 I'm Keith Ghostland. I'm Linda Krenlund. I'm Ann Charles. Welcome to All Things LGBTQ. It is Tuesday, June 30th. We'd like to acknowledge that we're recording in Montpelier, which is unceded indigenous land. And before we go to Keith, I have a quick announcement. I'd like to tell you that we're having a special interview show to be aired on July 11th, and then the following two days of our cycle. We have three illuminating interviews, and we encourage you to tune in for that. But now let's go to headlines with Keith. But first, I'm going to start with a trivia question. And if you get this, I will be truly impressed. This is Pride Month. Most of the mainstream media outlets are compiling their list of noteworthy LGBTQ plus individuals. It's nice when people think they can tell us who's important to us. MSN News Service had this name on their list, Oliver Cyple. Without Googling it, who's Oliver Cyple? We didn't know. So first thing is, early voting has started for the August 11th primary. You can request a ballot either by going on the Secretary of State's website or contacting your local town or city clerk. Elections matter. Think about 2016. Also, we have Debbie Ingram running on the Democratic primary for Lieutenant Governor. And there are three transgender women who would like to run for house seats and may be talking with one of them this week, the census. Latest study says that approximately only half of Vermont's registered voters have already registered. Please do remember, this is what is the basis for our federal funding. Check for those virtual events. Momentum, coffee hour, July 11th, 12th, excuse me. 11 AM, you can contact it on the Rainbow Umbrella website or by going to Momentum at the Pride Center. Very quickly, I want to talk about legislative stuff predominantly, but in Canada. Fragjection, New Brunswick, boom. Their only LGBTQ nightclub has permanently closed due to COVID and financial hardships. Their only LGBTQ nightclub. Winnipeg, Manitoba, Laura Ray, transgender woman. She was injured while she was coming out of a women's bathroom in a mall when she was physically attacked, verbally abused by what she described as two intoxicated cis-gendered women. Mall security stood by and didn't intervene. Also in Winnipeg, Manitoba, John Young, who is the president and CEO of the Canadian Museum of Human Rights, was forced to resign by the board of directors following complaints of sexual harassment and staff complaining that he made them censor LGBTQ content in exhibits depending on who was the group going through the museum. That's a Paul one. Hi. And onto national news. Well, Virginia is kind of turning out to be a different kind of a state and more of a blue state, as we know. And they have new laws on LGBTQ guns and abortion, which reflects a makeover of the state of Virginia. Restrictions on guns tighten while laws covering LGBTQ people, abortion and marijuana loosen. So you go, Virginia. 17 New York guards disciplined for letting a trans woman prisoner choke to death on her own vomit. There'll be more on her later. Another story that we'll cover in more detail is on the 50th anniversary of the first Pride event in New York City. Police launched an attack on the LGBTQ people with pepper spray, punches and arrests. Zendaya Kieg, a Latinx trans woman has been named social worker of the year by the National Association of Social Workers. Troll Zoom bomb tick-tock pride with racist and homophobic slurs that shut down the day long event minutes after it started. Joe Biden leads with LGBTQ voters and it is so massive that even Republicans are planning to vote for him. Mike Pence and the mega church will have more on that. Hairspray star Nikki Blonsky comes out as gay on tick-tock. And for those of you who don't know about tick-tock, it's a site that teens love. And parents apparently don't understand. Congress fears it. Brands wants to make money off it. It is perhaps the most controversial and beloved social network ever. Downloads off the app are rapidly outstripping those of more established social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Tick-tock even aired a commercial during the 2020 Super Bowl. So Pulitzer Prize winning poet Jericho Brown talks about racism, HIV and finding joy. I'll have more about that later. Dr. Ron Simmons dies and I'll have a tribute about his life and later in the show. And Bayla Stone, 17, a transgender girl who was found dead in Little Rock, Arkansas. Police and local news kept using her dead name. And as LGB activists asked them to stop, they revealed that the family had requested of the police and the media to call her by her birth name. Marine Corps celebrates pride and puts down homophobes. So, Ann, you're next. Okay, I have many items as usual. There's a ray of hope in Poland. You may not have believed this, but the president, the homophobic president of Poland, Duda, who is running for reelection, has been forced into a second round against the liberal challenger mayor of Warsaw. And what happened was in May, the election was scheduled and Duda was ascendant because the economy was doing well. But because of the pandemic and other reversals, Duda has lost ground and his opponent, the mayor of Warsaw, whom I mentioned, has gained ground. And in a last ditch effort to gain votes Duda resorted to his homophobic agenda, talking about gay people, vowing to defeat the LGBT ideology and comparing LGBT rights to communism. Trzawski, his opponent, has been a supporter