathered the day before to a captive audience of housewives in house dresses in the butcher shop at the corner.

Mama often wondered out loud why that woman had nothing better to do in life than worry about what everybody else was up to.

After I graduated high school, I started staying out late and partying outside of the neighborhood. If someone drove me home at night, no matter what time it was, Bella would be at the edge of her curtained living room window peering out. Many times, just to be a brat, I’d lean over and kiss the male driver -- on the lips. Or make out with him. I was just coming out and filled with the defiance that came with saying I’m gay and proud in the early 70s. I'm not sure how much she could actually see in the dark (I'm sure it was more than we mere mortals see), but I was still glad Mama avoided the butcher shop like the plague when she saw Bella standing in there hosting her gossip fest.

It became a game: do something outrageous to make Bella freak, like Gladys Kravitz, the noisy neighbor in Bewitched. Except Bella didn’t have a husband to run screaming to, she was a widow. The daughter she lived with was demur and kept to herself. It was hard to believe they came from the same gene pool.

Of course, Bella’s exploits were nothing compared to the supreme snoop of the day: J. Edgar Hoover. He who spied on the rich and famous, not to mention those in social and economic justice movements of which he disapproved. The man was shameless. A huge stain on this country’s reputation for civil liberties.

Not unlike today’s Department of Justice or NSA (National Security Agency). Recently caught with its pants down sifting through the emails and phone records of a reporter for Fox News, the Department of Justice is supposedly under investigation by the Obama administration. But considering Obama’s support for drones and spying, it’s hard to take any investigation of that nature seriously. Wanna bet no heads will roll and no policies will change? And untold amounts of information will continue to be gathered about every one of us?

Sometimes I have to wonder whether there’s really been a change in administrations in Washington in the past four and a half years. Obama may talk a different line than his predecessor, but when it comes to keeping dibs on who we call and what we post on Facebook or send in our email, apparently the "change" president is channeling George (the idiot) Bush and his neo-con thugs.

I'm sure there’s a monument to Bella somewhere in the White House.

The biggest gay riot in history

Wed, 22 May 2013 10:05:36 -0400

“Harvey Milk's people do not have anything to apologize for. Now the society is going to have to deal with us not as nice little fairies who have hairdressing salons, but as people capable of violence. We're not going to put up with Dan Whites anymore.”

With those words (quoted in Randy Shilts’ The Mayor of Castro Street), Supervisor Harry Britt, successor to Harvey Milk, said what needed to be said on the day after thousands of queers, upset with Dan White receiving a lenient sentence for his murder of Milk and Mayor George Moscone, rioted at City Hall, leaving windows broken and police cars on fire.

Police did a little rioting of their own that night. After the unrest at City Hall, a group of homophobic cops drove into the Castro and attacked patrons inside the Elephant Walk, then a bar at 18th & Castro, and out on the street. It took Police Chief Charles Gain’s arrival on the scene to stop the rampage by his boys in blue.

Yesterday, May 21, was the anniversary of those events, dubbed the White Night Riots. They occurred in 1979 the day before Milk’s birthday, which is today, May 22. Happy birthday, Harvey.

Why isn’t there an annual reminder of those riots? Why not a gathering in the Castro to remember another monumental moment in queer history when we said no to the terrible oppression we suffered? When we stood together as a community and refused to apologize, even with a media that tried its best to find a queer "leader" who would.

It could be part of the annual Milk commemoration, though the rally and march that happens in the Castro is as sanitized as can be and geared more toward promoting business in the neighborhood rather than celebrating the progressive politics of Harvey Milk.

With the strong assimilationist trend in the mainstream LGBT movement these days, is it any wonder that the White Night Riots have been relegated to LGBT museums and history books? It doesn’t help the fight for “respectable” gains such as the right to marriage and serve in the military to remind folks that our community had no problem rioting when the moment called for it. Whether it was at Compton’s, Stonewall or City Hall in San Francisco, sometimes the world just had to understand that we were pissed as all hell and weren’t going to take it anymore.

With SF Pride rescinding Bradley Manning as a grand marshal for this year’s pride parade after gay military personnel threw a major hissy fit, it’s refreshing to remember a moment in time when we were kicking ass rather than busy kissing it.

when the shrinks stopped electrocuting us

Mon, 20 May 2013 09:05:29 -0400

I’ll never forget the look on his angelic face, that dark, curly-haired Italian/American guy who came to our Gay Liberation Front (GLF) meeting in Philadelphia in the Fall of 1971 to tell us of the ordeal he endured after going for help at Temple University’s student counseling program.

