Minneapolis’s LGBTQ+ community has rallied to support Minnesota’s oldest gay bar after a fire forced it to close last month.
On March 22, a garbage truck hit a utility pole near the beloved 19 Bar in the city’s Loring Park neighborhood, causing electrical wires to ignite the building’s gas supply, Minnesota Public Radio reported. While no one was hurt, damage from the blaze has caused the bar, which first opened in 1952, to close indefinitely.
The loss, which 19 Bar’s management has vowed will only be temporary, has nonetheless hit the local LGBTQ+ community hard.
“It’s just so weird not having that place to go to on the way home from work,” Bubba Thurn, the secretary of Citizens for a Loring Park Community (CLPC) and a 19 Bar regular, told CBS affiliate WCCO.
“As the years go on, we still have struggles, challenges in the community,” 19 Bar manager Craig Wilson said. “And the 19 Bar has always been a safe haven for people to come and be themselves and be okay.”
“It never changes,” Thurn told MPR of 19 Bar. “It doesn’t have the attitude of the regular clubs and gay bars. This one is more of a mix of the community — the neighborhood of Loring Park and the queer community as a whole.”
According to WCCO, the bar’s closure has left eight staff members without jobs. But the community has stepped up to help. Two GoFundMecampaigns have so far raised more than $31,000 combined to support the out-of-work staff. Another local gay bar, The Saloon, has also announced an April 7 fundraiser, with performers and bartenders donating their tips to benefit 19 Bar’s employees.
And last Thursday, the nearby Walker Arts Center hosted a free event honoring 19 Bar. One of the gallery’s current installations happens to be Oakland-based artist Sadie Barnette’s neon-soaked reimagining of San Francisco’s first Black-owned gay bar, the New Eagle Creek Saloon, which Barnette’s father owned from 1990 to 1993. With the artist’s blessing, Walker Arts Center welcomed the city’s LGBTQ+ community into the space to pay tribute to 19 Bar, as bartenders served drinks, a DJ played music, and photos submitted by patrons were projected on the gallery’s wall.
The Walker’s associate director of public relations, Rachel Joyce, said she hoped the evening would provide “a joyful moment to reminisce on good times at the 19 and a way to look toward the future.”
19 Bar manager Wilson is doing just that. “Yes, there’s some fire damage, water damage, but that’s cosmetic, that can be replaced,” he told WCCO, noting that a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, which hung in the bar as a nod to the fact that it opened the same year she ascended the throne, had survived the fire.
“The bones of the bar is still standing and strong,” Wilson said, “and that just goes to show we will come back, rebuild, new and improved.”
Illinois state Rep. Kelly Cassidy (D) left Florida for Chicago when she was still a teenager, skipped college, went to work right away, had three kids in short order, and has been moving at the same lightning speed ever since.
Her first job was with the National Organization for Women, where she rose to legislative director. She joined the staff for Illinois Senate President John Cullerton, worked in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office as the director of programs and development, and was appointed to the state legislature in 2011 after playing a major role in the ouster of Speaker Mike Madigan, who was later indicted after ruling for more than 30 years as the top Democrat in the Illinois House.
Cassidy, 55, won her first term representing District 14 on Chicago’s North Side in 2012. She’s running for a fourth term in 2024.
Her staff managed to clear a spot on the rep’s always busy schedule for a conversation from her district office in Chicago. It was a mild spring morning in the usually Windy City.
LGBTQ Nation: I’ve seen different numbers for how many LGBTQ+ members there are in the Illinois General Assembly. To your knowledge, how many are there, and do you have enough to start a caucus?
State Rep. Kelly Cassidy: Actually, from our high watermark of five members a few years ago, we are down to one in the House, me, and one in the Senate, Mike Simmons. We’ve had a relatively large exodus to the city council over the years, because, unlike anywhere else in the country, it’s common to move up from the Statehouse to the Chicago City Council. So no, we don’t have enough to form a caucus — just one in each chamber, and we do both sort of have the attitude that we represent the whole state.
One of your biggest legislative achievements was pushing through a bill that legalized adult-use Cannabis in Illinois, the first state to legalize through a legislature and not a ballot measure. What’s your philosophy at the heart of that effort, and do you partake?
Yes, I do partake.
And the philosophy at the heart of the measure was undoing the harms of the War on Drugs using an equity-focused model that remains a work in progress, frankly. Centering records restoration was really the driving force behind everything we did. We ended up expunging nearly three-quarters of a million records as a result of that legislation.
You were appointed to your seat in 2011 after your predecessor moved up — by Chicago standards, as you say — to the Chicago City Council. The next year you faced off against another lesbian, Paula Basta, who, like you, is an inductee to the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame. Describe the dynamic between two gay women, both activists, running for the same seat. What tipped the balance in your favor?
First of all, there were 25 people, I believe, that sought the appointment after we drove Speaker Madigan from office. There was an eight-and-a-half-hour public hearing where Paula was one of the people seeking the appointment. In Chicago, the party of the person leaving an office chooses their successor. It was narrowed down to three finalists — one of them was Paula — then they interviewed us and then interviewed us again, and I was unanimously chosen as the winner.
It was not a foregone conclusion. In the election, Paula raised a whole lot of money, showing her capacity to beat me, and I spent the first several months of the race, in spite of being the incumbent, being outraised and outspent pretty dramatically. What tipped the balance was old-fashioned retail politics. I was on the doors all day, every day. And at the end of the day, incumbency helps, obviously, because I had been doing the work for over a year before I won my first term.