of LGBT rights during his time as Warsaw's mayor, but has tried to sidestep the issue during the campaign. You may, if you've been watching the news, you may recall that Duda just recently made a visit to the White House to boost his campaign. I don't know if it did, but that's just the headline. The next headline is student unrest over a Romania gender studies ban. The parliament has passed a law banning gender studies in universities, and it's particularly targeted at trans people because they wanted to abolish feminists too, abolish gender identity as a category and only talk about biological sex. So there's opposition, students, and some universities say they're not gonna honor it, and even the president of the country opposes it, yet parliament has passed it. Terrible sad story, I have a picture now before you of the three men who are attacked and murdered in Reading. They've been praised as the loveliest people. They were three gay men hanging out with each other in the park when a crazed Libyan 25-year-old stabbed them to death, and he's been charged with a terrorist act, but certainly mental health issues are being explored, but let's look at the picture now. From the left is Joe Richie Bennett, 39, a US expatriate. David Wales, a scientist, and James Furlong, 36, a teacher. They were beloved. They hung out at the gay bar in Reading and met on Facebook, terrible story. Trinidad and Tobago has rejected issuing protection orders among same-sex relationships, so they try to expand the domestic violence rules to protect gay people and LGBT people and LGBT relationships, and the Senate would have none of it. Another sad story, the death of a trans doctor in Mexico sparks new fears over LGBT plus violence. I have a picture before you now. Her name was Elizabeth Montagno. She was a tireless worker for transgender rights, trained a lot of transgender doctors, and the statistics in Mexico, Mexico has been described as one of the most deadly countries in the world for LGBTQ people, so there's more proof of that. I'd like to spend my next segment talking about the David France film, Welcome to Chechnya, a harrowing film about the regime's gay purge. When it first was in the works, I showed you a clip of it, but now it's coming out on HBO tomorrow, so I'll talk more about that. Now let's pass to some good news, if we could. Anti-gay law in Gabon passes the first step to decriminalization, so there's good news out of Africa in this instance. People are surprised what homosexuality is against the law in Gabon, and that includes same-sex marriage. People who are caught can be punished with up to six months in prison and fines up to 7,600 euros. New penal code, criminalized homosexuality, but less than a year later, Gabon's lower house voted to reverse the law that bans same-sex relations. So of course, another house has to pass it, but that's good news. Now let's see a picture of Thomas Beattie, if we could, an international soccer star who comes out as gay. He's a footballer. There was a very, he's the third openly gay footballer. The another sad story involves another footballer, the first African-American footballer who, the first black footballer to command a million dollars, a million euro salary came out and then he was accused of pedophilia, denied the charges and committed suicide. So this is a intense legacy that Mr. Beattie is trying to reverse. So there was his picture. Now another high-profile coming out concerns Spanish star Pablo Albarón, who just came out in a heartwarming video. He says, I'm going to be a little happier than I already am. So good for Mr. Albarón. And in a very colorful, lovely story from the Ukraine, the LGBT, Ukraine has got 14% approval rating in terms of saying one of the lowest in Europe in terms of approval of LGBT issues. So there's a Statue of Liberty in front of the Soviet era Memorial and it's called the Motherland Monument and in Kiev, Ukrainian activists used a drone to plant the rainbow flag on the sword of the monument. So it's a 20 by 14 foot flag soaring over the Eastern European nation's capital toward the statue. A trick of the camera angle appeared to show the banner attached to the monument's sword. So three cheers for Ukrainian activists. Finally, one more piece of good news. Spanish Village makes its own rainbow after the city council's gay pride flag was banned and I have a picture now of some gay pride flags in this small village in Spain. What happened was the mayor put up a rainbow flag and then learned that you can't put up flags in Spain unless they are supporting the government. So a big movement occurred. This flag maker who was out of work because the pandemic had all these extra flags and said you fly your flag at your private residence in the whole town is flying rainbow flags courtesy of this out of work flag maker. So anyway, those are my headlines and now let me turn it over to Keith. So Friday the 26th after a marathon zoom session the legislature adjourned and went home until Tuesday, August 25th. Some of the mischief they were up to that we want to acknowledge and follow up on. H611, the Older Vermonters Act passed the house. It's going to Senate Health and Welfare. What we really want to be looking at is to ensure that the expansive language for services to underrepresented communities including the LGBTQ plus communities stays in the bill and if they bring back the Older Vermonters Task Force that it's not just service providers, it's the voice of activist