One moment, he was explaining to a counselor that he thought he was gay, the next he was sitting in a dark room in the Eastern Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute (EPPI) with electrodes attached to his genitals. Slides were being shown on the wall in front of him. When a picture of a naked guy was displayed, a jolt of electricity shot through his dick. Then a photo of a woman in her birthday suit, and no shock.

Joey was being conditioned to change his sexual orientation. It’s called aversion therapy and it was once used extensively on gay men to try and make us “normal.” When he was finished talking to us, Joey broke down in tears. Not only was he not “cured,” but the shock treatments left burns on his penis.

This year is the fortieth anniversary of the 1973 decision by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to remove homosexuality from its list of sexual disorders. That decision didn’t happen because the shrinks suddenly came to their senses. It was the result of years of work by the gay and homophile movements, especially post-Stonewall groups such as GLF. In Los Angeles in 1970, for example, GLFers took over a meeting of the APA and enlightened the shrinks about queers.

Joey’s story prompted us to start a campaign to get the University’s student counseling center to stop referring gay students to EPPI. We didn’t have too much success at first.

Then, a very popular local TV talk show host, Kati Martin I believe her name was, called the office we had in the Student Center. We even had a phone that was paid for by the University. One of the perks of being a recognized student organization. We were among the first official gay groups on campus.

Kati Martin was interested in one of us debating a representative of EPPI on an upcoming episode of her After Midnight show. I was elected since I was very active in the campaign. I hadn’t come out to my family yet, but being 20 and fired up by the rebellious spirit of the times, I taped the show anyway. During the debate, I got so angry at the EPPI rep that I wouldn’t let her speak. The producer kept holding up a sign he scribbled on a piece of paper: “Shut him up!” I also wore blue eye shadow just to be even more “in your face.”

The day before it aired, I told Mama I was gay and about to be a TV star. Her biggest concern was Papa’s reaction. Fortunately, he never saw the show. Unfortunately, my uncle the cop did, and called him at 3AM to inform him that his son was a finuck (from “finocchio,” southern Italian for “fag”).

My father didn’t talk to me for 15 years.

The show caused a lot of waves at the University and eventually we got exactly what we wanted: the counseling program stopped referring gay men to EPPI.

Sadly, it didn’t save Joey. He committed suicide. But no doubt we saved lots of other young men from the same fate.

Something for Rosa Maria Mecca, my Mamma

Sat, 11 May 2013 11:05:22 -0400

You who came screaming into the room to find my limp five-year-old body that had fallen while I was swinging from the marble mantle, pounding on my chest with your fists to force air back into my lungs, then bolting out of the house and into the middle of the street in your housedress and flip flops to flag down a car and beg the startled driver to take you to the hospital.

You who ignored that nun in fifth grade when she warned that there was something “strange” about me, because I draped my sweater on my shoulder “like a girl.” I wasn’t developing properly, according to she of the Immaculate Heart of Mary who guarded the sacred binary gender system. Instead of admonishing me on the way home, you told me we would never speak of it again, and we didn’t.

You who told stories of an Arab prince sweeping an ancestor off her feet when I asked how you got the maiden name Mecca. Sometimes you told me, “you ask too many questions,” as if I didn’t inherit that habit from you.

You who protected me from Papa’s fits of rage when I started growing my hair and listening to rock music, two things he hated because they were symbols of a new world that he wouldn’t let himself understand.

You who one year cursed the priest when he arrived to collect the annual donation the church required of all of its parishioners. You were tired of seeing your name on the bottom of the list the church published and distributed at Sunday Mass. After that, you simply stopped opening the door when he came around.

You who wasn’t surprised when I came out to you on that hot summer afternoon in 1971. Perhaps you were flashing back to what that nun had said or perhaps you had already accepted your queer son who used to dress in your clothes. It wasn’t as easy to accept that I was going to be on a TV talk show the next night to discuss being gay, knowing that Papa was going to explode when he heard.

You who came to see me at my job all those years Papa wouldn’t let me come home, the son he thought was going to be a priest and who, instead, did drag shows and made headlines as a queer activist.

You who watched teary-eyed as Papa and I sat across from each other at your kitchen table on Xmas day in the late 80s after 15 years of not talking.

