 So, very briefly, what we're going to do tonight is I'm going to pose one general question to the panel. Then I'm going to ask a question that's particular to the areas of expertise for each panelist one at a time. And then we're going to have a couple of questions for kind of group discussion among panelists. And then we're reserving at least 30 minutes for questions and answers, because we want to make sure that all of you have time to be able to pose whatever questions or share whatever thoughts you have within short two-minute blocks at maximum with the panel and then we'll wrap up. So, sound good? All right, so let me start out then with a very simple question. We just had the midterm elections as everybody is aware. Lots and lots of news stories. Not everything has fallen into place as to what happened or what the implications are or even what the results of all the races are. But from where you stand now, each of you, and Brett, I'm actually going to start with you, for your fruit, for your, well, A comes first in the alphabet. And just ask each panelist for just a couple of minutes to share what is the top-line thing to take away from the midterm results. And you may answer that either in terms of for our movement or on a broader scale for the nation as a whole. Or if you do them both in a couple of minutes, go for all of it. So, Brett? You know, my name is Andrews and I've had to sit in that front seat all of my life in school. And I thought I got away from that and obviously I did it. So, here I am. Oh, you've never not liked that. This is going to go all night long, I can tell. You know, I think for those of us who have ebbed and flowed with wanting to watch, who've been overdosing on the news and then have just chosen to just ignore it for our own sanity. I think Tuesday was a bit of a, put a little bit more wind in my sail. I, the walk away from me is, and Kate and Ray probably know this because I'm such a feminist, women will probably save us. I just, I was so thrilled to see that 100 women are going to step into the House of Representatives. This, it brings in a particular type of dialogue, a more respectful dialogue, ways in which we can engage with each other and compromise and collaborate where frankly I will just admit sometimes men just don't do a great job of that. So, I'm thrilled and I'm thrilled to see people of color stepping up. I think that represents so much of in our movement, LGBTs are stepping into significant roles, the governorships and House representatives being represented for LGBTQI. So, it was encouraging to me that in these esteemed halls of Congress that there are some glass ceilings that are being shattered and it needs to happen at a faster rate and a higher percentage, but it gives me a glimmer of hope just this past Tuesday. Wonderful, Maria. Yeah, I don't know. I'm looking forward to hearing people who I hope are more optimistic than I feel looking at this also from a global perspective. It's like leading up to the election. I saw my friends and colleagues from literally all over the world making comments and expressing their wishes on Facebook for in relation to the American elections. And I mean, I wish I could see it more as a clear flat out rejection of the call for America first. I wish it really was a stronger people first, but I don't know. Yes, I agree it could have been a lot worse for sure, but I wish it was a little bit clearer this rejection of nationalists and just look at ourselves, don't care about the rest of the world. So, yeah, please continue to give me optimism. Well, I'll add a little bit of optimism. So I'm going to take my two minutes to talk about Massachusetts. So, so folks know there was an anti-trans ballot initiative in Massachusetts. It was the first time that our rights as transgender people were voted on at the statewide level, and we won, and we won by a lot. And yes, and I will say like I have so much appreciation, love for the translators on the ground in Massachusetts who really held that down for our allies and for all of the national organizations like a lot who are represented up here, who went in on that fight as well as the funders. And I guess I think the lesson that I take from that is that I know that win was only made possible because in Massachusetts there have been years and years and years of organizing by translators and our allies in that state to make sure that folks understood who trans people are, knew why our rights were important, and so that win was only made possible because of years and years of building up infrastructure and public and community understanding in that state, right? So if that had happened in another state where that was not true, we would be in a very, very different place right now. Congratulations on Massachusetts, it was incredible. You know, I would say how this election felt, my grandmother who lived well into her 90s used to have this magnet on her refrigerator that said fall down seven times, get up eight. And I actually have it on a bracelet here that I've been wearing for the last two years. And I feel like we got up. You know, I feel like at least in DC it feels like every single day there's just an onslaught of issue after issue that's coming up. Statement we have to spot. You know, it's just it's the pace of it and the intensity of it and the cruelty of it is just so intense. And so this election day was not everything we wanted it to be, but it was some of the things that we needed it to be. And I think, you know, a few things stood out for me. Grassroots engagement counts. Grassroots engagement counts. We saw that in Massachusetts. We also saw it in Florida. We were working on the second chances campaign working to restore voting rights to those who have been incarcerated. Florida is only one of four states where you can never, ever, ever vote again if you've been incarcerated. There were more votes for that than there were for the governor. So that took grassroots organizing. It took faith organizing. It took a lot of people who have been incarcerated talking to friends and family. And it worked and it worked and we went on that. Second, again, something that Brett said, but we've got to run diverse candidates. We don't, at the task force, we don't do that. Our colleagues at Victory Fund and others do that. But we've got to run a diverse set of candidates. And I think what was remarkable this year was how many LGBTQ candidates ran, many of them won, certainly not talking about LGBTQ specific issues. We have a new governor of Colorado who's not going to be the governor of the gays of Colorado. He's going to be the governor of Colorado. So I think the more that we, Jared Polis, so the more we run a diverse set of candidates, we bring diverse perspectives and a broader set of voters get motivated to actually believe their vote might count. And then finally, I think we just, we have a lot of work to do before 2020. I say this is a nonpartisan organization. But I think in terms of getting more LGBT friendly elected officials all the way up to the highest office, we have a lot of work to do. I invite you to look at an article. I won't use the time to do it now in the Washington Post today that did a very detailed analysis of the voting that said, yes, Democrats have a lot of hope based on the House election this year. It actually doesn't point to 2020. And so I think we need to continue to build the number of people who are engaged who, for whatever reason, chose to stay home still this election. Good evening. I'm so happy to be here with colleagues that I love and admire and so many of you in the audience as well. I think that the lesson from yesterday is that we're not for voter suppression and gerrymandering. We would have won many more seats in state houses and in Congress. And I also think that to double down on Brett's point, I think it's not just women that we should be proud of. It's black women in particular who are gonna save this country. And when you look at how black women voted versus white women, particularly white women married to men, white women married to men are really our enemy. And so, and those numbers were really bad in all of these districts where something was close. And yet it was the black women who really made the difference. I also think first time voters, it wasn't as big as we would have liked to have had, but this is what I think happened. And this is my optimism and I understand I've been in conversations where it may be tempered but my optimism is this. I think there are a lot of people who chose not to vote because they couldn't be disappointed again. They couldn't vote, they couldn't finally vote for the first time and then have things not go their way. I mean, there is, we do have, I'm talking especially about young people, a sort of gratification and if that doesn't happen, sort of distancing yourself from whatever it was that you feel wounded by. And I do feel like the fact that we sort of moved the needle, that people saw things change, that voting did actually matter is going to make a big difference in two years if we do the work to continue to keep people engaged. So I think it's really going to be important to say, yeah, we moved the needle a little bit, but voting matters, voting matters. And for the first time, and actually my life as an adult that I recall in 2016 kicked this off, there is I think a burgeoning understanding from kids who did not have any civics classes that exercising your right to vote is one of the most important things you can do as a citizen. Well, thank you all for those thoughts about incredibly complicated and up and down subject. And I appreciate hearing all the way from optimism to some of the worries that we all live with so intensely all our lives, and especially in the last couple of years. So I wanna shift just slightly and continue with you, Kate, and look to another branch of the government that we haven't talked about yet, but inevitably as part of what we're thinking about and looking at, and of course I'm talking about the judiciary, and we have just been through a, I'm not sure what the right adjective is, but nightmarish would be one for it, confirmation process that has put Brett Kavanaugh onto the court that has of course dramatic implications. We can all say a silent, or if you wish, a loud prayer for Ruth Bader Ginsburg at this time. And hopefully she is okay as a human being and as a justice. But could you talk a little bit, Kate, about what it is that the addition of Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court means in terms of the movement's litigation strategies? So Maria, right there with you right now. This is a dangerous moment. It is the first moment that I, as an attorney, feel like the Supreme Court has been so thoroughly degraded that not only is it not hospitable to issues of fairness and justice and to say nothing of LGBT issues, but that it is dishonored. And when you have the court, which used to be for people who weren't lawyers or who didn't steep themselves in the law, you sort of had this reverence, this sort of distance. It felt like something, they did something. It seemed to be important. We don't really know what it is, but these are amazing people. And now it's like, okay, these are frat boys, some of them, some of them seem to be okay, but this seems like every bit as corrupt and venal as unseemly as any other branch of government in terms of what we've seen in the last two years. That is dangerous for democracy. It is dangerous for a constitutional democracy that requires three branches of government and the court's supposed to be a checks and balance. You know, we've already kind of lost a little