consumers with a specific outreach to underrepresented communities for inclusion. Abenakis, the house passed a resolution basically apologizing for their having been targeted along with other indigenous people during the eugenics movement that is now also moving over to the Senate for action. H716 restores the Abenaki hunting and fishing rights and that one is on its way to the governor. H880, very interesting bill, state parks when they start to put up new signs they need to research to see if there is an indigenous name for that locale and if so, that name needs to be included on the plaque. And this was the comment from the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs. Land and places are living entities in Abenaki culture and are honored by the names given to describe them. After years of state policies and actions which have effectively made the Abenaki language almost extinct by making it inaccessible to most, H880 will make it possible for these places to be honored again in the old way. So looking at the budget and how the House and Senate voted to use some of that stimulus money, $20 million is going for the expansion of broadband, finally. EC fiber, which covers central and eastern Vermont said that they had already finished building in 13 of their designated towns connecting more than 50 customers per week. Vermont ETEL, which covers southern Vermont said that they have already added 14 Wi-Fi hotspots. AT&T says that they've already added 62 new cell towers in 52 towns. Broadband may be coming to you. Policing, a lot of conversation, a lot of things going back and forth. This was the bill that delayed adjournment and it was S219. This bill literally came about in less than two to three weeks. And there was a move from within the communities of color saying we think you're moving too fast, you need to be a little more thoughtful about this. So they put in some provisions that when they come back in August, they need to revisit some of the aspects of what it is, but they wanted something out there out front, establishing basically minimum standards. And the thing they did was use of force. There is now a very specific ban on the types of restraints that would result in someone losing consciousness. And if a law enforcement officer were to use an unauthorized restraint, they can be prosecuted now. And they could serve up to 20 years in prison or a $50,000 fine. As of August 1st, Vermont State Police will have body cams and they put in a provision that there also has to be the development of a model for body cams on a statewide basis because at this point in time, county sheriffs and municipal police are exempted from a lot of that oversight. They're looking at putting that in place. They're also going to tie state grant funding to local municipalities, including race on all of their traffic violations because if you think about it, that's sort of the lowest kind of crime, but it's also the one that's used the most just to harass people and where if there's evidence of profiling, this is where it's going to show up. In order to qualify for state grants for your law enforcement agency, you have to start collecting race-related data for everything that you're doing. The other piece that didn't make it in the final version, but there was a commitment on the House judiciary to bring it back up in August, is they want to sunset the provision in Vermont statute that talks about justifiable homicide. Why this is of interest to us is if there is no justifiable homicide provision in Vermont statutes, someone can't use a gay transgender panic defense. This would essentially eliminate it. So we're going to be watching this very closely. May I ask you, so this has to be, has it passed both houses? Yes, oh yeah. That's why they stayed late, is to come up with a compromise that both in the Senate could agree to, they both gave some. And it's now on its way to the governor. Good. Who has indicated he will sign it. And the governor was one of our political leaders saying we need to do something and we need to do something now. Good. We need to set an example. Okay, should we move on to national then? Oh, I think we must. Okay, first story I wanted to talk about was the young woman who died in prison. A psychologist said it was risky to put the 27-year-old transgender inmate Leyland extravaganza Polanco into a cell of her own, but they did it anyway. She was a member of the famous extravaganza ballroom family. And if anybody is familiar with the pose, they would, you know, the extravaganza family is in that series. Despite her history of schizophrenia and epilepsy, a prison doctor cleared her for placement in isolation. She died in a solitary cell after guards failed to check on her every 15 minutes as required by prison rules. We have a picture of her. And on the anniversary of the Pride event, in New York City, police launched an unprovoked attack on LGBTQ people with pepper spray punches and arrests. The march organized by Reclaim Pride, an organization started last year in response to the corporate pride. This year's march was a queer liberation march for Black Lives Matter and against police brutality. There are different stories about why this person was being arrested in one place. I heard it was graffiti in another place. I heard it was they tore down a covering on a window. I don't think anybody really knows for sure at this point. But so as this person was being arrested, protesters got into the act by