 Hi, welcome to the All Things LGBTQ interview show where we interview LGBTQ guests who are making important contributions to our communities. All Things LGBTQ is taped at Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont, which we recognize as being unceded Indigenous land. Thanks for joining us and enjoy the show. So, very often with candidates, you hear them telling you what their platform and priorities are. And then there is that rare candidate whose actions show you what their priorities are. And our guest for today is indeed one of those candidates. Please welcome to All Things LGBTQ, the Democratic candidate for Governor Brenda Siegel. Welcome, Brenda. Thank you for having me. I am so delighted that we were able to get you to come on. And I think where I would like to start is where we have begun with other candidates running for statewide office, which is, so what is your connection to Vermont and why was running here a priority for you? So I was born in Brattleboro and Brattleboro Memorial Hospital. I've graduated from Brattleboro Union High School. You don't often hear me talk about that because I think people are Vermonters. People are Vermonters no matter when they arrive here. But I have been a Vermonter throughout my life and my grandmother was a Vermonter for Generations and my grandfather's family immigrated here from Ukraine actually and then also from New York City is where my grandfather came from to Vermont. So we have been Vermonters for the last 45 plus years in my family and there was a period of time when I could have left. I had a son by myself, so I was very much tied here to my family. And then I could have left after Tropical Storm Irene because we lost everything. And that's when I made the choice to stay and become a Vermonter and to fight so that people like me would have more opportunities going forward. And you not only made a choice to stay here, you know, is the and to fight is the part that I really want to talk about because you've had a degree of community involvement and organizing that many other candidates don't have, don't have that wealth of experience. Can you share some of that with the people who are watching this? Yeah, I guess I'll start from most recent and tell you a little bit more going forward. But I on October 14th of this past year, I stood on the Statehouse steps and said that we would not leave. I was there with someone who was actively experiencing homelessness that we would not leave until the governor fully reinstated the program that was emergency housing people who had been exited onto the street. And what I didn't know at that time is that I would, I apologize. What I didn't know at that time is that I would be there for 27 nights. I didn't know how quickly my body and mind would deteriorate. Up until that 28th day, many people thought that we could not win, but we won. It was not without hardship or a great big, very steep uphill battle. And I think what's really important to understand is that that housing crisis was not the first crisis, nor did it begin with COVID. We have had a housing crisis looming for a very long time. Similarly, I've done work across the state and country on the overdose crisis, very successfully moving legislation. But all of these issues take all of us working together, fighting together. So that meant that I had to build coalitions, not just within people who agree with me automatically, but also sitting down with Republicans and Democrats that don't agree and making sure that we find a path to move forward. And so that's been the work that I've done in March of 2018. My nephew, who I'd helped raise, died of an overdose after a year in recovery, taken down by our criminal justice system. And he was a son of my brother who died just over 20 years before him, also using heroin. What my life experience tells me is that we have not done enough with 20 years between them. We still do not have the supports that they needed to be able to survive in our state. And what's really important about both housing and the overdose crisis and climate is that it's disproportionately impacting our community, the LGBTQIA community, especially LGBTQIA youth. And so when we decide, when we do just the surface type of legislation that supports our community and don't dig deep to the things that are deeply, the ways that people are being deeply impacted and the BIPOC community is being deeply impacted, then we actually are not making the change that we need to be making for all of us. And I think it's something that we do have to step back and reflect. So that's been the work that's been in my heart, but much of that, like you, has been meeting with the governor's administration, with the administrators, with seeing where we could be easily shifting up just rules and policies to be able to make it a more efficient, a more effective, and more supportive state. And the refusal to do that has been somewhat astounding, actually. So let's talk a little bit about some of those policies and some of the specific issues. There was a lot of publicity about the amount of American rescue dollars that came into the state of Vermont and housing being a priority. And the current administration has said that addiction has been a priority access to health care. So despite all of the publicity, what did they miss? I do find that sometimes our press corps doesn't dig as deep as they could have when the administration puts out what their narrative is. And I think any of us know that elected leaders are sometimes building a narrative around their