QL members ejected from council chambers during packed meeting

A Fort Worth city marshal removes Blake Wilkinson of Queer LIberaction from council chambers on Tuesday, July 14. TAMMYNE NASH/Dallas Voice

FORT WORTH — Members of the City Council this week promised a thorough investigation of what happened at The Rainbow Lounge in the early morning hours of July 28. But they said the investigation would take time to complete, and asked the city’s LGBT community to have patience while that happens.

An overflow crowd packed the council chambers on Tuesday night, July 14, leaving many more standing in the hallway outside or in a smaller meeting room nearby.
A number of those present were there to speak on other issues — primarily the council’s vote to elect a new mayor pro tem and discussion over possible budget cuts that could impact the city’s program for homeless people. But a majority of those present were wearing yellow “Fairness Fort Worth” buttons. And when those there to address other issues left, they were quickly replaced in the chamber by people wearing the “Fairness Fort Worth” buttons.

Both District 8 representative Kathleen Hicks and openly gay District 9 representative Joel Burns addressed the raid during the councilmember announcements time at the beginning of the meeting. But when Mayor Mike Moncrief attempted to move onto the mayor pro tem election, activists in the crowd stood up to disrupt the proceedings.

Blake Wilkinson, founder of Queer Liberaction, stood and interrupted the mayor, asking that the mayor “kindly move” the Rainbow Lounge discussion to the front of the agenda. Wilkinson was joined by Rick Vanderslice, Nicki Kerksieck, Joanna Bernal and Rich McPhee.

Moncrief eventually requested that city marshals remove Wilkinson and, a few minutes later, Kerksieck, when the two of them refused to end their repeated demands that the Rainbow Lounge discussion be moved up in the agenda. Four other QL members were also escorted off the property when they began shouting “Hear us now” in the hall outside the council chamber (See related story here).

Hicks, who had been mayor pro tem since May 2006 but was replaced by District 4 representative Danny Scarth in a vote held Tuesday night, earned a standing ovation from the LGBT community members and allies at the meeting when she said all city employees, including police officers, “must receive education on diversity and inclusion” for all minority communities in the city.

Hicks said that as an African-American woman, she experiences discrimination on a daily basis, and that she sees her duty on the council as not just to represent her constituents in District 8 but to represent everyone in the city who faces discrimination.

“We can’t ask nor should we want for this to just go away,” Hicks said to more applause. “But we can and we must move forward in a positive and inclusive way.”
Burns spoke out against those both locally and around the country who have demonized the city and its police department in the days since the Rainbow Lounge raid, saying that officials in city government and the police department would take appropriate action following a thorough investigation into what happened.

“We owe it to the people of Fort Worth and to our public servants to determine the facts of what happened” at the Rainbow Lounge, and Fort Worth police officers “deserve to have every ounce of doubt removed,” Burns said. He added that if the investigation shows that one or more officers acted inappropriately during the Rainbow Lounge raid, those officers would be appropriately disciplined.

Burns also said that be believes Police Chief Jeffrey Halstead — who has been widely criticized for remarks he made suggesting that patrons at the bar that night made sexual advances toward officers and even groped one — will conduct a thorough investigation.

“I have faith in him,” Burns said of Halstead, “but then, I know him. Others don’t” and may doubt that the police department’s two internal investigations will be unbiased.

To remove that doubt, Burns said he — along with the mayor and the other councilmembers — have requested that the U.S. Attorney’s Office conduct an independent investigation.

A total of 30 people signed up to speak during the meeting about the Rainbow Lounge incident, and Fort Worth attorney Jon Nelson, co-founder of Fairness Fort Worth, was the first at the podium.

Despite the fact that the Fort Worth council amended its nondiscrimination ordinance to include sexual orientation in 2003, Nelson said, “there remains an underbelly in this city,” and the raid at the Rainbow Lounge served to exacerbate people’s fears and stereotypes.

And in an effort to help the non-gay members of the council understand the pervasive homophobia LGBT people face, Nelson read an e-mail from someone angry with him because he is representing the Episcopal Church USA in a lawsuit against the breakaway diocese in Fort Worth.

The subject line read “How does Jon Nelson find time to sodomize his gay lover?” and the e-mail ended with, “God bless such a hard-working fudge packer.”

“That,” Nelson told the council, “is what it can mean to be gay in Fort Worth.”
Nelson said that Halstead’s early statements — which Halstead later told Dallas Voice were used out of context by a reporter from another newspaper — led many to believe that city officials had already made up their minds about what had transpired at Rainbow Lounge, and that the community’s voice would not be heard.

“That is not the Fort Worth way,” Nelson said, a sentiment that would be echoed by many throughout the night.

If not for the fact that the raid happened on the 40th anniversary of Stonewall, if one of the patrons had not been hospitalized with a brain injury incurred during the incident and if so much national attention had not been focused on Fort Worth because of it, many LGBT people believe “the chief’s pre-judgment would have been the end of it,” Nelson said. “You can understand our frustration.”

Nelson said he does believe that the Fort Worth police does a good job and that individual officers do their best to protect and serve the city as a whole. But that “does not create a presumption that everything was OK at the Rainbow Lounge that night.”

Nelson called for the council to institute diversity training through city government and to appoint liaisons to the LGBT community from a variety of city departments, not just the police department. And he insisted that the independent investigation to be conducted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office be more than just a review of documents and testimony collected in the PD investigations.

Fairness Fort Worth’s founders began with distrust, anger and frustration, Nelson said, but quickly decided to put those emotions aside and focus first on facilitating the gathering of witness testimony for the investigation, and later to find a way to keep such incidents from happening again.

