Cambridge vigil for LGBT rights
By Keith Rosenthal | December 2, 2008 | Issue 686
http://socialistworker.org/2008/12/02/cambridge-vigil-for-lgbt-rightsCAMBRIDGE, Mass.--About 40 people held a vigil here before the opening-night screening of the new movie Milk in support of the newly resurgent movement for gay rights.
Milk is based on the story of Harvey Milk, the pioneering gay rights activist of the 1970s and the first openly gay politician elected to major office in the U.S. Milk was assassinated in 1978 by Dan White, a one-time San Francisco supervisor and anti-gay bigot.
The event was organized by the recently formed group Join the Impact-MA. Initially formed in the wake of the passage of the anti-gay Proposition 8 in California, the group has been very busy ever since.
In recent weeks, the group has organized a 10,000-person protest in Boston (built mostly through the social networking Web site Facebook), a 100-plus person march in Cambridge, and weekly meetings of 20 to 30 activists. Though gay marriage is already legal in the state of Massachusetts, Join the Impact-MA is organizing around issues of transgender inequality and the repeal of the federal anti-gay law, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
