A roadmap for change in the leather community.

This is a compilation of points accumulated from responses to questions presented to attendees of LLC8.

• In order to safeguard our interests we actively promote governmental understanding of the leather community by working with other organizations toward such changes as redefining consent laws, legalizing gay marriage, and eliminating threats such as job discrimination and custody battles.
  
  
• The community can promote personal growth and power when we nurture and support others in becoming community leaders through educational and mentoring programs.
  
  
• When encountering bigotry, stereotyping, and/or political and social intolerance, we transform those situations into educational opportunities, finding creative ways to enlighten and bring personal growth to others and ourselves.
  
  
• We proactively seek to understand why perceptions of our community cause enough discomfort for groups and individuals to attack us. We also honorably counter attacks by networking and utilizing our community as well as activist organizations to communicate professional-sounding, compassionate, and educational information to the attackers as well as the general public.
  
  
• Organizational roles include seeking education-oriented and/or charity-related opportunities to positively participate in and contribute to our respective communities.
  
  
• Our long and short term goals include regular activism, creating and supporting mentoring programs, encouraging larger-scale understanding of our community/organization, and networking with other communities to support achieving each others goals.
  
  
• We use our economic power to seek out and take advantage of philanthropic opportunities to further social acceptance of our
  organization(s). We are politically active and outreach-focused to grow and strengthen our community as well as outside perceptions of it. We use networking, grassroots movements, and our economic power to influence political and social aspects of our local communities.
  
  
• Our economic power goals include continuous financial support of activism activities, boosting visibility of our community, finding creative ways to pool resources, regular contributions to charitable organizations, and establishing interpersonal financial support within our communities.
  
  
• We continue to bond as a community by practicing acceptance of each other and each other's kinks, treating each other as family, and showing up for and supporting community events.

If each community embraces at least one of these points, the Leather Movement will begin to be recognized as a political, economic, and social influence in the world.

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