“The reality is this, we [the LGBT community] bear some responsibility. We’ve never had a community. We’ve never really had a leader or a spokesman. But now we are here to cooperate with you, to care, to listen, to understand and to work with you,” he said.

Thomas Anable, the CPA for the Rainbow Lounge who was in the bar when the raid occurred, followed Nelson at the podium. He gave the council members a detailed account of what he saw happen that night.

“No one was acting unsafe or outrageous that I saw,” Anable said, referring to state law that allows officers to arrest people for public intoxication when that person is doing something that might endanger him or herself or others. “No one touched, groped or dry-humped any of the officers.”

Anable said that he took notes on his Blackberry, and that after officers entered the bar the first time, he saw them come back in “about 20 more times.”

He said he saw officers arrest people who had had very little to drink, and even some who were drinking only water. And even though only five people were eventually charged, Anable said he went outside at one point and saw “eight or nine people” lying face-down on the sidewalk, with the hands zip-tied behind their backs.

Anable told the council that officers were treating people “very roughly”and that he saw one man “slammed down across the pool table,” before he described in detail the arrest of Chad Gibson.

District 7 Councilman Carter Burdette later said Anable’s description of the raid was “chilling” to hear.

Public comment on the Rainbow Lounge incident started Tuesday evening with 30 people signed up to speak. In the end, 21 people actually addressed the council; the others were either among those removed from the chambers earlier or among those who had left as the hour got later.

Those who did speak included several straight allies of the LGBT community, including a man who described himself as a husband, father and student of theology, a woman who said she has a trans son and a lesbian daughter, and a woman who said the Rainbow Lounge incident is “not a gay rights issue; it’s a civil rights issue.”

Andrea Burnett told the council that as a bar owner herself, she has dealt many times with TABC agents, and had never seen anything like what witnesses said happened at the Rainbow Lounge. “I have never had TABC come in and have interaction at all with my customers,” she said.

Burnett also told the council that while she currently lives in the small town of Thurber, Texas and is that town’s mayor, she has already bought a condo in Fort Worth and had planned to retire here.

“But this is not the Fort Worth I remember,” she added. “I live in a small town. I am mayor of a small town. When we have a problem, we handle it. You guys need to deal with this.”

Jane Sheehan told the council she had driven in from San Francisco to participate in the meeting because “I care that much, as do a very large number of allies in the national and international communities.”

Although those who spoke expressed their shock and outrage that the raid had occurred, as well as disappointment in the police chief’s and the council’s initial handling of the situation, discourse remained civil — except for the early outburst by Queer Liberaction members.

Many of those present talked about their love for the city of Fort Worth, and their willingness to work with city and police officials to make sure similar incidents don’t happen in the future.

“I love my town. I love my community. And I don’t ever plan to turn my back on either one,” said Todd Camp, one of the founders of Q Cinema who was celebrating his birthday at Rainbow Lounge when the raid occurred. Camp was also one of the principle organizers of the two protests that happened the evening after the raid occurred.

Camp expressed his faith that the “guilty parties will be punished” and that “bad policies will be changed.” But, he said, it is equally as important to make sure that this kind of incident doesn’t happen again.

“Some of us are loud. Some of us are angry. All of us are frustrated,” Camp said. “I am ready to work with you. But we’d better get started now.”

Kyle Trentham said he is angry over the incident, but he is also tired of hearing people “bashing” Fort Worth.

“It’s easy to sit here and yell. But it’s all our responsibility to make sure it never happens again,” Trentham said.

Once all the citizen comment time was complete, each councilmember took time to respond — except for Hicks, who had spoken earlier — and each pledged support for an independent investigation and to take steps to improve the relationship between the city and its LGBT residents and to find ways to “begin the healing process.”

“In Fort Worth, we are a city that values diversity and inclusion,” said District 2 Councilmember Sal Espino. “This incident at the Rainbow Lounge has led to a crisis of confidence in our city, but we can overcome that. … We must change attitudes. I think Fort Worth is coming together.”

Burdette said that in his 75 years, he has always considered freedom the most valuable asset of being an American. But, he added, “Without respect for those who are different, we don’t have freedom.”

Burdette said he had remained silent in the wake of the raid so far because he did not want to speak without having some facts. But, he said, “Please don’t take my silence as a statement or a position.”

Burdette said the council and the community should give investigators the time to complete their work and “do it right,” and that if the investigation determines some officers acted inappropriately, they should be punished.

“We need healing and reconciliation. We have to learn from our mistakes,” Burdette said. “Please don’t let the frustration get to you. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

District 4 Councilmember Danny Scarth said the shock over the Rainbow Lounge incident shows that such behavior “is not the norm” in Fort Worth.
“That’s not the way things happen here,” he said.

District 6 Councilmember Jungus Jordan said he wants “us to fix anything that was broken,” and District 3 Councilmember W.B. “Zim” Zimmerman said he wants to see the city move forward.

“This was a crisis yesterday. It’s now an opportunity,” Zimmerman said. “We’re going to seize that opportunity.”

Burns agreed, saying the dialogue over the Rainbow Lounge is giving city officials and city residents “the opportunity to talk about a lot of things.”

Moncrief ended the forum by thanking the community for “your patience and your commitment,” and promised that the words of those who had spoken “did not fall on deaf ears.”

Moncrief told the crowd that he apologized for Chief’s Halstead’s early comments that angered so many. He also apologized for his delay in speaking out, saying he was trying to get accurate information before speaking, and he apologized for not having been able to answer all the e-mails he had received.

After the meeting, Nelson said he thought the council’s response at the meeting was “very positive. I honestly believe them when they say they want to get to the bottom of this.”


This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition July 17, 2009.