The YouTube channel of My Genderation, an independent trans film project, was deleted without warning on the first day of Transgender Awareness Week (13 November).
“Someone stole the My Genderation YouTube channel and now it’s been deleted,” co-founder and filmmaker Fox Fisher tweeted on 14 November. “I’ve been running that channel for 10 years.”
They added: “I’m feeling so sick about it. It’s literally the most important work of my life, created to help raise awareness of trans issues and celebrate trans lives.”
Fox added that they “don’t know if it is a targeted attack on trans supportive channels”.
My Genderation, an award-winning, trans-led non-profit organisation, was founded 10 years ago, and has made hundreds of films about trans lives, including for Channel 4, the BBC, Stonewall and trans health clinic CliniQ. A documentary about trans healthcare in the 1970s, Inverness Or Bust, is currently in the works.
The organisation’s directors include the journalist Ugla Stefanía Kristjönudóttir Jónsdóttir and film director Jamie Fletcher. It was founded after Fisher took part in the 2011 documentary My Transsexual Summer, which they left feeling frustrated that their experience hadn’t been portrayed authentically.
It remains unclear how the My Genderation YouTube account was deleted. Fisher posted a screenshot showing the message “your account has been permanently disabled”, which they get when they try to log in to My Genderation’s YouTube account.
A similar message, reading “this page isn’t available”, is displayed when members of the public try to see the channel.
A YouTube spokesperson told PinkNews in an emailed statement: “We take account security very seriously. We are in contact with the creator, and are working to understand what has happened, so that we can resolve this issue as quickly as possible.”
The My Genderation deletion comes after Novara Media, an independent left-wing media outlet, had its YouTube channel deleted “without warning or explanation” on 26 October.
The channel was reinstated after 24 hours, with YouTube admitting it made “the wrong call”.
The U.S. Department of Labor on Monday announced a proposal that would rescind a Trump administration rule that expanded a religious exemption from anti-discrimination laws for federal contractors.
The rule, which went into effect in the last days of the administration of President Donald Trump, broadened the exemption to include employers who “hold themselves out to the public as carrying out a religious purpose.” The exemption previously applied to a more narrowly defined set of religious groups.
By rescinding the rule, the department will return to policies consistent with those in place during the administrations of President Barack Obama and President George W. Bush, Jenny Yang, director of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, said in an interview.
“We are proposing a rescission of the religious exemption rule to protect workers from discrimination and safeguard principles of religious freedom,” Yang said.
The Trump administration framed the rule as a necessary step to ensure the full participation of religious organizations in the federal contractor system. But critics of the rule, including LGBTQ groups, warned that it would open the door to discrimination.
In light of pre-existing protections for religious organizations, the OFFCP found the Trump rule to be “unnecessary and problematic,” Yang said. Rescinding the rule would help ensure the exemption is applied consistently, she added.
“The proposed rescission would also promote economy and efficiency in federal procurement by preventing the exclusion of qualified and talented employees on the basis of protected characteristics,” she said. “This ensures that taxpayer funds are not used to discriminate.”
The OFCCP enforces discrimination and wage-and-hour laws against federal contractors. In 2014, the agency banned contractors from discriminating against workers on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Just days after 2021 became the deadliest year on record for anti-trans violence, yet another trans woman, Jenny De Leon, has been slain in the US.
De Leon, a 25-year-old with a “bright soul”, was murdered in Tampa, Florida, on 2 November.
With her death comes a grim realisation for activists. That 2021 is the deadliest year for fatal violence against trans folk since national record-keeping began – and with six weeks of the year left, the figure will only continue to climb, they warn.
With De Leon’s death, the death tally has leaped to 46.
Tampa Police Department officers found De Leon dead at around 6am in the 8500 block of North 9th Street in the quiet residential neighbourhood of Sulphur Springs.
Jenny De Leon, trans woman with ‘enough energy to fill any room’, dies aged 25
She was a homeless woman, the city’s force said on Facebook last week, who sought help from Tampa PFLAG, which commemorated her passing on Facebook.
