While the ‘No on 9‘ committee successfully defeated the measure, it did not challenge the dominant white supremacy that persisted throughout the movement and society
1992 was a significant year in Oregon's political history. The state was in the midst of a political campaign that had gotten the attention of the nation. The cultural wars between two different visions of civil society took place in the state. The Christian right battled advocates for the inclusion of LGBTQIA+ people.
In Oregon, the politically dominant group that came together for the defense of human rights for LGBTQIA+ communities was the “No On 9” Committee.
1992 was a significant year for the Western hemisphere. The world was amid the remembrance and reevaluation of the 500th anniversary of the European invasion into what would come to be known as the Americas. Indigenous and people of color communities were challenging the dominant white European hegemony.
In Oregon, a coalition of Indigenous and people of color community organizations and individuals came together to recall, reclaim and recenter Indigenous and people of color communities in remembering the history of this part of the world. This group became known by its acronym, ALANA (Asian, Latinos, African, Arabs and Native Americans for Justice and Peace).
Although the “No on 9” campaign succeeded in defeating the anti-gay ballot measure with almost 57% of the vote, participants both inside and outside the campaign committee admit it did not create an inclusive multicultural movement. As is typical of most mainstream organizations, “No on 9” did not challenge the dominant paradigm of white supremacy that is embedded in our society.
ALANA saw itself as centering the voices of those communities that have been marginalized by the European invasion of the Americas, beginning with the genocide of Indigenous communities, the captive and forced labor of enslaved African people, and continuing to the mistreatment and abuse of immigrant communities of color.
Two movements, two organizations, both struggling for justice, yet only rarely finding space to work together.
Holly Pruett and the Western States Center developed a living history of the “No on 9” campaign — “No on 9 Remembered.” In this project, people share their memories and histories about the campaign. Several persons of color who devoted countless hours opposing this ballot measure share their experiences of isolation, racism from campaign officials, not being heard and inadequate outreach to communities of color.
Lynn Nakamoto, a lawyer who would become the first woman of color and the first Asian American justice on the Oregon Supreme Court, reflected on why creating an Asian American Pacific Islander queer support group was necessary.
“I tried to get involved with the community, joined the board of (the Lesbian Community Project),” Nakamoto is quoted as saying in the project. “With the lesbian and gay community in general, there was some marginalization of Asian Pacific Islander folks back then. There wasn’t always the welcome mat.
“A group of us started Asian Pacific Islander Lesbian & Gays so we could have buddies, a sense of community. Part of my being involved came from that experience with the larger community — I felt a little left out. We are constantly overlooked. None of our issues ever gets addressed.”
The experience of being on the outside, of not being heard in the corridors of power where decisions are made, was something that other individuals and communities of color felt as well.
A lasting project of ALANA was a mural of individual panels showing something about the experiences of oppressed communities. Artists from each community worked together to create presentations of vibrant communities of resistance.
And maybe because the experience of not being heard that Nakamoto expressed was something that all of the ALANA communities experienced in the dominant culture, the artists and activists shared their stories in song, in art, in tears, in laughter, with food, with intense arguments and with love. In the end, communities were seen, heard and worked together to create, perhaps, what might be thought of as a glimpse of a better world.
Reading the stories of many people of color on the website in the “No on 9 Remembered” project, I am reminded of our invisibility by the mainstream. While it may not be intentional, it is inevitable because of who we are and why we are.
White supremacy has been endemic to Oregon from the time of the region's first white explorers and settlers. It manifests itself in different ways in different places at different times. It is always there.
At times, it is quiet and lulls Oregonians into a social or political slumber. At other times, it reveals its ugly and destructive power, and many Oregonians at first appear surprised that it continues to have a grip over our social landscape. However, upon some solemn reflection, wise Oregonians grudgingly agree that it has always been here, never far from the surface of our social encounters. It waits patiently for the opportune time to reveal itself. Such a time revealed itself in the late 1980s and created the background for the anti-lesbian and gay ballot initiative Number 9 in 1988. Racism seeded the political and philosophical anti-gay movement, as well as permeated the movement that ultimately worked to defeat the anti-gay ballot initiative in 1992. This narrative is one person’s story of how the “No on 9” campaign struggled with racism in its own movement even as it sought to confront queer bigotry and create a more welcoming Oregon in 1992.
From the beginning of the time of white migration to the Oregon Territory, Blacks were not welcome. In 1844, the provisional government of Oregon voted to exclude Blacks and stated any Blacks who settled in Oregon could be whipped with "not less than twenty nor more than thirty-nine stripes for every six months they remained.”
