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Meet GetEQUAL’s New Field Director Felipe Matos — Exclusive Interview

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Felipe Matos on Monday became GetEQUAL‘s new Field Director. Matos, who says he is both queer and undocumented, is perhaps in a unique position to assess and act on the current needs of the LGBT community while being able to form important and powerful coalitions with other minority groups — something the LGBT community up until now has rarely been effective at doing.

GetEQUAL, now two years old, has a very specific mission: “to empower the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community and our allies to take bold action to demand full legal and social equality, and to hold accountable those who stand in the way.” Clearly they have followed it to the letter, and with surprisingly effective results.

Perhaps best-known for the multiple times they have handcuffed themselves to the White House fence — drawing needed attention and momentum that resulted in the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell — GetEQUAL’s tactics of nonviolent civil actions have been praised, prosecuted, and impugned.

Matos “has a long record of pressuring both Democrats (see here) and Republicans (see here) for progress on Latino issues — and now he’s bringing that knowledge and history to the LGBT movement,” Heather Cronk, GetEQUAL’s Managing Director, tells The New Civil Rights Movement.

She excitedly adds that Matos will be “bringing his ridiculously successful organizing experience in the Latino community to the LGBT community. Felipe is a rockstar DREAMer who participated in the Trail of Dreams in 2010 to draw attention to the need for the DREAM Act, and has been organizing for the past few years with both Presente and United We DREAM.”

In an introduction, Matos himself notes:

I was brought to the USA by my older sister who was living here for 4 years then. My mother had developed a chronic back disease that prevented her from working. I had grown used to being oppressed by extreme poverty in my country of origin, Brazil, so the US was definitely a promising way to finally find freedom- I was wrong.

His bio also notes:

He has served in the Board of Directors of the Florida Immigrant Coalition, a core leader from Students Working for Equal Rights, he is part of the National Coordinating Committee of the national organization United WE DREAM and an online advocate for the national group Presente.org.

We asked Felipe Matos several questions about his plans as GetEQUAL’s new Field Director, and the challenges he will face both within and outside of the LGBT community.

GetEQUAL has been very successful in the short time since its inception. What do you see as your role, will you be altering the group’s direction, or will you just “stay the course”?
Get Equal has played a critical role in our movement’s recent victory- the repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”. However, Get Equal has also been an unsung hero in many other fronts. I got involved in 2010 with Get Equal when politicians in Washington, D.C. tried to create a divide between the LGBT movement and immigrant rights when both the repeal of DADT and the DREAM Act came up for a vote at the same time. Heather Cronk, Get Equal’s managing director, approached me and a few other DREAM Act students and we strategized on ways to keep our communities together by highligting stories of queer undocumented youth and we organized some local joined actions. Later, Get Equal brought together its local organizers to Memphis, Tennessee for a training, all of the trainers were United We DREAM organizers. These initiatives have been critical in creating solidarity between both movements and struggles. Both DREAMers and Get Equal organizers have a shared experience that will never be forgotten. This is how we build meaningful bridges between the different issue areas in the Progressive Movement.

I’m hoping to expand Get Equal’s capacity to go beyond the LGBT community but also its field power. Most national organization get stuck in the “DC mentality,” an island that allows politics to easily take over and “access” sometimes become more important than “progress.” Get Equal is different because we are actually led by people on the ground that face homophobia and homophobic laws on their daily lives. This is why I decided to stay in Florida, a place where we have a constitutional ban on marriage, SB1070 copycats are a constant threat, and we still have to fight to get justice for the murder of African American youth because of gun laws that allow for people to literally get away with murder. In my opinion, politics is truly done locally and a strong field is an integral part of our current plan to gain full federal equality. I wouldn’t call my plans “altering” the current course but rather expanding and exploring new opportunities for growth.

GetEQUAL’s success has not come without a price. There are those in the LGBT community who feel GetEQUAL’s “tactics” are more dramatic and disruptive that they are comfortable with. Some feel they don’t want groups like GetEQUAL or for that matter, HRC, to represent them. What would you tell them?
Not everyone agrees with our tactics or strategies, that’s OK. There is enough space in the spectrum of important roles everyone can play for progress in our community. We have chosen to create an unapologize way of organizing which it may not be popular but it’s definitely effective and it brings results to the community. We are more concerned with bringing equality to a young person in Iowa or a 80 year-old that waited his or her entire life for change than pleasing everyone. I also feel that everyone’s role is important and that’s why I would encourage anyone to reach out to us as we keep building a movement for full federal equality in this country.