surrounding and yelling at the police to let them go and telling the police to go home. One cop reached out and slammed a woman on a bike to the ground. Other marches were punched and shoved. So not a good story there. May I extend it? Quickly. Okay. Four were arrested and then there was a big party at the Stonewall and at 2.30 in the morning there was a slashing incident. Oh, that's right. And Pulitzer Prize winner Jericho Brown says that he is happy to receive this honor on the 70th anniversary of Gwendolyn Brooks being the first Black woman to receive a Pulitzer Prize. So it means the world to me to walk in her footsteps and to hold that mantle up. So you might want to check him out. His name is Jericho Brown and he won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. And in a sad story, Dr. Ron Simmons was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1950. He was a brilliant Washington, D.C. based educator and activist dedicated to Black Lives Matter and HIV AIDS prevention. Died at Josh Washington University Hospital on Thursday, May 28th. Following a long battle with prostate cancer, he was 70 years old. Simmons was best known for his 24 years of transformation work with us helping us. People into Living Inc., an organization dedicated to improving the well-being of Black gay men and reducing the impact of HIV AIDS throughout the entire Black community, which he led as president and CEO until 2016. Having photographed marches and activists in the early 70s, including Phil Wilson, Audre Lorde, Marsha P. Johnson, Joseph Bean, Barbara Smith, Mabel Hampton, and Tania Abdul Lahad, Simmons possessed an impressive portfolio of images. In fact, this is how he came to the attention of Black gay filmmaker, Marlon Riggs, who called Simmons to request usage of his photos. And the two of them developed a collaboration which ended in Tongues Untied. Riggs poetically documentary about Black gay men. You remember that? I love it. That was wonderful, wasn't it? And lastly, I want to just... I don't know if people saw this. They saw some photographs on Facebook and elsewhere, but Mike Pence spoke to 2,100 people jammed into an anti-LGBTQ mega-church in a COVID hotspot in Dallas, Texas. Most of the audience were not wearing masks and the choir sang with no masks. The first Baptist church didn't require masks or social distancing. Robert Jeffers is rabidly Islamophobic and an LGBTQ bigot to boot. So that's my stories. I have a concluding segment, and Ann would like to introduce an interview. But let's talk first about this chilling film Welcome to Chechnya, made by filmmaker David France, who did Journal of a Plague. You may recall that film about AIDS. He was prompted to make this, How to Survive a Plague, I'm sorry. I confused it with the Daniel Defoe novel, which was Journal of a Plague year, but I digress. David France posed as a tourist in Chechnya to expose the brutal state-sanctioned persecution of the region's LGBT community, and he tells the nail-biting story of an organization that helps persecuted people escape. He decided to make this film after reading a New Yorker article that described the heroic young activists of Russia's LGBT network, who smuggled gay Chechnyans out of the state and into safe houses in Moscow or St. Petersburg. Then supervised their journeys out of Russia to claim asylum. The documentary contains footage captured on iPhones and GoPro cameras of gay Chechnyans known to the authorities, making it past the border guards and police in a fragile kind of safety. I was posing it as a ridiculous American tourist, France says. I had two phones, one for tourist things and another for shooting the extractions. When they asked for my phone, I was able to show the one meant for their eyes and convince them that I was just a thrill-seeker. Coming out in the UK weeks after the video of George Floyd's murder and flame black, the Black Lives Matter movement, welcome to Chechnya shows yet again how technology now can be used to expose scenes which the authorities would rather keep from view. His biggest challenge was preserving his subjects anonymity because of course homosexuality is stigmatized and much of Chechnya so that families are actually pressured by the security forces to murder their gay members in honor killings. The sense of danger is stifling. When a desperate young man slits his wrist in a safe house, his handlers and fellow residents have to patch him up themselves as calling an ambulance would alert the authorities to their clandestine operation. France's solution, and this is sort of interesting for those of you who are interested in technology, he used something similar to deep-flake technology but in the cause of telling the truth. We asked other real people, mostly activists, mostly LGBTQ, mostly New York, to let us film them. An algorithm then maps their faces over the faces of people in the film. It's really kind of a digital transplant. The people are doing and saying and reacting to things in exactly the same way. They're just wearing a different face. And in many instances we also replace their voices. At the film's dramatic high point, one of these digital faces melts away as the subject discloses his true identity at a press conference. He announces that he's going to make a criminal complaint against the Russian authorities for failing to protect him after he was captured and tortured in Grozny, the Chechen capital. Although the Russian courts immediately dismissed his case