It did remind me, superficially, of George Santos running against Robert Zimmerman in 2022, two gay men competing against each other, but that’s a different story.
(Laughing) That’s a different story. I would definitely not put Paula in the Santos category. But it’s not super unusual to have two gay candidates competing against each other where we live because it’s so incredibly queer here.
You chair the Restorative Justice Committee in the General Assembly, where you did a lot of work on your cannabis bill. What’s the most egregious miscarriage of justice you’ve seen in your work, and how was it resolved?
I’m a mother of many, many children. I love them all equally, so it’s difficult to choose just one. In the criminal justice arena, there are so many things that are still not quite right. But last year, I was finally able to pass a comprehensive bill that allows incarcerated survivors of gender-based violence, whose abuse was not contemplated in their original trial, to be offered an opportunity to seek resentencing.
There’s a woman who just got out this year. She was convicted of murdering her husband after months and months and months of abuse and being raped, before marital rape was a punishable offense, and that was something she couldn’t bring up at the time of her trial. She had been in prison for 35 years. She’s out now, and she’s figuring it all out. I was on a Zoom call with her, and her delight at figuring out Zoom was maybe one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. It was awesome.
You spearheaded a ban on “conversion therapy” in Illinois, helped guarantee trans individuals could access bathrooms and change their birth certificates to reflect their correct gender, and you’ve been an outspoken advocate for reproductive rights. Illinois is surrounded by states moving backward in all those areas you’ve addressed. How important is your state as a refuge for marginalized groups under attack from those and other red states?
There isn’t a superlative big enough to describe the importance of what we’re doing here. I have had folks roll into town on fumes having spent their last dollar to get here from Florida because they were afraid of what was going to happen to them. You know, we’ve helped them find a way here, set them up with healthcare benefits, making sure they’re living somewhere safe, things like that. That happens pretty regularly all over the state. I talk to people at community centers in central and southern Illinois who are seeing it a lot, as well.
One of them I was talking to, in fact, described it as “an uncountable diaspora.” Because we start in a place of not having a good solid number of how many trans folks there are and how many queer folks, generally, there are. And then we’ve got people who are fleeing to access reproductive care or to provide reproductive care. We’ve got people fleeing to teach without being censored, so it’s a lot. The impact on folks can’t be overestimated.
When I moved here from Florida 30-some years ago, we spent a solid six months planning our move. And we had lots of help and support, and our families were supportive. One of us had most of the move paid for by an employer — a normal move, if you will.
I met a person who happened to be a constituent, it turns out, at an event at the White House. And when people were sharing, they explained that until November they had been living in Virginia with their wife. They work with an advocacy group for trans veterans, their wife was pregnant with their first child, and within the same span of a very short time, they were cut off from gender-affirming care and their wife was diagnosed with a fatal fetal abnormality. And within a week or two, they were living in my neighborhood. They made their home here now because they both needed care.
So it’s critically important. It’s why I’ve proposed a tax credit for folks who are coming in, fleeing these states, to be a bit of a warm hand-off. It’s certainly not much, not enough to make up for the trauma or the expense, but it’s something. It’s something more than anybody else has done for them.
In 2018, the Illinois legislature ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, enshrining protections for women in the Illinois Constitution. How would the stars have to align to revive and pass the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution?
There are those who say they just could, there are others who say other enabling pieces of legislation need to be passed. None of that is even possible to contemplate as long as we’re dealing with the hot mess that is the House GOP caucus.
What’s the next step after the Dobbs decision to guarantee a woman’s right to choose?
We need to win back Congress. We need to retain the White House. We need to pass the Right to Bodily Autonomy law. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, right? But that’s the reality.
The reality of states like Illinois, like Colorado, or New York and California, we can’t maintain the pace that we are having to in regard to patients, in particular with reproductive healthcare. In fact, it’s even harder to absorb gender-affirming care patients because there are already not enough providers for in-house folks. With abortion there was more of an infrastructure to scale. There were abortion funds. There were practical support networks. None of that exists in the gender-affirming care space. So it’s even more challenging there.
What’s the single most important thing the world can do to address the climate crisis?
Each of us needs to act, individually, to do our part in solving the climate crisis.
You have a novel feature on your website that I’ve never seen before, a “Bill Ideas” page where you solicit ideas for legislation from your constituents. What’s the smartest idea that’s been submitted, and what’s the craziest?
Actually, one idea was both, a bill to legalize human composting in Illinois, or what’s also known as natural organic reduction. It’s moving through the legislature now.
You live on the North Side of Chicago with your three sons and your wife, LGBTQ+ activist Candace Gingrich, who happens to be former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s half-sister. How and when did you meet, and who proposed to whom?
My former wife introduced us, actually, while we were still together. We both love baseball, so we became great friends over that. And we said jokingly if we were ever both available in the future maybe we should get together, and that’s how it turned out.
Your wife famously officiated on the landmark lesbian wedding episode of Friends back in the 1990s. Had you seen that episode of the show before you met, and have you watched it with her since you’ve been together — or on your own as “research”?
We actually watched it together when it first aired when we were friends. Then at our wedding, we surprised Candace when the officiant quoted her from the episode.
Have you spent any holidays with your Republican half-brother-in-law, and if so, do you leave politics at the door, or does someone have to apologize in the morning?
Our families’ schedules don’t always line up, so we don’t spend that many holidays together, but he’s very smart and charming and curious, and always interested in what I’m doing.
