Court documents, released this week, detail Equality California’s participation in the campaign to block CA Prop 8 from succeeding with voters in 2008. The document is the declaration of Geoff Kors, Executive Director of EQCA.
Not surprisingly, the document paints a fairly scattered approach to the Prop 8 effort, with an umbrella group, Equality For All, watching over a wide variety of groups and individuals. Originally about 35 local, state and national groups were involved, which stretched eventually to over 100 . Reading through it, a sense of cohesiveness is difficult to find.
It’s also easy to see why so much money was being raised but frustrating as well. The amount of paid consultants is staggering. There were messaging consultants, campaign consultants, strategy consultants, media consultants and on and on and on. It seems this problem is built into the LGBT activist movement to this day, with gay activist groups consistently gathering to "brainstorm", while "action" takes a back seat. I realize certain consultants are necessary to a campaign, but I mean really, do we know so little about this whole thing that all we can do now is brainstorm and pay consultants?
Glaringly missing, although perhaps not pertinent to this particular document, is money spent on actual television advertising and opposition engagement. We all know at this point how little was done in that area to combat the forces of Prop 8, but reading through this court document, it’s easy to see why we were constantly told TV ads couldn’t run unless we coughed up more money…they had a few rooms full of consultants that had to be paid. Maybe it’s time we stop "consulting" and "brainstorming" so much and do what the other side is good at…just DOING SOMETHING.
