Nadine Smith is an award-winning journalist and former U.S. Air Force Academy cadet. But she burst onto the local scene in 1991 as an African-American—and openly lesbian—candidate for Tampa City Council and won 42% of the vote. She co-chaired the 1993 March on Washington, and in 1997 founded Equality Florida. She has been its executive director ever since.
Smith is the go-to spokesperson for Florida’s LGBT community, and for many its heart and soul. That was demonstrated in 2007, when Smith was forced to the ground and arrested for handing someone a flier that said, ‘Don’t Discriminate’ at a Largo City Council hearing.
Smith, 49, lives in Gulfport with her wife, Andrea Hildebran Smith, and their 3-year-old son, Logan.
WATERMARK: Stuart Milk says that his uncle, Harvey Milk, could see a world of full equality, and that’s why he worked so hard to achieve it. I’ve known you for more than 20 years, and you’ve always struck me the same way. It’s like you see the end goal so you know exactly where we’re headed. Any truth to that?
NADINE SMITH: The first time Stuart Milk spoke for Equality Florida was at a big rally in Tallahassee. We were all gathered on the steps of the Capitol and thunderclouds came rolling in. There was one speaker after another… the whole time I was looking up hoping it wouldn’t rain. Finally it’s Stuart’s turn and he points out that he’s wearing Harvey’s ring. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not going to rain,’ he said. ‘Harvey’s going to take care of us.’ I swear to you, at that exact moment the clouds parted and sunlight came down through those clouds. If you had scripted it in a movie everyone would have rolled their eyes. It was one of those chill-inducing moments where you go, ‘Yeah, he’s right here with us… celebrating.’
Stuart’s the real deal. He has honored Harvey’s legacy with tremendous humility. He carries the baton and does it with kindness and absolute passion. He lifts everyone around him.
I’ll give you an example of the way you always saw the end game. Early on—even back in the early 90s—you pushed to include the transgender community in our battle for equality. Lots of people were afraid that would delay progress. Where does that come from?
Growing up black and gay in the south—what Bell Hooks calls ‘from the margins’—you have to be keenly aware of your surroundings at all times. It’s how the lowest person on the totem pole is aware of what the highest person on the totem pole is up to—even if it doesn’t work the other way.
And I grew up in a civil rights tradition. My grandparents were part of the first integrated co-op in the country in Mississippi. My grandfather didn’t want to teach his sons not to make eye contact with white people, and he knew that was the only way to preserve their safety in the Deep South. So he moved them to New York.
I have a family that taught me to stand up for myself. They taught me not to act like I was better than anyone, but to absolutely not let anyone treat me as though they were better than me. They knew they were teaching a young black girl those lessons. They didn’t know they were teaching a young lesbian those lessons as well.
Growing up, the messages I got were that people are going to try and push you down and erode your self confidence, and you have to have within you a place where they can’t get to you. I put that into this work.
Later this year I hope to go to the 30-year anniversary of the International Gay and Lesbian Youth Organization in Dublin. I was on the board, and one of the most transformative situations of my life took place back then. A group of our guys got beat up by some G.I.’s in Germany. When they came back I remember thinking, ‘Yeah, that’s a shame. You have to be careful out there sometimes.’ Everyone else was outraged. They said to call the American Embassy. To them this was not acceptable at any level. And I thought to myself, ‘When did I learn that violence was okay? When did I learn to just accept this as the way things are?’ Their outrage was the appropriate response from people who believe they are supposed to be treated as equals in this world.
I thought it was just part of the deal: you’re gay and you just better accommodate this level of hatred, violence, bigotry. It’s your job to sidestep it. It’s a lesson I’m still learning.
Looking back, I was my biggest oppressor. How did you get past that?
My family showed me how to stand up to racism. And being a part of the International Gay and Lesbian Youth Organization taught me to fight back… for everything. I became aware of the ugly poison I had consumed.
People sometimes say, ‘How do you not get burnt out?’ And I think, ‘Burnt out? This is how I saved my life! This is how I unpacked all of this stuff and detoxed all this poison.’ I learned that my life is worth fighting for. I get fired up by this. I don’t get demoralized.
And you’re right… I do see the long term. I know that people are waiting for permission, and have been waiting for permission, to stop believing things they never really believed.
I’ll never forget talking to this one man in South Florida in the early organizing days. He lived in one of our more protected communities—in this gay bubble. He said, ‘You’re not going to get much help around here because things are pretty squared away here.’ I asked him if he could remember a time when he’d been treated unequally because he was gay. He paused for a while and then said, ‘My nephew’s birthday. I stopped at a gas station and bought him a little bear as a last-minute gift. And my brother took me aside and asked why I had brought his son a gay bear with a rainbow ribbon. I hadn’t even noticed the rainbow. It changed my relationship with the kids. I became self conscious about everything I did around them.’
