Liberty Hill Foundation: Change Not Charity

The Liberty Hill Foundation hosted its Upton Sinclair Dinner on May 1 at the Century Plaza hotel and your's truly was there. The lovely and charming Alfre Woodard hosted and I have to say, next to Alec Mapa, the best non profit fundraising host I've seen in a while (Mapa wins out just for wearing full native American drag ala the Village People during the LA Gay & Lesbian Center's fall fundraiser last year.)

Out lesbian former president of HBO Carolyn Strauss presented the Upton Sinclair Awards to David Simon and Ed Burns, the creators of THE WIRE.

Former Paramount head Sherry Lansing presented the Founders Award to out phillanthopist Rick Jacobs, co founder and chairman of Brave New Films.

That's me with California Senator and out lesbian Sheila Kuehl there to the left. Photo credit: Gil Kaan.

The Liberty Hill Foundation partners with innovative and effective Los Angeles grassroots organizations to combat poverty and injustice, and help transform the "City of Angels" into a place that promises safety, equality and opportunity for everyone who lives here. .Since 1976, Liberty Hill Foundation has given away more than $30 million to grassroots community organizations in Los Angeles County. The Los Angeles Times has called Liberty Hill "the most effective organization of its type in the country."

Executive Director Kafi Blumenfield with Weston Milliken, one of the founders of Queer Youth Fund.
Andre Royo.

The goddess Judith Light with City Council President Eric Garcetti and honoree Rick Jacobs.

Former Paramount head, Sherry Lansing.

Judith Light and Thea Gill.

Socializing after the ceremony.

Our table.

After the ceremony, I spent the rest of the evening in the Plaza bar with some fabulous gay boys who all work in either politics, law or non profit. Other than talking social change, the biggest topic was how fast we'd all be seeing SEX & THE CITY THE MOVIE.



With Darrell and Erik!

Tonight, The Best Night of Gay of The Month. Guaranteed

This monthly event of absolutely outstanding lgbt comedy gets TheSmokingCocktail.com's highest approval rating. Great venue (classically very straight!), great people and a few hours of big big laughs always.

See you tonight!!

A Good Week for Celebrating the gay in LA

Darlings,

There was so much lgbt merriment of the celebratory and fundraising kind last week, I'm actually still recovering.

Without further ado, I'm going to dive into the recaps. Today will be All That Was Women's Night. Tune in for coverage of the Instinct 10 Year Anniversary Party and the wonderful Liberty Hill Foundation Fundraiser later today or tomorrow.

Here's the video from the night. Be forewarned, there are ALOT of lesbians. It includes the live auction with Sharon Stone heading up a team including Suzanne Westenhoefer, Jane Lynch, Susan Feniger, Bridget McManus, Cathy DeBuono and Jill Bennett.


This video is brought to you by the LA Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.



And the following is my vlog recap of the event, shot the following day poolside at The Standard with lesbian comics Poppy Champlin and Michele Balan (Last Comic Standing). That's right, three women over 40 at the Instinct Magazine party (read as surrounded by hot twenty year old gay boys...that blog entry to come soon). If you want east coast snark about Women's Night, here it is.

We dish about Sharon Stone, my breasts, Tig, Linda Perry, the history of the Henry Fonda theatre and call Jason Stuart a fag a few times (that's because he tried to crash our vlog!!!)





The event was held at the history Henry Fonda Theatre which is on Hollywood Boulevard and was built in 1926.

If you watched my vlog about the event (above) then you heard me dish a bit about the history of the place - like famous lesbian Barbara Stanwick used to party there!

So above are a few photos of the theatre from it's golden days.

LACE AWARD VIDEO: Part one: Susan Russell

If you'd like to be inspired and see the kind of change one can make in the world, watch this.

I'll be uploading the rest of the LACE AWARD WINNERS this week.