bit of that civics lesson. So I'm very worried about what it means for all sorts of cases going to the Supreme Court. To your point, Roger, we've already changed our strategy. We are slowing down federal litigation. We are looking to states to bring litigation instead of federal litigation. If we bring federal litigation, we are including state claims, so we can keep it in state court if we need to. We are looking to bring cases in good circuits where we could win. And then if the opposing party wants to settle or wants to appeal, see if we can come to a settlement. So the strategy is now much more complex than it was previously. I became a lawyer because I believed courts vindicated individual rights. And this was the Warren Court. I mean, this was like not a super, super liberal court, but even the Rehnquist Court, some of you will remember. I mean, very conservative justice, but still understood that the courts played a role in defending the most vulnerable. And now we have a chief justice and sitting alongside him, at least three other justices who believe the court should play no role in vindicating individual rights. And actually for the court to be asked to is preposterous and a waste of their time. So we're in for a long hard slog. And the last thing I'll say on it, because I know you're about to say something, is that this happened as the result of a patient and measured strategy by Mitch McConnell and other Republicans. And if I could say anything to my super liberal and progressive and radical friends of which I count myself as one, we can no longer have the attention span of a fruit fly if we actually want to see real change made. We have to have a 30 year plan, like Mitch McConnell had with the judiciary and we have to stick to it. That is how you actually remake change that is going to last for generations. So we have to rethink what winning means, short-term and long-term. So Chris, as the other person with a legal organization here, if you wanted to add anything to what Kate just said, I just wanted to pose that to you. This does not count as your question, but it's good. All right, okay, very good. So Ray, actually, no, Chris, I was going to turn to you next. The Trump administration, as we all know, has been in full attack mode for a while and is redoubling their efforts in attack mode around transgender rights. Now, given what happened in Massachusetts and some other developments around the country, it's not all a gloomy picture. And some of that activity, including Massachusetts, is happening on a state level. And so if you could just talk a little bit about some of the developments on a state level and how TLC as a national organization and looking at the landscape across the 50 states, how you are seeing things at the state level and where you see some opportunities and where you see some particular dangers. Yeah, that's a great question. So I will start by just backing up a little, which is to say that the reality is that for transgender people, as far as having rights and protections on the books, it's relatively recent, right? Like we're talking the last two decades or so. And we've seen this kind of increase in visibility for our community that also is super recent. We're talking the last decade, like last five years. So I just think that's important to ground in because while that is true, it is also true that the majority of trans people in this country, even while we've had those wins, have continued to struggle to survive on a daily basis, right? Facing intense discrimination, harassment and violence. And so, and this is pre-Trump, right? We're talking pre-Trump. So, and even before Trump came into the office, we were facing this climate of anti-trans legislation in the form of these bathroom bills across the country. And so then Trump gets elected. And I just think, and I'll get to the state and local, but I just think it's important to ground in what the overall reality is for trans and gender non-coupling people in this moment in that ever since he came into office, he has taken action after action. And the draft memo that was leaked just a week or so ago is just one attack among so many that are really about attempting to eliminate the very existence of transgender people in this country to deny our very humanity and to deny our rights and that this is for a community that already was struggling to survive, already is struggling to survive, right? Every year over the last couple of years have been the most reported of trans, murders of transgender people in this country, of which the majority are black trans women. So I just think it's important to ground in that this moment is devastating. And for trans people, particularly black and brown trans people, black and brown trans women, it's for a community that already was struggling to survive and facing such intense harassment and violence. And we've seen the ways in which this new administration has emboldened hate, right? Has emboldened discrimination and intolerance. And we've seen, and this is getting to the local and state, we've seen the impacts that has had on the day-to-day ability of trans people to just live our lives in states and communities all across the country. We've heard story after story of increases in hate violence and discrimination against transgender people. So looking to the state and local level, so thank God, Massachusetts, that we won. Because if we hadn't, we would have for sure seen valid initiatives all across the country. We are still very concerned that we will still continue to see anti-trans legislation in states across the country. Though on the positive side, we've seen major wins in terms of being able to pass policies and laws, recognizing the identities of non-binary people. We've seen that in state after state in the recent period. So we've also seen ways in which we've been able to advance and win. But I will just say that the overall picture, and I know that there will be space in this conversation to talk about the ways in which there's real hope, and the ways in which our communities have been incredibly powerful and resilient in this moment. But the real picture for trans people, for the majority of my community in this moment in this country is very, very bleak. People are very frightened. And while we will absolutely do everything we can and we will fight in the courts and we will fight in the legislature, I just think it's important for us here in this room as an LGBT community in California to really hold the ways in which trans folks, particularly in states and regions across the country that have much less than we have here, are really, really struggling in this moment and are needing all the support from all of us that we can get. Thank you, Chris. Thank you. So Ray, I know that over many, many years it's been necessary in the DC universe, other places too, but in DC in particular, to fight defensive actions as well as to try to move progressive things ahead. And in the last couple of years, it's probably never been quite like the last couple of years in terms of just how necessary and how ubiquitous the needs are to do that. I know the task force has been deeply involved in that work for many years, but especially over the last couple of years. And could you just talk for a couple of minutes about what it is, what a couple of the highlights, if you will, that you have seen over the past couple of years in that work and we're now looking into the next period, say the next couple of years, where you see some of that work most importantly focusing. Thanks, Roger. So to kind of get this context, one of the things that many of organizations, particularly the national advocacy organizations and legal organizations, have been doing really for a decade prior to this administration, is examining the many, many, many places where we do or don't show up as a community in the federal government. So what captures the headline is big fancy legislation or people getting elected, but really there are hundreds and hundreds of places within federal agencies where we could be getting more money. We could be getting more programs. So the task force along with a whole coalition of organizations, actually it was a program dreamed up by Matt Forman who's here tonight before Obama was elected, surveyed the entire federal government for policies that should be changed. We wrote how the policies should be changed. We often found the person, the role, who should change it. We created a literal binder and because it was way back when, a CD-ROM of all of those policies and gave it to the Obama administration and spent eight years working with them to change hundreds and hundreds of policies that didn't require any congressional action. It was beneficial because it improved a lot of people's lives and it got a lot more money flowing to our community. The risk of it we're seeing now which is that you can undo those policies. So many of those policies are being undone. They range from things like if you go to apply for a passport for your child, it no longer says mother or father on that application or on many federal applications to non-discrimination in public housing, right? Large and small effects. So our job now is to defend that progress and fight back whenever the administration, we find out about it, whenever the administration tries to make changes that will be detrimental to our community and Chris mentioned one which I'll talk a little bit more about at some point which was the leaking of this memo that they would change their definition of gender. So right now what we're doing with organizations in DC across, not only in the LGBTQ movement, but across movements is we're pushing back when we find out about these changes and sometimes we win. We found out for example that even after a whole process that led to the Census Bureau putting a question on one of their surveys, they do many surveys, excuse me. They, we literally found out in the dead of night one of our staff members got a call very, very early in the morning saying the question about sexual orientation was on last night and it's off this morning, find out what's going on. We did that because we have career public servants who care deeply about our community, who are doing the best they can to identify when threats are coming our way. And we're supporting those folks in the government who are able to do that. Secondly, so when we can win, we can win. We pushed back on that, we did a lot of letters, we did a lot of comments, we pushed back, we did a lot of media strategy, the question came back on the survey. So would we have counted that as a big win in the previous eight years? Maybe not, but it's a huge win for us now. Because they have that question, it allows us to continue to push to have our lives as LGBTQ people represented on all of the census surveys moving forward. It's gonna take a lot of work to get there and we're not gonna get it right away. But pushing back and winning sometimes matters, even on small things. Second is to lessen the damage. So a number of things have happened over the last two years, we found out about them, we mobilized people and the administration backed off a little bit. Still not great in a number of circumstances but they did back off. The third strategy that we're employing is to slow things down. Kate talked about slowing down legal cases. We're doing the exact same thing. We are gumming up the wheels, we are slowing down the process, we are flooding them with comments which are required anytime they change a rule or a policy. And it is slowing some things down and it buys us time to build a voice against a change or look at other strategies where we can bolster a need for our community. Finally I think, these are not small matters and in fact just over the last two years we have found 900 opportunities. We call them opportunities. 