Your background seems to be more focused on the DREAM Act and immigration. Do you feel you are changing direction personally, or are you at a point where you want to expand your responsibilities? Does your new GetEQUAL role mean you’re abandoning your DREAM Act activism?
I wouldn’t be able to ever leave the DREAM movement, as a matter of fact, I would feel like a traitor to an important part of who I am if I ever did so. My new role in Get Equal will allow me to embrace everything I am. I am an immigrant, undocumented, queer and a man of color. Get Equal’s philosophy allows for anyone involved to never have to choose which identity hat to wear, which part of their identity to highlight and which part to hide away. Instead, we are encouraged to embrace our full selves. I am grateful for Get Equal’s willingness to accept everything I am and allowing me to bring everything to the table. I am hoping that this new phase in my life as an organizer will expand the LGBT movement’s reach and keep a door open for Latinos and other communities of color to come in and also sit at decision making tables.

The LGBT community, especially recently, has benefited from other minority groups, like the NAACP, for example, showing support for our issues, yet LGBT groups have not been as active in speaking out for other causes, like immigration and the DREAM Act, or any of a number of other important social justice issues. Nor have we been especially successful at, or, apparently, interested in, building coalitions that support other causes. Do you feel you are in a unique position to change this? If so, will this be a focus for you?
I agree that several sectors of the LGBT movement has been “shy” to meaningfully engage on other social justice causes. Unfortunately, this has been a recurring problem in our movement. What we need to understand as a community is that there is LGBT people in every disenfranchised community. These individuals have to deal with homophobia and other structural oppressive system such as xenophobia, racism, transphobia, misogyny, to name a few. So immigrant rights, reproductive justice, health care reform, labor issues are LGBT issues because several individuals in our community are directly affected by these policies or issues. This is why I’m a firm believer that it is in the best interest of the LGBT movement to build coalition with groups working on other issues that have not been traditionally seen as our community’s issue.

In 2010, I had the honor of walking in the Trail of DREAMs, a walk from Miami to Washington, DC. to highlight the plight of undocumented students, with my partner Juan and our peers Carlos and Gaby. During our journey we met hundreds of people who live under several oppressive systems and whom were actively fighting against them. They have been an inspiration for my work in intersectionality and this will definitely be a focus for me in Get Equal.

Jorge Gutierrez, a personal mentor and a great friend, wisely told me, “Felipe we are natural bridges.” People who have multiple identities are clear ambassadors to multiple communities. I hope to bring other people from diverse communities to leadership position so we can expand Get Equal’s contribution in changing the current dynamic between the LGBT movement and other organizations fighting for other issues.

You have worked with faith-based groups in the past, especially on immigration. Do you plan to try to reach out to them, and do you think your past association with them will make that easier?
My personal interactions with faith groups have been very challenging and yet very rewarding. Faith groups have a strong base of people who many times care about equality and social justice causes. It’s important for us to create a strong coalition for equality and reaching out to them should be part of our strategy for change. Faith groups should be an integral part in increasing our political power as a movement and that’s why I will reach out to them.

What can the average person who supports LGBT rights and equality do that they may not be doing now to help us all “get equal”?
Martin Luther King, Jr once said, “In the end we will remember not the word of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” So they should join us, organize with us, vote for people who care about our issues but most importantly never stand silent even when it’s hard to do the right thing. If they want to get involved with Get Equal they can go to http://getequal.org/join-us.

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OPINION

Noem Defends Shooting Her 14-Month Old Puppy to Death, Brags She Has Media ‘Gasping’

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April 26, 2024

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Republican Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, a top potential Trump vice presidential running mate pick, revealed in a forthcoming book she “hated” her 14-month old puppy and shot it to death. Massive online outrage ensued, including accusations of “animal cruelty” and “cold-blooded murder,” but the pro-life former member of Congress is defending her actions and bragging she had the media “gasping.”

“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” Noem writes in her soon-to-be released book, according to The Guardian which reports “the dog, a female, had an ‘aggressive personality’ and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.”

