adults
Leadership
In Wisconsin, leadership in LGBT communities has developed at a remarkable pace in the past decade. This leadership relies on the important foundation laid over the previous four decades by our predecessors who envisioned what is possible for community development, equal rights, our health, and our pursuit of happiness. These pioneers forged the way with passion, hard work, and creativity with severely limited financial and social supports.
Groups like Positive Voice (Northeast Wisconsin), SAGE-Milwaukee, and Lesbian Alliance (Milwaukee) are notable for their persistence, even amidst varying levels of support and interest.
Advances in the development of infrastructure has greatly contributed to leadership in the more recent past. Pride events, especially PrideFest in Milwaukee, have established some solid systems that allow for their continuity and robustness, two features that allow for the development of emerging leadership. FORGE and GSA for Safe Schools are also excellent examples how systems have matured where leadership in the transgender and LGBT youth communities can flourish.
A Context for Leadership
LGBT organizational boards of directors have grown in their ability to sustain programming, transfer agency missions/visions/values to new cohorts, and extend their spheres of influence through programs. Examples of increasingly solid boards of directors include Outreach (Madison), Fair Wisconsin (Statewide), and the Milwaukee LGBT Community Center.
Wisconsin LGBT leaders also extend their reach through influence outside LGBT organizations. For example, religious groups like Unitarian and Evangelical Lutheran Church of American (ELCA) congregations nurture LGBT leadership within their parish life. So have organizations that provide vital health services to LGBT people, like the Sixteenth Street Community Health Center (Milwaukee), United Migrant Opportunity Center (Statewide), and Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin. Government projects have also stimulated leadership through opportunities like the development of Healthiest Wisconsin 2020, the state health plan.
Somewhat less formal opportunities for LGBT leadership have also arisen in the last 10 years. A once vibrant house community in Milwaukee is being revived, offering programs and setting up systems of decision making and support for young African American gay and bisexual men. Community health promoters for topics such as tobacco cessation, alcohol abuse prevention, awareness of intimate partner violence, and HIV prevention do their work in Appleton, Eau Claire, Green Bay, La Crosse, Madison, and Milwaukee. Another interesting venture that has supported leadership development over the past 20 years is the The Challenge Party, through which philanthropy is fostered for Milwaukee HIV and LGBT organizations.
Leadership Challenges
The challenges regularly confronting LGBT leaders in Wisconsin mirror those faced by leaders everywhere, but these appear to be complicated by issues peculiar to LGBT communities in Wisconsin at this time. For example, isolation is a challenge for leaders around the US. Even the most gregarious and democratic leaders find their spheres of personal contact attenuated by limits of time, the need to focus energies, the huge job of mustering human and financial resources, and protection from attack. Wisconsin’s LGBT leaders frequently find the same challenges further complicated by the urgency of some of their work (e.g., electoral politics or rapidly increasing transmission rates for HIV).
The disproportionately large number of LGBT groups in some Wisconsin communities also complicates leadership. On one hand, the very small organizations – most often with very limited structures, funding, or participants – provide an important but limited chance for a number of individuals to hone their thinking on an aspect of LGBT life. On the other hand, this very diffuse leadership may reflect a refusal to follow, limited skills in cooperation, and a lack of appreciation or awareness of what others are already doing or have done. It can also herald situations where there has been a failure to provide sufficient meaningful opportunities for many people to contribute. In some cases charismatic communicators enjoy the advantages of electronic “communities” with severely limited “face” contact, thus activating affect among groups of followers but stimulating limited sustained action.
The oppressive systems and interpersonal discrimination that LGBT individuals experience are also re-enacted in our organizations and among our leaders. This interpersonal and internalized homophobia is evidenced in competition for resources and influence, and in episodic attacks on other leaders.
Further, when sexual orientation is the major organizing feature of our groups, other identities upon which we vary become increasingly salient; at times these seek redress that they do not enjoy in the larger society. Thus racism, sexism, disability and age oppression – both of youth and seniors – become pertinent issues for LGBT leaders.
Financial resources are also severely limited for LGBT groups in Wisconsin; this limitation certainly impacts the implementation of programs and services in a meaningful way. The 220,000 LGBT teens and adults in the state are supported by a combined budget of roughly $5,000,000 for all LGBT agencies in Wisconsin. This results in approximately $23 per person. It contrasts to the $123 per person benefit provided to every youth 5 to 18 years old in Milwaukee by a single youth-service organization.
Homophobia affects the willingness of LGBT people to disclose their gender identity and sexual orientation. By extension, homophobia also limits their willingness to financially contribute to or visibly support leaders and organizations. Homophobia also prompts desires for comfort and escape, sometimes through the acquisition of high status items, thus diverting available community resources to excessive substance use or “retail therapy.” A handful of lesbians and gay men have led the way in challenging this pattern; they hold up our community infrastructure on their own.
Financial resources are also diverted from local needs at times by contributions to national LGBT groups with very limited Wisconsin presence or impact. Wisconsin’s LGBT leaders are increasingly questioning local supports for HRC, NGLTF, and the Trevor Project.
Funds from national LGBT foundations have dwindled in Wisconsin in the past decade as well, with the periodic exception of critical supports for electoral politics.
Why Lead?
Against this backdrop of challenges, one might ask why anyone would lead LGBT people in Wisconsin. Honestly, many elect not to do so or seek leadership opportunities in large cities elsewhere with more robust LGBT infrastructure or funding. Still others elect to lead, but in the face of these sizeable issues, have limited opportunities to develop as leaders and then either lead constantly frustrated or go on to something else.
But scores of LGBT people in Wisconsin decide to lead, to develop their leadership, and to persevere for many reasons. These include
• The reality that there is much to do.
• The fun in achieving big things.
• A desire to contribute.
• The satisfaction of winning.
• The warmth that comes with the relationships that get developed.
• The enthusiasm that is fostered when we follow our dreams.
• A refusal to settle for less than our due as humans.