You offer an amazing museum pass through your office for constituents in your district that grants admission to 17 museums in Chicago and is good for two days. Has anyone ever tried to hit all 17, and would that make a good scavenger hunt for your kids, or a fun fundraiser?
Ha! That’s a great idea! Now you’ve got me thinking about doing a whole pass around that.
Here are some either/or questions about museums and other Chicago institutions:
Adler Planetarium or Shedd Aquarium?
Shedd Aquarium.
Museum of Contemporary Art or Museum of Science and Industry?
Museum of Science and Industry.
Chicago Botanic Garden or Chicago History Museum?
Botanic Garden.
Cubs or White Sox?
Cubs! Yesterday, today and tomorrow and forever and six ways to Sunday.
C.J.*, a volunteer with the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) Auxiliary Officer program, says fellow officers and supervisors subjected him to homophobic harassment, including an off-duty assault, vandalism of his departmental locker, and retaliation for complaining about how he was being treated.
Officers in the NYPD’s auxiliary program supplement the regular police force and perform limited duties like foot patrolling, traffic, and parade control. Auxiliary officers get a uniform and a modified badge and aren’t given a gun, pepper spray, or allowed to arrest anyone. Auxiliary officers can also join “special units” that patrol specific transport areas like the subways, highways, or ports.
C.J. moved from Dallas, Texas to New York City in 2012. He worked a full-time job and began volunteering for the NYPD’s auxiliary unit that same year. But because of his negative experiences in the military, he hadn’t planned on coming out in the NYPD.
However, in 2014 the coordinating officer of his auxiliary unit informed Jimenez that his fellow officers all knew he was gay. C.J. didn’t know how they found out or who began telling others, but the outing made him feel very uncomfortable. He decided he wouldn’t “broadcast” his homosexuality at the department, but he could sense that others were gossiping about it.
C.J. told LGBTQ Nation that he endured a lot of mistreatment in the military because of his perceived sexual orientation. He served in the U.S. Army from January 2000 to January 2005, joined the U.S. Army Reserves in 2007, and served in Iraq from 2008 to 2009.
At the time, he didn’t report his mistreatment to his superior officers for fear of being forcibly discharged under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the U.S. military ban on homosexual service members. He retired from the reserves as a Sergeant First Class in June 2022.
However, his old fears about homophobic mistreatment materialized in October 2014 when fellow Auxiliary Officer David Jones* allegedly assaulted him while off-duty. C.J. already disliked Officer Jones, seeing him as a narcissist whom he never saw eye-to-eye with. While the two were being driven from a Halloween party, they got into a drunken verbal argument.
Jones began yelling and belittling C.J., to which C.J. responded, “You’re just pissed off because I’m gay and I have more balls than you, and you haven’t been in Iraq.”
When C.J. exited the vehicle to take a subway home, Jones allegedly shoved him out of the car onto the ground, began kicking and choking him, and called him a “wetb**k,” a “queer,” and a “dirty fa***t.” C.J. said he felt stunned and surprised to see Jones’ “true colors.”
The attack didn’t leave C.J. with any serious injuries, but he felt emotionally shaken. Despite this, he didn’t report the attack because it happened off-duty and because he thought things at the NYPD would be better if he didn’t.
In 2015, Jones was transferred to a special auxiliary unit. In November of that same year, C.J. asked Sergeant John Smith*, the coordinator overseeing all auxiliary special units, for a transfer to another special unit patrolling the borough of Queens. C.J. spoke with that unit’s coordinator, Sergeant Tim Jackson*, and went on rides with two unit sergeants who seemed to like him.
But by February 2016, neither Smith nor Jackson had returned C.J.’s calls asking about his transfer. “At that point, I began to realize something wasn’t right,” C.J. told LGBTQ Nation.
By July 2016, C.J. spoke with Detective Robert Brown*, an officer overseeing the special unit Jones had transferred to. C.J. confided about the assault, and Brown reportedly told him that Smith and Jackson weren’t processing his transfer request because he didn’t get along with Jones.
Tired of the stonewalling and mistreatment, C.J. reported Jones’ assault to NYPD Internal Affairs in October 2016. Nine months later, in July 2017, C.J. tried filing another transfer request to the special unit where Jones no longer worked. Brown, the unit head, seemed reluctant to accept C.J.’s transfer request, C.J. said.
In November of that year, C.J. filed a complaint with the NYPD’s Equal Opportunity (EO) office about the lack of responses to his transfer requests. In response, Smith then allegedly ordered C.J. not to contact him or anyone in auxiliary special units anymore. C.J. felt that his order was a retaliation for filing a complaint.
In June 2018, C.J. filed a complaint with the New York State Division of Human Rights that he was being retaliated against for his EO complaint. However, C.J. didn’t pursue it because he couldn’t afford a lawyer.
C.J. unsuccessfully filed another transfer request in October 2018. He then filed a Human Rights complaint with the City of New York in September 2019 to address the ongoing stonewalling. The COVID-19 shutdowns of 2020 delayed any handling of his complaint, and it was administratively dismissed in September 2021. Yet again, C.J. chose not to pursue the matter because he couldn’t afford a lawyer.
Despite the stonewalling, C.J. continued volunteering with the auxiliary program. However, in December 2020, someone broke into his departmental locker, cutting the lock with bolt cutters. Whoever had broken in had removed his duty belt, baton, flashlight, uniform cap, road guard vest, tie, and other various uniform items that he kept in a blue IKEA bag. The vandal hadn’t touched any items belonging to his locker mate. He later found what he believes to be his broken lock on top of the lockers while deep cleaning the area in May 2023.