900 opportunities for our community to push back on these changes. Some we've won, some we've slowed down, some we've lost. But 902 years, the way that we're able to do that is that we created a coalition called FedWatch. It is over 175 organizations and they're not just LGBTQ organizations but it is primarily focused on literally reading through their federal register. So others of us don't have to. We have people reading through the federal register every single day, finding out what the changes are, large or small, coming together to create strategies to push back and sending out action alerts. So sometimes you all will get emails from any number of our organizations saying this is happening, it's the comment period, please tell your story or a story of someone you know. If I were to ask you to do one of a handful of things that actually make a difference, please respond to those alerts, tell your story, tell someone else's story, flood them with stories because they have to look at them and they have to respond to them and it slows the process down. And in some cases it allows us to win, to not make a change. I do want to note the next time you might be seeing one of those is around the changing of the definition of gender that was leaked. It's called the HHS memo but it's much broader than that. It affects Department of Justice, Department of Education, Health and Human Services and possibly others. We haven't been able to get our hands on the memo yet, but we will. When you see that, it is absolutely critical that you share that with people you know and we push back on this. We've already seen with the wave of coming together of the last couple of weeks around this and we've already heard from inside the administration that they're getting more nervous about doing this. So it does work as nerdy as it is, it works. Thank you. And out of curiosity of those 170 organizations about how many are explicitly LGBTQ in their focus? Probably about 80 or 90. About a half. It's a cross movement, it's civil rights organizations, women's organizations, all sorts of social justice organizations. So it's a massive coalition showing up originally starting for LGBTQ issues but making the connections between all of our lives. That's especially exciting about that. Brett, going back to you. PRC works chiefly with folks affected by HIV and that remains a huge issue in our community especially among, but not exclusively, but especially among gay and by men and especially gay and by men or MSM of color. There's also a major initiative that's going on which I know you've been very deeply involved in on a regional level as well as nationally which goes under the label of getting to zero. Could you just talk a little bit about where that stands regionally and nationally and what you see right now as some of the principal challenges or focus areas in that initiative and more importantly, of course, in actually getting us to zero. God, you asked some difficult questions. Oh, you could talk about this in your sleep, I know you. I want to start off with something that is personal. It's something that I have been struggling with certainly for different times in my life more or less but really in the last couple of years and this is I'm going to tell quickly my personal story. I'm a kid of the 60s born in 64. I was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to a Jewish mother and a black father. So there is a story in and of itself and we can talk about that one later. But I got the opportunity to be loved, kissed, hugged, supported by a black face and a white face. And so I found value in both of them. The love superseded all of them. I bring that to this conversation because now I feel like we're at this kind of cultural precipice. A couple of stats that I'll throw out. A little over a million people in the United States living with HIV. The African American population around 12% and yet we make up 39% of the HIV cases. Here in lovely San Francisco, political, progressive, leaning left really about the causes, informed, participatory. We have about 16,000 people living with HIV. The vast majority of them people of color. 4% of the population makes up African Americans here in San Francisco. We also make up 36% of the homeless population. You see where I'm going with all of these disparities in a black African American report that just came out. Around asthma, HIV, high blood pressure, birth deaths, lowest life expectancy, lowest income, household income. We came in dead last. Let me throw in low high school graduation rates. African Americans, and I think to myself, San Francisco, 840,000 people, 7x7 square miles, an $11.2 billion budget with ways in which we're either deciding between light blue, medium blue, and dark blue, not really ready to get in our way. How do we have this? My question continues to reveal itself to me, and I'm worried. I'm worried that like George Orwell's Animal Farm, the animals set out to do something different than the humans, and all of a sudden, they recreated exactly what they were running from. What are the drivers that have us doing this in our sub-community? That's what I'm struggling with. We're thinking about getting to zero, which is zero deaths, zero new infections, zero stigma, and zero viral load. When we're talking about this big effort, it's about education, it's about expanded services, it's about prep, it's about early treatment, it's about making sure that people retain themselves into treatment and in care. We've done a great job until we get to the, it's like the L, the G, and the B, and then the T, and that's like the African American community. So where I'm struggling with this significant effort in San Francisco and nationally is I need for everyone to make sure that they make it a part of their conversation. It needs the political will and the community will that it had when it was a significant crisis and people were dying from it. And now that we've kind of stabilized so much of the population, which we need to have an honest conversation here, in the Caucasian community, it's stabilized. But when we start talking about the fringes of African Americans and Latinos and Asians and people of color, we somehow pivoted and we left it and moved on to something else because good was just good, good was good enough, and good can't be good enough. You have to find a way of knowing that if your brother or your sister is still struggling, if viral loads are still high and baby hunters point in this valley that those are your brothers and sisters and you still need to participate, be educated, have that conversation, advocate for them, write those checks. So this is my call to action for everybody who is here. And I know in so many ways I'm preaching to the choir because you're already there. I just encourage us to make sure that we're having these conversations as often as we can at the dinner table, at the lunch table at work, so that folks get an understanding that it isn't over for HIV. It may be over for you or it may be over for your circle of friends. You may have achieved all that you needed to do in stabilizing your life and moving it forward. But just know that for every one of you, there's somebody else who's struggling and it's that lower rust belt. I mean the lower southern belt that is struggling deeply right now around HIV and women of color, particularly trans women of color and so that's my encouragement to everybody to continue to have these conversations but we're doing great work. San Francisco has always led the way in terms of creating a model of care that was inclusive or often what we're now talking about is whole person care. I'm sure that PRC predominantly serves HIV positive individuals. We went through a double merger and now we serve basically half of people of our clients are HIV positive. Others are suffering from mental health issues and substance use issues. The same client that walked in a couple years ago just for HIV now is dealing with an opioid issue and through Baker places we serve them through our mental health and substance use issues. Many of our clients are struggling with PTSD or depression and we're serving that client too. The evolution of the disease has revealed itself and been around long enough that we're dealing with aging issues, we're dealing with mental health issues, and we're dealing with substance use issues and how can we find a way of talking about it in an integrated way so that it's not siloed funding that leads to siloed services, that leads to siloed thoughts and processes where we say that's them or what I call the othering. We can't other anymore because that is us. It is all about us. Those are a few of my thoughts around that. I know that as we continue to talk more about it I'm happy to share a little bit more about what we're doing at PRC in the Department of Public Health, but I needed to get that out because I'm watching this happen and I have to figure out how this very well-intentioned group of people called the LGBTQI movement is quietly and possibly benignly following the path of what we were running from for so much and for so long. Thank you, Brett. Thank you for sharing all of that from beginning to end and I'm going to want to circle back to some of that in a moment but I also want to get to Maria. And so Maria, thank you for coming here and being with us and outright, of course, looks at the globe, looks at the world and the worldwide movement for LGBTQI people. So on the global stage right now we've been seeing everything from an incredible wonderful event in India with the striking down of the infamous article 377 which has maybe you can talk about for just a sec but I'm not sure everybody will know what that is so wonderful historic things happening like that that affect more than a billion people directly to deepening repression from Indonesia to Tanzania to a great deal of reason to be worried about what's going to happen in Brazil and literally all around the globe. So at the risk of asking a completely simplistic question but mostly want to just give you an open field on this, are we going backward, are we going forward? Is it all at once? How do you and outright see kind of the state of things on a global stage right now? I mean I think we, I think for the foreseeable future and probably beyond, the answer to that question is going to be both. So we're making enormous progress in a place like India so the 377 was basically the British Empire criminalizing same-sex relations all over the world but the model law was the India section 377 and so it was struck down in September of this year in what will debate whether it was like the decision of the decade or the century. It impacts of course everyone in India currently 1.3 billion people and you know regardless of what percentage you want to claim are gay you know it's a lot of people it's also going to impact a lot of other countries in the same way that India had the model law that would then, I mean even in Singapore the law is 377a they didn't even come up with their own number and so it's going to impact Singapore, Sri Lanka, Kenya around the world striking down on this law in India is going to have ripple effects and so that's I mean that's an enormous step forward at the same time we of course who I'm personally from Sweden decriminalized same sex relations in 1944 the same year my mother was born and of course it didn't go from being criminal to being perfectly respectable it went from being