This person who had just told me things were squared away was now in tears. I told him, ‘You live in a big world where your brother and nieces and nephews are getting fed these ideas about you, and that is what we are here for. We have to do this work.’
Those were the early days of Equality Florida—having those conversations in really heart-to-heart terms.
Does it surprise you where we are today? Did you see marriage equality crystallizing so quickly?
Well, quickly compared to what? It’s easier looking back than looking forward.
Back in 1994, I don’t know that I would have said we’d have it in 20 years. But I remember getting a lot of heat because we were talking about full equality. Our message was very simple: full equality under the law. This was at a time when people were saying, ‘Don’t say it, you’ll scare people.’ And there were also very legitimate critiques of marriage and the patriarchal underpinnings of marriage.
Like military service, it came down to this: it should be your option. You can make a potent argument against joining the military, but there is a difference between choosing not to and being forbidden from joining.
I was on the organizing committee for the 1993 March on Washington. We had a platform that had something like 20 demands, and people criticized us for seeking too much. It was really just a comprehensive list of all of the ways our lives were diminished and harmed. I don’t know whether it was the most pragmatic document, but it was an honest document.
Can you recall a time when you compromised full equality for pragmatic or political reasons?
That’s an interesting question. I don’t know that I can say ‘no,’ but I can’t think of a circumstance. I think you compromise when it comes to tactics and strategies, but there are principles you can’t compromise.
I’m proud of Equality Florida for leading on transgender issues. The 1993 March was the first time I heard the word transgender. It was the beginning of a more public identity that sort of captured the experience of people who had been fairly invisible. So much of what gay people are taught to fear has to do with gender roles: that gay men are too “effeminate” or lesbians are not feminine enough.
Equality Florida brought Gina Duncan on to our staff recently. We’re really fortunate. The far-right is trying to make transgender people the focal point of their fear campaigns, and that’s something we really have to reject.
Walk me through the early days of Equality Florida.
Back in the early 90s, a straight pastor tried to get a human rights ordinance in the City of Tampa and it failed. After that effort we created the Human Rights Task Force and got the ordinance passed. A number of cities around the state said, ‘Give us your playbook.’ So we started out just sharing information. And then we learned that people who wanted to support us were sending money to our national headquarters. We didn’t have a national headquarters. They were sending money to better known organizations with similar names. So we decided to rebrand. Now we are Equality Florida and we also have Equality Florida Institute and Equality Florida Action. We also have a political committee that supports candidates.
How big is your staff now?
Right around 20. We have staff in Jacksonville, Gainesville, Tallahassee, Orlando, Broward, Miami and St. Petersburg, and some in more rural parts of the state. We have offices in St. Pete, Orlando, Jacksonville, Gainesville and Broward.
What is your annual budget?
$2 million.
I remember fundraisers for Equality Florida where the goal was to bring in something like $5,000. And we were happy to get it! When did the level of financial support change?
The biggest difference was that we began to do a better job communicating how we were going to change Florida. We were forgetting to tell people the impact we were having together, so we created a map that showed where Florida was versus where Florida is now so that they could see all the local victories.
We’ve been very successful in stopping bad stuff from happening. Not one anti-LGBT piece of legislation has passed in Tallahassee since we formed. But we stopped playing defense and starting talking about winning. We stopped being cynical about Tallahassee and started pushing legislation.
And we discovered that if we were real and formed personal relationships, people would surprise us. I thought one guy would kick me out of his office. Instead he closed the door and said, ‘You don’t have to convince me. If this gets to the floor I’m going to vote for it. My daughter’s best friends have lesbian moms and I wouldn’t be able to look them or my daughter in the eye if I didn’t do the right thing on this.’
Compared to the early days, do you think there’s been a shift in the way the LGBT community sees its fundraising responsibilities?
We show them the process. We say, ‘Hey, we can win but it’s going to take this many people on the ground and having the ability to do these very specific things.’ Then people do invest.
You have to realize that we began winning at the local level—victory after victory, even in conservative parts of the state. After passing an anti-bullying law, we got communities to build on that at the local level. People saw the cause and effect. We found that people were hungry in all parts of the state; they wanted to get in on the action. Those are my donors.
Can you articulate what still needs to happen?
When Equality Florida first arrived in Tallahassee, the legislature was openly hostile to us. Now they’re mostly indifferent. Back then we were dealing with legislators who equated gay people with pedophilia and necrophilia and words I had to look up just to see how they were insulting us.
In this atmosphere of indifference, we are seeing growing bipartisan support. Some of that is driven by younger Republicans who don’t line up with the more hateful element of their party. Doing a head count, we had enough votes to pass the Florida Competitive Workforce Act if we could have gotten it out of committee. A number of Republicans were co-sponsors.
Things are changing in Tallahassee, without a doubt, and this election is critical to that. If we had a governor who made this a defining part of their administration, we would see this legislation move.
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