“I was hesitant to say anything because I was burned out,” he told LGBTQ Nation. He felt like hehad been targeted for filing complaints and that no one would really care or do anything about the locker break-in. He alerted the EO office about the vandalism, but nothing came of it, just as nothing came of his repeated transfer requests, the most recent of which he filed in late 2023. C.J. says his transfers seem to keep disappearing with no explanation.
C.J. says he has had no disciplinary actions filed against him for any misconduct on the force, meaning that his on-duty behavior doesn’t seem to be the reason for his mistreatment. He feels his experience at the NYPD shows that some in the department are acting like a “good ol’ boys” club at the taxpayers’ expense, basing their workplace decisions on who he gets along with rather than his actual qualifications.
LGBTQ Nation contacted the NYPD for comment but they did not respond by the time of publication.
“Following the locker incident, I have been reluctant to do any auxiliary police patrols because, at this point, I feel very uncomfortable because of everything that has happened,” C.J. told LGBTQ Nation. Despite this, he said he has stayed in the NYPD because he refuses to be scared away.
“NYC prides itself on being a safe haven for LGBTQ [people] and NYPD says it is here to protect the LGBTQ community,” he added. “However, look at what happened to me after I felt safe to open my mouth about a problem in a place that is supposed to be a safe haven — I am getting the runaround.”
C.J. said he missed out on his longevity ceremony and because of his reluctance to do hours due to the runaround. He is telling his story now in hopes that the NYPD might finally live up to its standards and address his ongoing issues, not only for himself but for future officers who might otherwise face similar mistreatment.
“I know from military experience that all it takes is one or two people with ulterior motives … to make things difficult for [someone], especially if they have power over them such as rank or authority,” he said. “My goal isn’t a lawsuit, or another investigation — all I want is the wrong righted.”
*The officer in this story asked LGBTQ Nation to use aliases for fear of violating department policies as his official complaints move through the system.
Ella Matthes, the longtime publisher and editor of Lesbian News Magazine, died March 16 at a hospital in Norwalk, Calif. She was 81 years old, and the cause was a heart attack, according to a press release.
She ran Lesbian News Magazine, commonly known as the LN, from 1994 until 2022. The LN was North America’s longest-running lesbian publication. When it was founded in 1975 in Southern California by Jinx Beer, it was the lone voice for lesbian issues (The Ladder, published by the Daughters of Bilitis, had ceased publication three years earlier) and evolved throughout the years under Matthes’s leadership. The press release calls it “the nation’s foremost voice for lesbians of all ages.” It carried cover stories on Melissa Etheridge, k.d. lang, Ellen DeGeneres, Marlee Matlin, Hillary Clinton, Toni Braxton, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Judith Light, Janet McTeer, and more.
Matthes, a native of Los Angeles, bought a printing company, Superior Printers, when she was in her 20s, and ran it for several decades. However, she wanted to support lesbians and iacrease their visibility, so in 1994, she bought Lesbian News Magazine from Deborah Bergman, who had acquired it from Beers.
This was her mission statement: “The editorial vision of the LN has always been to inform, entertain, and be of service to women who love women of all ages, economic class, and color. We hope women from all walks of life will not only find something of themselves in the LN, but also be accepting of those with differing opinions. Lesbian News is our small contribution to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender liberation movement.”
She received several awards for her work, including the 2002 Women’s Night Gay & Lesbian Center’s Lesbian & Bisexual Women Active in Community Empowerment Award, the 2002 Business Alliance of Los Angeles Community Involvement Award, the 2003 Southern California Women for Understanding Community Service Award, and the 2012 Vox Femina Los Angeles Aria Award.
Matthes and Gladi Adams had been together for 26 years and were married July 13, 2013. Matthes’s survivors include Adams and a brother, Carl Matthes.
Memorial donations in her name may be made to the June Mazer Archives in West Hollywood.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) signed a law on Monday that adds crucial protections for LGBTQ+ couples using fertility treatments to build a family.
The Michigan Family Protection Act includes a series of provisions to protect families of all kinds. Most notably for the LGBTQ+ community, it changes “outdated state law to treat LGBTQ+ families equally and eliminate the need for them to go through a costly and invasive process to get documentation confirming their parental status,” as a press release from the governor’s office explains, adding that “Even if they move to a state that does not respect these basic rights, these bills help ensure they cannot be denied their relationship to their child.”
The law also repeals a law that made Michigan the only state in the country to criminalize surrogacy contracts; increases protections for surrogates, parents, and children; ensures equal legal treatment of children born through surrogacy and assisted reproduction; and streamlines the process for families to establish legal connections to their children.
“The Michigan Family Protection Act takes commonsense, long-overdue action to repeal Michigan’s ban on surrogacy, protect families formed by IVF, and ensure LGBTQ+ parents are treated equally,” Gov. Whitmer said in a statement. “Your family’s decisions should be up to you, and my legislative partners and I will keep fighting like hell to protect reproductive freedom in Michigan and make our state the best place to start, raise, and grow your family.”
Stephanie Jones, founder of the Michigan Fertility Alliance, called the legislation “an incredible victory for all Michigan families formed through assisted reproduction, including IVF and surrogacy, and for LGBTQ+ families.
The press release also acknowledged the attacks on reproductive rights taking place across the country, most notably the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade and the 2024 Alabama Supreme Court’s declaration that embryos created through IVF have the same legal rights as children.