work. And so when we're talking about the housing crisis, for example, things that had to be taken after our legislators were fighting very hard, actually, to make sure that there was emergency and transitional housing, to make sure that their new bills included low income folks and there was protection for tenants. All that stuff was included. It had to be taken out because the governor was not going to sign the bill and the housing crisis is so bad that not moving anything forward was not an option. Additionally, he has repetitively vetoed things like just cause eviction. And he's governing by that veto. He doesn't come to the table to work out a solution, much like I've had to in legislation I've worked on. He does not come to that table and stay there until the job is done. And that means that people in Burlington were are no cause evicted with nowhere to go, no way to get back into the rental market, sometimes with severe disabilities. And they're being no cause evicted in fact, because they brought up an issue that they have that doesn't meet ADA compliance. And but there is no way for them to support fighting that because it was no cause. So there's many issues where he claims to care about that issue. However, when it actually comes to how we support those that are most impacted, we get the same kind of trickle down narratives. Like if we do this for the people at the top, then it will support the people at the bottom. But we know since the 80s and beyond that when we don't lift from the bottom to rise, then we actually aren't solving the problem at all. It doesn't help the it actually doesn't even help the people at the top as much as they think it is. It doesn't help the people in the middle at all. And it certainly doesn't help the people who have no recourse except the ways in which we're able to help them. And all of these issues have a connection to each other and they disproportionately impact those of us within underrepresented communities more so than others. So could you talk a little bit in greater detail about addiction and addiction services? And there was a very high profile veto about what could have been an option to create a safe environment for someone who was still choosing to use. So most of people so I guess I need to start by saying that this governor has presided over the most deaths in the history of our state. In 2020, we had the most increase in deaths from overdose of any state in the country. That means yes it was rising for other people but we did worse, much worse, not by a little bit by a lot. And then in 2021, we saw the historic amount of deaths in our state. So we had the most deaths, record breaking number of deaths from overdose in our state. So that's where we have to start with this framing. We have a hub and spoke model that reaches three in 10 people but there's seven in 10 who are not being reached by that model. Most people in our state are dying alone. We have seen how overdose prevention sites work but before I even get to that I need to say that that bill also increased access to medically assisted treatment and syringe services. Increasing access to medically assisted treatment supports recovery in a massive way and that was also vetoed along with the rest. It also increased syringe services and syringe services not only makes it less likely for people who are actively using to get hepatitis C but also any of their HIB, also any of their partners. And so it's extremely important to understand the risk that people were put under by not signing this bill. The part of the bill that the governor had took issue with was a study on overdose prevention sites. So while he and I differ and I think that overdose prevention sites absolutely should happen. I've seen the data, the science is already there. The legislature respectfully understood that there were some concerns and went instead with the study to figure out how we could do it safely in our state. Moving forward in a way that would save people's lives and it doesn't just save people's lives in the places where it has been done in this country and others. It's also decreased waste by an enormous amount because of the reduction of needles and other paraphernalia that is in the street. It's also reduced crime by a very significant rate and every one of these people is developing connections with someone who might be able to lead them to treatment. So if you're someone who says we have to keep the criminal justice system because it's a linked treatment and you don't support this then you don't mean it in the criminal justice system either because the criminal justice system actually causes far more harm, often death like it did with my nephew and overdose prevention sites save lives and make that same connection in a much more safe and healthy way. People are going to use drugs. If we don't figure out how to curtail that use to decrease the crime by using harm reduction, we decrease use, death and potency of the substance. When we add criminal penalties, we increase use, death and potency of substances. That is a fact. It is not disputable and so what the governor did was go on his drug war based ideals and not the new data and science and if you believe in science for vaccines and you believe in science for climate then you have to believe in science for drug policy. You either believe in science or you don't. So you also are truly concerned about climate change and how it impacts all of the other issues. What is it that we could have done and haven't and what is your vision to where we should be moving? Well, we