Lessons from the Safe Schools Movement

(This was a bit of local coverage I did for Bay Windows, but I think it may be of interest to anyone interested in the history of social justice movements and the interaction among various progressive groups.)

Twenty years ago, when the first Gay-Straight Alliance was created, with the goal of making schools safer for students regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity and expression, no one would have predicted it would be the beginning of a national movement encompassing 4000 high schools and middle schools in North America. Conservatives were enjoying a run in the White House and progressives everywhere were on the defensive. The Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth began in 1992, however, under Republican Gov. William Weld, and the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Student Rights Law passed in 1993.

Michael Connelly, director of Stonewall Communities Lifelong Learning Institute, wanted to explore this paradoxical history of the Safe Schools movement. He teamed with The History Project to launch a yearlong initiative that includes panel discussions, an oral-history course, a study guide, and an upcoming Web site. As part of this project, on June 3, four panelists and a knowledgeable audience at Wheelock College addressed the question of what other social-justice movements can learn from the success of Safe Schools.

In Massachusetts, Safe Schools has been a clear success, with over 300 GSAs in the more than 350 public high schools in the state, said panelist Pam Garramone, executive director of Greater Boston PFLAG. Her group now does numerous student and faculty trainings on making schools safer for LGBT youth.

Not that the way has been smooth everywhere. Panelist Rev. Irene Monroe noted that for many black and Latino urban communities, a “safe school” is one where a child doesn’t have to deal with gangs, or where the infrastructure isn’t dilapidated. LGBT-inclusive behavior must be modeled in these communities from the top down, e.g., in churches and local media, and in such a way that it “doesn’t seem like a white thing,” before an LGBT Safe Schools program is attempted.

“Change is happening,” though, she said, noting that a PFLAG group has just launched in Dorchester. Although PFLAG had tried in vain for many years to start a chapter there, Garramone added, it was the prompting of the black mother of a lesbian teen who made it happen. From the audience, Stanley Griffith, president of Greater Boston PFLAG, said that his group made the strategic commitment to expand into communities of color, but “realized we had a lot to learn because we failed badly over the years.” They are now starting to make inroads, however, in Haverhill, Fall River, and New Bedford, and want to add three more communities per year.

One of the key factors in the Safe Schools movement’s success was the decision to focus on safety and frame it as a public health problem rather than one of diversity, noted Connelly. Early organizers were able to do this in large part because they could rely on data, including a 1989 national survey that found higher-than-usual suicide rates among LGBT youth. Panelist Jon Auerbach, Commissioner of the Mass. Department of Public Health, elaborated that hard facts help “where there may be a tendency for people to talk about whether they agree or disagree with an issue. I think you can be homophobic and still believe that schools should be safe for young people to go to school.” He said a similar approach had worked to address HIV, too, keeping the focus away from moral judgments and on evidence-based studies of what types of interventions might help.

Making Safe Schools a matter of public health helped garner institutional support, noted panelist Pam Chamberlain of Political Research Associates, but it never would have succeeded without the students who built it into a movement. They had a direct impact on their schools, and were also better prepared to advocate for LGBT rights after graduation.

Why did Massachusetts offer such fertile ground? The panelists offered a number of reasons. Its small size helped, said Chamberlain. She cautioned, though, against assigning too much value to the state’s liberal reputation, saying, “If you work in schools, you don’t really experience Massachusetts as a liberal place.” Griffiths gave credit to “a unique blend of Republican libertarianism” under Gov. Weld, as well as several gay men in senior positions in his administration. Auerbach, however, cited “an unusual combination of trailblazers,” including many non-famous people who helped lay the groundwork.

With many older adults from Stonewall Communities in the audience, it is not surprising discussion turned to how activists could apply lessons from Safe Schools to LGBT seniors. In terms of visibility and the understanding of their needs, LGBT seniors are where LGBT youth were in 1982, asserted David Aronstein, president of Stonewall Communities. When it comes to driving change for LGBT seniors, we are still creating the social structures other movements have relied on, noted Chamberlain. Aronstein added that schools are a natural gathering place for youth, whereas LGBT seniors have no such locus.

First, the senior movement should establish a vision that resonates with people, said Chamberlain, and figure out how to frame it as “a collective grievance” that can bring people together. Garramone suggested that LGBT seniors, like LGBT youth, must become more visible, and find opportunities such as speaking at mainstream senior centers.

One of the big lessons from the Safe Schools movement, all agreed, was the need for allies. Connelly noted that it is no little mark of success that every high school student now knows what a straight ally is. Garramone then shared the example of the GSA at Haverhill High School, which had asked PFLAG to talk with the school’s Violence Intervention and Prevention group. The group, almost all black and Latino boys, were peer leaders, but supposedly “hated gay people.”

To her surprise, at the meetings she organized, many students talked about having gay relatives, but not realizing that the language they used might have hurt them. “For me the lesson in that is really when you go into the schools and talk to these students, they’re not homophobic, they don’t hate gay people. They just never see the model … of happy, positive, gay people, and that’s what we showed them. …They never get a safe space to talk about it, and when they do, I think amazing things happen.”

Auerbach commented that one of the reasons for Haverhill’s success was that conditions already existed to make the audience receptive. Students had already been thinking about racism, relating to peers, and dealing with issues that made them uncomfortable. LGBT advocates should look for opportunities to collaborate with these other efforts, he advised.

Connolly then used the idea of allies to discuss the burgeoning transgender movement, suggesting, “Trans people will need even more allies because they are fewer in number.” Audience member Mycroft Holmes, chair of the Transgender Working Group at Keshet, agreed to the extent that there are fewer trans people who are visible and willing to be out. He noted, though, that trans youth are still often marginalized even within LGBT youth programs, just as LGBT people have been excluded from other social justice movements. He then asked the panelists to share their positive stories of becoming allies.

Monroe underscored how personal connections can bridge divides by relating how having a trans housemate and hearing negative comments even from her black LGB friends taught her about the type of oppression trans people face. Auerbach then related the story of a training session he organized about trans issues at the Department of Public Health, and how it “changed everybody’s understanding,” including that of lesbian and gay staff members.

Jeff Perrotti, director of the Department of Education Safe Schools Program, spoke from the audience and suggested one approach. One of the Safe Schools movement’s greatest successes “is that we were very optimistic and we spoke to the best in people: ’Of course you want kids to be safe in school’… I think we created a movement that people wanted to be part of,” and now young people have taken the lead.

He spoke of his recent involvement with a program to introduce students to careers that are non-traditional for their genders, and how he used this as a jumping-off point to talk about gender identity, expression, and trans people. “There’s support in unexpected places,” he concluded, “and that is what we found over and over again. … I think that’s what the challenge is for movements, to let people see this is a real need and this is what you have to contribute to it.”