“By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going ‘out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life’.”

“Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, ‘grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another’.”

READ MORE: President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off

“Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like ‘a trained assassin’.”

Except Cricket wasn’t trained. Online several people with experience training dogs have said Noem did everything wrong.

“I hated that dog,” Noem wrote, calling the young girl pup “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with,” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.”

“At that moment,” Noem wrote, “I realized I had to put her down.”

“It was not a pleasant job,” she added, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done.”

The Guardian reports Noem went on that day to slaughter a goat that “smelled ‘disgusting, musky, rancid’ and ‘loved to chase’ Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.”

She dragged both animals separately into a gravel pit and shot them one at a time. The puppy died after one shell, but the goat took two.

On social media Noem expressed no regret, no sadness, no empathy for the animals others say did not need to die, and certainly did not need to die so cruelly.

READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

But she did use the opportunity to promote her book.

Attorney and legal analyst Jeffrey Evan Gold says Governor Noem’s actions might have violated state law.

“You slaughtered a 14-month-old puppy because it wasn’t good at the ‘job’ you chose for it?” he asked. “SD § 40-1-2.3. ‘No person owning or responsible for the care of an animal may neglect, abandon, or mistreat the animal.'”

The Democratic National Committee released a statement saying, “Kristi Noem’s extreme record goes beyond bizarre rants about killing her pets – she also previously said a 10-year-old rape victim should be forced to carry out her pregnancy, does not support exceptions for rape or incest, and has threatened to throw pharmacists in jail for providing medication abortions.”

Former Trump White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah Griffin, now a co-host on “The View” wrote, “There are countless organizations that re-home dogs from owners who are incapable of properly training and caring for them.”

The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson blasted the South Dakota governor.

“Kristi Noem is trash,” he began. “Decades with hunting- and bird-dogs, and the number I’ve killed because they were chicken-sharp or had too much prey drive is ZERO. Puppies need slow exposure to birds, and bird-scent.”

“She killed a puppy because she was lazy at training bird dogs, not because it was a bad dog,” he added. “Not every dog is for the field, but 99.9% of them are trainable or re-homeable. We have one now who was never going in the field, but I didn’t kill her. She’s sleeping on the couch. You down old dogs, hurt dogs, and sick dogs humanely, not by shooting them and tossing them in a gravel pit. Unsporting and deliberately cruel…but she wrote this to prove the cruelty is the point.”

Melissa Jo Peltier, a writer and producer of the “Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan” series, also heaped strong criticism on Noem.

“After 10+ years working with Cesar Millan & other highly specialized trainers, I believe NO dog should be put down just because they can’t or won’t do what we decide WE want them to,” Peltier said in a lengthy statement. “Dogs MUST be who they are. Sadly, that’s often who WE teach them to be. And our species is a hot mess. I would have happily taken Kristi Noem’s puppy & rehomed it. What she did is animal cruelty & cold blooded murder in my book.”

READ MORE: ‘Blood on Your Hands’: Tennessee Republicans OK Arming Teachers After Deadly School Shooting

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OPINION

President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off

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1 day ago

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April 26, 2024

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President Joe Biden gave an nearly-unannounced, last-minute, live exclusive interview Friday morning to Howard Stern, the SiriusXM radio host who for decades, from the mid-1990s to about 2015, was a top Trump friend, fan, and aficionado. But the impetus behind the President’s move appears to be a rare and unsigned statement from the The New York Times Company, defending the “paper of record” after months of anger from the public over what some say is its biased negative coverage of the Biden presidency and, especially, a Thursday report by Politico claiming Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger is furious the President has refused to give the “Grey Lady” an in-person  interview.

“The Times’ desire for a sit-down interview with Biden by the newspaper’s White House team is no secret around the West Wing or within the D.C. bureau,” Politico reported. “Getting the president on the record with the paper of record is a top priority for publisher A.G. Sulzberger. So much so that last May, when Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at the newspaper’s midtown headquarters for an off-the-record meeting with around 40 Times journalists, Sulzberger devoted several minutes to asking her why Biden was still refusing to grant the paper — or any major newspaper — an interview.”

“In Sulzberger’s view,” Politico explained, “only an interview with a paper like the Times can verify that the 81-year-old Biden is still fit to hold the presidency.”