aren't going to solve climate change one electric vehicle at a time and nor have we figured out how to get electric vehicles to low income people and our state is made up of mostly moderate and low income people so if we're not figuring that out then I think we're we haven't at all met the mark but additionally we have to make sure that we're creating more in-state renewable sources. We have to make sure that we're addressing how we get the solutions to low and moderate income and marginalized communities. We have to center in fact those communities in our solutions. We have to support small farms in transitioning to carbon sequestration and we have to require large farms to do their part to do that work. It is not us versus them. It is that we all are going to have to take a heavy lift right now if we want to support a reversal. I mean I don't even know that we can support a reversal. We want to move forward on protecting our earth for our children and for the earth. Thank you and I want to switch a little bit. You are unique in the typical candidate who runs for public office. I'm wondering if you could share some thoughts about what it is that we do that makes it difficult for people to run for public office and what it is that would specifically need to change to support people running for public office. The first thing that I want to say about that is that if we want marginalized people to be in leadership then we're going to have to redefine what we see as people developing their leadership skills because it is not a reality that people like me low income single mom can climb the unpaid ladder or the low paid ladder leaving their kids at home. I did not have another parent in order to get to running for a statewide office. We have to accept that we see leaders in our communities every single day who are perfectly capable who are already the bench to make this to make this work and we need people who already have this power to be lifting those folks as well. I also want to say that the financial barrier is designed on purpose to keep low income people out of office in all levels of office and I'm in a position where I'm the Democratic nominee it's kind of phenomenal and the Democratic nominee I'm still low income I'm still struggling and I've made it to this moment by really fighting and giving a lot of myself but without the support and help of others economically we're not going to be able to wage the same fight and frankly I can wage quite a fight so if people support I am able to do that work however this is not what should be happening we should have a public finance system so that all that we're looking at is is this a good candidate for office is this someone who can really lead our state forward if that was our only question then there are several people I would say who are obvious choices to be in leadership roles but as long as we accept that money is the only thing that qualifies you really because we don't ask someone if they're a businessman of many years what what else they've done we just don't or if they're a billionaire not to name names we don't we just don't but we do ask especially women especially lgbtq communities especially black and brown folks we do ask them and oftentimes based on stigma around their poverty and I would guess that most folks who have fought hard lives full of trauma are actually so much more prepared to lead us forward because they have had to dig their heels in and keep clawing their way to survival in ways that most of us cannot even imagine so in our remaining time what's the question I didn't ask you okay I guess on Friday we saw our civil liberties across the state across the country by the supreme court begin to erode in a massive way the reversal of roe v wade is going to make many of our neighbors many other people across the country currently lose their rights we have a reproductive health reproductive freedom amendment for our constitution which we can all vote proposition five we can all vote for the reproductive liberty amendment in november however if you hear people telling you that we are safe here and that's enough it is not enough it's first of all only the tip of the iceberg next is going to be contraception also marriage equality and I would not stop there it's going to go on and on and on if we are not prepared to fight back and prepare to protect people so the things that we need to do in addition to prop five is we need to first of all say that we will not extradite people who come here to have a safe and legal abortion we are we cannot extradite people with reproductive organs who access that care here we need to build up a fund so that that care does not show up on their insurance so that it cannot be found so they can do it in private we need to ensure that we are leading about prop five not just saying well we're done like we did it we did what we need to and in addition to all of that if there is a federal ban we are not protected by prop five so we need to make sure that we're fighting to ensure that there won't be a federal ban and coming up with and coming up with agreement for protections across the state that would protect us even then and that is a that's a tough call to make but it's one that we have to make because we cannot backslide all of the civil liberties that were won at one time it was legal to restrict those liberties from people and it is starting to be again and if we don't say we will not accept that under any circumstance we will block it then we are not leading on this issue so I would say that we need