Adah Bush, one-half of the new leadership at Liberty City Democratic Club, is looking to fuse her passion for social-justice work with her adeptness at grassroots activism to create viable change for the LGBT community through the local political landscape.
Bush, who was elected alongside Gregory Walker as the co-chairs of the LGBT political group in November, moved to Philadelphia about 10 years ago from her native Utah.
Before heading east, Bush had worked in the area of HIV/AIDS prevention and also provided health-education outreach to ethnic minorities.
As a Native American, Bush said she’s always felt a pull toward advocacy work on behalf of marginalized populations.
“I have an enlarged sense of justice,” Bush said. “Even as a child, if I didn’t think something was fair, I’d have to say so. I’m one of those people who if I see some injustice being done, I want to help and guide efforts to stop that. That’s just an innate part of me.”
While in Utah, Bush was involved in an effort to counter legislation that sought to institute an “English-only” policy for all state-printed materials.
“I networked with a lot of other organizations and collaborated and brought in a lot of new people to work on this,” she said, noting she gained support from the hearing- and visually impaired, as well as from Navajo “code takers,” whose language proved invaluable in World War II.
The measure was eventually defeated in 1999.
“People in favor of this had argued that there was just a small group of people who would be impacted, but we tried to show that there were many, many people who’d actually be impacted,” Bush said. “And I think that’s something that we in the LGBT community need to embrace more. We need to realize that it’s not just us; we have family members, coworkers and friends who are impacted when we’re discriminated against and who more than likely would be willing to battle with us for these rights.”
Since Bush moved to Philly to be closer to her partner, Sheri, she has volunteered as a juror and screener for QFest and worked with Sheri on numerous events staged by Mountain Meadow, a summer program for children of LGBT parents.
Bush works in contracting at GlaxoSmithKline and is a member of the organization’s LGBT employee network.
She said she was involved in the “periphery” of Liberty City in recent years and took on a more active role during the 2008 presidential election.
“I had been volunteering, going door-to-door on behalf of Liberty City, and then started becoming more involved because of the election when I saw how important that was,” she said. “I realized early on that if we could get a majority of voters in Philadelphia to vote Democrat that we could take the state and could make real progress for equality for LGBTQ communities.”
Bush said that Obama’s success, as well as the election of many other LGBT-supportive candidates in the area, illustrated the hard work of such groups as Liberty City.
“Through the get-out-the-vote initiative, I realized what an impact Liberty City can have on furthering the equal-rights fight in our community. They really have a lot of ability to get people elected who are supportive of the community, which can be very important for our progress.”
Bush said she also hopes to institute a system to measure how well those candidates-turned-elected-officials are living up to their promises to the LGBT community.
“Liberty City has worked very hard to get certain candidates elected, but right now there hasn’t been much documentation on how supportive these candidates actually are once they’re in office,” she said, noting that one of her goals for the agency is the development of a “scorecard” to track elected officials’ LGBT positions. “This would show whether or not candidates are supporting issues like ENDA, what they’ve done on our behalf. And if there are candidates who are voting against our issues, it sends a message to Liberty City that these candidates shouldn’t be supported in the next election.”
Bush is also hoping Liberty City can launch an initiative similar to its 1998 effort to train dozens of LGBT individuals to run as Democratic committeepersons, which resulted in 33 of the 36 candidates getting elected.
Liberty City will host elections for new board members at 6 p.m. Jan. 28 at the William Way LGBT Community Center, 1315 Spruce St., Bush said the organization is hoping to expand its leadership to include more representatives of the transgender and ethnic minority communities.
“We’re trying to be as diverse as possible so we can fully represent the community. This organization is open to everyone, and we need people from all of our communities to show that,” she said.
Prior to the board elections, board member Micah Mahjoubian will lead an “Election 101” discussion, Bush said, during which he’ll explain the ins and outs of this spring’s primary process and provide an overview of the candidates’ positions.
Bush encouraged all LGBT and ally community members to attend the meeting to educate themselves about the upcoming election and to strengthen Liberty City’s capabilities.
“We need everyone’s support both financially and by actual bodies; we need people to come support us so we can support candidates who will work on our behalf,” she said. “I think it’s really important this year to have a really strong showing at the polls by our community so people can see that we’re here, we’re not going away and we’re going to continue to fight for our civil rights.”
Jen Colletta can be reached at [email protected].