But it was this statement that made Politico’s scoop go viral.

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

“’All these Biden people think that the problem is Peter Baker or whatever reporter they’re mad at that day,’ one Times journalist said. ‘It’s A.G. He’s the one who is pissed [that] Biden hasn’t done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting on his age.'”

Popular Information founder Judd Legum in March documented The New York Times’ (and other top papers’) obsession with Biden’s age after the Hur Report.

Thursday evening the Times put out a “scorching” statement, as Politico later reported, not on the newspaper’s website but on the company’s corporate website, not addressing the Politico piece directly but calling it “troubling” that President Biden “has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term.”

Media watchers and critics pushed back on the Times’ statement.

READ MORE: ‘To Do God Knows What’: Local Elections Official Reads Lara Trump the Riot Act

“NYT issues an unprecedented statement slamming Biden for ‘actively and effectively avoid[ing] questions from independent journalists during his term’ and claiming it’s their ‘independence’ that Biden dislikes, when it’s actually that they’re dying to trip him up,” wrote media critic Dan Froomkin, editor of Press Watch.

Froomkin also pointed to a 2017 report from Poynter, a top journalism site published by The Poynter Institute, that pointed out the poor job the Times did of interviewing then-President Trump.

Others, including former Biden Deputy Secretary of State Brian McKeon, debunked the Times’ claim President Biden hasn’t given interviews to independent journalists by pointing to Biden’s interviews with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” and a 20-minute sit-down interview with veteran journalist John Harwood for ProPublica.

Former Chicago Sun-Times editor Mark Jacob, now a media critic who publishes Stop the Presses, offered a more colorful take of Biden’s decision to go on Howard Stern.

The Times itself just last month reported on a “wide-ranging interview” President Biden gave to The New Yorker.

Watch the video and read the social media posts above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Doesn’t Care if Pregnant Women Live or Die’: Alito Slammed Over Emergency Abortion Remarks

 

 

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News

CNN Smacks Down Trump Rant Courthouse So ‘Heavily Guarded’ MAGA Cannot Attend His Trial

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April 26, 2024

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Donald Trump’s Friday morning claim Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building is “heavily guarded” so his supporters cannot attend his trial was torched by a top CNN anchor. The ex-president, facing 34 felony charges in New York, had been urging his followers to show up and protest on the courthouse steps, but few have.

“I’m at the heavily guarded Courthouse. Security is that of Fort Knox, all so that MAGA will not be able to attend this trial, presided over by a highly conflicted pawn of the Democrat Party. It is a sight to behold! Getting ready to do my Courthouse presser. Two minutes!” Trump wrote Friday morning on his Truth Social account.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins supplied a different view.

“Again, the courthouse is open the public. The park outside, where a handful of his supporters have gathered on trials days, is easily accessible,” she wrote minutes after his post.

READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

Trump has tried to rile up his followers to come out and make a strong showing.

On Monday Trump urged his supporters to “rally behind MAGA” and “go out and peacefully protest” at courthouses across the country, while complaining that “people who truly LOVE our Country, and want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, are not allowed to ‘Peacefully Protest,’ and are rudely and systematically shut down and ushered off to far away ‘holding areas,’ essentially denying them their Constitutional Rights.”

On Wednesday Trump claimed, “The Courthouse area in Lower Manhattan is in a COMPLETE LOCKDOWN mode, not for reasons of safety, but because they don’t want any of the thousands of MAGA supporters to be present. If they did the same thing at Columbia, and other locations, there would be no problem with the protesters!”

After detailing several of his false claims about security measures prohibiting his followers from being able to show their support and protest, CNN published a fact-check on Wednesday:

“Trump’s claims are all false. The police have not turned away ‘thousands of people’ from the courthouse during his trial; only a handful of Trump supporters have shown up to demonstrate near the building,” CNN reported.

“And while there are various security measures in place in the area, including some street closures enforced by police officers and barricades, it’s not true that ‘for blocks you can’t get near this courthouse.’ In reality, the designated protest zone for the trial is at a park directly across the street from the courthouse – and, in addition, people are permitted to drive right up to the front of the courthouse and walk into the building, which remains open to the public. If people show up early enough in the morning, they can even get into the trial courtroom itself or the overflow room that shows near-live video of the proceedings.”

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

 

 

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