An Introduction to who we are:

Coalition efforts between the labor movement and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community in San Francisco have always been essential in protecting and expanding worker’s rights in state and city elections, but our organizing efforts in 2005 and 2006 show how education and outreach truly make a difference.

In 2005, the Labor movement beat back a significant attack on working people with the help of communities across the state of California. The Asian community, the African American community, the Latino community, and many others played a significant role in our victory. In the weeks leading up to the election, the LGBT community also worked very hard to defeat Proposition 75, an anti-worker initiative that would have silenced the voices of working people.

WHY?  Because, in 2005, LGBT organizations and community members worked hard to pass legislation authored by Assembly member Mark Leno that would have given LGBT couples the right to marry in California, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger indicated he would veto it.

In San Francisco, queer community leaders knew a veto of this bill would anger and rally people, and they wanted to use this opportunity to channel this anger towards understanding the many ways that Schwarzenegger’s policies hurt our communities. Local queer organizations and activists met to discuss how the LGBT community could be mobilized to see the links between Schwarzenegger’s anti-LGBT, anti-women, anti-poor, and anti-worker initiatives.  The group decided to form the SF LGBT Alliance and coordinate efforts against Propositions 73 through 78.

SF LGBT Alliance Work
The SF LGBT Alliance recruited hundreds of volunteers at rallies, teach-ins, and street fairs. Members of the LGBT community walked precincts and phone-banked to identify voters who opposed Schwarzenegger’s initiatives. The Alliance also tabled at LGBT events and helped canvass 60 precincts in San Francisco with the highest number of LGBT individuals and families.  On Election Day, over 250 volunteers worked to turn out the vote in those precincts, which turned out to be some of the top-performing neighborhoods in the election, such as the Castro, Diamond Heights, Duboce Triangle, Noe Valley, and Bernal Heights.

Pride at Work SF coordinated the re-assembly of this coalition for the 2006 election, broadening efforts to include efforts for a paid sick days initiative, renter relocation assistance and protection of teen safety and women’s right to choose. Through this electoral campaign Pride at Work identified and activated young queer activists, who were not yet active the labor movement, but were eager to fight for economic justice and learn more about the labor movement.

The Birth of the Queer Youth Organizing Project
In 2005, the national Pride at Work convention passed a resolution urging P@W to reach out to and engage younger LGBT persons. In San Francisco, we learned, through the overwhelming interest young queer activists showed in our 2006 campaign, that this was necessary.  We learned that while younger progressives have shown renewed interest in labor, many are resistant to participating in traditional union campaigns and many are not union members.

QYOP, or the Queer Youth Organizing Project, was born in 2006 as a working group of SF Pride at Work, aimed at expanding the work of the local chapter to include queer-community centered economic justice work beyond traditional labor organizing.  New members, many aged 18-30, identified key areas of interest for future campaigns, including Migrant Rights, Worker Rights, and Tenant Rights/ Gentrification.

For months, members met with local organizers to hear about the work already being done in these areas, to learn where community leaders thought more work was needed, and to identify existing campaigns that they might be able to join or support.  The work we do today folows directly from these conversations and visioning meetings.

Working Groups and Campaigns

For each area of interest, a working group was formed to develop and engage in specific campaigns and projects.

MIGRANT RIGHTS- The first project of this group was to help plan for, outreach for, and attend the No Borders Camp, a week-long convergence on the US/ Mexican border.  Today, this working group is in coalition with immigrant rights groups across the city to create and uphold the policies that will keep San Francisco a real Sanctuary City.  It also seeks to engage the queer community in critically examining the violence that an increasingly militarized border and interior does to our communities.

WORKER RIGHTS- This working group continued a lot of the original work of P@W, mobilizing mutual support between organized labor and the LGBT community.  It supports local labor struggles, such as the Sleep With the Right People campaign or the Woodfin Suites Campaign, as well as organizes local support to pass important national labor law, such as the Employee Free Choice Act, or Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).  Additionally, the worrking group is part of the OLSE Worker Outreach Project works coalition with La Raza Centro Legal, the Chinese Proessive Association, and the Filipino Community Center to do worker outreach and education around local labor law.

The campaign to push HRC, a major national LGBT organization, to support a version of ENDA that would protect trans and gender-variant people included a boycot of and alternative party to HRC’s annual fundraising gala.  The event was so successful that organizers across the country used the Left-Out Party model to protest HRC’s anti-trans policies!

HOUSING and GENTRIFICATION- Concerned about the ways working class queers and queers of color are being pushed out of this city, this working group joined the CitiSTOP campaign. CitiSTOP is a coalition of tenant activists who are fighting back against San Francisco’s largest and most infamous landlord, CitiApartments, who circumvents rent control by evicting as many long-term tenants as possible and replacing them with short-term renters, professionals working short jobs downtown, and students.

Pride at Work members took on the work of door-to-door outreach within the coalition. Talking to neighbors in Citi Apartments buildings in the Tenderloin, Mission, and Western Addition, this group has started to build a coalition of long-term central city residents, queers, activists, and angry Citi tenants who are fighting evictions and building grassroots power among the residents of this city and to show all of San Francisco’s landlords that Citi Apartments’ gentrifying tactics don’t pay.

The Name Change to HAVOQ

At some point, QYOP members realized that some people didn’t think they could join organizing efforts because of the word “Youth” in our name.  We decided to change our name to HAVOQ in order to make it clear that people of any age are invited to join our efforts.

HAVOQ can stand for a few different things, all with the same general idea behind them: we are a group of queers committed to organizing together in the most horizontal way possible.

Here are some interpretations of HAVOQ:  take your pick or make up your own:

the Horizontal Alliance of Very Organized Queers
the Horizontal Alliance of Voraciously Offbeat Queers
the Homolicious Association of Vaguely Organized Queens