A young gay man has been shot dead by the Taliban in Afghanistan because of his sexuality.
Hamed Sabouri, from Kabul, was killed in August, local activists have told PinkNews. He was just 22.
He was reportedly kidnapped by the Taliban and a video showing his murder sent to his family days later.
Bahar, another gay Afghan who knew the victim personally, told PinkNews Sabouri had dreams of becoming a doctor, but his hopes were stolen from him when the Taliban seized power in August 2021.
He described Hamed as a “shy” gay man with an infectious laugh.
“Life is hell for every LGBT Afghan,” Bahar said.
“Taliban terrorists are worse than wild animals.”
Bahar, who is a member of Afghanistan’s growing LGBTQ+ organisation the Behesht Collective, deleted all the pictures and videos he had of Sabouri on his phone after he learned of his murder.
Protesters hold a sign that reads “stop killing Afghans” at a demonstration in Canada. (NurPhoto via Getty/ Sayed Najafizada)
Bahar lives in fear of being stopped and searched by the Taliban – he’s afraid that he would also be killed if they found out about his sexuality.
Since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021, PinkNews has spoken to a number of LGBTQ+ Afghans who have had their phones searched by the Taliban.
Many have resorted to deleting their social media accounts in a desperate bid to stay safe, while many others have crossed the border into Pakistan where they are less likely to be killed.
Taliban wants to ‘eradicate’ LGBTQ+ people
Nemat Sadat, an Afghan activist who is fighting to have LGBTQ+ people evacuated from the country, told PinkNews that Sabouri’s death is the result of inaction from western governments, many of which have failed to take in adequate numbers of fleeing Afghans.
Afghan activist Nemat Sadat. (Provided)
“The death of Hamed Sabouri is further proof that the Taliban will not stop until they eradicate all gay people from Afghanistan,” he said.
“His execution was deliberate and outside of any legal framework. I don’t understand how people in good conscience around the world sit idle while the Taliban continue to rule with a total disregard for human life.”
Sabouri’s killing is just the latest blow to Afghanistan’s embattled LGBTQ+ community.
Since the Taliban seized power, reports have circulated about queer people being beaten, raped and murdered as the regime ramps up its persecution of those who fall foul of Sharia law.
Most recently, it was reported that the Taliban had started using the monkeypox outbreak to harass and detain LGBTQ+ people.
Virginia governor Glenn Younkin has insisted his trans student bathroom ban isn’t “controversial”, despite widespread outrage.
The Republican proposed the policy – which disallows trans students to use bathrooms corresponding with their gender – in September.
He claimed during an interview on CNN’s State of the Unionon Sunday (9 October) that it was designed to allow parents to make decisions for their child.
n fact, along with making bathroom access dependent on gender assigned at birth, Youngkin’s policy proposal states that schools should defer to parents on names, nicknames and “pronouns, if any” for their children, as well as any “social transition”. It also suggests that schools should out trans students to their parents.
“I just think the idea that we’re going to have policies that exclude parents from their children’s lives is something that I have been going to work on since day one,” Youngkin said.
“We campaigned on it. We empowered parents to make decisions with regards to [COVID-19] masking in Virginia. We have empowered parents to make decisions with regards to curriculum that fits their families’ decisions.”
As well as instructing students to use the bathrooms of the sex written on their birth certificate, the policies also prohibit preferred pronouns and given names without express consent from parents.
Youngkin describes these policy changes as fixing “a wrong” with previous guidance allowing for schools and institutions to decide on policies for specific students.
“The previous administration had a policy that excluded parents and, in fact, particularly didn’t require the involvement of parents,” he said. “Children don’t belong to the state, they belong to families.
“And so, in these most important decisions, step one has to be to engage parents, not the exclusion of a trusted teacher of an advisor, but to make sure that parents are involved in their children’s lives.”
Regardless of how significantly Youngkin believes in his policy changes, the assertion that the legislation is uncontroversial is not true, given the amount of pushback he has received from activists and allies.
Senate Democrats lambasted the move in a joint statement reported by The New York Post, saying they were “an outright violation of Virginian’s civil rights.”
