 That was amazing, Ani. The chat is blowing up, love it, keep it going. Without further ado, let's just keep a roll in y'all. Let's turn it over to our comrades at Howard Brown Health Center. We're gonna start off with Shakia Flowers, who's gonna give you a bit of an overview of what Howard Brown is and what their organizing has been in and then dig right in. So Shakia, over to you. Good evening, everyone. So excited to be here and sharing this space with you all. Just wanna thank Labor Notes for the invitation to have us back. We were there in the summer, which it was an amazing experience then and I'm looking forward to continuing that experience and sharing what we've been working on as a union, it's called Howard Brown Health Workers United. I wanna start off by reading the mission statement, because this is always hilarious to me. The mission statement for Howard Brown and it reads, rooted in LGBTQ liberation, Howard Brown Health provides affirming healthcare and mobilizes for social justice. We are agents of change for individual well-being and community empowerment. Now, as I begin to share with you what we've experienced at Howard Brown, I want you to keep in mind what that mission statement is and you tell me, you'll be the judge and tell me if Howard Brown's executive leadership at Howard Brown has come through, have been true to what their mission statement is. So back in, I wanna say around like December of 2021, some of my wonderful coworkers decided, hey, what do you guys think about a union? And so there were some people that got in touch with our nurses that already unionized at Howard Brown. And so they got in touch with the union reps for the nurses union and from there, it just kind of took off. We organized and I'm gonna kind of fast forward this. We organized really fast in over eight months and just eight months, I should say. We were electing our union overwhelmingly. So 97% of the workers who voted in the election, the union campaign voted to elect a union. From that point on, and I'll tell you why we unionized. Workers were overworked, underpaid, executive leadership was not tending to the needs of the workers and also ignoring the needs of the patients that we serve our patient population. And we needed, we wanted to be a voice. We wanted to be a voice for ourselves and for the community that we serve. And so that's where a lot of this came forward. And what people were experiences is that they spoke up or spoke out, they were being retaliated against. They were started to be targeted by their management. They started to be targeted by leadership and fired for frivolous reasons. And so what happened was, people decided, let's unionize. Over the course of, I also wanna point out over the course of, let me just take a look at my notes here. Over the course of the pandemic, our leadership who already made six figures out salaries, who received funding from city, from the city government, from the state government and the federal government, they decided to go ahead and give themselves 33% raises while denying hazard pay to frontline workers during the pandemic. That is absolutely diabolical. Like the word does not come to mind to me. With the rate of transmission during COVID and so many unknowns, this is what leadership and how around decided to do. And so after that, after we decided we elected our union, we went into the union, our first union meeting that we had our first bargaining meeting that we had, they decided to go ahead and introduce and this idea of voluntary separation. Basically said, Howard Brown was in a crisis and this crisis was a making of their own doing by the lack of, or by their poor management. That there was this crisis, this financial crisis and they needed to cut, they initially wanted to cut 115 members and they wanted to do this before Thanksgiving. And so they offered a voluntary separation program and it only offered like two weeks severance. And this is just before the holidays of 2022, right? And so fortunately, we were able to get a lot of support from our city, from city government, city council and we were able to get a leadership to push the layoffs back. And so fast forward, there's a lot of stuff and I'm kind of jumping around because there's a lot of stuff that happened really quickly in the course of like a few weeks here. And we're talking about the union busted was ridiculous. Also during our union campaign, one of our coworkers was fired for her union. Fortunately for her, she was because we have a union, she won her job back and she'll be starting very soon if she has started already. So we're really excited to them actually, two workers are gonna be getting their jobs back who were illegally fired because of their union support. Because of their union support. So fast forward, a lot of union busting happened just not giving, not bargaining and good faith. I think we have a total of like maybe 22 UOPs currently that are being considered with the national labor board. And we are still in the union, we are still bargaining at this time. I am one of the laid off workers. So in January of 2023, the very beginning, our union decided they all elect or voted to have a unfair labor practice strike that happened at the beginning of January of 2023. So 10, the 10 clinics closed down including the three brown elephant locations as well. And we had basically the union support was amazing it was such a great feeling to be out there with my coworkers fighting for the rights of my colleagues and for the community