“PFLAG Tampa is devastated to hear of the recent murder of Jenny De Leon,” the organisation said.
“Jenny, like many of the youth we encounter, attended our chapter meetings seeking support in the beginning of her transition, ultimately finding placement in a home through two PFLAG Tampa members.
“Jenny was an enigmatic, bright soul with enough energy to fill any room.”
Equality Florida, the state’s largest queer rights group, said on Facebook that it is “heartbroken” by the news of De Leon’s murder.
Law enforcement and the press often deadname or misgender victims, if they report on the homicide at all, making it challenging to know for sure whether a victim was trans.
This paucity of data means that advocacy groups and grassroots activists must comb through local news reports themselves and talk to family.
But regardless of whether the data is incomplete, activists know one thing – that year on year, violence against trans people, Black trans women, in particular, is surging.
For Black trans women in the exact same age group, the rate rockets to one in 2,600, an investigation by Mic found. If in 2015 all Americans had the same risk of murder as Black trans women, there would have been 120,087 slain instead of 15,696.
Tyianna Alexandra, a 28-year-old Black trans woman, was shot and killed in Chicago in the early hours of 6 January, becoming the first known violent killing of a trans person in 2021.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender American Indian and Alaskan Native (AIAN) adults have higher levels of mental health issues, physical abuse and economic instability than their non-LGBTQ peers, according to a new report.
The study, released last month by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law in advance of Native American Heritage Month in November, found 42 percent of AIAN LGBTQ adults have been diagnosed with depression, compared to less than a quarter of non-LGBTQ Native people and just 6.7 percent of the general U.S. population.
AIAN LGBTQ adults, particularly women, are also more likely to engage in high-risk health behaviors, including heavy drinking, according to the findings.
Three-quarters of respondents reported not having had enough money to make ends meet in the prior year, compared to less than half of non-LGBTQ AIAN people. And nearly half reported a major financial crisis in the prior year, compared to just 11 percent of heterosexual, cisgender Indigenous people.
“The complex picture of health and economic vulnerabilities of AIAN LGBT people is likely a product of factors shared with all Indigenous peoples, such as the impact of historical trauma, and those shared across LGBT people, such as anti-LGBT stigma,” said lead author Bianca D.M. Wilson, a senior scholar of public policy at the Williams Institute and the report’s lead author, told NBC News.
In the report, Wilson stated that, “It is critical that policies and service interventions consider the LGBT status and multiracial identities of AIAN adults.”
‘Pushed out to the fringes’
Somáh Haaland, who is queer and nonbinary and uses gender-neutral pronouns, is the media coordinator for the Pueblo Action Alliance. Haaland also lives with clinical depression.
“The unique intersection of being Native and queer can feel incredibly isolating, both in a displaced urban setting and in our own communities,” they told NBC News.
Haaland said queer Indigenous friends have spoken to them about feeling “like they have to chose one marginalized identity over the other because existing as both simultaneously feels like it is not physically safe or feasible for their mental health.”
“In white queer spaces they experience racism and disconnection, while at home or on their reservation they may feel like being out could exclude them from cultural activities or simply being in community with their people,” said Haaland, whose mother is Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland.
“Being queer and being Indigenous are both beautiful identities to carry that are sacred when they intersect … But we often must fight twice as hard just to show that we are worthy of living and thriving.”
SOMÁH HAALAND, PUEBLO ACTION ALLIANCE
The Williams Institute study found that violence aimed at LGBTQ American Indians and Native Alaskans was prevalent: More than half of all respondents reported having been physically or sexually assaulted at some point, and 81 percent reported verbal abuse.
Pamela Jumper-Thurman is a retired research scientist in the ethnic studies department at Colorado State University and has researched HIV/AIDS education, substance abuse and mental health in American Indian communities for three decades. Jumper-Thurman said she’s not surprised by the findings.
“In the cities, they may have access to a sense of community, but on the reservations and the rural surrounding areas, they can be ostracized, made fun of and pushed out to the fringes,” she said of LGBTQ American Indians. “They have to be very careful about who they’re out to.”
