Cyndi Lauper Fights for LGBT Rights

Throughout her career, Cyndi Lauper has supported lesbian and gay rights. When Lauper's sister, Ellen, came out as a lesbian, Cyndi considered her to be a true role model. Ellen worked with several charities for the gay community and also worked in a clinic helping people suffering from AIDS. Inspired by her sister's work, Cyndi Lauper began doing some of her own. Lauper began performing at gay pride events as a featured artist in places around the world. In 1994 she even performed in New York City at the closing ceremonies for the fourth annual Gay Games, the world's largest sporting and cultural event organized by and specifically for LGBT athletes, artists, and musicians.

In June of 2007, Lauper headlined the True Colors Tour for Human Rights through the United States and Canada. Logo, the MTV Networks channel targeting gay audiences, sponsored the tour. Information concerning gay rights was provided to fans who attended, as well as purple wristbands with the slogan "Erase Hate" from The Matthew Shepard Foundation. A dollar from every ticket sold was given to the Human Rights Campaign, a national civil rights organization which advocates equal rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Recently Cyndi Lauper launched the Give a Damn campaign through her True Colors Fund. The new campaign is meant to encourage everyone of ANY sexuality to get informed about and involved with LGBT issues and causes. The Give a Damn website provides lots of useful information intended to engage, surprise, and move any reader. There is also information on a bunch of ways to get involved and show your support.

Now, Lauper is taking the next step in her fight for equality. In 2011, Lauper is planning to open a shelter for homeless LGBT youths in Harlem. The shelter, which will be called the True Colors Residence, will be a safe place for LGBT youths between the ages of 18 to 24 who need a place to stay while they get back on their feet. The $11 million worth of funding for the six-story building that will contain 30 studio apartments, communal space, a library and a computer room, will come from Lauper's True Colors Fund, the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development and some additional sources. In mainstream shelters already available to the homeless, many LGBT youth face violence. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force reports that there are between 15,000 and 20,000 homeless youths in New York City, and, of that number, roughly 3,000 to 8,000 of them identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. Lauper has said that this is one of the reasons she feels a LGBT shelter is necessary.

When asked what inspired her to open the True Colors Residence, Lauper responded that, "Kids are coming out in greater numbers as they see themselves accepted and represented on TV and in movies, but they’re still being kicked out of their homes or running away and living on the streets. We need to make sure we’re taking care of them. This is the next generation of the LGBT community."


Visit Cyndi Lauper's websites to learn more about her cause.

Give a Damn

True Colors Fund






EDIT:

Immediately after finishing this post, my mom called me into her room because Cyndi Lauper was on The Apprentice. The whole episode was the men versus the women giving makeovers to new artists Emily West and Luke Bryan. I only caught the end when everyone was going over the work that had been done, and Donald Trump decided which team did better and who would be fired. What I thought was cool was that at the end when they announced the women won, Trump also announced that all proceeds from Luke Bryan's song "Rain is a Good Thing," and Emily West's song "Blue Sky," would benefit Cyndi's True Colors fund for the next month. I just thought it was a funny coincidence that right after I posted this I happened to catch the new episode and Cyndi's True Colors fund was mentioned, and that music was going to benefit it.

Let's do our part to forever preserve this work of art

Diana and I worked with a member of the LA Greencorps to produce a song that would raise awareness about the environment and how it is every person's job to take care of it. Although there were difficulties meeting as a group, we did decide together how we wanted to approach the issue.

-We wanted to write something that people could connect with on a personal level.
-We wanted to present a good reason as to why everyone should help out.
-And finally, we wanted to present a solution to the problem that was small and manageable so that it was something any person could easily do.

So to connect with people on a personal level, we decided to talk about New Orleans in our song. The idea of a song or anything you write is to grab the listener/ reader's attention, right? So we planned on starting our song with something about New Orleans, and hinting at reasons why New Orleanians love their city so much. In the final song we made a reference to the ways that other people in the country think that everyone in this city is too crazy and does nothing but party, and how we don't let any of the negative comments stop us from being who we are. We wanted to be sure to remind the listeners that they loved this city, and WHY they loved this city.

So with the sentimental "We Love New Orleans" aspect of the song, we expanded by saying how it is our job to take care of the city. We wanted to emphasize that our city isn't going to be here forever, and that every individual is responsible for doing anything they can to preserve this historic beauty. Several times in the song is the line "This is YOUR city, so do YOUR part..." We wanted to make a point of stressing that this is OUR city, and so therefore we must not expect everyone else to take care of it for us.

We presented the problem of too many greenhouse gases as our environmental issue. We again, gave people a reason to care about the problem by saying how the problem would effect New Orleans by taking away from the city's beauty and polluting our air.

Last but not least, the solution. Providing a solution to the problem is what would make our song a magnetic song according to Denisoff. As a group we wanted to not only state the problem, but also inform people of something they can do to help make sure the city stays around for a very, very long time. The idea of greenhouse gases and pollution is huge, and we wanted to approach it in a way that wasn't overwhelming. So, to do this, we wanted to present simple solutions to the problem that any individual would easily be capable of doing. In the end, that solution was to install energy efficient light bulbs in your community. We added facts/statistics in the song to give people the sense that we were a reliable "source," and that maybe what we were suggesting wasn't such a bad idea.

In the end, the final product was definitely, as would be expected, nothing like what we had originally planned. But, we feel that we did succeed in meeting our main goals for our song: Present the problem, recruit individuals by reinforcing their value structures, and present a solution to the problem that is easily manageable by any person.