Democratic delegate Mike Mullin called the new policy “absolutely shameful” in a tweet that criticised “calls for the misgendering and outing of children in schools where they’re supposed to be safe.”
Additionally, thousands of Virginia students from nearly 100 schools walked out of school on 28 September to protest the policy, saying that they are fearful of how the new policy could affect them.
“We want our school districts to stand up for us and support us and say they’ll reject these guidelines,” 16-year-old Lauren Truong told The Guardian after she lead fellow schoolmates in a walkout.
Additionally, high school senior Natasha Sanghvi said to NBC Washington that the group decided to hold the walkouts “as a kind of way to disrupt schools and have students be aware of what’s going on.”
Anthony Rapp testified in federal court about an “incredibly frightening” encounter, in which Kevin Spacey allegedly climbed on top of him when he was a teen.
Rapp, who is suing Spacey for $40 million in a civil trial over alleged sexual misconduct, described to the court on Friday (7 October) how he first became acquainted with Spacey as a teenager on the New York City theatre scene.
He testified that Spacey invited him to a party at the actor’s loft in 1986 when Rapp was 14 and the disgraced actor was 26.
Rapp, now 50, told jurors he decided to go because he was “honoured” to “join a colleague at a gathering” and was eager to show some independence from his mum.
The Star Trek: Discovery actor described feeling uncomfortable because he didn’t know the other guests, so he decided to go into a bedroom to watch TV. Rapp told jurors that Spacey later appeared in the doorway, seemingly intoxicated, and approached him.
“It felt very wrong,” Rapp said. “I didn’t want him to do it, and I had no reason that made any sense of why he would do it. I felt like a deer in headlights.”
Rapp testified that he was able to “wiggle” his way out from under Spacey and hide in a bathroom. Rapp recalled later running to the front door of the loft when Spacey stopped the teen and asked him: “Are you sure you want to leave?”
After the alleged encounter, Rapp said he contemplated how he would “recover from this incredibly upsetting and frightening experience” during his long walk home.
“I was this 14-year-old child, and I had no desire to have any kind of this experience in my life,” he said. “It was incredibly frightening and very alarming and totally antithetical to anything else that I had ever experienced.”
Anthony Rapp alleged he had an “alarming” encounter with Kevin Spacey at the older actor’s home in 1986. Spacey has denied the allegations against him. (Getty)
Kevin Spacey, now 63, has denied Rapp’s claims. His lawyer Jennifer Kelley claimed Rapp invented the incident as she said it resembled a scene in Precious Sons, a play that Rapp starred in at the time.
Kevin Spacey initially apologised on social media to Rapp for what he said “would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behaviour” but said he “honestly” didn’t “remember the encounter”. He has since denied the allegations.
Rapp is one of several individuals who have come forward with accusations of sexual misconduct against Spacey in recent years.
Rapp is expected to continue his testimony and then face cross-examination from Kevin Spacey’s lawyers when the civil trial resumes on Tuesday (11 October).
Officials at Vanderbilt University Medical Center announced Friday that they are pausing gender-affirming surgeries for minors in order to review their practices.
The news, delivered in a letter sent to a lawmaker who has demanded an end to the surgeries, was publicly released Friday afternoon. It comes amid mounting political pressure from Tennessee’s Republican leaders — many of whom are running for reelection — who called for an investigation into the private nonprofit hospital after videos surfaced on social media last month of a doctor touting that gender-affirming procedures are “huge money makers.” Another video showed a staffer saying anyone with a religious objection should quit.
None of the politicians could point to a specific law that the hospital had violated, and no agency to date has committed to an investigation. Republican Gov. Bill Lee’s office said they had passed their concerns to the Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, but his office has not commented on whether he is looking into the Nashville-based hospital.
“We are pausing gender affirmation surgeries on patients under age 18 while we complete this review, which may take several months,” wrote C. Wright Pinson, VUMC’s deputy CEO and chief health system officer.
The GOP-dominated Legislature is scheduled to reconvene in January, and many lawmakers have vowed to introduce legislation further limit gender-affirming treatments. If successful, it’s unclear if VUMC would be allowed to resume gender-affirming surgeries for minors, regardless of their internal review.
“We should not allow permanent, life-altering decisions that hurt children,” Lee tweeted late Friday. “With the partnership of the General Assembly, this practice should end in Tennessee.”