so that we could finally have our voice heard and so that people could know what was happening at Howard Brown Health. And so my experience with the union is that I met some wonderful people that I would not have otherwise met had we not unionized. And realized how much, how like-minded I am we are as you say with each other in terms of what we think about how workers should be treated in the workplace. Toxic leadership has no place. I think what the pandemic showed us was that that the labor force needed us, they need workers just as much as we need them. And so we should be approaching work now from a partnership standpoint. I don't know how many times in the past I've heard people say you should be grateful you have a job. No, business owners should be grateful that they have workers. And that is the position that I'm taking right now. We are the people that drive this economy and we deserve rights and we deserve living wages with the rate of inflation there is right now. We deserve to be respected for the work that we do. And I think that now is the time I'm loving to see all of the unions that are popping up all the unionization that's popping up across country right now it's so powerful, it's validating, it's affirming. And the fact that I'm a part of it and I'm working with such courageous people right alongside me, it's been amazing. So I know we have a short amount of time there's so much I wanna say but I think Andrea and Julian will definitely pick up where I left off. And so I guess, am I passing over to Andrea? I noted Julian, thanks so much. Julian, you're welcome. Yeah, thank you. Hi Julian. So first of all, I just wanna say thank you to Shikia for giving that a review. I'm gonna kind of talk about like the process of unionizing and what that has meant to you know not just me but a lot of the people that I've met through this union process. I will start off by saying that I am not the same person that I was when I started unionizing some of my backgrounds. I worked for seven years in the film industry down in Atlanta. So I was a member of IYATSY 479. Shout out to all the IYATSY peeps in the chat. Glad to see a number of you there. And so I started at Howard Brown, oh my God, only 14 months ago. I had always really identified as a socialist. I had experienced the benefits of a union and I think the first union email saying, hey, we're unionizing went out like a week and a half after I started there. I wasn't even on the email list at that point but I still found it and I found a way to sign up and sign my card right away. And so I got involved in the process. I was called by one of the organizers to work as part of the organizing committee, which kind of drums up votes, talks to people about unions. If you haven't ever been part of a unionizing process, you have to get people to sign cards and then when you have end of cards, you can file for an election. So doing a lot of this work, getting to know coworkers and I kind of started, I was like, my job isn't bad. Like I'm gonna do this for other people. And the more that I talked to other people across this organization, I was an event planner. So I was there throwing fundraisers. My job had seemed on the surface, had very little to do with what people that were working in the clinics were going through. And then when I heard what was happening to them, the way they were being treated by management, I was noticing those things happening to me and my colleagues too. And so, I'm talking to nurse practitioners whose jobs probably couldn't be more different than mine and we're running into the same problems. And what that really highlighted is that this is like an issue that A is affecting everybody and it's coming from the top down. When you're seeing such diverse kinds of job titles experiencing the same things, those problems trickle down. And so in talking to all of these people from different life experience, from different fields, living in all over different parts of the city. I mean, one of the things about Chicago is that we're about Howard Brown, is that we have clinics all the way on the north side in Rogers Park, all the way to the south side in Englewood. I mean, you're talking about a really, really wide array of different Chicago neighborhoods, people with very different experiences in life. And they were all coming together because this was, these problems were affecting them. It didn't matter what their background was, it didn't matter what their job was. Everybody was seeing these problems and management was not taking it seriously. So it was really eye-opening to me talking to other people outside of my field that these were not isolated incidents. I think that was kind of like the first inkling that there is something like seriously troubling here at Howard Brown and there was something that we needed to do about it. And so, on a personal note, like I had moved to Chicago in 2018, you know, the job I was at before, I was the only queer person there. So coming to Howard Brown was already like really an exciting opportunity for me to meet queer people. I mean, in my 30s, people tell you that it's hard to make friends in your 30s. Let me tell you, you need to organize your workplace. It's honestly one of the best ways to meet people. I have people that I consider family now through this process. And so, you know, the process already like radicalized me more so than I already was. And all three meet Shakia and Andrea. We got elected to be on the bargaining committee and help write the