After 18 months with no permanent executive director, Georgia Equality announced Monday the selection of veteran Atlanta leader Jeff Graham to its highest post. It’s a bold move that will hopefully give the statewide gay political organization some much-needed edge.
After two strong executive directors, Harry Knox and Allen Thornell, who brought different but important skill sets to the table, the organization developed a tin ear when it came to filling its top job.
First Georgia Equality hired Kris Pierce, a heterosexual with no previous experience working on gay issues, in June 2004 to serve as campaign manager against the state constitutional amendment banning gay mariage. Pierce was fired after less than two months on the job. The next permanent executive director, Chuck Bowen, was hired in November 2004 and lasted less than two years.
Georgia Equality took a giant step in the right direction late last year when it hired Kyle Bailey as political director and Cathy Woolard as interim executive director.
But it’s telling that in an August 2007 interview about the new hires, then-board chair Kathleen Womack was still talking about the need to adapt to the Republican takeover of the governor’s mansion and General Assembly — almost five years after Republicans won the governorship and control of the state Senate in the November 2002 elections, and almost three years after they completed the sweep by winning the state House in 2004.
In a press release announcing Graham’s hiring, Georgia Equality leaders lauded his extensive record of non-profit work, including his long and successful tenure as executive director of AIDS Survival Project.
Just as important is Graham’s history as a scrappy activist with ACT UP, at a time when the grassroots AIDS group was literally fighting for our lives on the streets of Atlanta.
That’s not to say that the answer to the low-profile and perceived timidity that has plagued Georgia Equality in recent years necessarily lies in street protests and “zaps.” And Graham has certainly proven that he can work as well within the system as outside it.
Still, if Georgia Equality — and with it, Georgia’s LGBT community — is to regain even a shadow of its former political clout, we need a leader who is willing to speak beyond sound bites or a well-rehearsed script, work with political leaders when possible, and publicly call them out when it’s not.
Graham has proven he can do all of the above, and it will be exciting to see how he advances the cause of Georgia Equality.
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