April 11, 2001
Happy Hour
April’s 4th Friday Happy Hour on will be on April 27, 2001, from 6:00 - 8:00 p.m. at Gabriel's, at the Radisson Barcelo Hotel, 2121 P Street, NW, Washington, DC. We hope to see more members, their guests, and new folks join us there. These events have proven that gay and lesbian networking out of the office works! Please join us.
Interior GLOBE Volunteer Effort with Food and Friends
We will have our regularly scheduled meeting this evening at 5:30pm at Food and Friends, located at 58 L St., SE. As a reminder, these monthly volunteer nights are always the same Wednesday evening as our GLOBE meetings. We have been getting a few members and their friends to support this monthly volunteer effort, but more could help support this important Interior GLOBE outreach effort. Jay spoke of receiving several e-mails supporting this commitment after he sent an e-mail to members asking for their continued participation.
June Pride Planning
The program is scheduled to begin at 10:00 AM on Wednesday, June 13, 2001, and will last about an hour. We will be holding this Observance in the newly renovated South Interior Building Auditorium, located at 1951 Constitution Aveenue, NW, Washington, DC.
Elizabeth Toledo will be our guest speaker. She was named Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in April 2000. She previously served as Vice President - Action of the National Organization for Women. She was elected to that national position after serving as President of the California chapter of NOW, and before that served as President of NOW's San Francisco chapter.
Andy DeVito was asked to work out some talking points and Departmental information for Ms. Toledo and provide them to Maria Wiseman so she could work with Ms. Toledo on her presentation. It was discussed by the membership that in formulating a relationship with the new administration, we are focusing on the need for gays and lesbians to be included in the diversity plan for the Department and its offices and bureaus. The membership supported the idea that Ms. Toledo would highlight the outstanding leadership that the Interior Department has provided the federal government in policies that support gay and lesbian employees.
Jay Douglas provided information about our Pride event to Fed GLOBE so they can provide notice to others. This informational note invited other agency GLOBE members and their friends to the event, and Fed GLOBE has already posted this information to their website.
Bob Veltkamp will again contract the Washington Blade and place an announcement of the event in the paper. Diane Wood, OSM coordinator for the Gay and Lesbian Pride event, had requested photographs of gay and lesbian people who are outstanding in their fields, such as Gore Vidal, author, or Tami Baldwin, Congresswoman. Any member wishing to contribute photos or a list of names should call Diane on 202-208-2997.
We encourage all Interior GLOBE members and their friends to attend this event and celebrate Gay and Lesbian Pride with us.
Spring Newsletter
Jay Douglas stated that due to the late filings of several stories for the Spring Newsletter the April date for its printing will not be met. We are now looking to produce it in May. Stories or ideas for stories can be submitted by any member, either in Washington or in any region of the country. Please send your stories or story ideas to Maria Wisemen.
Stonewall Plaque Update
Steve Morris briefed the members on the latest events around the plaque for the Stonewall Inn. Kim Kearns, Executive Director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, has expressed her personal support and interest in having the standard National Historic Landmark plaque placed on the building. She is presently on maternity leave and will work on this project while on leave. She will contact the owner to see if he will place the plaque on the building. While the plaque is free, the owner of the structure must pledge to maintain the plaque and grant the government accesses to the building to see that it is being properly maintained. There is no large press event contemplated for placing the plaque on the building.
While the membership supports this standard plaque approach to commemorating the events around the Stonewall Riots, it was the consensus that a larger wayside exhibit should be pursued at some point after the standard plaque has been placed. These exhibits are costly, but it was felt that if National Gay and Lesbian organizations were contacted they could help provide the funding for such an exhibit.
New Business:
OPM Standard Equal Opportunity Language on Position Announcements
It was reported that the Office of Personnel Management is still using some old vacancy announcement templates that don't include sexual orientation under the non-discrimination clause. Apparently, it was discovered that the Park Service advertised a number of vacancy announcements in several regions recently without the sexual orientation language. The Park Service personnel office was asked why and they said they pulled the template for that job series (the job series was not reported) from OPM, and OPM's template was lacking the sexual orientation language.
We had had fairly high level meetings between our Assistant Secretary and OPM officials about this problem about a year ago and we were assured that it would be taken care of quickly.
Jay Douglas will contact the President of OPM GLOBE to see if they can again get their agency to fix this situation. We hope and presume that OPM's new administration has not intentionally removed this language from the templates.
Revised: 04/15/01
Robert_J_Veltkamp@nbc.gov