Tribes are sovereign nations with their own laws and regulations, she added. “If LGBTQ people get assaulted or beaten up in a hate crime on tribal land, it’s often not prosecuted.”
Data on LGBTQ American Indians is extremely limited, but a 2010 survey conducted for the New York State Department of Healthfound nearly 1 in 3 (29.4 percent) reported experiencing hate violence — the highest rate of any LGBTQ demographic in the report.
State initiatives, like anti-discrimination and hate-crime laws and inclusive education programs, often don’t apply on reservations. Even same-sex marriage is not uniformly recognized.
A 2015 report from the National Congress of American Indians found 54 percent of gay and lesbian AIAN students reported being subject to physical violence because of their sexual orientation, and more than 1 in 3 said they missed class at least once in the last month for fear of being bullied or harassed.
“LGBTQ kids don’t have a place to go,” Jumper-Thurman said. “They don’t have family acceptance, and they may not even have a group of friends they feel comfortable with.”
Haaland shared a similar sentiment.
“Being queer and being Indigenous are both beautiful identities to carry that are sacred when they intersect,” they said. “But we often must fight twice as hard just to show that we are worthy of living and thriving.”
Working toward solutions
Jumper-Thurman recently worked with the Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University on a series of posterstargeting American Indian families and communities to help support LGBTQ and two-spirit youth. (The phrase “two-spirit” started as an umbrella term in the 1990s for the understanding of gender beyond male and female that many tribes historically embraced before colonization but has come to encompass a diversity of sexual orientations and gender identities.)
Courtesy Family Acceptance Project
The posters show how negative reactions to a child’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression can have a detrimental impact on their well being.
“You’re part of a group already dealing with racism and historical trauma and, within that group — if you’re queer — you can be alienated from your community and even your family,” said Sharon Day, a member of the Ojibwe nation and executive director of the Indigenous Peoples Task Forcein Minneapolis. “For people living on reservations, these are small, rural communities that are slower to change.”
Day was one of two children to come out in her family. In 1987, she helped organize the Basket and the Bow, the first national gathering of gay and lesbian American Indians, held at the Minneapolis American Indian Center. (The annual event was later renamed the International Two-Spirit Gathering.)
Today, the Indigenous Peoples Task Force offers a variety of programs but works extensively in HIV education and testing, harm reduction and suicide prevention among Native youth.
Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for Native youths ages 10 to 24, according to the National Indian Council on Aging. A study last year by The Trevor Project found LGBTQ AIAN young people were two-and-a-half times more likely to report a suicide attempt in the past year than their non-Native peers (33 percent to 14 percent).
Sharon Day. Courtesy Sharon Day
Both Day and Jumper-Thurman say acceptance of LGBTQ members varies greatly from tribe to tribe and often depends on religion.
“The communities that have been heavily Christianized are the ones where there’s a lot of inequality and discrimination,” Day said. “In the Ojibwe creation story, men and women came into the world simultaneously. We didn’t come from Adam’s rib. That came with the settlers.”
In the South, especially, Christianity is a big part of Native American life, according to Jumper-Thurman.
“There’s just a lot of religious overtones that have infiltrated and changed the culture so much that being LGBT is seen as a bad thing in their eyes,” she said.
The Williams Institute survey found more than 60 percent of AIAN LGBTQ adults reside in the Western and Southern United States.
“In the South, the Church of Christ and Southern Baptist Church are pretty pervasive,” Jumper-Thurman said. “These are not gay-friendly churches, and they’re the ones that have a lot of sway in those areas. In the area where I lived, there were more churches in town than anything else. They may preach in the native language, but they still preach the dogma of white, homophobic Christianity.”
Day founded the Indigenous Peoples Task Force after her brother, Michael, tested positive for HIV in 1987 and they discovered a near total lack of HIV education and prevention programs aimed at the American Indian community.
“We aim to be a safe space, and LGBT people are integrated into everything we do,” Day said.
‘We’ve always been here’
Using data culled from the Gallup Daily Tracking Survey from 2012 to 2017, the Williams Institute estimates that 285,000 AIAN adults identify as LGBTQ. That’s roughly 6 percent of the total Native population — and slightly higher than the 5.6 percent of the general population that identifies as LGBTQ, according to a Gallup poll in February.