claiming that there was no evidence, Maxine Lupodoff is going to the European Court of Human Rights to date the only LGBT person who is dared to make such a challenge. Let me show you a clip now of the film. Ania, we're here. We started receiving the first messages from Chechnya about the mass detention of gay people in Chechnya. We can go to Lopo, go to Chuvat with us, or go to the police station as soon as I got out of the hospital. We closed the door and there were more gay people in Russia. I wanted to ask you about the alleged abduction and torture of gay men in the Republic. This is nonsense. We don't have such people. The decision was made to rescue and evacuate people. We didn't have such experience. We needed to hide people, we needed to look for them, for some secret ways to get out of the country. Go, go, go, go, go. It's starting to rain. I'm not going to look for them. I know everything. I'm not going to do anything to prevent this from happening. The situation may change only the person who has gone through these attempts and is calling for this public. I will do everything possible to stop me. That's a great clip. I like that. It's wonderful. Lubanov's position is still pretty precarious. He and his family moved from place to place during the prosecution of their criminal complaint so that they're living mostly on the margins. They're not very good at keeping people alive. But they're still in the Soviet Union. Well, he doesn't disclose. I'd be trying to figure out ways of getting out quickly with my family. I know. Remember London? I think it's fair to say they're not yet in their ultimate destination country where they can live a more carefree life. Right now they are not carefree at all. Oh, dear. It's very chilling. If you get HBO, tune it in. I think we're going to have to get HBO just to see some of these films. Well, I want to see, you know... ...an enlistor, gentlemen Jack. But now, it's my great honor to introduce an interview with Taylor Small, who is candidate for House Rep of Chittenden 6-7. So enjoy the interview with Taylor. Hi, everybody. I'm here with Taylor Small, who's candidate for the Vermont House of Representatives in Chittenden 6-7. Welcome, Taylor. I'd like to start... I'd like to start by reading something from the current occupant of this seat, Deanna Gonzalez, who says, real progress comes not from individuals, but from communities. And I'm thrilled to know that Taylor Small for State Rep Chittenden 6-7 will step up to represent this remarkable city in the few streets of Burlington. Taylor will advocate for the progressive values and democracy I care about, while fostering her own new initiatives on the state and local level. She will continue the shared work of democracy here in Vermont and in the United States. I am honored to have you. So let me just tell the audience a little about your biography. You have a very impressive resume that most people know, I'm sure. You work, you're the director of health and wellness at the Pride Center of Vermont. You have worked in mental health services at the Howard Center and Northwestern Counseling and Support Services. You were on the board of directors of outright Vermont and esteemed position that I also hold. I'm an alum of the board. But maybe less well known is your personal biography, which is that your family emigrated from Canada to the United States in the 1960s and chose LaMoyle County as your home. You graduated from Colchester High School and the Burlington Technical Center in 2012, followed by the University of Vermont in 2016 with the BS in human development and family studies and a minor in sexuality and gender identity studies. I'm getting my biographical material from the Victory Fund that has endorsed you. That's an LGBTQ political action committee and the Victory Fund adds, Taylor's activism has taken many shapes and forms over the years, including inhabiting her drag persona, Nikki Champagne. So welcome again. This is a great resume. Thank you so much and thank you for having me. Oh, it's great to have you. I've been wanting to for a long since you declared and we hope to have you on again after you win the primary, which viewers may want to know is August 11th. So if you're in Chittenden 6, 7 district, cast your vote for Taylor. I personally can't endorse her enough. Let us proceed. However, let me ask you how did you happen to run for office? You've had a very, very background. Yeah. And you know, politics come in such a variety of shapes and forms. So I'm really glad that you brought up the piece of drag and drag as a form of activism and standing up and supporting our community. And so that's what, that's honestly where my foot got into the door when it came to running and doing the political gain. And working within our systems to make sure that all of our monsters are supported and especially within that realm. LGBTQ plus for monsters, because we know often we're pushed out to the margins. We're not represented within our larger systems and definitely not necessarily within our legislature. And so it was that work along with the guidance and support of Deanna Gonzalez, but actually gave me the courage to put my hat in the ring, especially during a pandemic nonetheless. Well, yeah, there are challenges in the pandemic. And I'd like to move me to what's going on in Winooski. We were talking before we taped about what a diverse, exciting community it is, but it's also experienced a little bit of an outbreak recently. Can