Queerty: Jacobs and Courage Campaign. The next wave?

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http://www.queerty.com/looking-for-leadership-rick-jacobs-is-already-fighting-californias-next-marriage-equality-battle-20081211/

Rick Jacobs to No on 8 Leaders: 'Do Not Try to Run This Again. Ever.'
Queerty Exclusive

QUEERTY REPORTS — Rick Jacobs isn't your average run-of-the-mill critic of the No on 8 campaign. As founder of the Courage Campaign, a progressive netroots organization with over 300,000 members that partners with labor, religious and netroots groups, Jacobs is in a unique position to look at what went wrong with the No on 8.

Like many groups, the Courage Campaign offered its support and services to the No on 8 Campaign, but felt largely rebuffed. When the Jacobs saw that the Mormon Church was donating unprecedented sums of money through its members to Prop 8, the Courage Campaign created a television ad featuring two Mormon missionaries invading a lesbian's home and taking their marriage certificate and rings from them. It would be the only large-scale criticism of the Mormon Church before the election.

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We worked closely with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of LA. We got 17,000 people to sign a letter calling on the president of the church to stop breaking the ninth commandment, not condone blackmail and stop using the church to take rights away from a minority.

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I founded the Courage Campaign three years ago as a vehicle by which to bring the energy of the 2004 campaign back into California. We always export labor and capital and we never build political infrastructure here. In August 2007, we had 26,000 or so people on our list; today, we are close to 400,000. We exist to make California more progressive and governable. Right now, it is neither.

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Equality California had a meeting with its Board of Directors last weekend and its begun asking people to submit the names and contact info of grassroots, netroots leaders to them. Are the "traditional" gay organizations doing enough?

I am not aware of Equality’s meeting. EQCA announced a “summit” of all interested in parties around repealing Prop. 8 to occur in LA on 24 January. It’s a huge list and growing. I have no idea of the purpose or intended outcome. One thing is clear: no one organization or group “owns” this movement, nor should it.

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Activists for marriage equality have to learn about the needs and cares of others and have to be relevant to those needs. That’s how we get to know each other and, as we saw in MILK, that’s how we build power.

You've been a critic of the No on 8 campaign. Why?

Continued criticism of the No on 8 is useful as a means by which to learn what not to do next. It is not useful to get personal or unprofessional about the critiques. My friend Andy Rappaport said after the 2004 presidential election, if something does not work after having tried it several times, the only thing you know for sure is not to dump a lot of money into that same strategy again.

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We have a golden opportunity now to build a real progressive movement that fires on all cylinders. As I have said to folks who ask me, first, don’t ask permission. If you want to do something, do it. Ask forgiveness. Second, we need organizing principles and infrastructure.

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