Gay Rights Crusade Against Stoning in Brunei Began with a Los Angeles Labor Dispute [View all]

[Omaha Steve]

Last edited Tue May 13, 2014, 06:59 PM - Edit history (1)

http://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/how-a-los-angeles-labor-union-orchestrated-a-boycott-of-the

“Stories need a hook,” said a spokesperson for UNITE HERE Local 11. The union had been fighting the Beverly Hills Hotel and the Hotel Bel-Air for over a year, but it wasn’t until LGBT activists got on board that their efforts found traction.

posted on May 7, 2014 at 4:44pm EDT

J. Lester Feder BuzzFeed Staff Jacob Fischler BuzzFeed Staff


Jonathan Alcorn / Reuters

For more than a year before the Beverly Hills Hotel became the target of a boycott, a Los Angeles labor union had been trying to draw attention to the fact that it is owned by the sultan of Brunei, a tiny Southeast Asian nation with laws criminalizing homosexuality. Almost no one cared.

How this went from a failed ploy in a labor dispute to an advocacy campaign involving celebrities including Ellen DeGeneres to Jay Leno is one that could only take place in the age of internet outrage, when relationships between American activists and social media go a long way in determining which human rights causes blow up and which ones go virtually unnoticed in the United States.

UNITE HERE Local 11 spokeswoman Leigh Shelton told BuzzFeed that the union began trying to shine the spotlight on Brunei’s LGBT rights record in February 2013, as part of an effort to drive business away from the Hotel Bel-Air and the Beverly Hills Hotel, both owned by Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah’s Dorchester Collection hotel company. The effort stemmed from a feud stretching back to the 1990s, when the union was shut out from representing the Beverly Hills Hotel after it went through renovations. The union was shut out in similar fashion from the Hotel Bel-Air in 2009. In researching the hotel’s ownership, UNITE HERE discovered that Brunei has actually long had a law criminalizing sodomy well before the new Sharia code, dating back to its days under British colonial rule.

The union produced a video urging people to “take a stand against homophobia” and “dump” the Beverly Hills Hotel. “The Beverly Hills Hotel is owned by the nation of Brunei, where it is illegal to be gay,” the video proclaimed.

FULL story at link.