you talk a little about that? Absolutely. Winooski has grown exponentially in such a short period of time. And I think you hit the nail on the head when we're talking about how beautifully diverse this place is. I reflect back on my own transition story and my understanding of my identity. And I actually came out as transgender when I was living here in Winooski and I've been here through my transition. And it's because of the safety that I feel within this community that has allowed me to be my authentic self and to, you know, now run for Vermont house. And so of course, when we think about diversity, we want to make sure that folks are getting all of the information that they need to be able to keep healthy and to keep informed. Whether we're thinking of politics and voting, I'm glad that you mentioned the primaries coming up on August 11. I think folks sometimes forget about our local primaries, but honestly, when we get out to vote, we need to be thinking local in the way that we're represented here in our state, especially among all of the federal acts that have been coming out lately that are very much discriminatory against the majority of Vermonters. And so if we don't have the state protections in place, then we are significantly impacted by what is coming out of, say, the White House. Yeah. But back when we think about COVID in this pandemic, I think what we've seen is that we're not getting the information out in ways that folks are able to retain or understand. And so that can come from a language barrier, knowing that a large portion of Winooski residents and Burlington residents have English as a second language or third language. And so making sure that there are diverse ways for folks to be able to access that information. I was really excited to see that the Department of Health is recently releasing these YouTube videos of folks within our community is giving information around COVID and testing and how to keep safe in various languages in a way that is just so user-friendly. And of course, now we know that technology is where we get a lot of our information. And I think we have a lot of fortune here in Winooski and having access to internet and broadband, at least for the majority of folks. But of course, even thinking beyond Winooski and the access to internet as a way to keep involved is definitely our growing edge. We want to make sure that folks are able to get all the information that they need. And of course, it's highlighting just what system breakdowns already exist and are just exacerbated by the current pandemic. The three prongs of your campaign concern, healthcare housing, and the minimum wage, very pressing concerns for many of our monitors. Would you mind talking a little about how you happened on those three focuses? Absolutely. Healthcare was an easy one for me. And that's why it's at the top of my list, working for Pride Center of Vermont as the director of the health and wellness program. It's been one of my favorite goals to make our systems inclusive and representative of all of our monitors. And of course, my highlight being for LGBTQ for monitors and healthcare. And as we've gone through this system, we know that a majority of our monitors do have access to health insurance. We're one of the leading states in the nation around getting folks connected to health insurance. But we also know that access to health insurance doesn't mean equitable access to health care, especially when we think of the costs that come up with premiums and deductibles and all of those out of pocket costs that folks don't necessarily consider when they're going in to get those medical procedures done. But end up being a barrier for folks to need or access that necessary care. So health care, again, toggle list, very easy. And then when I think especially about being here, right here in Manuski, and all of our older buildings here, I really put the emphasis on making sure that folks have safe housing and affordable housing. And really working towards this model of giving Vermonters a pathway to home ownership. I think reflecting as a young person who's going into the legislature, it is a wild concept to think that one day I may own a house because I've been so ingrained within the system of renting and that that is the only possibility that has been made available to me. And I think this goes beyond just myself, especially when we think of new Americans and their access to housing and safe housing more specifically. And then it all ties together when we think of a livable wage. And I know Vermont is pushing very strongly for a $15 minimum wage, which I absolutely agree with and think that we need. But again, when we think of the current pandemic and our frontline workers, those are the folks who are making minimum wage and we know that they are essential. We know that their work is important. And yet we are not paying them enough to continue on and to do this work. And one story that really fits with me now is that there are some folks who have lost their positions due to the pandemic and are making more currently through unemployment than they were in their actual jobs, which is mind blowing. That is mind blowing to me that these resources were available and were not given to Vermonters in the first place. So there's so many ways, yeah, so many ways that we can grow. And it's not necessarily changing the system. It's not mixing things up. It's redistributing what we have there so that folks feel