AIAN people who identify as part of the LGBTQ community tend to be younger, according the report, with 33 percent between the ages of 18 and 24, compared to just 15 percent of non-LGBTQ AIAN people in that age group.
“Social media has given the youth greater acceptance and more power to express who they are,” Day said. “Because they can belong to a community online, where they may not be able to in the real world. They can reach out to other people.”
For many years, identifying as gay meant leaving the reservation, Day said, for much the same reasons white people who came out left small towns — isolation, alienation and discrimination.
“In the last couple of decades, there are more queer [Native] people who are staying in their home communities,” she said. “Some of that has to do with changing attitudes. I think more and more we see people returning to the cultural values system of our past, and those values are to be kind and loving, to be courageous and honest, to be respectful, to seek wisdom and to be generous.”
“When we’re following that original system,” Day added, “it’s really difficult to not be accepting of other people.”
LGBTQ Natives, she said, “are starting to look at our history and say, ‘We’ve always been here. We’re part of the circle.’”
Haaland called the gender binary “a colonial construct based on European values.”
“Pre-contact, the Native people that we now label as queer and trans were often revered and had sacred roles in their communities,” they said. “It was not until colonialism that the European perspective of gender and sexuality was forced upon our people as a part of the bigger effort to control us and assimilate us into whiteness.”
Day said she tries to remind other American Indian and Alaskan Native people that “these are the values that have been with us since the beginning of time.”
“These are the original instructions,” she said, “and if we follow them it’s really hard to hate anybody.”
Using gender-neutral pronouns makes people more positive towards women and LGBT+ people and less biased towards men, scientists say.
Three experiments were carried out to determine the effects of using gender-neutral pronouns on people’s perception’s of women and LGBT+ people.
The results show that “individual use of gender-neutral pronouns reduces the mental salience of males.”
“This shift is associated with people expressing less bias in favour of traditional gender roles and categories, as manifested in more positive attitudes toward women and LGBT individuals in public affairs,” the research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), says.
Efrén Pérez, one of the authors of the study who is a political sciences professor at the University of California in Los Angeles, told The Guardian, “Let’s assume there are societies that generally agree on being more inclusive of women and LGBT individuals, and there are more than a few.”
“Our findings suggest that the words we choose to use can matter in getting us a little bit closer toward reaching that ideal.”
More than 3,000 people took part in the research, which involved being shown a cartoon of an androgynous figure walking a dog and then asked what was happening in the picture – with one group told to use only neutral pronouns, one female pronouns and one male.
Participants then completed tasks, including writing a story about a person running for political office and answering questions about their views on women and LGBT+ people.
According to the report, using gender-neutral pronouns at the beginning of the task made it more likely that the volunteers would use non-male names in their short story and would have pro-women, pro-LGBT+ views.
Sabine Sczesny, a professor of social psychology at the University of Bern who was not involved in the research, told The Guardian that the research was further evidence that gender-inclusive language could reduce gender-biases and “contribute to the promotion of gender and LGBT equality and tolerance.”
Laura Russell, director of research, policy and campaigns at Stonewall, said, “The language we use is important, especially when it comes to describing or referencing someone’s identity.
“This study adds to the evidence showing that when we use language that actively includes women and LGBT people, it makes a real difference in reducing gender stereotyping. Using gender-neutral language is a positive step towards creating a world where everyone is accepted without exception.”
Navy veteran Rhett Chalk was rendered quadriplegic on Thanksgiving Day in 2003 after his knee — which he severely impaired while serving in Vietnam — gave out, causing him to suffer a life-changing spinal injury.
At the time, Chalk had been with his partner, Lawrence Vilord, for roughly 26 years. However, Vilord was barred from riding alongside Chalk in the ambulance or from consulting with his doctors because he was not his legal spouse or family member.
But that day, Vilord became the one who would care for Chalk until the veteran died in June 2020.