“As other states seek to restrict IVF, ban abortion, and make it harder to start a family, Michigan is supporting women and protecting reproductive freedoms for everyone,” the release stated.
One fierce advocate, Tammy Myers, has been fighting for the decriminalization of surrogacy in the state for the past four years. She told7 Action News, “The tipping point, I think, is seeing that rights are being taken across the nation and we all need to fight for reproductive freedom.”
Polly Crozier, director of family advocacy at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), added in a statement, “Michigan has shown us what strengthening families should look like in 2024: making it more possible for people to fulfill their dreams of building a family and more accessible for all families, including LGBTQ+ families, to obtain the safety and stability that comes with legal parentage.”
“Amid efforts to restrict Americans’ reproductive freedom and roll back protections for LGBTQ+ people and their families, the Michigan Family Protection Act is an inspiring example for other states where gaps in parentage laws leave families vulnerable.”
The American Library Association has released its list of the 10 most challenged books of 2023, and seven of the 10 were challenged — that is, subject to ban attempts — at least in part for LGBTQ+ content. Several of them are by or about people of color.
“In looking at the titles of the most challenged books from last year, it’s obvious that the pressure groups are targeting books about LGBTQIA+ people and people of color,” ALA President Emily Drabinski said in a press release. “At ALA, we are fighting for the freedom to choose what you want to read. Shining a light on the harmful workings of these pressure groups is one of the actions we must take to protect our right to read.”
The top 10 list, released Monday during National Library Week, consists of these books:
Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe; reasons: LGBTQ+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit
All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson; reasons: LGBTQ+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit
This Book Is Gay by Juno Dawson; reasons: LGBTQIA+ content, sex education, claimed to be sexually explicit
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky; reasons: claimed to be sexually explicit, LGBTQ+ content, rape, drugs, profanity
Flamer by Mike Curato; reasons: LGBTQ+ content, claimed to be sexually explicit
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison; reasons: rape, incest, claimed to be sexually explicit, equity, diversity, and inclusion content
Tricks by Ellen Hopkins; reasons: claimed to be sexually explicit, drugs, rape, LGBTQ+ content
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews; reasons: claimed to be sexually explicit, profanity
Let’s Talk About It by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan; reasons: claimed to be sexually explicit, sex education, LGBTQ+ content
Sold by Patricia McCormick; reasons: claimed to be sexually explicit, rape
“These are books that contain the ideas, the opinions, and the voices that censors want to silence — stories by and about LGBTQ+ persons and people of color,” ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom Director Deborah Caldwell-Stone said in the release. “Each challenge, each demand to censor these books is an attack on our freedom to read, our right to live the life we choose, and an attack on libraries as community institutions that reflect the rich diversity of our nation. When we tolerate censorship, we risk losing all of this. During National Library Week, we should all take action to protect and preserve libraries and our rights.”
Attempts at book censorship took a giant leap in 2023, with 4,240 titles targeted in schools and libraries nationwide — a 65 percent increase from 2022’s record of 2,571, according to the ALA. There were 1,247 demands to censor books, with many targeting multiple titles, as documented by the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom.
Monday is the second anniversary of Right to Read Day, a day of action launched by the ALA’s Unite Against Book Bans initiative, which takes place the Monday of National Library Week. This year’s theme is “Don’t Let Censorship Eclipse Your Freedom to Read,” and anyone who supports the right to read is encouraged to take action by contacting Congress.
The Top 10 Books are featured in Unite Against Book Bans’ Book Résumé resource. Launched in February, these résumés support librarians, educators, parents, students, and other community advocates when they defend books from censorship. Created in collaboration with the publishing industry and library workers, each book résumé summarizes the book’s significance and educational value, including a synopsis, reviews from professional journals, awards, accolades and more. Where possible, the book résumés include information about how a title has been successfully retained in school districts and libraries after a demand to censor the book.
Also Monday, ALA announced the theme for Banned Books Week 2024, “Freed Between the Lines,” which honors the ways in which books bring us freedom and that access to information is worth preserving. Banned Books Week will take place September 22-28.
Lambda Legal and co-counsel Winston & Strawn LLP, Perkowski Legal, PC, and Scott Schoettes today announced they have reached a settlement with the Department of Defense (DoD) in a lawsuit filed in 2018 on behalf of a former Navy midshipman, Kevin Deese, and a former Air Force cadet, John Doe (a pseudonym), who were denied commissions after graduating from their respective service academies because they are living with HIV. The settlement provides for Deese and Doe to be commissioned as officers in recognition of the status and military careers they qualified for and earned years ago.
“We are gratified that our clients, who were denied officer commissions they had earned because of the U.S. military’s discriminatory policy of withholding career advancement opportunities from HIV-positive service members, will now be able to achieve their goals,” said Kara Ingelhart, Senior Attorney at Lambda Legal. “Service members living with HIV, once affected by an outdated, discriminatory policy, no longer face discharge, bans on commissioning, or bans on deployment simply because they are living with HIV.”
“Joining my brave co-plaintiff in this case was, for me, about demonstrating the very leadership that inspired me to a military career. I follow the mantra of 2004 Naval Academy graduate Travis Manion—“If not me, then who?” said plaintiff Kevin Deese. “Now, ten years after my Naval Academy graduation, future midshipmen and cadets living with HIV will be able to commission with their classmates upon graduation. And I could not be more proud to finally be commissioning.”