supported. Exactly. Two more questions. What distinguishes your policies from that of your opponents? You do have two opponents in the primary. I do have two opponents here in when you gave for three seats. So we have about 8,000 residents here in Linooski. And so on a larger scale, typically representatives in the Vermont house represent about 4,000 residents. And when it comes to my opponents here, I really reflect on the progressive policies that I'm moving towards. So not thinking of incremental changes that are able to happen, but thinking about those broader changes that are going to have more impact. For Vermonters. So I think so often we get caught up in the politics of it all. When honestly our work as representatives and legislators is to be the voice of our constituents. And to stand up and say when things aren't working and things aren't working right now. And we do need this change and we need creative folks who are going to come in and say the status quo has got to go. I love that slogan. No one can we as your audience, of course, if you're in Winooski, you can vote for Taylor. We know, a box of Burlington that Deanna Gonzalez mentioned, but how about the rest of us? I would love to vote for you, but I live in Montpelier or less. So what can we do to help your campaign? Thank you so much for asking. The best thing you can do is go to my website. It's TaylorSmallVT.com. And it has a variety of ways that you can participate, whether it is with volunteering, getting materials out there, placing phone calls, or donation, if that is something that you're able to do, as well as social media is really big right now. As we know, it's one of the major ways that we're able to connect with community. So I would also encourage you to follow me on Instagram and Facebook and share. What resonates with you, what really stands out, and have those conversations within your community. But I also recognize that it's not just my run that's happening right now. We have so many people across the state of Vermont who are stepping up and saying that there is a change that needs to happen. And a lot of folks who are holding these marginalized identities, whether they're LGBTQ, people of color, people with disabilities, who are stepping up and running in their district and giving a voice to all Vermonters. So I would encourage you to start local first, look at who your representatives are and make those informed decisions about who you can vote for in the primaries. Again, local elections are important. So August 11th, you can vote in person at your polling place. You can even vote by mail now. It's mvp.vermont.gov. It's your voter page. It gives you all access to be able to make those choices and stay informed. Wonderful, Taylor. Well, this has been a great conversation and we'll hope to see you again. And good luck. We'll support you in any way we can because you're a great candidate. Oh, amazing. Yeah, thank you so much, Anne. It's been a pleasure. I wish I could vote. I hope she wins. She is so full of energy. And I learned afterwards there are three candidates and two seats. And one of them isn't incumbent. So it seems like she's got a pretty good chance. And Deanna Gonzalez, who had chosen not to run for re-election, endorsed Taylor at a public press conference. You'll have to listen to the interview where I read part of the endorsements. Oh, it was very good. And oh, I was wondering if we were going to will we get to talk about no, I was thinking about the poetry reading might be on Orca if people wanted to see that. Sure. There was a Pride poetry reading organized by poet Linda Koeneland. And Michelle Singer. And Michelle in collaboration with Michelle Singer at the Kellogg Hubbard Library. That will be up probably some time in the next week if anybody wants to see that. It was a fabulous reading. It was great. I love your work. All the poets were distinguished including our friend here, of course. And before, let's go to the trivia question. Shall we? Okay. And then we'll come back to our... So isn't it nice that people are naming our heroes for us? Oliver Seipel. The hint that I gave both, Lyndon and was 1975. St. Francis Hotel San Francisco. Joanna Moore may have pointed a gun at then President Gerald Ford and Oliver Seipel may have been the ex-Marine gay man who knocked it away so she missed the president. And this was his coming out? Well, he was not out to his family or really to anyone and he was outed during this process. And if you think about 1975, what's the impact of the media taken upon themselves to disclose your sexual orientation in a public form? If anybody wants to do research with him... Google. Google and let us know. 1975 is the year I came out. It was my first semester of teaching and I came out to my friends but I kept my own counsel until I got it. Until later. As my family keeps telling me I was always out, I grew up as this outrageous queen in a small Vermont community. I said I was a queen without a country. Well, on that note... Take us home, Linda. No, no, no. Let me remind the viewers of our special interview show to be aired next week. We're going to talk to the Chandler Pride Committee. We're going to talk to distinguished poet Judith Chalmer and we're going to talk to activist and energetic member of the community which the others are too, of course. Myra Iverson. So tune in. It should be a great show. So, good night. See you next time. Look for the interview show and in the meantime... Resist.