You who refused last rites from your nephew the priest because you believed that, whether there was a god or not, you were going to take your chances. “I’ve lived a good life,” you said. “I got nothing to be afraid of.”

You who told me days before you died that I was going to take a long journey. I thought it was the fever. I left for San Francisco a year after you passed, for months having dreams in which you told me you were watching over me.

There’s not a day long enough to honor you, Rosa Maria Mecca.

SF Pride: It doesn't get better!

Wed, 8 May 2013 10:05:22 -0400

It’s really difficult to believe that SF Pride could make a tense situation even worse, but they managed it with flying colors last night, and not the colors of the rainbow flag.

For those who may be out of the loop, a quick recap: For two weeks now, the board of directors of SF Pride has been feeling the heat for its overturning of the vote of its electoral college of former grand marshals electing whistleblower Bradley Manning their choice as grand marshal for this year’s parade. Manning is the Army soldier who leaked thousands of pages of classified documents to WikiLeaks that, among other things, show American airstrikes on civilians and journalists. Manning has come out as both gay and transgender.

In a statement that borders on the bizarre, Board President Lisa L. Williams explained that Pride couldn’t show “even a hint of support” for Manning because his actions put service members, queer and straight, in danger. Note to Williams: Congress, U.S. presidents, including Bush and Obama, and the generals at the Pentagon put service members in danger by continuing the wars.

At 5pm yesterday, just before about 100-125 people showed up to speak at SF Pride’s public meeting to express their disagreement with the Manning recision, the board issued a second statement, apologizing to Manning for “taking sides in the controversy concerning Mr. Manning’s conduct,” and making a completely different excuse for its decision. It seems that Manning doesn’t qualify to be a grand marshal because he doesn’t meet the criterion for that honor. He is not “a local hero (individual) not being a celebrity.”

Funny that they didn’t think of that when Manning was first nominated by the electoral college months ago.

And funny that they didn’t realize that the folks who gathered outside SF Pride offices last night expecting that they would have their minute or two to address the board weren’t going to be happy about not being let up to their fourth floor meeting room.

By 7:03, it was obvious something was wrong. The meeting was supposed to start at 7pm, and the doors were still locked. Some folks managed to slip into the building when a board member used a key to open the door. A bunch of them got on the elevator to the fourth floor before it was shut off. For an account of what happened upstairs, click here.

Police arrived. I spoke to two of the officers, explaining that we were being denied access to a public meeting. After making a call to the SF Pride office, the officer said that the room upstairs was too small to accommodate everyone. I asked why they didn’t anticipate that and move it to a bigger space. It’s not as if they didn’t know we were coming. The officer assured us that he was told we’d be let up in groups of 15.

We weren’t. At some point, the folks who had been upstairs exited through another door and some of them joined us, among them, 70s whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg (author of The Pentagon Papers). Ellsberg explained that the board was only giving people a minute to speak and it was best we edit our remarks accordingly. By that point, we had been waiting over an hour. I had no expectation that we were going to get upstairs.

I went around to the other exit. Folks were chanting, “Shame on pride.” As I arrived, a group pushed past the guards at the door and into the hallway leading up to the board meeting. I followed them. Tempers were flaring. A man was shouting that he had been assaulted by a Pride security person. Another was screaming at the guards to step aside and let us go upstairs.

“We are the community,” we kept saying to them, to no avail. They were just doing their jobs.

Then one of the guards, who was constantly on his cellphone, said that the meeting was cancelled and the cops were on their way. Instead of coming down to talk to us themselves, the cowardly board members were going to have us arrested?

Nice way to treat the community, SF Pride, and to de-escalate a very tense situation.

The cops turned out to be much more reasonable than the SF Pride board. After talking to board members, who still remained out of sight, one of the men in blue stood at the top of the stairs and announced that Pride would hold another meeting in a bigger space on another night.

I shouted up to him that we wanted to hear it from a board member. “We are the community, we’re not leaving until we hear from Pride,” I said.

Eventually, someone from Pride, I didn’t catch his name, confirmed what the officer had said. There was some shouting, the board member dashed off to hide with his fellow cowards, and we collectively decided to go outside to talk, and eventually disburse.

Has it really come to this? That SF Pride overturns a decision by its own electoral college after pressure from gay military types, then cancels its own public meeting rather than let community members have their say about that decision?

If SF Pride board members learned nothing else from last night, they should realize that this issue is not going away.