“We are grateful for the opportunity to work with Lambda Legal and others to overturn the military’s outdated and unconstitutional policies concerning people living with HIV,” said Bryce Cooper at Winston & Strawn. “Our pro bono efforts, in both the district court and the Fourth Circuit, have brought about a meaningful, and long overdue, change for service members living with HIV.”
This settlement also follows the June 2022 DoD policy changes to some of the military’s former policies that discriminated against service members living with HIV that confirmed service members living with HIV who are asymptomatic with undetectable viral load “will have no restrictions applied to their deployment or to their ability to commission . . . solely on the basis of their HIV-positive status.” That 2022 policy change had the effect of preventing what happened to Deese and Doe from impacting future military academy cadets who seroconvert while in their course of their college education. And those changes followed a groundbreaking federal court ruling in April 2022 that ordered the DoD to stop enforcing those discriminatory policies. The ruling came in two cases—Harrison v. Austin and Roe v. Austin, combined for purposes of discovery and summary judgment—for which Lambda Legal served as co-counsel with Winston & Strawn LLP, Greenberg Traurig LLP, Scott Schoettes, and Peter Perkowski.
As of this release, counsel and clients are currently waiting for a U.S. District Court to rule on the military’s last remaining bar preventing people living with HIV from joining any branch of the U.S. Armed Services in the lawsuit, Wilkins v. Austin.
Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, an organization founded by Marsha P. Johnson & Sylvia Rivera during the Queer & Trans Liberation Movement of the 60’s/70/s to be refounded in response to anti-trans/ queer/ non-binary sentiment growing across the U.S.
In response to rising tide of anti-trans/queer/non-binary sentiment in the U.S. Minneapolis, MN organizer Sam Martinez announces the refounding of STAR on the eve of the 2024 International Transgender Day of Visibility & the 2024 elections in the United States.
Martinez, lead organizer of STAR National and Star Minneapolis, declared, “We are told that Marsha & Syliva are dead, and that we should settle for what we got. However, with the refounding of STAR we as BIPOC Trans, Non-Binary, and queer people declare, ‘OUT OF THE CLOSETS AND INTO THE STREETS! TRANS, NON-BINARY, AND QUEER LIBERATION NOW!’ We; specifically BIPOC Trans, Non-binary, queer people, cannot wait for someone else to save us, we have the power! People power, Trans, Non-Binary, Queer power! Black, Brown, Red, Yellow power to unite our peoples! To liberate our peoples! We must come out of the shadows of the people’s movements! Along with the National Liberation, labor, and many other movements we shall overcome all obstacles to our liberation and freedom!”
STAR is to be founded as a Trans/Non-Binary/Queer, working-class, multi-National AKA BIPOC, (Black Indigenous People of Color) organization which will water the roots of the past with the spirit of the present to refound and rejuvenate the U.S. Trans/Queer liberation movement. Currently, the National organization shall handle larger matters. While the first local chapter in Minneapolis, Minnesota shall handle local organizing.
Sam Martinez is a Chicano@ non-binary, trans person who uses they/them pronouns. Martinez started as a student organizer/president of a local Chican@/Latin@ student organization. In November of 2015, while being a local-leader in their AFSCME union Martinez joined the highway protest to demand Justice for Jamar Clark who was killed by Minneapolis Police Department officers Ringgenberg & Schwarze. After joining and becoming a lead organizer of the Twin Cities Coalition for Justice for Jamar and Minneapolis for Community Control of the police, they became a National leader in the struggle against police terror when they were pivotal in defeating Mike Freeman, the sitting Hennepin County Attorney. They won the “No More Grand Juries” policy, witnessed Freeman’s trivialization of police murder in comparison to Justine Damond, and his ultimate defeat: retirement after trivializing the murder of George Floyd.
Martinez worked on many of the cases of police shootings in Minnesota and Nationally such as Marcus Golden, Phil Quinn, Thruman Blevins, Hardel Sherell, Cordale Handy, Terrance Franklin, Sarah Lee Circle Bear, Paul Castaway, Philando Castile, Adam Toledo, Vanessa Marquez, Jesse Romero, Andres Guardado, Antonio Zambrano-Montes, Korryn Gaines, Sandra Bland, Breanna Taylor and too many others.
Martinez took time to breath and reflect on the lessons of the local, national, and international uprising in the struggle for justice for George Floyd. Now they are taking their knowledge of leading the Labor and National Liberation movements and applying it to the struggle for Trans, Non-Binary, and Queer liberation and freedom by refounding STAR!
A group called Love Lives in Seekonk (LLIS) sought to educate their small Massachusetts town about LGBTQ+ issues while building support for queer youth in schools. But soon after the group formed, another resident established a similarly named group to mock them. That resident has since accused LLIS and its supporters of being pedophiles and suggested that violence awaits them if they continue their advocacy.
Some residents of Seekonk, Massachusetts (population 15,700), were angered in late March 2023 when Mildred H. Aitken Elementary School advertised its annual Boy’s Choice mother-son dance with an ad welcoming all boys, students who identify as boys, and non-binary students.
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After right-wingers shared the ad’s wording on social media accounts, the school district received phone calls and online messages threatening protests and violence. One post featured a picture of a bullet and the caption “PEDOCILLIN,” a combination of the word pedophilia and the medication penicillin. The district canceled the $1,500 event hours before it was about to begin and canceled its scheduled Girl’s Choice dance that following April since its flier used similar wording about trans and non-binary students.
