Building Coalitions

At the Task Force, we believe the struggle for LGBT equality is strongly connected to other social justice issues, especially racial and reproductive justice. At times, allied groups ask for our help with their campaigns. One of our recent partnerships has been with Planned Parenthood in California.

In the 2005 and 2006 elections, California faced two successive anti-choice parental notification initiatives. Task Force staff played a major role in the Los Angeles field efforts of both the No on 73 and No on 85 campaigns.

In the first campaign, we deployed staff to run the Los Angeles field operation. Our organizers significantly ramped up the scale of volunteer recruitment, and this larger volunteer team was able to talk with tens of thousands of voters across the state about protecting teen safety.

After the victory, the Task Force was asked to help provide statewide training to Planned Parenthood public affairs staff. And when faced with a second measure, our allies quickly returned to seek additional help.

This time around, we created and ran a paid and volunteer canvass program focused on reaching out to Latina voters, who represented a key swing voting group in the 2006 election. We helped organize Spanish-speaking canvass teams to go door to door and talk with Latina voters about how Prop 85 threatened teen safety.

Both anti-choice initiatives were ultimately defeated. The Task Force is proud of our ongoing partnership with Planned Parenthood.