criminal to just being sick and immoral and so of course even in India as you know people are celebrating this huge win there is still there's still a lot of fight that needs to happen and just as an aside I mean the decision in India and as many of my colleagues on this panel have said like you don't get to a win it's not a short term it's not a race like a 100 meter race like a win like that takes decades of organizing so and I mean I think that that perspective on any international work is necessary you need to know that you're in it for the long haul that's the only way that change can happen we were super excited outright when we saw in the 490 plus page verdict that actually piece of text that we wrote and submitted to one of the UN agencies made its way into the verdict like they really took information and legal judgments from around the world and from around a lot of different institutions and put into that verdict so all of this sort of this global movement or our global movements fighting it really does matter at the same time we see a huge backlash our communities are visible everywhere people are out there they're organizing increasingly I think governments are less concerned about what we do in our so-called bedrooms they're not as concerned about that anymore this is why we see like the case of Russia I'm sure many of you have heard of the anti-propaganda law like they basically they don't care if you have sex as long as no one knows about it it's worse to wear a rainbow sticker on your jacket than actually to have same sex relations as long as you're in private you know it doesn't really matter but if you try to spread it by showing up with a rainbow sticker you know horrible then they're going to clamp down and so this increased visibility this backlash results in violence I mean this week we've been very concerned with Tanzania because the regional commissioner of Dar es Salaam the capital of Tanzania decided to form a task force to root out the homosexuals of Dar es Salaam and the rest of Tanzania there's a lot of organizing behind the scenes a lot of UN agencies and other countries in private trying to put some pressure on Tanzania so actually the national government not that they are in any way LGBTIQ friendly but they actually over the weekend distance themselves from the regional commissioner and said that that was his personal initiative so it sort of we sort of relaxed a little bit and who knows it's not the crisis certainly isn't over many of our friends have actually relocated to other places some decided they needed to get out of the country but this backlash is real and it's happening in more countries than I can mention and I think I'll stop there for now so I want to shift now to pose kind of questions one or two questions depending on how we go with time because we are going to reserve at least 30 minutes for the Q&A and where I wanted to start picks up a little bit off of what Ray you were talking about as an example about a coalition of 170 different organizations and a little bit also Brett off of kind of what you were talking about and we hear frequently about how important it is for our organizations and our movement to be working in collaboration with and to be able to work in an intersectional way and to work with immigrant movements with community of color movements with women's movements with labor with all kinds of others and as is everything else it's undoubtedly it is a mixed bag one can point to areas where we're doing great and where we're doing poorly and I would like to ask each of you to share whatever thoughts you might have about where are some of the places that we're doing that really well and where is it that we really need to pay attention where we're falling particularly short and you can take that again you can talk about it nationally or you can talk about it on a regional level as you see fit because all of those apply to our lives so whoever wishes to begin I'll jump in I always find it interesting when there's a critique of being involved in a broad range of issues as an organization and getting pushback that says why are you doing that that's not an LGBTQ issue and my reaction is always like based on what evidence because LGBTQ people are everywhere we are in every demographic I mean it is in some ways more and it is also a sort of unicorn like existence that we occupy we are in every demographic every issue that impacts any human being impacts queer people and LGBT people we are in every strata of social life in every country and so to not treat any issue that degrades or stigmatizes or undermines the humanity of humans LGBT people are impacted by that and an issue where I feel like we've been doing better and in some cases as well is around immigration NCLR we launched our immigration project years and years ago really focused on asylum representing LGBTQ asylees who are seeking asylum in this country based on horrific persecution in their home countries and we represented asylees from all over the world and it helped us developing that expertise helped us build relationships with mainstream immigration rights organizations and figures and individuals and policy makers and so when Trump started clamping down and when it just is rhetoric even before this election was about stigmatizing and demonizing immigrants many of us came together to share strategies and to really unite forces and say oh no we're not going to let this happen and of course look it's hard when every apparatus of the government is arrayed against you to make a dent in that but it makes a difference to the people on the ground who are being targeted by this administration to feel like you speak up for them and to what Chris was talking about with this memo this floating this tweet that we're going to have sex on birth is the only way to determine someone's gender that was an all hands on deck moment not just in the LGBTQ community but in every strata of people who cared about the basic humanity of our brothers and sisters and I think that is what threw them off their game a little bit they really thought they could get away with that and when he attacks immigrants he's thinking he can get away with it and the only way we've been able to push them off not stop them entirely and understand people are still terrorized and I know this is a horrible moment for many people to live in but we by coming together across issues we really have stood in the breach and we have prevented him in many ways from doing his worst it's still I don't anyway want to discount how horrific it is for so many people who do not have the privilege of being in this room and have to worry about ice coming and knocking on their door and taking away a loved one but by coming together and showing force we really have been able to have our reach exceed our grasp and push back against some of the worst that this administration plans and I think for us anyway in the work we do on immigration I feel like that's where we've seen some real if not headway at least maybe having some bulwark against the worst that he has planned that's a great example if I can just jump in on that and tell two stories along the same line so this was in the first year of Trump so we got word that there was a small caravan of trans immigrants that were approaching the border about 17 folks and so what we were able to do is send our attorneys and our organizers to the border along with another national immigration law center we were able to partner with grassroots community based organizations on both sides of the border we partnered with churches on both sides of the border so that when that group of 17 trans folks crossed the border they crossed with a 500 page legal brief with rallies on both sides of the border cheering them on and with churches ready to receive them on the US side it's a small story and we were able to get them all out all of the trans women out of detention which is huge and so it's a small story and it took a huge lift but to me it speaks to the importance of working cross sectors with churches with grassroots organizations with legal organizations and the trans immigrants who knew that if they crossed together that there was more power and safety in crossing as a group than individually the other story that I'll share is similar also the conditions of the borders have gotten much much worse what we did with those 17 folks I don't know if it would be possible now honestly earlier this year there was a large caravan there's now a much larger caravan approaching the border but earlier this year there was another one and we knew that there was a group of trans folks who were part of that and so they were able to cross unfortunately one other woman who crossed as part of it Roxanna Hernandez she died in ICE detention after being there for not very long and so when that happened it was a moment of mobilization particularly amongst the trans movement particularly amongst LGBT immigration groups and so what came out of that that horrible story and we are still fighting for justice for her is that there was a convening of a hundred black and brown LGBT immigrant rights leaders from all across the country who came together in Albuquerque, New Mexico just a couple months ago literally not happened before and they came together to call for justice for Roxanna they came together to also call for the release of Udoka a gay Nigerian man who had been held in detention and who was recently freed and to me this spoke to just one the ways in which trans folks and LGBT immigrants of color one were able to hold leadership in such a powerful way and it was cross race and it was cross gender and it was cross sexuality and it was from folks all across the country and it really it was led by familiar trans queer liberation movement which is a Latinx group transgender law center and the black LGBT migrant project so it also was this moment where it really centered the communities who are most targeted and most vulnerable in this moment we saw the convening being led by black trans and gay migrants in a way that had not been seen before so there's also ways in which in this moment of real attack that we are continuing to build cross community, cross movement in ways that honestly have not been seen before I want to speak also to the second part of your question here in a sec I will say the relationships are deep they're not superficial between our movements and other movement leaders Sunday two Sundays ago seems like months ago two Sundays ago when we got word about this leaked memo because of the New York Times article around gender immediately immediately I and other leaders in LGBT organizations started getting texts emails and phone calls from non LGBT leaders of other organizations in other movements saying where do we show up tell us where we need to be and in fact one of the women who I don't think she slept for weeks Fatima Goss Graves who runs National Women's Law Center must have been exhausted and she showed up Monday morning at a press conference with us and spoke and we're doing the same on issues that most people don't say are LGBT issues but they are to the second part of your question it's kind of where can we work this better right I would say that the next phase of really where we need to be intentional about this is when we work on local and state ballot measures and legislation and I'll give you an example a couple years ago in Houston there was a repeal of a human rights ordinance it got framed as a trans bathroom issue that ordinance was a civil rights ordinance it was race gender, sex same thing with North Carolina that wasn't just about trans bathroom issues that was