to lead and with that I need to say thank you and I'm looking forward to standing next to you in the work that's before us thank you thank you so much on a recent episode of all things LGBTQ I shared information that I had read from a newsletter from Equality Main that talked about their Republican Party and the platform they had just adopted but I also received notice and we have reported on Equality Main has a new executive director and we thought this might be a good time to introduce that new executive director and talk about what is happening in main inequality so please welcome to all things LGBTQ for the first but hopefully not the last time Gia Drew welcome hey thank you so much I'm happy to be here Keith thank you for the invitation I am so glad we could find time for this conversation so it's been a while since all things LGBTQ has really focused on Equality Main and its role within our larger communities could we start with you sharing a little bit about the work that Equality Main is doing and then we'll start talking about how you became involved with that okay we can do that sure so for folks who are unfamiliar with Equality Main we were founded in 1984 after the murder of a young man named Charlie Howard a young gay gay man living in Bangor and was thrown off a bridge and was killed for being gay and for those of you familiar with Stephen King and his novels that of course that scene was captured in the novel it and featured in the movies as well as you know Stephen King lives in Bangor and he was deeply affected by that tragedy in the 80s of course not only Stephen King but concerned community members in Bangor and around the state and the country actually reacted against the murder of Charlie and in the aftermath of that a community group was formed known then as the main lesbian gay political alliance the MLGPA to provide education on how great it is to be LGBTQ to former communities so people could connect with one another in a large rural state like Maine and to advocate for policies and laws to protect LGBTQ people and and that little organization 38 years ago morphed into Equality Main which is where we are today and we still do those things absolutely we are still you know talking about what it means to be LGBTQ out into the world we do a lot of education with corporations small businesses social service agencies state agencies around what it means to be LGBTQ how to make workplaces more inclusive how schools can be doing a better job so that's still at the core of what we do we definitely do community events across the state to bring people together and we support other community organizations doing like-minded work so we don't have to do all that ourselves and we of course are still doing the public policy work that is so important to ensure that LGBTQ people can live their lives free from discrimination and so that's that is an ongoing ongoing effort at Equality Main so though the mission of the in the work it really has stayed pretty consistent in 38 years of course it's evolved and changed over time but I mean that is at the core of who we are at Equality Main and and and a little bit we will talk about what you're anticipating with this most with this election season and when your legislature convenes but if we could talk or if you would be willing to share a little bit about how you happen to come to Maine and how you happen to become involved with Equality Main and I understand that you were a first in several areas sure I'd like to say it all started in Vermont it didn't exactly but I do have a Vermont history so I just want to put that out there I was married and conquered Vermont in 1994 in the Northeast Kingdom region of Vermont and lived in the St. Johnsbury area and then moved to Southern Vermont and lived in Brattleboro for a little while and I was a school teacher a public school teacher for much of my career for 20 years some of that in Vermont in New Hampshire and eventually landed here in Maine a little over 22 years ago and during that time as a teacher here in Maine I transitioned on the job becoming one of the first out transgender teacher public school teachers here in Maine and one of the first out transgender high school coaches in the entire country and absolutely didn't plan to be first or want to be first it just happened that way and you know there were a lot of challenges in doing that as you may imagine this wasn't very long ago this was about 13 years ago that this was all happening here in Maine and my school was not ready for that nor was most public schools ready to have an out transgender teacher or coach and so it could have gone better unfortunately and I was pushed out of teaching about a year into that and I became unemployed and virtually unemployable as an out transgender teacher here in the state of Maine and that's really where my connection to Equality Maine started that was in 2012 and it was there I started volunteering on the marriage campaign in 2012 with Equality Maine and was a volunteer for about a year and a half and then was hired in 2014 to do programming rural outreach and work in schools and and here I am today 10 years later I've risen up from a volunteer to become the executive director of Equality Maine that's that's quite the wealth of experience so my next question may seem a sort of da so what made Gia the best pick to be the executive director of Equality Maine at this point in time well that's a it's a fair question and so the board directors did do a national search to make sure they were getting the best candidate