Heartland Alliance and the Center on Halsted invited five forum speakers (of the Global Equality Network, or GEN) participating in a month-long fellowship with Chicago organizations to share their unique experiences at “Out Around the World: Global LGBT Activism.” The alliance’s director of global HIV initiatives at Heartland Alliance, Sean Casey, moderated the forum, which included GEN fellows Georges Azzi (Helem), Rosana Flamer-Caldera (Sri Lanka), Hasna Hena (Bangladesh), Georges Kanuma and Olumide Makanjuola (Nigeria). The forum, held on March 17 at the Hoover-Leppen theatre at the Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted, was attended by more than 30 people.
Each panelist spoke briefly about the challenges each organization faces within an oppressive society, which in some cases includes imprisonment or state-sponsored executions for having or being accused of same-sex relationships. Global activists have strategically formed partnerships with other movements by joining campaigns for women’s rights and children’s rights in their regions. Azzi shared some of the challenges in the Lebanese LGBT nonprofit organization Helem, like not having a word in the Arabic language to describe homosexuality in a positive way.
Azzi said, “What we have as an organization? We have the Gay and Lesbian Center. It’s a little bit less big than this one, but it exists.” Flamer-Caldera of Equal Ground in Sri Lanka, where the sentence can be 10 years in prison for having same-sex relationships, was grateful for the opportunity: “When I walked into the Center [on Halsted] I thought ‘Wow. Do you think one day in Sri Lanka we can have a center like this?’ It’s a dream; [it] might come true one day.”
And speaking of dreams that continue to become more real with every campaign, the LGBT community of Sri Lanka held its first annual PRIDE event in 2007. Equal Ground has decided to mainstream LGBT issues by looking at the issues as a human rights issue and not as a special rights issue. Flamer-Caldera concluded, “There is a lot more that we have to do in our countries. One of the key things is to change the law, but changing the law is not going to change peoples attitudes about homosexuality—not in a hurry, anyway.”
GEN has partnered with four organizations in Guatemala City; Beirut, Lebanon; Colombo, Sri Lanka; and Lagos, Nigeria. For more information, visit heartlandalliance.org.