about whether or not you can file a lawsuit if you've been, if you've experienced discrimination as a person of color who is not LGBTQ that was whether or not a city or a town can pass a law that is any more favorable in civil rights than the state I think what we're looking at next is how do we make sure over a long period of time we are showing up we are building relationships and we're actually getting a jump start so that all of these all of these things that are coming up don't get framed as transgender people being the bad people that the state has to fear these laws and these policies affect a broad range of people who fight for all of the issues in those laws that affect our community and lift those up too but I do think that that's the next piece of our cross movement work as we're looking at the next decade Brad or Maria did you want to two areas that I think we have done a good job and one is really emerging and that is around LGBT and seniors somehow we all for those of us who have a little bit of Peter Pan syndrome in us never thought we were going to just get old and deal with old issues turns out we are and so there was a way in which with some great intentionality because there was an inevitability to it LGBTs had to start thinking about long term planning and who's going to care for me in my senior years and where are the services and the supports and the resources that I need and that are available to me and I've watched a beautiful group of conversations and services and resources coming together to serve the LGBT community particularly with seniors so I'm really encouraged by that partnership and then another one has always it has ebbed and flowed over the years and periodically Ray and Kate and Chris together with you soon Maria have had this intention deep intention and yet sometimes a struggle with finding ways of making sure that advocacy and policy organizations are informed by direct service organizations and direct service organizations are informed by policy and advocacy because at the end of the day your quality of life the quality of life that we have right now is based on what is on the books whether that's healthcare or whatever that may happen to be and so if you can hear in real time the conditions on the ground that are affecting the fullness of the LGBT community that informs your work often prioritizes it because sometimes there are subsets that really need more attention paid to it we've made an intention of having that conversation on a regular basis and I think that that cross sectionality and intersection it has been working and we have are a better movement for it than we have with it in years past I mean I think from my global work I have seen I mean it comes it's obvious you have to work with other movements and I think I don't know but maybe maybe the US has been lagging behind a little bit on this compared to movements LGBTIQ movements in other countries I mean it's obvious we need the allies and we need to be the allies so I think that that's for me it's like a good example I think is what we have seen we do a lot of work at the United Nations and of course under this administration it's been more challenging but I think what we have seen in the first you know in the first two years in some instances our access has been a little bit better than for some other organizations because maybe a little bit the gay issue is not quite as threatening as women's rights for example abortion is even more contentious than gay rights so I think we have been able to access a little bit more information in some situations than some of our colleagues in the women's rights movement and of course we run right back to them and talk to them and strategize together I mean it's like that is how we have to do this work we have to show up and you know they have to show up I mean I think an area where I don't see as quite as much crossover is maybe with the climate justice movement and for us and for me personally a wake up call has been the work that we are doing with LBTIQ activists from the Pacific Islands and some of the Caribbean Islands they are like we have to look at these issues too our countries are going to cease to exist due to climate change so I think that for us is something that we can definitely learn more we can show up more there last question for all of you as a group and I want to turn oh that's okay sorry we'll get to Q&A in just a moment I wanted to just ask you if we were to look down the pike five years so I'm actually looking past 2020 you know past 2019 past 2020 where do you see our movement in five years if you were to look into your own crystal ball where do you see our movement in five years I'm going to jump in just because I since we're making it all up to be optimistic there are bigger movements that are out there and they haven't come up by name and I wrote them down we need to call it out black lives matter me too movement matters never again with gun violence and I feel that in so many ways our movement the health the strength the robust way in which we can move in the world is predicated on how well we're partnering with these large larger movements and I hope that we pay attention to that because if we don't again we will move our agenda forward but we will move forward in a siloed way and so we have to think more broadly about that and that was to Kate's point earlier and to Ray's point of just really a coalition building the ways in which we have to build these coalitions so I would say our greatest opportunity in front of us is finding ways of partnering to come online and in the view and the zeitgeist and focus of our society and just building on that I mean I really do not feel like we have fully plumbed how powerful it is that we literally are everywhere it's not just a slogan and I just was listening earlier tonight to the Iranian American woman who won a house seat in or won a state senate seat in Florida and she talked about how she needed together the coalition that made that happen and she's not a lesbian identified woman herself but she included my district includes the pulse nightclub so I needed to I wanted to talk about issues of discrimination and justice and fairness for the LGBTQ community and then also gun violence and sensible gun laws and so I do think there is this way in which we in some ways some of us in the LGBT community are the last ones to think about all issues being LGBTQ issues and if we thought about all issues as LGBTQ issues we could show up we would show up in all these other movements we are the leadership of black lives matter started with three women who are queer identified so this is like this is how like I'm serious black women will save us I'm totally clear on that but we we actually have more power than we think by marginalizing ourselves as only LGBTQ and then there are only LGBTQ movements so I would like to see us five years from now being led by individuals queer and non-queer who bring us in and we bring them in to unite and really step into our power because I think you unite all of that and you know these fools that are in pushing the levers of power in government right now they're gone and so are the people who have been ignited by them they are marginal too they should be the marginal ones not people of color not poor people not queer people I mean I think from the if I look five years ahead globally I mean currently there are over 70 countries that criminalize same-sex relations and I mean that's just a basic measure and I think if we look five years ahead we're gonna be in the 60 something things are moving in enough places moving well maybe not moving they're being pushed in the right direction let's not kid ourselves it's not something that's automatically moving but our movements are pushing things in the right direction and that for me is that's what's gonna happen that's what I'm part of that's that is what we're fighting for and it's going to happen part of it it's gonna of course generate more backlash but we're gonna fight that too so I'm gonna start a little negative but I will get more positive so you know my first kind of response to that question and the first kind of what was in my heart is that more of my community will have been lost and I just think that's real and it's true and it has always been true and it is gonna be more so in this moment and over the next few years and depending on what we do depending on what we do as a community and a movement I also could see that along with that loss that in five years we will have trans organizations all across the country which we do now but that they will be strong they will be resourced they will be connected to each other and that they will continue to do everything they can to keep our folks safe and alive and that in doing so they will have build up community they will have built up infrastructure they will have built up allies and that we will actually be in a stronger place alongside the loss I'll just add briefly I am a glass half full gal most of the time and I would also reflect that had you asked us that question five years ago we probably would have been saying very different things than are the reality now so I don't like to predict that much I will say a lot of it depends right and no matter what happens we are gonna be cleaning up a lot the sheer magnitude of what is happening now to build a government reshape a country in a Christian world view in a nationalist world view in a white supremacist world view will have a lot of casualties and I am seeing the wear and tear on a lot of members of our community now with regular existential threats so the part of me that knows how resilient we are as a community knows that part of our work to do between now and five years from now and after that is to sustain each other and figure out how to pace ourselves and someone recently who used to run a gay men's chorus told me about the concept of I think he called it interval breathing where part of the choir sings while the other part is breathing and then they come back in but as an audience member you hear one tone and I feel like we are entering we have to enter this time of kind of interval breathing of like not everyone can show up all the time every day we cannot expect that of each other but that we can create partnerships both on an individual level but really on a kind of a systemic level so that five years from now there are enough of us who still have the energy to keep fighting because we've built where we got to now and even though a lot of it is being taken apart brick by brick we got the blueprints so we are going to rebuild it I have no doubt we will rebuild it I hope that that work gets to start a few years earlier than five years from now absolutely thank you all so I want to open up to people who have questions I will do my best to keep track of folks so please, yes, go ahead thank you for being here I've been rescued by some of you and that's how I am here I heard Brett Kavanaugh in some of these people in law school were kind of groomed into a direction so this is what I vision maybe 30 years from today that we will groom into law schools and we will have a black female trans Supreme Court judge amen so my question is this how are we going to help our students get there okay, they are in SROs so how are we going to help them finish what they need to finish that means that we have to stick together I was at Standing Rock speaking across roads and sticking together the whole world was there up against the black snake I saw it and I think it could happen thank you for being here thank you I want to say this is Kavanaugh came out to your point a very intentional