By Melanie Nathan January 17, 2024.
Creating Change, a preeminent LGBTQI+ conference, put on by the Task Force has a long history of making Jewish people feel unwelcome. Today they did it again at the 2024 plenary opening. There is a history of pro Palestinian led protests against Jewish events at the conference that has led to this feeling and opinion. At these events the LGBTQI+ community members and probably some instigators included chants that called for the genocide of Jews. SO far we see a Palestinian flag, to me a symbol of terror.
Now you be the judge given this history as delivered through the repeat article I am reposting here and the opening Plenary at Creating Change 2024, today, where a Palestinian FLAG was paraded by the CREATING CHANGE organizers or allowed (I presume) on the Creating Change 2024 opening Plenary stage.
Bottom line if you allow this flag on your stage at a time like this you may as well have a sign saying “JEWS NOT WELCOME”
Given the history, and even though I have been a former San Francisco Pride Board Vice President, there is no way you would see me at a CREATING CHANGE LGBTQI+ TASK FORCE event ever again. I had previously held a workshop there but will never attend again. Not only do I NOT feel welcome but as a Jew given the October 07 savage massacre by Palestinian Hamas terrorists of my people, and the fact that hostages are still being held by Hamas from that attack, I would feel threatened by the terrorist connotations that the flag now signals for me. I find it frightening to be in an environment where my demise is on the agenda.
Indeed it is much worse given the October 07 brutality against Jews, the history of Creating Change, and the fact that the flag is now forever associated with marching and parading chants, which have been occurring in the streets of America, calling for the eradication and genocide of the Jews, just as occurred at CREATING CHANGE in 2016.
There is no intersectionality for Jews at this Gay, lesbian, bi, trans and queer conference.
MY PRIOR ARTICLE ON NOV 2023, reflecting on 2019 and 2016 antisemitism displayed at the CREATING CHANGE conference:
LGBTQ Task Force Creating Change Lynch Mob Set the Stage for Today’s Street Anti-Semitism
By Melanie Nathan, November 02, 2023
I am compelled to implore accountability or at least let this serve as a reminder of the longstanding antisemitism against LGBTI Jews from within our community. Back in 2019 I posted the BLOG article, reposted below (and other links) calling on LGBTQ+ Task Force the host of Creating Change led by Rea Carey to do more to curb anti-semitism in our LGBT Queer spaces. This followed the 2016 lynch mob that attacked LGBTI Jews on a shabbat night at the conference. That is well recorded as can be seen from the links on the article below. In the wake of the attack and only after outcry, …. a blah apology and failed remedial action serves deep rooted lies and hate, all with what felt to a Jew like me, an insulting shrug.
I am reposting the article below because I have heard nothing from these LGBTQI+ quarters to condemn the 10/7 barbaric massacre of Jews, unconditionally, or at all, which impacted and included our Jewish LGBT community and queers. I have only heard those same players we saw back in 2019 and 2016 perpetuating what they said and did then: on our campuses, dorms, in our streets and online.
It seems to matter not that Jewish queers unconditionally support all LGBTI communities and other pertinent so called intersecting movements, regardless of religion and affiliations. Our Jewish LGBTI community has supported Black Lives Matter, Trans movements, Womens March, Immigrant Movements, and we mounted a voracious fight against Trump’s Muslim ban, with organizations like the one I lead, African Human Rights Coalition fighting hard to advocate for our LGBTQI community in forced displacement, refugees and asylum seekers, including Muslims from all countries and Palestinians.
As I write this I identify as a Jew with a right to return to my indigenous homeland, hence labelled appropriately a Zionist. This was made to feel like a dirty word at Creating Change, yet is part of my identity and does not serve the definition that those without lived experience created for it.
To demonize Zionists is to to demonize Jews! To chant for the end to Zionism is to chant against Israel’s right to exist.
ITS VERY SIMPLE TO ANALYZE and ignorance is not on the table here!READ MORE HERE.
BY MELANIE NATHAN
nathan@AfricanHRC.org
ABOUT Melanie
O-blog-dee-o-blog-da 
One thought on “Jews NOT Welcome at Creating Change 2024”