possible to lead the organization for the next you know for the foreseeable future and and that's good on them to do that I think they wanted to be sure that they had someone that had a vision for the organization in our community that aligned with their their goals and strategic planning and and I'm glad they picked me but I I think the things I bring to this work that maybe are different than or maybe our previous directors and now you know we there's not a lot we've only had a handful of directors run the organization over those 38 years for much of it it really was a volunteer driven organization and it really wasn't a staffed organization until the you know the mid-2000s when we started doing non-discrimination protections and so I think for me what what I think makes me a standout candidate was the longevity of course in the connection to the community here in Maine and my ties and grassroots ties to to Mainers you know getting to know Maine first as a teacher for for such a long time and coach knowing the communities across Maine and then having done the outreach and community work for the last nine years working with with different community members young and old in virtually every county in the state in my relationships that I built along the way I think are a really important part of being executive director is is maintaining and establishing relationships with people and with organizations and and utilizing those relationships to effective create change so I think that that was one of the reasons on I'd like to think that I'm an inclusive leader that I really appreciate their virgin points of view and creative thinking and it may be not always doing what we once did you know and I think the idea that I am a a trendsetter willing to challenge the norm I am the first trans person to run the state organization you know I think there are some visibility issues that I like to think having a transgender person lead the organization is exactly where we should be at this day and age in terms of where most of our conversations are happening on LGBTQ rights we are mostly talking about what it means to be trans and on binary binary in this world and I think just my lived experience related to being trans and and my familiarity with gender issues and things like that and then just the work I've done coordinating and programs here at Equality Maine we run a lot of youth programs I oversee all our programs for older adults through Sage Maine and all our education you know so I think I'm the candidate that they chose for all those reasons and I'm excited it's exciting to sort of take on this challenge it's not easy running a business organization that has such a long-storied history and we have a state that has nearly you know 100,000 LGBTQ people in it and so that's a deep that's a really weighing responsibility too and I think they chose someone who is mature and has handled responsibility before has weathered challenges personal and you know challenges before it has risen above them and so I think I do think they made a good decision. From what I have heard that I would tend to agree and I would support the national search because we received notice and included it on our news program encouraging people to apply. So what is your vision as the new executive director for the priorities for Equality Maine and how would you like to move the organization forward? Well it's interesting we did a strategic plan in 2013 and then we did sort of a mini one about four years ago and then we are in the process of finalizing a new strategic plan and it hasn't changed all that much but I will say the things we're really pivoting most urgently are the needs and concerns of the most marginalized members of our community. And historically they may not have been the focus of attention at Equality Maine and that's something that I own as now the director that I inherit that history and we still know that there are LGBTQ people out there especially who are poor living with a disability maybe they're black indigenous or person of color or maybe English is not their first language and I think for me in speaking with the hiring committee and the board is that's really where I think we should be spending the bulk of our energy and time is to how do we empower and lift up the most marginalized among us. So I think that's where I'm leading from in the work that we're going to be doing in the in the future and that's going to take time and effort it takes communication with our traditional base you know our base that's been connected to Equality Maine is now older they're white they're mostly cisgender and so how do we communicate with that group of people who are still very important about our priorities are still making sure we have laws and policies to protect people we have programs that connect people to one another and we don't want to leave anybody behind we want to make sure that everyone you know can live their life free from discrimination and can thrive in every community in Maine Maine is a very big state and so our offices are here in Portland which is a pretty welcoming place to be LGBTQ but there are other pockets in Maine that it's pretty hostile still if you have a pride flag in front of your house you're probably gonna yell that or get some you know some slurs hurled at you by some people driving by or you're going to be at a school board meeting where people are going to say really horrible things about you and so you know I want to make sure that we're prioritizing the needs of the most marginalized the folks