system that has been invested in by the right the Heritage Foundation has existed for a very long time and they realized 20 years ago that the way they were going to remake the judiciary is by grooming law students and so they took law interns from colleges and law schools all over the country and put them up for free in apartments that were built in D.C. and then deployed them in branches of the government where they could take hold that's the strategy we really need to and then you go back even earlier when you are talking access to education these were privileged kids so early investments if we could actually give every parent who is struggling to raise their kids and read to them and provide time to them if we could give them each $40,000 a year just so they could focus on being the kind of parent that every kid deserves and the kind of parent they want to be but they can't because they are working four jobs that would change everything and then you build an infrastructure to get them well educated and to put them up and to put them in internships and to house them for free and to have a world view about what kind of country we want to live in and is founded in justice and security and safety and free from stigma and all of that but it's really about starting early and really making a commitment that this is generational other questions and I want to maybe take two or three questions at a time and then put them to the panel so please Sean I run up there I'm really frustrated by the increasingly disappearing Democratic coalition more and more voters are identifying as independent unions are shrinking we're not really seeing a growth in the Democratic and left kind of political establishment on the same thought the Democrats and political parties don't really build anything permanent they build toward a campaign they're like little rapid startups that arrive at election day then they shut down and go back to their corners so the political infrastructure isn't really building anything permanent that's what the Democrats do organizations do so there is no strategy there's barely a message from the Democrats to have an urban strategy a suburban strategy a rural strategy a western strategy the right had a southern strategy so why the left hasn't been able to create a long-term vision for how we pick up all of these western states what we care about the most are things that many people in this room could get behind things that Christians are supposed to care about there's a way to fracture them there's a way to invite them there's a way to build a coalition with them why is there no strategy coming from any coalition on the left for that kind of thing to bring those voters to the left it's not going to come from the Democrats so do we as a movement or in any of the circles you all sit in nationally to fracture that coalition and bring them to our side because it's not going to happen from the Democrats thank you other questions yes please the question that I had was a little bit about contesting power so I'm a little nervous also that it seems like a lot of the folks that we depend on especially in the US are on the Democratic side are on the left side so when we and increasingly the hyper partisanship and tribal politics in some of these areas I'm originally from Georgia now it's really encouraging to see that it's becoming a battleground state and that folks are mobilizing but it's just really innovating to see that when we don't have people who are amenable to our community in positions of leadership in an elected office we are really pardon the French fucked over right like we are in serious like crisis mode and one of the things that I was going to just like question about that is also how do we dismantle like structural sources of power especially like misinformation campaigns and how there's like on the right this conservative misinformation ecosystem that's basically a privatized propaganda like machine and so like now we're fighting with people and we don't even have it to be able to have a conversation and move people forward like politics have gotten to such an outrageous like point and where things are just like misinformation campaigns and like things like this so I find that to be a very difficult place to be organizing in especially when you're trying to have conversations with people and move them forward in a logical way they're just so plugged into like these kind of like what their political tribe is and how do we move past that and how do we deconstruct some of these sources of power right that the right has like for example Fox News and some of these other things to really everybody thinking like you know very very small thinking big one more question maybe to throw into the mix and we'll turn over yes please Hi Dimitri good to see everybody one of the questions that I had was around religious freedom it's a hot topic that actually hasn't come up once so I'm really surprised about that and I view it as one of the top threats to our freedoms right now particularly in things like adoption I mean I feel very luckily lucky being a gay man living in San Francisco in California where I know I'm protected but across our states that is not the case I was able to adopt with my husband but those freedoms are threatened and what are we doing about them so I would love to hear about a strategy around how we can defend and get in front of those issues before we're really in defensive mode okay thank you so I'm going to take those three for the moment and then I saw your hand and we'll get back to you and others so we had a question about frustration of the shrinking of democratic infrastructure that we used for bringing kind of the other side over to us and also another question that was around how do we attack and dismantle some of the structural sources of power that we see on the other side and those kind of actually go together really well and then maybe we can talk about the religious freedom question a little bit separately it's all intermixed but maybe a little separately so on the first couple of questions anybody want to offer so some thoughts about that big picture questions yes Brad I wrote down Auntie Maxine Waters because and I think we all are going to be in some way on a spectrum of how we need to approach this particular issue of this hyper vibartism that we have going on right now politically but I'm a big believer of I don't know that I'm going to spend lots of my time trying to convince you it's like going on a date and trying to convince somebody that you're the right guy my mother said don't go out looking for the right person go out being the right person and I feel like we have to figure out a way that our message is so appealing that we don't have to fight for folks to come over that they would want to come over so I believe that there is a lack of attention paid to a full degree of why you would want to be a Democrat or why you would want to be on this side rather than being on the right so I'm not spending a whole lot of time I'm like Maxine Waters with the half glasses like I don't have to listen to you I'm not going to listen to you I'm a little bit of a hilltop seeker so I'm headed there and I'm just going to stay there and I'm going to get across there so for those of us who are diplomatic I think that's great and we're there but we also need some warriors and some soldiers who are willing to fight the good fight I think that is a big issue for me but I firmly believe that we have to ourselves develop the appealing components of why you would want to be a part of either the Democratic Party or an independent who wants to be and be a part of the values that we're about rather than trying to convince folks because these folks many of them just don't want to be convinced it's about safety for them and about fear being fear based and if we can show that love really does and I know it sounds corny love and abundance always Trump's fear and I'm sorry to use Trump but it is true it just does that I think we can move the needle on it Anybody else? Kate? Well I mean those this is I'm no expert on you know political demographics and the answer specifically however I do think the thing that I was most encouraged by in the elections is new leadership I mean Beto O'Rourke came a lot closer than anyone ever thought he was going to come to defeat Ted Cruz Andrew Gillam came a lot closer to being Governor of Florida than anybody thought Stacey Abrams may still yet be Governor of Georgia Goddess willing Josh Harder, Josh Harder almost unceded in the Central Valley you know a toxic venal member of Congress and Steve King was unceded in Southern California thank God Loreen Underwood won in Chicago and nobody thought she was going to win as a black woman so they had the message they had the message that appealed across difference and you know they were they were very schooled I mean the Democrats finally I do feel like exercised some discipline around message this is the thing that's lovely about our progressive rainbow is that any time you want to say only talk about this and this because these are the most important things our response is fuck I'll talk about whatever I want to talk about I'm not going to listen to you the right says okay got it down did I say it exactly right should I say it this way did I do everything okay so it's intrinsic that we will not be as disciplined on message because we are who we are and we love that but when you have these young younger folks who can win and we're not expected to win they are show they're going to show the way to leadership to I think be able to lead more effectively in the future and have more discipline around those messages and take that playbook he got evangelicals to vote for him in Texas Josh Harder got Central Valley evangelicals to vote for him Stacy Abrams got evangelicals to vote for her in Georgia what did they do and how did they talk about themselves and as to this thing about the misinformation this is where I again I mean maybe this is not the exactly right political perspective to take but but we somebody has to take the rudder at the Twitter and at Facebook to say you are not going to be allowed to post here if your information is not verified and if you're trafficking messages of hate this is not that does not have to be a democracy they can stand on a street corner and say whatever they want but they're not entitled to be on sources like that and I do think we just have to take a much firmer hand that or have them go through some matrix and if they are really a human person yes you can say whatever you want to say but if there's this machine behind you you are not going to allow you on our platform so I want to invite anybody who might want to respond to the question also about religious freedom have Ray, Chris, Maria yes and thank you for saying it that way I talked about the Christian nation but yes it is something that a lot of organizations are spending a lot of time on and so I think there are a few things about this and it actually has to do with some of the things that have been spoken to the other set of questions which is one we and other organizations but particularly the task force we re-engineered our entire organizing department to be a faith based faith focused organizing department because we got our asses kicked on marriage because of the faith argument in the early years of marriage and we learned from that and we adapted and a lot of progressive people of faith got really mad that their God was being represented in a way that didn't reflect their morals or their values and what's been encouraging is that there are people of faith all across the country