“Practically every night when I gave him a shower, religiously every night, he would say to me, without a doubt, ‘Thank God I have you in my life’ because he says ‘I would never have been able to survive; you’ve been my Rock of Gibraltar,'” Vilord, 77, told NBC News.
So when he was denied the full amount of enhanced Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC) benefits — which are granted to surviving spouses of disabled veterans — by the Department of Veterans Affairs last November, he said it frustrated him “to the point of no return.”
“It was just another nail in the coffin. It was another nail in my heart,” Vilord said. “It was just another thing to delegitimize who I was and who he was.”
He qualified for the VA’s standard Dependency and Indemnity Compensation benefits for surviving spouses, which amounts to $1,300 a month. Vilord and Chalk married in 2017 after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Obergefell v. Hodges legalized same-sex marriage nationally in 2015.
However, because the pair were not married for at least eight years, Vilord was denied last October the VA’s enhanced benefits for survivors of certain veterans who are declared totally disabled at the time of death, for which Chalk qualified. The benefits would grant Vilord another $280 per month.
Vilord appealed his denial before the VA and in federal court last week, arguing that the rule effectively disqualifies all same-sex couples in nearly every state, including in his home state of Florida.
“Our argument though is that the mechanical application of that requirement does injustices in cases such as Mr. Vilord’s where he could not possibly have met the requirement,” said Tyler Patrick, one of the student members of the Veterans Legal Clinic at Harvard Law School, which is representing him. “It’s unconstitutional, not to mention nearly unjust, to deny him these benefits, these benefits that he is deserved after serving as his partner’s caretaker for 18 years, on the basis that Florida prevented him from marrying until 2015.”
“We argue that because the VA in making this determination looks to Florida state law, a state law which was unconstitutional and unconstitutionally as ruled in Obergefell prevented Mr. Vilord and Mr. Chalk from marrying, VA can’t then use that unconstitutional state law as the basis for its denial of his enhanced DIC benefits,” Patrick continued.
The VA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Patrick also points to previous cases where LGBTQ widowers have successfully petitioned for Social Security survivors benefits, after arguing that they were prevented from marrying, and therefore qualifying, because of bans on same-sex marriage.
Last year, federal district courts in Arizona and Washington ruled that excluding same-sex partners from Social Security benefits was unconstitutional. Shortly after, the benefits were put in legal limbo after the Department of Justice under the then-Trump administration appealed the two rulings. However, the department and the Social Security Administration under the Biden administration dismissed the appeals earlier this month.
Patrick said Harvard Law School determined that Vilord is the first person to challenge the requirement, making it a precedent-setting case for LGBTQ widowers of disabled veterans.
Vilord says he hopes his case will help others earn the benefits that they deserve.
“I just feel that there’s got to be somebody else out there that this will make a difference for,” he said. “I may not need it, OK? It’s not going to make a huge difference in my life. It’s not a great deal of money. It’s just the principle behind it.”
The Louise Lawrence Transgender Archive (LLTA or Louise), founded and managed by professor Ms. Bob Davis, is a fiscally sponsored project of the GLBT Historical Society. Located in Vallejo, California, it is one of the world’s largest repositories of archival materials pertaining to transgender and gender-nonconforming people in the world. In honor of Transgender Awareness Week this November, we interviewed Ms. Bob about Louise’s latest projects and on the significance of transgender history.
What are some of the initiatives that LLTA has been focusing on during the course of the COVID-19 pandemic?
Ms. Bob: Back in 2019, I gave a talk at the “Queering Memory” conference in Berlin called “Glamour, Drag and Death: HIV/AIDS in the Art of Three Drag Queen Painters.” It focused on the artists and performers Jerome Caja, Doris Fish and Miss Kitty, all three of whom died between 1991 and 1995, and includes analysis of artworks held by both LLTA and the GLBT Historical Society. I published an article based on the talk in Transgender Studies Quarterly this February, and now I’m working on turning the material into a short documentary film to reach a wider audience. I want people to learn about how these artists confronted AIDS. It was less intellectual; they responded in a visceral, emotional way, in a very valiant fight to retain their identities in the face of this horrible crisis. It’s now thirty years since the height of the AIDS pandemic, and there’s a whole generation of LGBTQ people who simply don’t have that lived experience. It’s important to pass on this history so they can learn about what the community went through.
