HRC Blog

New York celebrates the First 100 Days with President Barack Obama

April 30, 2009

By Anthony Hayes, HRC's Northeast regional field organizer: Last night in midtown Manhattan at Therapy Bar & Lounge, over 50 people gathered to mark the first 100 days of the Obama presidency. I was in the back of the room editing my remarks to make note of yesterday's amazing day for equality. First, New Hampshire's Senate passed a marriage equality bill. Then, the US House of Representatives passed the hate crimes bill! The evening started as we played the inspiring video from Judy Shepard in support of the Matthew Shepard Act. After the video ended, I introduced myself and told the crowd that I wanted to share with them what has happened in the first 100 Days from an LGBT perspective. I laughed and said, "For starters we have a President who put out a press release encouraging Congress to pass this bill and to expand hate crimes. Not a press release that says he will veto a hate crimes bill!" On November 4, 2008, New Yorkers flooded into Therapy to see the election results come in---and the results of their hard work. Many of those same people were sitting there tonight as we discussed how President Obama has appointed 30 openly gay LGBT individuals to his administration so far. I mentioned how Secretary Hillary Clinton's State Department endorsed a U.N. statement calling for the worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality, a measure that former President Bush had refused to sign. At the election night watch party in November, people knew that things would be different. Tonight that was clear as everyone heard about the President's National AIDS Strategy that is striving for these key goals: lowering the number of new HIV infections; increasing the number of people in care; and reducing racial disparities. The president also announced a new, five-year outreach and prevention project called Act Against AIDS, which targets populations most at risk. I watch two women nudge each other and smile when I told them about HRC's Spring board meeting where Senior White House Advisor Valerie Jarrett stood before us and proclaimed: "Your agenda is the President's agenda." Indeed, there has been so much movement towards equality in the last two months that many New Yorkers not only celebrated the first 100 days of the Obama administration, but left inspired for the next 100 days.