who are organizing to say my morals tell me that it is immoral to discriminate against someone that's right and just so you know kind of on a grassroots level people talking to each other about their faith being out about their faith I've heard so many LGBTQ people say it's much easier to come out as bi than it is to come out as Christian that shouldn't be where we are as a movement there's something in that right so it's people of faith talking to people of faith I think the other thing is we are very very good on the left at our heady arguments about policy versus policy policy versus policy our policy is better we have to shift the landscape to have a moral discussion there are people with whom I disagree just about everything as a policy matter but we both believe teenagers should not have shock treatment to try to change them for being gay they are against conversion therapy I'm against conversion therapy let's have a conversation that starts with that and then we'll see where we go so I think it's looking at and there's a bravery in that I think in because of this polarization I myself sometimes I'm afraid to have public conversations that aren't about okay you have to believe these 10 progressive things or you're the enemy right we've locked ourselves into this and if I believe 9 out of 10 or I have a capacity to work on 9 out of 10 let's still work on those together and I don't think you're the enemy because you don't have the time or energy or care to work on reproductive rights but you may have the we may cross over in other areas so I think it's looking at the political moment to be able to have those conversations in a way and I've talked to so many people who have said well I would really like to have this conversation but I'm afraid I'm going to get slammed for it online or in person and I think we as a movement because we are everywhere have a unique role to play in trying to be brave but it's not easy these days you had a question and then I see a hand there as well so can I just add two quick things I agree with all of that and I just came from I was just in Utah last week where I grew up, some of you know that grew up Mormon in Utah good girl gone bad and there was a good girl gone better so and the conference was at BYU and it's called BYU Conference and we have convened it with the NCAA and it's bringing together athletic directors and assistant athletic directors from Christian affiliated universities and colleges in conjunction with LGBTQ athletes at those colleges to have a conversation about how they can make their programs more inclusive we've done it four years in a row we have 60 people there and it is transformative and it is, it goes to this point across difference and recognizing these are people who many of them adhere to face where my sexual orientation is an abomination they don't talk about that in the room but you can tell it's a struggle but what they want and absolutely believe is that their LGBTQ athletes should be treated with respect and dignity and should be fully able to be out and who they are on their college campuses so that conversation gives me hope that we can make headway here and the other thing is I have not seen the number of bills I would have expected to see introduced and passed in the number of states that were threatening them I think part of it is that the Supreme Court slapped it down a little bit with the cake baker case in Colorado where they didn't give them a full win we may see more, I don't think it will be as bad as we originally thought it was going to be, I mean obviously we'll be prepared to sue but now we have a Supreme Court where we have to be really careful about that it could be difficult before it gets better before we come out the other end of it where a new generation of younger evangelicals care about climate change and care about human dignity and they don't care about who somebody has sex with but being at BYU last week and having this conference gave me hope that there are voices, older voices powerful voices within these denominations that say well no no no we need to treat people with respect and we shouldn't be engaging in discriminatory or harmful actions I think I saw a question there and I'll take another couple of questions so please yep coming right up my heart is racing and the adrenaline is flowing because I know I'm bringing up a topic that is very you know I didn't wear my bullet proof vest so I'm kind of scared here as a white privileged frat boy from the old from you know I'm 73 now so from the old days what I'm I'm not even noticing it so much is just feeling it in the conversations that happen it becomes a lot about us and them and the them and the us seems to be white men against the rest and I'm starting to feel in the conversations that white men are the same and they're looked at the same often so I just want to put a word in when I look at this which there's no white men up here well one but not on the panel but you don't count Roger not on the panel I there kind of seems to be a lacking to me in the conversations of reaching out to a large part of the population which is white men just because Trump is a president and Congress is mostly Republican doesn't mean that all white men feel that way about things and I've gone to meetings recently I went to a transgender discussion meeting where it was moderated by lesbian and I was sitting there as the only white man in the room and I said something about transgender people and I was called out because it's transgender persons and I went like if you hit on the allies that are trying to be out there that look like white men that are in Congress and Republican just because of my skin and being a male and whatever and we get pushed back at because of that it makes it difficult to be an ally and I understand that this is not something I haven't heard before but what I so what I will say about that is and that I know is an erosion of privilege and no one wants to see their privilege eroded and all I would say is be courageous in that moment and recognize that the erosion of your privilege is a level setting to make sure that other people can step into spaces don't feel shut down because people didn't feel like you used the right language use that take that as a learning moment and still lean into that clearly you're showing up in places as an ally and every white man here is showing up in places as an ally and every white man here cares about racial justice and the rights of transgender people and the rights of lesbians and women and the rights of women to be free from sexual harassment we know that when you come into these rooms so to the extent there is a correction or a challenging of you in any way that feels feels personal it's actually not personal it's really about trying to erode a white supremacist power structure that has existed for a very very long time and you have to be at the vanguard of eroding that because people of color and poor people and people who have been marginalized are not going to be able to erode it themselves we need your help in eroding it but you really need to commit to eroding it and that sometimes means there will be uncomfortable moments so that's all I'll say be a champion be courageous don't pull back step in well what I'll say to that and then we should move on to another question is I know that white people and particularly white gay men white lesbians as well particularly if you're poor particularly if your parents rejected you and haven't spoken to you in decades you have been marginalized you felt degraded you felt attacked you felt threatened maybe you've been physically harmed but it's never been because of your race we have white privilege those of us who are white we will suffer there's no doubt about that but we will never suffer because we're white but that's what boils up white supremacy is that power structure will never be attacked based on race but people of color face that every single day so it's really just understanding that privilege operates whether you want it or not and whether you suffer or not thank you and we have time for just one or two very quick questions I see a hand there and I see a hand there so I'm going to ask you to keep it tight it's a quick question and it was and I want to ask you to you mention people who choose not to vote maybe as a political statement and a friend of mine expressed that on Facebook that this was her choice and that no one can tell her that that's not a valid choice and yet there's and I honor that and at the same time there's this piece of me that's like yeah but if everyone like you voted people like Gillum and Abrams could be in the office and that does make a difference so I want to know maybe some ideas on how do you honor someone's choice because I do think it is one of those things that demand respect but at the same time I really those are people who already think the same way we just they don't think that their vote in fact they think abstaining makes a statement that will change the system so thank you and one more question here okay we're going to slip in two questions but asking you to you know yeah please go ahead thank you so much for being here I'm a professor and I run a Ph.D. program in human sexuality studies here in San Francisco and one of the things that I've noticed is that among generation Z we see later sexual debut so there are a lot of the originities that later on later dates right they kind of blame lots of things including these smartphones but also this idea that generation Z frequently identifies as sexual fluid not as LGBTQ in the alphabet suit so my question is really about generational organizing and whether or not and how your organizations are pulling in those folks I'm not down with this identity organizing but I'm really still interested in doing this cross organizational work or cross issue work so just maybe to speak a bit to that thank you and I think there was somebody back over there hi yes Kevin Franken I was a federal employee until two months into the Trump administration he fired me for being gay so I heard talk about how organizations are pulling back on federal litigation because of the judicial system so I'm curious what your organizations are willing to do to help those of us who are still fighting and not willing to go back into the closet thank you we have a question about voting one about generational organizing and thank you for sharing your personal story and about what folks are doing so I can jump in on the generational organizing because I think that this is a situation where there's something to be learned from the global movement because obviously international we talk about LGBTIQ but of course it's just an umbrella term it's like the Fafafine in the Pacific Islands they're not necessarily trans but we can't be I feel like it's important we can't use sort of these identity labels in such a strict way because it's like we need a common language and it's like I've worked a lot with getting governments on board in fighting globally for LGBTIQ rights and so as soon as I find that there is like a bit of resistance they often fall back on this well you know it's hard it's difficult it's not the same everywhere in the world it's not the same being a woman it's not the same everywhere in the world but we can still use the term woman and we sort of know what we mean and I think that that's an important approach don't think of it as like these defined exact labels that have to mean exactly the same thing and I think if you focus on the issues people can find a way to get involved that's my approach yeah of course because it's like I mean we talk about LGBTIQ issues