Several activists stood outside the Jewish Center in Jackson Heights tonight, to protest Christine Quinn's dismal record on LGBT equality, NYPD discrimination, and restrictions on the use of birth control.
Tonight's protest, which had been announced well in advance, was a success, activists said, because Christine Quinn cancelled her appearance at this forum.
Tonight's mayoral forum was sponsored by the New Visions Democratic Club, by the Lesbian Gay Democratic Club of Queens, and by City Councilmember Daniel Dromm.
Activists distributed over 300 flyers outside of tonight's mayoral forum. In their interaction with passers-by and with the attendees at tonight's mayoral form, activists often mentioned how Christine Quinn was primarily responsible for extending term limits to allow Mayor Michael Bloomberg to steal a third term, how Christine Quinn's use of slush funds creates a culture of corruption in City Hall, and how Christine Quinn has failed to hold the NYPD accountable for discriminating against innocent New Yorkers.
LGBT activists question why Christine Quinn, who is the highest elected openly LGBT politician in New York City politics, does not stand up to the NYPD. The NYPD have demonstrated a pattern of discriminating and falsely arresting innocent LGBT New Yorkers if they carry condoms. Police claim that if LGBT New Yorkers carry condoms, then the condoms are evidence that LGBT New Yorkers are engaged in prostitution.
Protest against @chriscquinn's inaction against NYPD condom criminalization today at 6:30 pm facebook.com/events/1650544… twitter.com/stopchrisquinn…
— Stop Christine Quinn (@stopchrisquinn) April 11, 2013
Activists displayed a banner, which portrayed a condom locked in a handcuff to represent how NYPD are trying to crack down on safe sex practices -- forcing us to return to backward Victorian times.
How can Christine Quinn support this kind of crackdown on the use of prophylactics, if the fact that prophylactics and birth control because legal in 1965 only after decades of attempts by Planned Parenthood to make it legal for people to use contraception.
But that's not all. The NYPD policy on stop-and-frisk also deliberately targets transgenders ; meanwhile, Christine Quinn does not hold the NYPD for discriminating against the LGBT community. The stop-and-frisk program discriminates, and, as a consequence, the City of New York ends up paying hundreds of millions in damages for violating the civil rights of innocent New Yorkers.
#NY’s Stop-and-Frisk #Election: In 2011 alone, #NYC paid out over $180 million in lawsuits against the #NYPDbit.ly/Zc7YX3
— BQ Brew (@BQBrew) April 11, 2013
Here is one of the flyers, which activists distributed tonight :
2013-04-11 Christine Quinn Stop and Frisk Condom Flyer
What a disgrace for the NYPD to menace the LGBT community like this. In an article in The New York Times last week-end, it was notable that no LGBT leader in this city was quoted here to denounce the institutional discrimination by the NYPD of LGBT New Yorkers. Most notable was the absence or silence by Christine Quinn, the highest elected LGBT official in New York City politics. She is somebody, who has a sensibility of what it means to be treated different because of her identity as a woman and as a lesbian. And yet she has said nothing about how the NYPD treats others in the LGBT community solely based on their identity. And in all the articles about how stop-and-frisk is used by the NYPD against communities of color and other minority groups, there has remained a radio silence about how a municipality can discriminate against people in public spaces based on sex, race, and other factors that are expressly prohibited by the Civil Rights Act. When were municipalities given the option of not enforcing the Civil Rights Act ? And how can the NYPD deliberately violate Griswold v. Connecticut, the landmark case that legalised the use of contraceptives in the United States ? When did carrying contraception or prophylactics become a criminal behaviour ? How can this be ?