Upset by the cancellation, local parent Joe Novinson spoke passionately at a school board meeting, calling out the violence directed against children and the right of queer families to exist without being shot. After hearing his speech, a group of LGBTQ+ supportive parents, called Love Lives in Seekonk (LLIS), recruited Novinson to join their board. He did.
The group, started by local parent Kris Lyons and Pam Godsoe, decided to help raise the $1,500 that the school’s parent-teacher organization (PTO) lost by canceling the dance. So they began selling yard signs and bumper stickers colored like the progress Pride flag with the group’s name printed on them. The group raised nearly the full amount by April 11, 2023 and presented the amount to the PTO in an oversized check.
As the group’s membership grew, it pledged to hold community and educational events for LGBTQ+ youth and their families. LLIS held a September event to paint rocks for the local library’s Kindness Rock Garden, a November Lovesgiving fundraiser, and a February 2024 trivia night. The group, which became a non-profit in August 2023, donated $300 to Seekonk High School’s gay-straight alliance. LLIS also uses its Facebook page to educate residents about LGBTQ+ issues like pronouns, banned books, trans athletes, anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, coming out, queer crisis hotlines, and other topics.
“[The events were] really just about bringing the community together,” Novinson told LGBTQ Nation. “There was a lot of pushback initially to our group and people accused us of being online only, that we didn’t have much more than a digital footprint. So we wanted to counter that by holding events in real life. And we’re making our presence here felt, and we’re telling [those who disapproved of us that] we’re not going anywhere.”
Around fall 2023, the group also began publishing letters to the editor in the monthly local news magazine, The Seekonk Reporter. Since the magazine often reprints long letters to the editor and gets delivered to each local resident’s mailbox, LLIS thought it’d be a good way to reach older populations who didn’t engage with the group’s Facebook or Instagram pages.
In October 2023, the Reporter published Lyons’ letter introducing LLIS to the community. In November 2023, the news magazine published a letter written by Joe Novinson’s husband and fellow LLIS member Michael about how visible attempts at LGBTQ+ inclusivity aren’t a form of discrimination against Christians or Republicans.
“Just because something makes you as a parent uncomfortable doesn’t mean it’s discriminatory in nature,” Michael Novinson’s letter said. “Schools should be opening children’s minds to the world outside of our own family, not building protective bubbles around children to keep new ideas and people you consider undesirable out.”
That’s when the trouble started. A local resident named Kanessa Lynn sent a letter to the Reporter claiming to represent a similarly named group called Luv Lives in Seekonk.
In one letter, Lynn wrote, “Luv Lives in Seekonk had its first ever LuvsGiving fundraiser on November 8th…. All proceeds are going to myself.” She claimed her group sold yard signs and bumper stickers and held a rock painting event, claims that others in the town doubted, considering her letter made it sound like she was just writing a satirical article mocking Love Lives in Seekonk. “I seen how gullible people are,” her letter continued, “and I’m excited to come up with more merchandise to scam, I mean sell to the community!”
Lynn reposted the article in Seekonk Residents, a right-wing Facebook group that reposts screenshots from anti-LGBTQ+ activist Chaya Raichik’s Libs of TikTok X account, the transphobic right-wing group Gays Against Groomers, and videos of far-right activist Charlie Kirk. The group also features various posts opposing transgender athletes, immigrants, DEI efforts, “the war on whites,” and the “COVID vaccine hoax.”
After complaints about Lynn’s letters, The Seekonk Reporter removed LLIS’ and Lynn’s letters from their website.
On October 26, 2023, Michael Novinson said he had a phone conversation with Barbara Georgia, co-owner of The Reporter. According to him, Georgia said the publication reprinted Lynn’s letters so that it wouldn’t be seen as “taking sides.” Georgia also reportedly said that the Reporter didn’t fact-check Lynn’s claims because “Those are her words, not ours” and that the publication had the right to refuse any submissions.
“We have given space to both groups in the past and due to the fact that it has escalated so much in nature we have decided to remain neutral and no longer print either side,” Georgia wrote to Michael Novinson in a January 4, 2024 text message exchange.
Novinson explained to Georgia that, unlike Lynn, his group was created to improve the lives of local queer kids, not “to get in a tit-for-tat with” Lynn or her sham group. “Silencing our voice will only serve to hurt LGBTQ+ youth,” Novinson wrote. Georgia and her husband have previously made donations to Republican candidates and the 2020 re-election campaign of President Donald Trump, according to data from the Federal Election Campaign.
Lynn cheered Georgia’s decision in a January 18 Facebook post in the Seekonk Residents Facebook group, writing, “To them it was a setback, but for all of us in Seekonk it was a victory!!! Now we don’t have to read their useless articles filled with lies.”
In other posts in the same group, she arranged four progressive Pride rainbow flags in the shape of a swastika, misgendered reposted screenshots of the full names of all the members of the LLIS Facebook group, and posted images of her car with two signs on it: one reading, “Love Lives in Seekonk are GROOMERS,” and another reading, “LEAVE THE KIDS ALONE!”
At the January 8 meeting of the Seekonk School Committee, Lynn said the LLIS’s members and supporters are “groomers.” She referenced the community upset at the aforementioned “PEDOCILLIN” social media post, saying that it meant that “pedophiles should get a bullet.”
“If you’re not a pedophile or a group that grooms children,” she continued, “then the meme shouldn’t even have affected you.” She then asked if the library or school board if either would be able to handle a neo-Nazi protest if either organization ever held a community drag event at LLIS’s request.