According to Pinson, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health recently changed its recommendations for transgender treatment, which helped prompt the need for a review.
On average, VUMC has provided five gender affirming surgeries to minors every year since its transgender clinic opened in 2018. All were over the age of 16 and had parental consent, and none received genital procedures.
“The revenues from this limited number of surgeries represent an immaterial percentage of VUMC’s net operating revenue,” Pinson wrote.
Emails provided to The Associated Press through a public records request show hundreds of Tennesseans reached out to the governor’s office in support of shutting down VUMC’s transgender youth health clinic, with some asking him to call a special legislative session to address the issue. Others asked if he could suspend the licenses of the doctors who work at the clinic.
A few criticized Lee for not taking harsher steps earlier when he signed legislation banning doctors from providing gender-confirming hormone treatment to prepubescent minors.
Only a handful defended the clinic’s services, with some saying the transgender health care they received had been life-saving.
More than half of trans and non-binary people are misgendered in death by officials, new research suggests.
Research, published in the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, found that between 2011 and 2021, more than half of transgender and non-binary people who died during this time period were misgendered on their death certificates.
Kimberly Repp, chief epidemiologist for Washington County and one of the study’s authors, noted that this could impact the allocation of resources like social services and public health programs, which can change depending on a region’s vital statistics.
She said: “What we learned will likely alarm anyone who identifies as transgender or non-binary – or anyone who cares about the rights of transgender and gender non-conforming people.”
“When a population is not counted, it is erased.”
The HRC, which trans violent deaths of trans people, has often warned that many trans people are misgendered in death, and therefore go uncounted.
The research was conducted by public health officials from Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas, and focussed on the Portland, Oregon, metro area, and looked at the recorded deaths of 51 trans and non-binary people.
It revealed systemic gaps in coroners’ ability to accommodate trans and non-binary people.
The majority of medical examiner case management software does not include a field for gender identity, and there is no national requirement for death investigators to be trained about how to verify a deceased person’s gender identity.
Next-of-kin also have unilateral power to declare a deceased person’s gender and have it changed on a death certificate, which can lead to what the study calls “nonconsensual detransitioning” – when the next-of-kin rejects the deceased’s trans identity.
Kimberly DiLeo, chief investigator with the Multnomah County Medical Examiner’s Office, said that while it has been “proactive in training our staff to record gender identity… without adequate tools to collect this data and changes at a national level, we are limited in what we can do”.
in 2019 the American Medical Association made attempts to tackle increasing violence among transgender people by establishing a more consistent way to collect data on trans identity.
Despite this, the report noted that no agency regularly collects information about gender identity at death.
The drag show at a Tennessee pride festival will go on Saturday — but not in the way organizers had planned it.
After weeks of criticism, online threats from far-right groups and a legal complaint, the Jackson Pride Committee and the city of Jackson, which sits about 70 miles northeast of Memphis in Madison County, reached a compromise with state Republican representatives and community members who had complained about the pride festival’s drag show.
The annual pride festival was supposed to be held in the city’s public Conger Park, as it was in 2019 and 2021, but now it will be held indoors at the nearby Civic Center.
The drag performance was going to be an event open to all, but at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Jackson Pride organizers will have to clear out the Civic Center and then check IDs of those who want to re-enter to ensure drag show attendees are 18 or older.
Darin Hollingsworth, a Jackson Pride Committee member, said organizers were “horribly disappointed,” because they know local LGBTQ youths would have felt supported at the drag performance.
“We’re devastated, because we know that young people in their teens who are queer or questioning or supportive would love to see this, and parents could have brought them,” Hollingsworth said. “But we will be in contempt if we even allow parents to bring in their child, so we won’t.”
Hollingsworth said the pride event had been in the works for a year, and Jackson Pride had advertised it repeatedly. The event began to face backlash after a Sept. 17 Facebook post from Republican state Rep. Chris Todd.
“I continue to hear from Madison Countians APPALLED at the possibility of a drag queen show in Conger Park,” Todd said. “I share your shock and sentiment. If Mayor Conger or City officials have approved (allowed) this event, then they are clearly ignoring the law. I intend to see that the law is upheld!”