contract. We were all really excited because we knew that there were all these issues that we had talked to all these people about. And then for us to go into contract negotiations and immediately the focus has shifted to these layoffs was, again, really eye-opening. And, you know, in my 30s, like I said, I was laid off in 2008 when the recession happened then. I was laid off in 2020 when COVID broke out and then here I am at the start of this new recession on this like chopping block again. And it really like lit a fire inside of me I spent so many nights phone banking and talking to my coworkers who I had never talked to before. And, you know, I'm talking, I'm a gamer and like my life is pretty carefree in some ways but I'm on the phone with single mothers who don't know how they're going to be able to pay for their kids food or their health care. Shakia, you know, I mean Shakia is a single mother. She's raised two amazing kids. Howard Brown's taking away her income and their health care. I'm talking to trans people that have never had like the security of a job that working at Howard Brown can provide them and they're on the chopping block and they don't know how they're going to find a job that provides these benefits for them. I'm talking to people who have chronic health issues they need their health care and Howard Brown is going to take it away because of this financial crisis that, you know, they created through mismanagement. These sorts of things, it's really hard to have these conversations and for them to not change a person. You know, I always like consider myself kind of cynical. I was like the kind of person that was like, I don't need to make friends at work but I really encourage people to do it because you have a lot more in common with the people that you work with than you think. And I think that's really been a huge takeaway. Howard Brown is run by gay people. There are gay people in almost all of the top queer people and almost all of the top positions at Howard Brown and there's no solidarity that, you know between the workers at the bottom and the workers at the top at Howard Brown there is, doesn't matter if we're all queer it doesn't matter, you know if there are people of color at the top because they're not making decisions that are good for people of color at the bottom gay people at the top are not making decisions that are good for gay people at the bottom. And so I've always said that I would rather spend time with a straight socialist than a gay capitalist. So, you know, I met people it did not matter their background it didn't matter their experience what matters that we were united in this way. And so when it came up to the strike, this... Julie and I just wanted to say, I'd like one minute left. Okay, I'll keep it, I'll wrap it up nicely. So we go on strike, we have the entire community turning out for us. We have the benefit of being an organization that provides crucial lifesaving services to the queer community and the queer community loves their healthcare providers they love what this organization can do with them. They were pissed off that the workers that were being treated. I mean, we had people from other unions coming out people, patients were coming out all kinds of people coming out. And on the final day of the strike a lot of us went out for drinks afterwards and we're all talking and one of the things that we all like realized was that we are not the same people like we all agreed that this has fundamentally changed each of us. We were talking about this is the sort of thing that on our deathbeds we're going to remember, you know these are people I will go to their, I will go to their weddings. I want to be in these people's lives forever. I think that the power of organizing really is so profound because at the end of the day, it is about, it's people power. It requires you to like drop that cynicism and look at these people as like individuals and what their needs are and how you can work together to help them achieve that. I don't know that I was that kind of person before and I am so happy to come through this process and be that kind of person now. Thank you, Julianne. They start unionizing. Even if you're on the fence, just start doing it. I promise you, the spirit will enter you. It will. That was a great plug for you. Just start talking to people. Guaranteed friends, dance partners, people, anything you could want. I want to just remind people before we turn it to Andrea that if you are writing in the chat, a lot of you I think are not meaning to but you're writing just to us, the hosts and panelists because that's the default. We're happy to get your stuff but I'd rather, if it's meant for everyone, just that you click everyone so that everyone can be involved. Okay, now without further ado, I will pass it to Andrea to bring us home. All right, well, I am tasked with the unenviable task of following all of these incredible people. First of all, thank you to everyone who has spoken so far from Jerry and Annabelle. I still like, I value the history lesson. I got back in June and now here so much. It's made me feel so inspired and also Ani and my fellow Howard Brown Health Union workers, Julian and Shakia. It's incredible just hearing people from situations like ours talk. The people I was in the organizing committee with and the people I'm in the bargaining committee with now are all massive inspirations to me and people who I consider dear friends now. And I thank you both for speaking and for saying so