in rural Maine and keeping our eye on the prize in terms of public policy and law so building off the public policy and law this is an election year yeah and the newsletter that I had received from Equality Maine talked about the Maine Republican Party having adopted a strongly worded anti LGBTQ plus platform so taking that into consideration what is the political climate like in Maine right now what are you anticipating and do you think that the Maine Republican Party will try to introduce hostile pieces of legislation yes absolutely I can say that I can say it was a smile but it's terrifying and so I think as you as folks have seen across the country there is a wave of anti LGBTQ sentiment sediment whatever that word is sentiment sentiment not sediment and it's ugly and it's rooted in all sorts of stuff that I don't want to get into but and we do expect that to show up on our shores here in Maine in the next legislative cycle which begins in January you know we got a hint of it in our last legislative cycle there were three or four squarely anti trans bills that were introduced about transgender participation in sports allowing shelters to turn away transgender women from women's shelters and things like that and we just know that and all those bills were written exactly like all the other bills in other states and so we know there's a coordinated effort across the country to attack LGBTQ people to remove LGBTQ people especially transgender people from public life and so we expect that to happen but for us to be prepared to fight that fight we need to have pro equality candidates elected in office here in the in the in Maine in the state house specifically and we've been doing a really good job ensuring that our main legislature is pro equality and we have a pro quality senate we have a pro quality house of representatives and we have a governor that is a strong ally to LGBTQ people and she has signed numerous LGBTQ bills governor mills and so you know we're going to do our best over the next five months to ensure that we maintain the house and senate in terms of pro quality candidates we do have an endorsement process that goes on this summer and so there'll be like a questionnaire and scorecard for elected officials and then we'll be endorsing candidates in the races for state legislature we've already endorsed governor mills for a second term and so I think that is really important and we're of course supportive of Shelly Pingry one of our congress members and we have a very close race with our congressman Jared Golden who represents our second district it's a very purple district and he's going to probably be in a very close race if you remember he actually lost the popular vote in the last election but one because of ranked choice voting and so we know that that election is going to be very tight for that district and that is really important for our federal federal protections and the race for governor is neck and neck the latest polling has governor mills in in LaPage in a virtual dead heat if you factor in that you know the margin of error and so I think that is terrifying absolutely terrifying to consider that the former governor is even close to governor mills at this point in time he's horribly anti-LGBTQ when he was governor for eight years he did nothing to protect lgbtq but he went out of his way to like do things that were anti-LGBTQ and still and like signing on for things in other states that had nothing to do with Maine he just wanted to put his name on being anti-LGBTQ he would use anti-LGBTQ slurs when he talked to elected officials he called parents that support transgender kids like horrible things and so yeah we we do not need a governor that wants to roll back same-sex marriage wants to stop any conversations of being LGBTQ in schools or anything like that and and again we know he's you know anti-anti-abortion as well and so you know we have no energy to bring that person back into the state house and we're going to do whatever we can to elect pro-quality candidates and includes governor mills again so is there a sense in Maine that either your senate or your house might flip or are people feeling fairly confident that those majorities will be maintained? That's a good question you know I haven't heard recently I think there was some early on worries about this maybe the senate would be the only one because we did have it did switch recently in the last couple of cycles it did switch from republican to dem and it has switched back and forth but there's never been a super majority either way we definitely will keep the house it looks like we'll keep the house that I mean everything got redistricted as it did everywhere in the country after the census and so it's hard really to know exactly what's going to happen next because some of the districts for some of the senate seats are just completely new like I have no idea what's happening in some of them so I'd like to think we're going to keep them a progressive majority in the house and senate so should there be that catastrophe of the other governor coming back we'd have the that sort of barrier protecting us against you know that that horrible thought but hopefully we'll get we'll keep on everything that would be nice so with that I need to say thank you for spending this time with us and I'm extending an invitation now that post-election we get back together and talk about what just happened in your backyard sounds like a plan thank you you are welcome have a great day thank you for joining us and until next time remember resist