Todd also quoted a state law that bars “adult cabarets” from being within 1,000 feet of public parks, residences or places of worship.
Jackson Mayor Scott Conger held a meeting at City Hall on Sept. 26 that included Todd, Republican state Rep. Ed Jackson, attorneys for the state, members of the Jackson Pride Committee, officials from local churches, among other interested parties.
During the meeting, Todd said he had heard from concerned community members who didn’t want to see “this trash” in the community, according to a recording of the meeting shared with NBC News by the Jackson Pride Committee.
But Darren Lykes, chair of the committee, said that he spoke with all of the drag performers and told them it would be a family-friendly event. He added that there had been drag performers in the park at the past two festivals. “Where was your outrage then?” he asked Todd.
“Well, I didn’t know about it,” Todd responded.
A member of Englewood Baptist Church also compared hosting the drag show in the park to people wearing blackface in a public place.
After the meeting, Hollingsworth said he became aware of threats in the form of online comments that mentioned both the anti-LGBTQ Westboro Baptist Church and the Proud Boys, a white nationalist group.
As a result, the Jackson Pride Committee decided to move the festival, including the drag show, into the Civic Center and to increase security measures by, among other things, having a metal detector. But changing the location didn’t satisfy Todd and some community members.
On Tuesday, state Reps. Todd and Jackson, along with 12 members of First United Methodist Church, filed a legal complaint against the city of Jackson in the Chancery Court for Madison County, claiming that holding the drag show in the Civic Center would violate state law.
“Plaintiffs who worship at First United Methodist Church will suffer imminent and irreparable injury if this injunction is not granted as an adult cabaret will be featured within 1,000 feet of their house of worship,” the complaint states. “Plaintiffs have a high probability of success on the merits, injury to the Plaintiffs will be substantial, while the injury to the Defendant is minimal as this Complaint does not seek to cancel the Jackson Pride event, but rather prevent the drag show from occurring, and the public interest will be best served by granting this injunction.”
The court scheduled a hearing on the complaint for Friday morning, but the Jackson Pride Committee decided to pursue a compromise under the legal counsel of the ACLU of Tennessee and city attorney Lewis Cobb. Under the agreement, Jackson Pride will have attendees exit the Civic Center at 7 p.m. and will check the IDs of everyone who goes back in for the drag show to ensure they are at least 18. Todd and the other complainants will also drop their lawsuit.
Some members of First United Methodist Church disagreed with the legal complaint. Adam Pulliam, a member of the church who didn’t join the complaint, said most members weren’t even made aware of it until it was filed and made public.
“I have been part of online discussion for four days with members, and there is general outrage,” he said in an email to NBC News. “This act is not a good representation of the feelings of many members of the church.”
Stella Yarbrough, the legal director for the ACLU of Tennessee, said the agreement will still allow Jackson Pride “to create a welcoming event that celebrates the diversity and expression of all community members.”
Cobb said that Jackson Pride would likely have won its case to hold the drag show outdoors without the age restriction had it decided to pursue litigation on First Amendment grounds, but it may have forced it to cancel or delay the event. He said he and Conger “were sort of caught between two competing interests and tried to see if we couldn’t get a resolution without having to have litigation.”
But while the ACLU of Tennessee framed the outcome as a compromise, Todd, in a statement posted to Facebook on Friday, claimed victory, saying the event is now being “properly restricted.”
“By taking the issue to court, we have succeeded in having the city and the group agree to several restrictions after challenging city leaders to answer questions about why they would allow our children to be exposed to this kind of outrageous adult performance,” he said. “By agreeing to the restrictions, they have effectively acknowledged that what they were promoting was way out of line.”
CORRECTION (Oct. 8, 2022, 3:44 p.m.): A previous version of this article misstated the name of the church whose member compared hosting the drag festival in the park to wearing blackface in public. It was a member of Englewood Baptist Church, not First United Methodist Church.
Once shunned as a political pariah for her extremist rhetoric, the Georgia congresswoman who spent her first term in the House stripped of institutional power by Democrats is being celebrated by Republicans and welcomed into the GOP fold. If Republicans win the House majority in the November election, Greene is poised to become an influential player shaping the GOP agenda, an agitator with clout.