What can you tell us about your ongoing online “scrapbook” project on the LLTA website?
Ms. Bob: It’s an online project called “I Think This is Our Denise: Discovering Forgotten Scrapbooks of Trans History,” and it’s based on a remarkable collection of six large scrapbooks donated by Taryn Gundling in 2014. They belonged to a trans woman named Denise, and contain over a dozen pages of candid photographs of transgender people and cross-dressers from the 1960s and 1970s. This was a time when the transgender community was just beginning to define itself and establish networks. It took four years of research to learn more about Denise and the people in the photographs. I recognized some of them in other LLTA archival collections; in issues of the first national transgender community magazine, Transvestia, which began publishing in 1960; and in photographs held by the Art Gallery of Ontario, many of which were published in the book Casa Susanna. These photos depict transgender people vacationing at several Catskill mountain resorts, one of them named Casa Susanna, run by Susanna Valenti and her wife Marie. These establishments served as safe spaces for transgender women to vacation in their gender of choice in the 1960s and 1970s.
Now we’re using the scrapbooks to do a deep dive into transgender history. LLTA is partnering with the Art Gallery of Ontario; the Transgender Archive at University of Victoria; the website “A Gender Variance Who’s Who”; and the Digital Transgender Archive to create an online hub that connects the resources of all five organizations to present photographs, biographies, and autobiographical articles about the individuals in the scrapbook. For example, many of the people in the snapshots wrote autobiographical articles in early issues of Transvestia, so the site connects you to essays they wrote about their lives. This project will allow them to really live again, and the site is being beautifully put together by our webmaster Robyn Adams.
You’ve been curating LLTA for many years now. What’s something you want people to learn about transgender history?
Ms. Bob: One of the things I’m personally interested in conveying relates to the growing awareness of trans, nonbinary, gender-nonconforming, genderqueer identities that we see today. When you examine historical materials, you realize that these shades of gender and gender identity have always been with us; they aren’t just emerging or being “invented” now. Trans people in the early 1960s, when the community first began to organize, were working with different terms, often borrowed from the medical establishment and out of date now. They certainly didn’t have the vocabulary that is available today. But if you dig down, the documentation reveals that people were defining, exploring, and working out their identities in complex ways. Understanding this supports us in continuing the work of building our community in the present so that we can display more of our rainbow.
Ms. Bob Davis (she/her/hers) is the founder and director of the Louise Lawrence Transgender Archive. In the 1990s she served two terms on the GLBT Historical Society Board of Directors.
We are reaching out with a reminder that Equality California (EQCA) will soon be sending out surveys to school districts throughout California for the purpose of updating the information in their Safe and Supportive Schools report, which is published every two years (see here for the most recent edition). This report is a vitally important source of information for LGBTQIA+ families seeking to understand the degree to which their school district is implementing supportive measures for LGBTQIA+ students and families.
As reflected on this map, most school districts in Sonoma County did not respond when the survey last went out in 2018. If you have a student in a local school district or want to help create more LGBTQIA+ inclusive learning environments in our community, please consider using or modifying one of the email templates below from EQCA to contact your superintendent or local school board to encourage them to participate. The survey should be going out to schools during the month of November, so please get in touch with your district at your earliest convenience!
In addition to the information in the templates below, points you can include in your message or follow-up conversation with your district include:
With the availability of one-time pandemic response funds, school districts have a unique opportunity in the next couple of years to invest in social emotional supports and learning loss mitigation efforts for LGBTQIA+ students that would be responsive to many of the issues addressed in the EQCA survey. These measures include investing in professional development for educators around LGBTQIA+ cultural responsiveness, as well as in teaching LGBTQIA+ history and LGBTQIA+ inclusive health education. Funds can also be used for curriculum updates, facilities updates to ensure all gender restroom/locker room access, and support for LGBTQIA+ student clubs such as GSAs. You can find more detail about these and other supportive measures in this May 2021 open letter from the Sonoma County LGBTQIA+ Coalition to all Sonoma County school districts.