many amazing things. So what I'll say is, well, first of all, I'm Andrea. I use she, her pronouns. And what I wanna kind of bring up is I wanna kind of tie us into history a little bit. We are Howard Brown Health Workers United is a union that was started by, that was led by queer people and people of color. I can count on probably one hand the number of straight cis white people that have been in this. I can see you trying to count, Julian. I'm sorry, I'm getting caught up a little bit. Claire and John, Julian. I feel like when I think about what we've done, the people who organized this union, the people who are still organizing this union, it feels like we are stepping, I feel like I'm standing on the shoulders of giants a little bit, both within the union itself and especially looking back through history. We as queer people at Howard Brown have the unique privilege of not being alone, of not having to feel alone in some ways. Howard Brown Health is the first place I've ever worked where I wasn't the only trans person. One of the only places I've ever worked where I wasn't the only queer person. And that is an immense privilege that we have. And I think in unionizing, we have utilized that privilege in a way that I think is really important. I think now that I have taken part in unionizing our workplace, I realized that I would have lived the rest of my life in unknown regret had I not left Howard Brown in that way. I think we spent a lot of this looking back at history, but I think one thing that's really beautiful is that we get to look into the future as well. Anyone who is unionizing their workplace is creating a future, is building the future for anyone that starts working there after them. I'm not gonna be at Howard Brown forever, but someone is going to be working at Howard Brown forever. Someone new every few years maybe, but because of what we have done, their life will be a little easier. Their working conditions will be a little better in the same way that as queer people, our lives are immensely better because of people like Jerry and people like Leslie Feinberg and everyone else who has mentioned today. I'm terrible with remembering names, so I wish I could just list all of them, but our lives have been deeply affected by those people. And I think in unionizing our workplaces, we can deeply affect other people's lives in the same way. And I think that's something that's really important to carry with you. One of the things that I hope inspires people to unionize their workplace if they're considering it is just you are creating history, maybe in a small way, maybe in a big way, but you are creating history and creating the future. And as Julian said, unionizing is one of the best places to make friends. I think one thing I really wanted to mention was being on the picket line in January. Being on that picket line was one of the first times I looked around myself and said, wow, I am a part of a community. I've always been a bit of a homebody. I've always been a little, not shy, I'm very outgoing, but I'm very awkward. So I've always shied away from large events and from a lot of traditional queer spaces or what's considered a traditional queer space. And being on the picket line, I felt like that at all, none of that mattered. I felt like I'd found the queer community that I needed. I met people, as we've said so many times today, I met people that I care about deeply now on that picket line or just before or in the months preceding that. The queer community is ingrained, or labor is ingrained in the queer community, I think, and the queer community is ingrained in the labor movement. Those things should and do walk hand in hand, sometimes less than others, but there is no queer liberation without labor liberation. There is no liberation of queer people without liberation of working queer people. And I think that's a, something that we're all very privileged to get to work towards. I don't know, I think that's about everything I have. I don't know how I'm doing on time, but I just, I want everyone to know that if you are a queer person or even not a queer person, if you're a person of color, if you are anything and you are unionizing your workplace, you're doing something deeply important and something very meaningful and something that puts you on the right side of history and puts you in step with some of the most important people in history. Yeah, we, something I said at some point is, you know, in solidarity, solidarity is, I don't remember what I said. I'm sorry, but in solidarity, we're all connected to each other and through everyone in our history in our effort to improve each other's lives and our own. And that's something that's really powerful. I think I'll stop before I repeat myself too many times. Okay, thanks so much, Andrea. And thanks to everyone. I'm sitting here feeling really moved in a way that I was not prepared for or anticipating. I forgot to say this earlier, just sort of how we see this panel tied together. And I think I hope it's been kind of obvious, but, you know, we started with history, a little bit of history lesson so that we could just get some grounding in what has come before and then bring it into the present and sort of hear what's happening for folks now. I wanna give a special shout out, which I was planning to do earlier, but now I see them in the Q and A to workers from Fenway Health in Boston, Fenway Workers United who are organizing now with my beloved unions, 1199. I'm really, really happy to see you here.