The Justice Struggle Is not for the Faint of Heart

by Mona Shaw

For decades I wondered what I was doing wrong.  I sure pissed off a lot of people who were ostensibly on my side. I was mostly told it was my tone and my timing.  I agonized over both every time I did something. Sometimes my efforts did get traction. When that happened less radical folks would take the reins and cast me out as problematic as soon as a critical mass of support was achieved.

One of many examples was in 1990.  A friend, Brett Beemyn, had filed a complaint with the University of Iowa Human Rights Committee (UIHRC).  Brett claimed that a poster displayed in the Iowa Memorial Union violated the University’s policy against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and created a hostile environment for LGBT people.  The controversial poster was the image of Bart Simpson aiming a slingshot with a large rock. There was a conversation balloon extending from Bart’s mouth that read, “Back off, Faggot!”  At the top of the poster were the words, “STOP AIDS!”

The UIHRC denied the complaint. They claimed the poster was free speech. One woman on the committee also said the poster was a public service.  There was a gay man on the committee who resigned over the finding. I spoke with him, but that was all he wanted to do about it. 

I could only find one other person who wanted to make a stink about it.  I couldn’t just let it go. So, I issued a press release from the UI Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Staff and Faculty Association stating we were going to file a complaint against the UIHRC claiming their finding was discrimination. I listed my name and phone number as the press contact.

All Hell broke out. The University brass were caught with their pants down. I called an emergency meeting of the University of Iowa LGBT Staff and Faculty Association. There was no such organization, so I was pleasantly surprised when about 40 people showed up for the meeting. The consensus of the meeting was that the group would back the complaint and sent a letter to University President Hunter Rawlings saying as much. Several in the group wondered if they could just put their initials on the letter. In the end, some faculty and staff agreed to put their names to the letter as representatives of a community of more than 3,000. 

The matter was front-page news for weeks. The Chronical of Higher Education, Newsweek, and the New York Times covered it.  There were op eds not only across the state but across the nation supporting us. The University did a little damage control by posting an official letter next to the Bart poster stating they disagreed with the poster and valued their lesbian and gay members of the university “family.” We said that wasn’t enough. 

In the middle of this, we sent a copy of the poster to Matt Groening, the creator of “The Simpsons.” Groening sent a “Cease and Desist” letter to Campus Review, the conservative student group responsible for it.  That removed the poster.

Eventually, a meeting was scheduled in President Rawlings’ office to hear our demands. We were given these things.

A Blue-Ribbon Panel would be established to study the incidence of sexual orientation discrimination at the University.

The University would a establish a separate office to confront homophobia and support efforts to counter it. It would be called, “Opportunity at Iowa.”

The University would sponsor and donate its resources to a national conference on LBGT issues.

The UIHRC would find that its own committee had discriminated. The woman who spoke in favor the poster would resign.

I became persona non grata overnight. I was excluded from every subsequent university sanctioned activity. At first, I thought I was being paranoid. I tried to not take it personally. Until a friend asked me to tag along to the first meeting of the Blue Ribbon Committee.  The anger on several faces when I walked into the meeting could not be denied. I was taken to task for being there and scolded harshly for being some place where I was not invited.  My friend tried to defend me and explained I was there only because of his invitation.  Still, someone said, “You are not to be here! Leave NOW!”  So, I left.

I was squeezed out of the UI LGB Staff and Faculty Association. The group chose a more reasonable woman to be their president.  My salary increase was shaved for the next seven years. The wage smack was also in part because I blew the whistle on a member of the School of Music faculty who was excluding gay men from faculty searches.

Three years later the Office of Opportunity at Iowa would drop LGBT concerns as part of its mission.

The LGB Staff and Faculty Association is now the University of Iowa LGBTQ+ Council. It no longer has an activist component but does sponsor a few educational and social events a year.

Sometime later at some University event, President Rawlings approached me and squeezed my shoulder.

“I wish we could leave and get a drink,” he said.

“Let’s go,” I said.

“Sorry, kid,” he continued as he walked away, “You embarrassed us. You were the squeaky wheel, the loose cannon. I had to cut you out. Be glad I could save your job. And, we didn’t have this conversation.”

Still, this was easier than some struggles in which I’ve engaged. It was a picnic compared to what others have faced. When studying human rights struggles, I’ve found a consistent pattern. It isn’t what you do wrong that gets you in the most trouble. It’s what you do right.

I’m often struck by how common knowledge of the struggle and history of human rights advances in the United States is profoundly skewed and distorted.

Many believe it goes something like this.

A handful of people decide to stand up against an injustice. The others affected by the injustice stand with them. Then, people who are not affected by the injustice stand with them.  Almost everyone else is convinced. They win their cause. A national holiday is declared, and you get your photo on postage stamps and money. They all live happily ever after. This all takes about 10 years.

That’s not how it works at all.  Struggles for justice take many decades, if not centuries.  Most members of the oppressed group do not stand with those who speak out. Most keep their head down and stay quiet. Many even join in to persecute the strugglers. On top of that, the bravest and most outspoken are mistreated and betrayed by others in the struggle with them.  Almost no one lives happily ever after. For most their lives are forever severely damaged if not destroyed. Many are outright murdered.

Let me give a few examples.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered. He was not publicly popular on the day he died.  He was support was growing but spotty and unpredictable.  He was staying in a cut-rate motel when he was shot. Most, including those sympathetic to his cause, saw him as too radical, too pushy, too harsh, and too demanding. He was persecuted by the FBI and arguably killed by that agency. The family won a wrongful death suit years later based on that claim.  (The FBI admitted shooting Viola Liuzzo and defaming her afterward.)  He was constantly in contention with his own group, not to mention the white people who thought they knew better than he.  King didn’t write the famous “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” to white supremacists. He wrong to the Southern Christian Leadership Council, the Civil Rights group that had recruited him.  They were admonishing him for being too radical.

Susan B. Anthony didn’t live long enough to see women get the right to vote. She, too, was harshly criticized, within and outside of her ranks, for engaging in civil disobedience. She, too, died with a criminal record and fines she refused to pay. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was treated worse. She was ousted and banned from the women’s organization she founded because she had the audacity to take on sexism in religion.  Cady Stanton died still devasted by that act. Alice Paul was given a harsh dressing down by Carrie Chapman Catt for criticizing then President Woodrow Wilson. She was given a lecture about incremental change, the lesser of two evils, and not alienating “our friends.” However, it was the imprisonment of Alice and the other women who chained themselves to Wilson’s White House and their consequent torture that turned the tide.

Activists for workers and class rights were treated no kinder. Read anything written by Eugene V Debs, Mother Jones, or about the Haymarket Massacre to get a glimpse of that ongoing persecution.  And what did happen to Jimmy Hoffa and why?

Harvey Milk did not die of natural causes. His killer was let off on a junk food defense. The nation watched 60,000 gay men die and did nothing until ACT-UP became very civilly disobedient and protested Democrats as vigorously as Republicans.

I could write a book, but they’ve already been written.  We just need to read them. You’ll find the struggle never ends, it always requires a price, and it doesn’t happen in a voting booth.