This is the outlook for the Republican Party in the Trump era, the normalizing of once fringe figures into the highest ranks of political power. It’s a sign of the GOP’s rightward drift that Greene’s association with extremists and nationalists, violent rhetoric and remarks about Jewish people have found a home in elected office. Her proximity to Trump makes her a force that cannot be ignored by what’s left of her mainstream GOP colleagues.
A young gay man, who fled to Israel to escape persecution in Palestine and was seeking asylum abroad, has been kidnapped and brutally murdered in the West Bank.
Ahmed Hacham Hamdi Abu Marakhia, 25, fled Palestine two years ago after his sexual orientation was revealed. He had been living in Israel after authorities acknowledged his life would be in danger if he returned to Palestine.
He was about to begin the process of seeking asylum abroad – potentially in Canada – at the time of his death.
Ahmed was killed Wednesday (5 October) in Hebron, a Palestinian city in the southern West Bank, Makoreported. A horrific video of his decapitated body lying on a roadside was circulated on Palestinian social networks.
Authorities have opened an investigation into Ahmed’s death, but his friends and activists in Israel believed the reason for his death was his sexual orientation.
Israeli Labour Party MK Ibtisam Mara’ana mourned Ahmed’s death in a message posted on social media.
“Ahmad, who stayed in an Israeli shelter due to his sexuality, was murdered by a vicious and twisted killer,” she wrote.
“In the next government, we intend to complete the Palestinian LGBT revolution.”
Tomer Aldubi – a volunteer in the Different House, an organisation that helps LGBTQ+ Palestinians find asylum abroad, and a journalist for Mako – told PinkNews Ahmed had left his hostel in Israel to travel to his job on Wednesday.
But he said Ahmed’s friends and people at the hostel became concerned later in the day when he “did not answer his calls”.
He said there were rumours that Ahmed was killed because the “video was already out”. He got a call from Ahmed’s social worker at about 11pm about the story because “people were 90 per cent sure it was him”.
Aldubi, who is also a theatre director, briefly met Ahmed when he produced a play titled Sharif about gay Palestinians fleeing from the West Bank to Israel. He described Ahmed as a “good person” who had built a community of friends.
“He came all the way from Tel Aviv with his best friend, and I talked with him,” Aldubi said. “I met him just once. He was very nice, very quiet – actually did not talk a lot.”
“He seemed to be intelligent, and it was only a brief discussion but I know that he had many friends here.”
Aldubi said Ahmed’s friends and Rita Petrenko, the CEO of the Different House, believed the 25-year-old had been kidnapped or forcibly taken back to Palestine.
He had been told by others that there was “no reason for [Ahmed] to go back independently” as he knew it was “dangerous for him back there”.
“All he wanted to do was eventually immigrate to another place,” Aldubi said. “He was on the list.”
“He was going to be the next one, according to Rita – who was in charge of his permit and visa bureaucracy with the Canadian authorities. He was waiting for that.”
LGBTQ+ Palestinians face direct opposition imposed by a conservative society, as well as the external conflict Palestinians face with Israel.
In Palestine, the state is fractured by war and diplomatic division so there is mixed legal recognition of LGBTQ+ lives. Being gay is illegal in the Gaza Strip, and sentences for male same-sex sexual activity can include a maximum penalty of ten years’ imprisonment.
Homosexuality is not illegal in the West Bank, but LGBTQ+ people face discrimination and violence in the region.
LGBTQ+ Palestinians can flee into neighbouring Israel, where support for queer rights is on the rise.
Members of Queers for Peace during a demonstration against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in Jerusalem, 2003. (GALI TIBBON/AFP/Getty Images)
Activists told PinkNews that queer Palestinian people fear potential retribution from Palestinian authorities or their families while also facing discrimination while awaiting asylum abroad in Israel.
Aldubi explained many people in Israel “don’t want to work with them or to give them a job” because they “cannot hide” their Palestinian, Arab or LGBTQ+ identity.
“It’s very difficult for them,” he said.
“They prefer not to be in mixed cities or mixed places like Arab cities or Palestinian cities.”