“You might wanna take that to Rehoboth or Attleboro because it’s not going to happen in Seekonk,” she said. “We’re not going to have grown, mentally ill men dressed as women coming to read to little kids in Seekonk — it’s not going to happen, I promise you that…. Leave the kids alone, leave the schools alone… You have a sick obsession with children.”
As proof of LLIS’s obsession, she noted an LLIS Facebook post in which Michael Novinson opposed a proposal to make the school district’s sex education classes opt-in and to let parents opt their child out of any curriculum that contradicts their religious beliefs. In his post, Novinson worried that the policy would reduce the number of students learning about human sexuality and “lead to more STIs and unwanted pregnancies for teenagers in town.”
Beyond the censorship, accusations, and threats, Seekonk is gearing up for the upcoming April 1 townwide elections. Lynn and other town residents are supporting conservative school board candidates who could push school policies banning LGBTQ+ books, curriculum, and trans-inclusive policies. Meanwhile, LLIS’s members continue to speak out at board meetings and inform its Facebook followers members about why LGBTQ+ kids need community support.
“Folks running from the right are making things like gender ideology and critical race theory central components of their campaign,” Michael Novinson said. “In that way, Seekonk mirrors national patterns and a push on the right to make this a culture war.”
Lyons, one of the straight co-founders of LLIS, said she wants to encourage more residents in her town and in neighboring towns to “feel more emboldened to step up and be loud” in support of LGBTQ+ people.
“Two straight moms from Seekonk got together with a bunch of people to take a stand, and you can too.”
As the use of solitary confinement in immigration detention centers increases under the Biden administration, according to the federal data, some Democratic-aligned lawmakers are demanding an end to the practice — or at least the creation of rules that would limit it — accusing the federal government in a letter of being “in clear violation of international norms.”
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement “has isolated individuals in its facilities for months and even years, used solitary as punishment for minor infractions, and placed in solitary vulnerable individuals, including those with mental health conditions,” Massachusetts Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, and Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin wrote in a letter Friday to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and ICE acting Deputy Director Patrick Lechleitner.
“ICE has failed to follow its own guidelines that limit both the punitive use of solitary confinement and the imposition of additional forms of punishment in solitary confinement,” added the lawmakers, who were joined by eight other Democratic senators and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
ICE statistics show the agency detains more than 38,000 people each day, an increase of about 15,000 since President Joe Biden took office in 2021.
The senators cited a study released last month that found 1,106 uses of “segregation” — informally known as solitary confinement — in the third quarter of 2023, up 61% from a year prior. Researchers at Harvard University and the nonprofit group Physicians for Human Rights based the analysis on ICE’s own data, and also established the agency placed people in solitary confinement over 14,000 times in the past five years with an average duration of 27 days — “well exceeding the 15-day threshold that United Nations human rights experts have found constitutes torture.”
Philip Torrey, an assistant clinical professor at Harvard Law School and researcher on the study, said that given the findings, they would like to see ICE “end the use of segregation and at the very least begin a phase out process to discontinue its use.”
The Democratic lawmakers agreed, writing in their letter that “at a minimum, DHS and ICE must issue binding rules limiting its use of solitary confinement and follow them.”
The senators said they are especially concerned about detainees in the most vulnerable populations, including LGBTQ people and those with mental health and chronic medical conditions.
Medical and mental health remain the largest reasons why immigration detainees are placed in segregation, according to ICE data on its website, followed by disciplinary and protective custody issues.
Markey said he felt obligated to urge DHS and ICE to “phase out” solitary confinement after reports of its use on detainees for even minor infractions or as retaliation for conducting a hunger strike.
“Solitary confinement is unfair and cruel, and it’s time for our government to stop using it,” Markey told NBC News.
The senators asked Mayorkas and Lechleitner for answers to several questions, including what steps have been taken to limit solitary confinement, what is the breakdown of time spent in it and by vulnerable population, and what is the agency doing to respond to recommendations from government accountability and oversight offices to ensure clear and consistent policies for segregation.
DHS and ICE did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the senators’ letter or the study they cited.
In 2013, ICE issued a directive that the use of segregated housing must be carefully weighed.
“Placement in segregation should occur only when necessary and in compliance with applicable detention standards,” the agency said at the time. “In particular, placement in administrative segregation due to a special vulnerability should be used only as a last resort and when no other viable housing options exist.”
The agency also agreed to protect transgender people in a 2015 memorandum.
Immigration advocacy groups remain dismayed over the use of solitary confinement and say the issue is taking greater importance ahead of an upcoming election that is on course to see a rematch between Biden and former President Donald Trump.
In 2019, an NBC News investigation in partnership with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and other news organizations found a widespread use of solitary confinement for immigrant detainees in ICE custody under both the Obama and Trump administrations.
Concerns continue in detention centers under the Biden administration, with detainees in Louisiana last year telling NBC News about the threat and use of solitary confinement as punishment. The president has been criticized during his tenure about the increased use of so-called restrictive housing in federal prisons as well, despite a campaign pledge to end solitary confinement except for “very limited” reasons. Bills were introduced last year in the U.S. Senate and the House by Democrats to largely ban the practice on federal inmates and detainees.
Jesse Franzblau, a senior policy analyst at the National Immigrant Justice Center, which offers legal representation for detainees, said he believes what has been happening in federal facilities must change because it is “arbitrary.”
“There’s already weak standards in terms of human rights and basic humanity, and there’s not a lot of oversight and accountability from staff just throwing people into solitary and them not having the opportunity to get out,” Franzblau said. “This is how it plays out on the ground when members of Congress say the government is violating its own policies.”