June 2, 1999 re: PECO - 2301 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA

First, thanks to Franny Price, Diversity of Pride Executive Director and Rally Organizer.

Adrienne Rich: A Lesbian/Feminist, A Mother, and a Scholar:

….that which is misnamed…that which is omitted from biography…that which is unspoken becomes not merely unspoken, but unspeakable….

The PECO Crowns Light struggle is about the right to name and to define our being. It is about our struggle for existence in a world that forces our invisibility, that silences our being, and degrades our essential humanity. It is about private corporate power and its protection of the status quo. It is about PECO’s extraordinary arrogance, an arrogance that derives from its near absolute power and, as a private corporation, its lack of public accountability. It is about insult and injury, it is about fear and loathing. And we can not – this time – let them get away with it.

Nearly two decades ago, in task force led campaigns, we won local civil rights protections (1982) and more than five years ago, we won local and state education rights – each limited in their scope, enforcement mechanisms, and meaningful remedies – but nevertheless law, law that gives us grounds on which to fight if we can afford the fight.

But the law does not protect us against private corporations’ prejudice or hatred or discrimination with a few exceptions – one of course is the area of employment and another is "public accommodations." In a conversation today with Kevin Vaughn, Executive Director of the Commission on Human Relations, Vaughn said that the City Law Department has determined that PECO’s Crown Light Display is NOT a public accommodation. We might ask the Mayor who is presumed to be gay-friendly, why not?

Whether the Law Department is willing to change its view as it did eventually on the matter of domestic partnership, the question remains: what can we do to get what we want?

Question: What do we want? "Gay (GLBT) Pride" on its Crown Lights Display.)

In organizing, it is important to know one’s enemy, to focus on a specific goal, and to decide what are the best strategies to move that goal forward.

PECO

We know that PECO is NOT a good corporate citizen – we know that it is not socially responsible for a variety of reasons.We know that it is an "investor-owned" private corporation and that its 1998 10-K report acknowledges about 5 billion dollars in operating revenue (Securities and Exchange Commission). We know PECO’s annual spring meetings are open to stockholders and that stockholders may submit proxies for consideration at such meetings, including possibly, policies related to social and environmental issues. So what can we do?

Primary Messages

1. Live our lives as if we believe that we deserve full human rights: legal, social, and economic.

2. Challenge PECO so that it will now and forever acknowledge, equally and visibly, our celebration of gay and lesbian pride as well as bisexual and transgender pride Disrupt Business as Usual. Through organized and public dissent -- personal visits, letters, phone calls, e-mails, and pickets; through economic, though limited, boycotts and girlcotts; through publicity campaigns; through stockholders’ meetings etc.

Individual Strategies:

1. Reduce consumption significantly – a conservation measure that would hurt PECO’s bottom line and save the world from our egregious over-consumption

2. Stamp every check we write to PECO and everyone else with the words "Gay money" – "Lesbian money" – or Queer Bucks – a stamp available at Giovanni’s Room.

3. Most importantly, we can participate in collective strategies that may reach the end result in a meaningful way.

Collective Strategies

1. Organize a collective Boycott/Girlcott of PECO energy and each "convert"to some other provider – someone who at least pretends to be gay-friendly.This is still problematic however because PECO still gets our money. It will maintain its monopoly in the transmission and distribution of electrical power and will receive about one-third or more of its revenues from us.

2. Organize Stockholder Meeting Takeovers – or at least organize proxy fights to discuss important socially responsible policies and practices (reminiscent of the early anti-war movement and environmental activists’ strategies).

3. Organize a Letter Writing Campaign to the Executive Committee and the Board of PECO (see plgtf June 2 1999 letter to McNeill, Jr.) It is imperative to copy those letters to Diversity of Pride to show critical mass and to permit follow through.

4. Organize pickets and sit-ins if we wish

5. Demand that the Mayor of Philadelphia instruct his Law Department to re-examine the question re: whether PECO’s Crown Lights Display constitutes a "public accommodations" under the Fair Practices Act, as amended 1982.

6. If we want to have the maximum input, we might consider a discussion about the de-privatization of public resources and call on the government to operate public utilities efficiency and fairly while holding them publicly accountable to us – each and everyone – a real "wake-up" call to PECO.###