“So they do go to places – to Tel Aviv or other communities – and it’s very dangerous for them. They succeed in managing or surviving, but it’s not easy. It’s very difficult.”
He added there were concerns the PA police will “close the investigation fairly fast” if they believe the reason he was killed was that he “insulted the family” due to his sexual orientation.
‘We don’t feel safe’
Eran Rosenzweig, an LGBTQ+ activist in Israel, told PinkNews that the news of Ahmed’s death was particularly devastating because he was “part of the gay community”.
“It’s much less traditional in the gay community in Israel than in other communities,” he said. “They [Palestinian and Arabic LGBTQ+ people] are a part of us.”
“There is solidarity between us. It’s very hurtful for us to know there are people, who are in Israel, that are facing violence – and it was such brutal violence.
“We don’t feel safe because we have attacks on gay clubs and people in mixed areas. There is a direct effect, and we don’t feel safe.”
Rosenzweig said LGBTQ+ Palestinians “are not safe here” in Israel because they are in constant fear of persecution from their families and the Palestinian Authority as they face lengthy wait times for asylum abroad.
“And now you see, it’s too late for them – it was too late for [Ahmed],” he said.
“I want the embassies in Israel and authorities in Europe, North Africa, America to notice them and to try to help give them refugee status to help save them.”
SECOND TUESDAY! In-person at Mgt Todd Senior Center 1560 Hill Road, NovatoHill Community Room, behind the main building / see site map below new people warmly welcomed! October 1112:30 to 1 pm brown bag1 to 2:30 pm discussion Topic: RESILIENCYpresented by Dana Pepp and the Marin Center for Independent Living
Fourth Tuesday! West Marin LGBT Senior Town HallComing to San Geronimo Valley CC We had a great first time out at our Fourth Tuesdayevent. There were twelve participants which included a West Marin community member we haven’t seen in quite awhile and a person new to Spahr who only learned about us through our event publicity there. We shared meaningful conversation, laughter, a sense of community and a commitment to spreading the word about our next gathering on October 25th. On the Fourth Tuesday of every month, The Spahr Center’s LGBTQ+ Senior Program will be hosting an event for West Marin LGBT seniors at the San Geronimo Valley Community Center. The Center has given us a big roomy space & we’ll have windows & doors open. We also encourage people to wear masks if you wish. Let’s be safe together!
UPCOMING EVENTSall events are free(more info below) October 2LGBTQIA+ Meetup **Mill Valley Plaza October 4LGBTQ & HIV+ Grief Support Group **at the Spahr Center (mostly-) & on zoomPlz email Nikki: nmillet@thespahrcenter.org October 11Second Tuesdayat Mgt. Todd Senior Center, Novato Topic: Resiliency presented by Dana Pepp & MCILwatch for more details
*Social Committee event, RSVP required;to RSVP or get on their email list, write to them atsocialcommittee@comcast.net;find a link to their calendar and flyers below ** See flyer below
To join the Spahr Senior Groupon ZoomMondays, 7 to 8 pm, &Thursdays, 12:30 to 2 pm,click the purple button below the Butterfly Heart or here:
New participants are warmly welcomed!If you’re zoom-challenged, let me know and I’ll work with you!
Topical Thursdays12:30 to 2 pm October 6Change & How We Handle ItIt’s said that the only constant is change. We often don’t have control over what those changes are that appear on our horizon. We do, however, have some control over how we respond to them. How do you respond to change? Let’s share our experience & wisdom as we face changes in our lives and our world around us.
Living Room Mondays7 to 8 pm We share with each other about how we’re doing and have unstructured conversations focused on listening from our hearts and deepening community.
Coronavirus Updates The Spahr Center has coronavirus rapid home test kits& masks and they are available for free in the office – 150 Nellen Avenue, Suite 100, Corte Madera 94925; 415/457-2487. The office is open 10 am – 3 pm weekdays. Only vaccinated people may come to the office and masks must be worn inside the building. Any staff person can direct you to the kits. This is a great resource we are pleased to offer, please don’t hesitate to get these kits! In order to keep track of new infections, the County asks that we report self-test resultshere. To see Marin County’s latest pandemic information, click here. The mask recommendations of the Mask Nerd– an aerosol scientist who studies mask effectiveness – are featured in this article and highly informative video. May we all be safe and well!
