Queer Activism--meet your new friend, Branding.
Tim Gill is a wealthy, white, male US citizen. One can only imagine the endless privilege available to someone like him. The fact that he is a wealthy, white, gay male, US citizen of course compromises his access to every privilege extended through institutional patriarchy. However, so many gay men like him, who can hide their difference and maintain their "normalcy" in the boys club, do just that. Maybe Tim Gill did that for awhile, he made his money, a lot of money. But these days the software millionaire has stepped outside the inner circle, in order to reach out, around, up and down, to all those on the fringes who are fighting against marginalization. The
Gay and Lesbian Fund for Colorado was founded by Gill in 1996 with the mission of "financially supporting nonprofit organizations that enhance the quality of life in Colorado and promote equality for all people, while highlighting the contributions of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. " The Fund's policy is to award grants to non profits serving minority and deserving populations, non of them lgbt, with the stipulation that the fund's name, 'The Gay and Lesbian Fund for Colorado" always be prominently displayed in their literature. That means supporters of The Latina Initiative, Care and Share Food Bank, Pike's Peak Library District, Latin American Education Foundation, and Central City Opera to name a few, will all see and hear about The Gay and Lesbian Fund for Colorado and know that they've made their important programming possible.
This in effect creates positive PR for lgbt communities by raising awareness that lgbt groups exist, thrive, and contribute. Gill is using the tools of consumerism-advertising, branding, incessant messaging, to firmly press the words and with them the idea and reality of gay and queer lives into the everyday experiences of conservative communities. It is even more ambitious work considering the locale. Colorado is not New York, it's not California, this is not another 'gay liberal throwing their money around'. Imagine if you will, a conservative, small town hockey mom passing out supply kits covered in Gay and Lesbian Fund for Colorado logos while she is volunteering with her fellow church goers at the local homeless shelter. Increasing the prevalence of the word "gay", especially in spaces of positive association, goes far in making the word just a word. Not scary, threatening, or politically charged, just another word in our everyday.
What's even more enjoyable is that he's taking the disenfranchised model of non profit social service provision and made it an empowered locus of organizing for all minority groups affected by oppression. Institutional oppression, whether experienced by a gay person, a person of color, a gender queer person, a woman, an immigrant, it all derives from the same site of fear. The withholding of resources is not based on any one difference, but any difference that can be sighted in order to deny privilege to many for the sake of a few. Attention to differences among the different is a tool of oppressors, used to keep us fighting each other for scarce resources. Tim Gill provides a model of non profit funding that celebrates a common objective of equality and resource management rather than our usual fight to champion ones own oppression over another marginalized group.
To hear more about his efforts, listen on Marketplace by American Public Media.
