 Hello, everybody. As you know, I'm Tony Newman. I am an African-American transgender female. I started my journey as a young boy in Jacksonville, North Carolina, raised by two Baptist Holy Ghost Field parents, very loving, loved the Lord. And I was taught that gay LGBTQ was just the wrong way to go. So I waited until in college freshman year to come out. That same year, Dr. Maya Angelou came to Wake Forest. And I shared a secret with her that no one else knew that I thought I was transgender. And she, in a matter of fact way, said, it's no big deal. Just do it. Well, it took me 25 years from that moment to do it because of all the fear that I had. So I always start the reading off with her poem, which I named the book after I Rise. You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lies. You may tread me in the very dirt, but still like dust I rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why you be set with gloom? Because I walk like I've got oil wells pumping in my living room. Just like moons and suns with the certainty of tides, just like hopes springing high, still I rise. Did you want to see me broken, my head bowed, and lowered eyes, shoulders falling down like teardrops weakened by my soul for cries? Does my heartiness offend you? Don't you take it off for hard? Because I laugh like I've got goldmines dicking in my own backyard. You may shoot me with your words. You may cut me with your eyes. You may kill me with your hatefulness, but still just like the air I rise. Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise that I dance like I've got diamonds? At the meeting of my thighs, out of the huts of history shame, I rise. Up from a past that's rooted in pain, I rise. I'm a black ocean leaping and wide. Waiting and swelling, I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear, I rise. Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear, I rise. Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and hope of the slave. I rise, I rise, I rise. And I named my book after that because of all of the pain. When I started my transformation in 1995, I was working. I was an assistant dean. I was doing very well. I was then asked to leave my job. And the four very close friends that I'd had for 10 years told me that they didn't understand what I was doing and the friendship was over. So within six months, I found myself homeless. I was out of all the money that I saved. I sold my car and moved it to New York to pursue my journey, which I found as an educated person with almost an MBA degree. I was on the streets with the other queens who on 14th Street back in New York City, back in the late 80s, early 90s, were prostitutes. And that was the only thing that I could find to do. So I began prostitution on the streets of New York City with about 85 other Latino, Asian, and black females who basically didn't have a high school diploma, but they taught me something that Wake Forest didn't teach me. How to be myself, how to be authentic. And that's where I learned how to be a transgender on the streets of New York City. In chapter nine, I wrote my thoughts and just a page or two. Fear and shame control my life for many years. I never had the fear of not finding myself. Living in fear created a very unhappy life and existence. My goal and mission was to find out who I was. I was never the type of person who could live a life forever. I lived it for almost a decade, but I don't think I could have lived it forever. I was simply afraid to do what I knew I had to do 25 years ago when Dr. Maya Angelou told me, just do it, just rise. I knew if I continued lying to myself and everyone around me, the lies would eventually consume me. I wanted peace and happiness without the lies, but I was so afraid to be myself because I thought I would lose my job and all my friends, which I did lose my job and all my friends. So my worst fear became my actual truth. I was on a journey to find myself and nothing less. Though I did not know how, I knew I had to make it and transform, even if I did it on the streets of New York City with people who I early in my life thought, why can't they go to college? Why they don't have a degree? What's the problem? When nobody would give us a job, nobody would help us out. I understood that many gays and lesbians lived in fear, but for me as a transgender, the fear was just overwhelming. Not only for emotional reasons, but for physical ones as well. It was hard to find the money to pay for the necessary hormones and silicone shots that I was taking out of a van by another queen we called the doctor, especially after my health insurance ran out and I had no more money and the checks stopped from the college. Though I could not always afford the shots, I always took some form of female hormones even if I had to buy them in the drug store, which I would buy at my regular drug store, but the fear of not having shots and hormones was never as great as the fear of not being myself. Once I decided to make the transformation and enter into the transgender world, I was totally, totally happy. I was broke. I was living in Harlem in a drug house. I was living with other drug addicts, but I was very happy. Even when I was homeless and hungry and all alone, I knew that to be whole, I had to complete the journey that I was on. From the very beginning of my transformation, I did not once think, not once of giving up or ending my life. Six girls at that particular time in that four year period killed themselves and five were killed by Johns on the street. And though I never worried about my transformation as I proceeded, I started to hesitate about going the full route of the reassignment surgery. I was just not convinced. Back in that time, it just wasn't sure what would happen to me. The two girls that had got the sexual reassignment surgery killed themselves a year after their surgery. So they were my guidelines that I went by. Despite all the ridicule and harassment, I persevered and moved forward. Regardless of what others thought, I knew this was not a choice made on a whim. It had been 25 years in the making and two decades of me fighting with my inner self just to be who I really was. It was ingrained in my being and no one would choose this path on a whim. It took me 25 years and after 500 interviews with transgenders, I realized none of us really had really decided one morning I wanna be transgender. It was just something within our very being, our very soul. For 20 years, I was on a journey to become the real me. At first, I tried to suppress it and fit in, but I never did fit in. I was always the odd person out even in the intimate LGBT group as a professional. There was something I wasn't fitting in. This was not my story to fit in. I was a child of a religious black southern woman who loved the Lord and a military father who also loved the Lord. So I had two whammies against me, religion and the military. Though I came out to my mother, I knew my feelings as being a gay was a lie, but I told her I was gay in order to start the process. When I did tell her I was transgender, that cut all relationship off for 22 years. I believe she already knew and I think most parents do know that their child is LGBT in my inner self. I think it's hard for a parent not to know, but. I think she knew that I was gay but had no idea that I was transgender. It was obvious I was always very sissy, very easily feminine, and most people would say you should stop being a sissy. But it was just who I was. I was a woman inside and nothing else could change that. I was just being my authentic self. So my story is that life is hard and the transgenders here in America now, most of the black and Latinos are homeless, uneducated, but just like we fought for marriage, we've got to fight for them. We fought for marriage, I worked for Equality California, made thousands of calls for marriage and raised almost $40,000 is one of the top fundraisers, but it saddens me that as the LGBT community, I hear it from the head of homosexuals and I can take it from them, but for us not to fight for our transgender brothers and sisters is wrong. We have to help them out, even if they are uneducated, even if they don't have a GED, we still have to reach out and offer our help. And that can be in different ways, not always money, but we should look out for each other. If the LGBTQ don't look out for the T, then who will? We can't expect the heterosexuals. And in my circle as a development manager, I deal with a lot of heterosexuals who I find more empathetic and sympathetic to my cause than my LBG family. And that saddens me that I can get a white male who's married with two kids to donate to the Transgender Law Center, but we can't get any volunteers to come and help these transgenders who are homeless and without a place to go. We see them on the street and my message tonight simply is let's support one another. Let's look out for one another. If we don't do it, who will? We're still fighting to get transgender laws passed in 28 states. Discrimination is still very rampant in the transgender community. They can't get jobs, they can't get schools, some of them can't get loans because they're felons, they've been arrested for a prostitution mixed with a drug case. And if you're a felony, you can't get any money from the government. So that cuts out the schooling if you have nowhere to go. So let's support one another as LGBT. Even if you're just heterosexual friendly, everybody's a human being and needs support. And we need to look out for each other. That's it.