The anti-Black laws were not an anomaly but were confirmed with additional legislation in 1849 and written in the 1857 Constitution. This seminal document stated: “no free n***o or m*****o not residing in this state at the time of the adoption of this constitution, shall come, reside or be within this state or hold any real estate, or make any contracts, or maintain any suit therein; and the legislative assembly shall provide by penal laws for the removal by public officers of all such n****es and m******es, and for their effectual exclusion from the state, and for the punishment of persons who shall bring them into the state, or employ or harbor them.”
The last of the anti-Black laws remained until 1926, and residual racist language in the Oregon Constitution was not removed until 2002 (when 28% of the electorate voted to keep the racist language).
Many Oregonians, particularly those whose families experienced the trauma of poor housing, inadequate education and job segregation, are familiar with Oregon’s poor history of racial relations in our recent past. The recruitment of Black workers to work in the shipbuilding industry and related fields during World War II increased Oregon’s Black population tenfold. In subsequent decades Oregon failed to live up to its 20th-century vision of an inclusive community for all. Red-lining, school segregation, gentrification, poverty and racist policing, trials and sentencing are the inevitable results of our failure to question the cultural norms of our society.
Most people involved in the “No on 9” campaign believed they were working for an affirming and inclusive community, a place where those who were members of a marginalized (LGBTQIA+) community would find acceptance. It probably grieved many to realize that their best attempts to create a campaign organization that modeled their ideals failed miserably. And yet the campaign succeeded in its immediate objective, even if it meant that its nobler long-term vision had to be put on pause for another season.
This failure highlights the need to pause and hear the voices of those who are often silent or silenced. This provides an opportunity to examine our motives and commitment.
James Baldwin, the Black gay writer, cultural critic and activist, offered prescient comments on racism in white LGBTQIA+ communities a few years before his death.
"I think white gay people feel cheated because they were born, in principle, in a society in which they were supposed to be safe. The anomaly of their sexuality puts them in danger, unexpectedly," Baldwin said in a 1984 interview. “Their reaction seems to me in direct proportion to their sense of feeling cheated of the advantages which accrue to white people in a white society. There’s an element, it has always seemed to me, of bewilderment and complaint. Now that may sound very harsh, but the gay world as such is no more prepared to accept Black people than anywhere else in society.”
While intensely aware of their rejection from the dominant culture, white LGBTQIA+ people are unable to easily abandon or disown the culture which, except for their perceived rejection of heteronormative mores, embraced them in other important ways, as privileged.
In spite of the fact that alienation from the dominant white-led “No on 9” organization led to independent organizing in people of color communities (see Western States’ “No on 9 Remembered” for stories on organizing in the African American community and organizing in the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities) there were opportunities for successful collaborative efforts to educate, organize and mobilize oppressed communities.
Both ALANA and People of Faith Against Bigotry (a grassroots religious coalition organizing against the discriminatory Ballot Measure 9) received staff support from the Portland office of the American Friends Service Committee (a Quaker-based social justice organization). Both organizing efforts reflected the values of the grassroots organizing philosophy of the AFSC, which affirmed the leadership of the oppressed in determining philosophy and tactics. It was not unusual for committees of both groups to be meeting in AFSC offices at the same time. Indeed, I and many others were involved in both campaigns.
A natural cross-pollination of ideas, tactics and materials took place, and people began to share and learn about struggles for liberation and what movements can learn from and with one another. These were discussions among a small number of people who lived, worked and play in various communities, and the long-lasting impacts on various movements for social change are noticeable when we reflect on how justice-seeking movements are organizing today.
Silos are no more. Intersectionality describes identities, analyses and campaigns. The “No on 9” campaign was seismic in Oregon’s political landscape. The social movement for the inclusion of LGBTQIA+ people shifted the discussion and led to the acceptance of LGBTQIA+ individuals and organizations in social, political, economic and religious classes. As a political campaign, its primary task was to win 50% of the vote plus one on Election Day in 1992. It succeeded in achieving its goal.
The “No on 9” campaign did not develop into an inclusive, transformative organizing model that would question and reject the state’s racist underpinning. Oregon’s reckoning with its racial past and present would need to take place in the future. The failure of the “No On 9” campaign to become an anti-racist organizing machine was disappointing but not surprising. Racism is systemic. Nevertheless, the consistent struggle of people of color, and their refusal to be silenced, will continue to force the power structure to take notice and will continue to chip away at racism and eventually crumble. It is a long but inevitable process.
Kathleen Saadat, a human rights advocate and organizer of "African Americans Voting No on 9," summarizes her manifesto for transformational organizing thusly: “The struggle to include, to broaden, is still there. We talk about working together. We need to talk more about listening to each other. That plants the seeds of growth. You can’t do that while you’re diminishing the other person. You have to give what you want to get.”
The Rev. Cecil Charles Prescod is an ordained minister at Ainsworth United Church of Christ in Portland.
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