Community Notices
Social Security Opens to Survivors of Same-Sex Couples Who Could Not MarryThe Social Security Administration now allows lesbians and gay men to receive survivor’s benefits if we can show that we were in a committed relationship and would have married had that been possible. More information here.
The Spahr Center’s Food Pantryis open to seniors who need support in meeting their nutrition needs. We want to help! Items such as fresh meats, eggs and dairy, prepared meals, pasta, sauces, and canned goods are delivered weekly to people who sign up.
The Northbay LGBT+ Senior Social Committee has been consistently offering fun events to offset the boredom of the pandemic. Everyone born in any month will be celebrated in that month’s email – including your birthday if you’ll let them know when it rolls around! Please RSVP ahead of time as participation is limited to 20 people. They request that participants please be vaccinated and healthy. Watch here for their October calendar. To see their September calendar & flyers, click here. To sign up for their emails or register for events, clickhere.
Vivalon Resources for Seniors Whistlestop, now renamed Vivalon, offers many resources for us seniors, now listed in this easy-to-print one-page guide. Access to rides, food, classes, activities, resources, referrals, and more. Membership not required for most classes and services during the pandemic. Some in-person events are being planned. To get Vivalon’s listings, click here. They also provide access to resources including rides for older adults. Please note: there is a 3-week registration process for the ride program so register now if you think you may need rides in the future. Click here for their website. The Jackson Cafe has great specials, a roomy dining room, small tables and big round tables for groups. Open 11:30 to 1:45; $8 for members, $10 for guests, with takeout readily available. You can find their daily changing menu and more information here.
Building Community in the Midst of Sheltering-in-PlaceSee old friends and make new ones! Join us!The Spahr Center’s LGBT Senior Discussion Groupscontinue everyMonday, 7 to 8 pm& Thursday, 12:30 to 2 pm on zoom
To Join Group by Video using Computer, Smart Phone or TabletJust click this button at the start time, 6:55 pm Mondays / 12:25 pm Thursdays:Join GroupAlways the same link! Try it, it’s easy!
To Join Group by Phone CallIf you don’t have internet connections or prefer joining by phone,call the following number at the start time,6:55 pm Mondays / 12:25 pm Thursdays:1-669-900-6833The Meeting id is 820 7368 6606#(no participant id required)The password, if requested, is 135296#If you want to be called into the group by phone, notify Bill Blackburn at 415/450-5339
California Department of Aging ResourcesThe CDA has a website that is packed with information and resources relevant to the lives of seniors in our state. From Covid-19 updates to more general care for age-related health issues, access to legal assistance to getting home-delivered meals to help with housing, you may well find answers to your questions by clicking: here.
Adult and Aging Service’s Information and Assistance Line, providing information and referrals to the full range of services available to older adults, adults with disabilities and their family caregivers, has a new phone number and email address: 415/473-INFO (4636) 8:30 am to 4:30 pm weekdays473INFO@marincounty.org
Questions? Assistance? Suggestions? We have resources and volunteers for:grocery deliveryfood assistanceproviding weekly comfort calls to check in on youplus more!
Funding for this program, at least in part, is made available by the Older Americans Act, administered locally by the Marin Department of Health & Human Services, Aging & Adult Services.
Saturday October 15 @ 8 pm. Heartwood Crossing at Occidental Center for the Arts. Heartwood Crossing returns to OCA for an evening of amazing harmonies and uplifting, energizing music! Treat yourself to Americana at its finest. This talented local group is sure to include some of your favorite tunes, and thrill you with their originals. Heartwood Crossing is Emily Lois, Dan Ransford, Tim Sheehan, Dave Monterey, Jon Berger and Daniel Magee. Tickets to this event are $25 GA, $20 for OCA members at www.occidentalcenterforthearts.org; or at the door. OCA is wheelchair accessible. Fine refreshments for sale, art gallery open during intermission. Following current public health guidelines for optional indoor masking. Become an OCA Member and get free/discounted admission to all events! 3850 Doris Murphy Ct. Occidental, CA. 95465. OCA is a non profit performing and fine arts center staffed by volunteers.