Putting supportive measures in place for LGBTQIA+ students will help school districts ensure that they are compliance with AB 493, which became effective on July 1, 2021, and requires the California Department of Education to develop training and resources for educators and other school staff to create more supportive environments for LGBTQIA+ students and connect them with community resources, such as those listed here. Schools are encouraged to utilize these training materials at least once every two years in grades 7 through 12.
For districts with fewer resources available to implement supportive measures in areas of the survey that they are concerned will reflect negatively on them, one way to encourage participation can be to highlight that survey results can be a means of demonstrating a district’s funding needs to the state with regard to compliance with the many laws that are now in place that require LGBTQIA+ student support in California schools.
As listed here, a number of local organizations serve LGBTQIA+ youth and families in Sonoma County, and are available to work with schools in developing and implementing supportive measures for LGBTQIA+ students.
For additional background on current efforts related to the EQCA Safe and Supportive Schools report, as well as the amazing work that our friends at Our Family Coalition have been doing to advance this important initiative, check out this article.
Note that you can also find your Sonoma County school district’s superintendent and contact information here. It may also be helpful to contact district administrators who work in student services, educational services, and/or student wellness. It is our understanding that schools will have until about March to respond to the surveys.
Please consider reaching out to your local school district today, and feel free to contact us at northbaylgbtqifamilies@gmail.com with any questions!
With Gratitude,
Ana Flores Tindall (she/her/they/them) Sal Andropoulos (they/them) Kayla Flores Tindall (she/her) Sam Coates (he/him) Zahyra Garcia (she/her/they/them)
My name is X. I am a parent/community member/other who lives in X.
I’m reaching out with regard to Equality California’s Safe and Supportive Schools Program, a California Department of Education endorsed program which collects data on school district policies and practices with regard to school climate, curriculum, suicide prevention, and other areas. This data is published bi-annually in a report that provides critical information on where districts stand in their implementation of laws and best practices with regard to safe and supportive school environments. Last year’s report is available at this link.
This survey is sent out to school districts every two years to gauge where they are in these areas. In 2018, the last year that the survey went out, your district did not respond. Equality California is now preparing to send out the next survey, with the goal of publishing our findings in 2022. We would like to schedule a time to speak with you about the survey and the importance of your district responding to it via a virtual call.
Please let us know if you’re available for a short, 30 minute meeting to discuss. We hope to work with you to improve school climate in X Unified and across California and to support LGBTQ and all students.
Thank you and all the best, X
***********
(School Board Members)
Hello Board Member X,
My name is X. I am a parent/community member/other who lives in X.
I’m reaching out with regard to Equality California’s Safe and Supportive Schools Program, a California Department of Education endorsed program which collects data on school district policies and practices with regard to school climate, curriculum, suicide prevention, and other areas. This data is published bi-annually in a report that provides critical information on where districts stand in their implementation of laws and best practices with regard to safe and supportive school environments. Last year’s report is available at this link.
This survey is sent out to school districts every two years to gauge where they are in these areas. In 2018, the last year that the survey went out, your district did not respond. Equality California is now preparing to send out the next survey, with the goal of publishing our findings in 2022. We would like to schedule a time to speak with you about the survey and the importance of your district responding to it via a virtual call.
Please let us know if you’re available for a short, 30 minute meeting to discuss. We hope to work with you to improve school climate in X Unified and across California and to support LGBTQ and all students.
Saturday November 20, 2021 @ 7 pm. Occidental Center for the Arts presents our annual fundraiser: ’Sonoma County’s Got Talent! Please join us we showcase talented community performers of all genres live in our auditorium to benefit OCA. Tickets $25 General/$20 for OCA Members. $15 application fee for participants – please apply by Nov. 7th. Tickets/Info @www.occidentalcenterforthearts.org. Fine refreshments available. OCA Art Gallery open for viewing and gift purchase. Masks required for all entry. Accessible to persons with disabilities. Become an OCA Member and get free admission! Keeping the Arts in Our Hearts