but like the people and the groups that we work with they use a lot of and of course English is not their first language it's like you have to be inclusive people know if they belong in this umbrella or not yeah and I can just add quickly and really actually echoing that so we have a project in partnership with the GSA network called Truth which is a transgender non-conforming youth led organizing mobilizing kind of storytelling project that's national and and to your point I mean it's it's very like the folks who are part of that identify in like so many different ways right but they know that this is about their identity their ability to live their lives and to tell their stories and so I think it's just important to kind of have an open openness around it and just to also add like and this was a while ago and this would have been like I don't know 10-15 years ago in New York when we were first starting up one of the first trans people of color organizing projects when we would do like one of our largest events we just left like an open kind of line for people to identify gender and we would get like 75 different ways that people identified their gender you know so I think it's just important to be kind of expansive and open yeah any comments on the other questions whether it's one about voting and also the gentleman who shared about his recent experience as a former federal employee I'll say something about voting on the youth thing it's for us we orient our work grounded from treating people as whole people right and so like with our national conference we have a very very high percentage of the people who come are Gen Z sometimes with their parents and they come and they present they're coming with their school groups but they're coming because they're seeing their whole experience represented in some way or much of it at least and so and then they're bringing new language language will always be inadequate we'll never have enough letters right but they're bringing their own language and it's incredible because then it helps other people it resonates with people saying oh that yeah that feels like me so I think it's this kind of engagement I've not experienced what you're describing which is a lack of engagement or not wanting to be involved based and I don't want to change your words much but based on identity what I see is here here I am all of me I'm showing up with all of me deal with me and I want to be engaged and I want to lead on the voting thing I you know everybody's got their own motivation of course they can choose not to vote I have I'm a little judgy around that I will admit but but I actually and I'm also the parent of a teenager so I was reading this article about Gen Z and others who are coming into voting for their first time some of whom are saying well I'm not going to vote because I don't want to be disappointed or I'm not going to vote because I want to like stick it to the man or something and I thought it was a great part of this research that showed that like if you say to them they don't want you to vote then they want to vote right so like that's the they don't want us to vote there there is a systemic there it there is voter suppression is so intense in this country right now so I don't know I mean maybe that works for some that than others but and and what I'll say on the federal employment thing I mean I know that the administration rolled back protections in federal contracting for LGBTQ folks I was just saying to Ray I don't recall them rolling back the protections generally for federal workers and I might be wrong so what I want to do is just give you my card and smarter people at my office will figure out what if there's a claim here and what we can do and we'll at least get you a decent answer about if we can help and how I mean we're definitely willing to still litigate cases we want to be clear we're open for business and we're suing the fuck out of them so in every way we possibly can so yeah let's so let's I actually just in light of that we're still suing I just want to give credit to Chris and transgender law center they you sent out an email not long ago which I particularly liked and the title of it was still here still suing so I want to just pose sort of a you know lightning your last question to everybody here and that is that everybody here in this room by virtue of being here has made a statement as one of you was just saying before about what you care about and you care about this community and a lot of us express that in lots of different ways we volunteer and we do all kinds of things and one of the things we do often also is is to give money and a lot of us give money at the end of the year and so horizons as a philanthropic organization of course we want to encourage that kind of behavior and I know that lots of people in this room are very generous so from each of your perspectives if you were to speak to people as donors thinking about what they might do toward the end of this year in light of the world as it is now what might be one thought that you would ask people Joe to or suggest that people have in mind as they make their decisions and I'm just going to start as we began with with Brett and just work my way this way yeah I think it's also overwhelming for people that they don't know you know what to do you're frozen with just this onslaught of information and I think of it oftentimes as like a little Dutch and you just don't know where to jump in and how to get it going but once you're in you're in and so I've been using the starfish Joe for those of us who know the starfish where the guy was on the beach and there's about a million starfish that were on the beach the guy walks up and says and he's chucking them into the water and the guy says oh my god what are you doing there's like a million starfish on the beach you're not making a dent in the world and he picked up one and he threw it in and he goes I made a difference to that one so there's ways in which you can give give $25 and know that that $25 is really going to impact an organization and it allows us to leverage leverage is big remember in business you start with something small market it properly and you can create magnitudes of effect and impact in the world so start with something small like a $25 gift or take $100 and divide it up into four and just know that you're doing the right thing and that small amount that you just did really is impactful and it has great magnitude to it so Thank you Brett, Maria I mean I see a lot of our donors in the room so thank you very much for supporting us and for those of you who haven't thought about supporting global issues I know for some people it seems vast you know there's a lot of countries a lot of stuff going on in the world but I want to encourage you to have a global mindset as well and one of the reasons among many is that that's what the opposition is doing too alliance defending freedom they're not just fighting in Colorado or around cakes or whatever they're fighting around the world they're sending Kim Davis who well thankfully lost they're sending her on tour to other countries to talk about how persecuted she is so like we need to show up too like that's would be my encouragement think add global to whatever else you're doing thank you so my development director is working on the Stacey Abrams campaign right now so I can do this without her yelling at me so one if you live here in the Bay there's a number of organizations led by Black and Brown trans women Ella, Palo Trans Latina Transgender Intersex Justice Project St. James Infirmary and I really encourage folks to give to those orgs because even in the Bay some of our most targeted and vulnerable communities are really struggling and then I would say go to the trans justice funding project website trans justice funding project you can either give to them directly or they have a map that has mapped out all the trans organizations all across the country so these are orgs that like lead staff are operating out there their cars like if you are not from the Bay and want to give to where you're from your state your hometown there will be a trans org there and your $25 will go so far and mean so much to them thank you a couple things horizons and others did a survey to discover that very few members of our community give to our community so find a giving buddy or 10 or 100 but find someone who for whatever reason just hasn't taken the opportunity to give to an LGBTQ organization and I really I have some board members here and they hate when I say this I don't care which organization fund to your values fund local organizations fund people of color led organizations fund trans organizations they're all important and we are all part of the same pie but find some other people who haven't given and have a conversation with them about it and if and if they can give 25 bucks if they can give 25,000 great but bring others into the fold to support this movement because to Kate's point we're going to need it for the long hall and I want to say one more thing that Kate doesn't know I'm going to say and I don't think she's going to say it herself Kate's leaving National Center for Lesbian Rights which is very sad for all of us and unfortunately one thing that sometimes donors do when an executive director leaves as they go I'm going to wait to see what happens next before I write my check don't do that fund National Center for Lesbian Rights fund organizations that are going through leadership transitions they are a solid organization you wouldn't have done it yourself but it's true I wasn't going to do it myself but what else is there to say? Organizations and leaders like Kate have built organizations that will sustain the work of this movement for decades to come so don't slow down speed up and double down and put your money where your values are well thank you Ray thank you then what I'll say is since I don't have to do a pitch for NCLR what I what I will say is beyond is a little bit beyond the money and maybe pulling like 30,000 feet I know I've been on many panels with Chris and have heard him talk about how our trans brothers and sisters are suffering and many of them dying I've been on panels with Brett and heard this incredible discordance despicable as it is of the disparities between infections for white folks and black folks with HIV I've just met with folks from outright yesterday and I've known about right for many many years when it was Eagle Herc and understand how lethality that it is to be an openly LGBTQ person in many countries and I know that every day we wake up and there's some new fresh horror happening in this country and we woke up and saw it this morning so what I want to just say and remind us all is this is a tough moment it's a tough moment there's no doubt about it but you're here for a reason in this moment you have a purpose here you're not it's not an accident that you're born right now it's not an accident that you live through AIDS and help build organizations out of nothing it's not an accident that some of you suffered through Jim Crow and now have seen a long way to go but still a much different country it's not an accident that you're able to marry the person that you love which was unthinkable 20 years ago you're here because you're born for this moment so whether it's money whether it's volunteering whether it's having difficult conversations whether it's continuing to show up whether it hurts even when it stings a little bit that is your purpose to live through this moment and to be able to say 10 or 20 years from now when your kids or your grandkids or your neighbor kids or your nieces or nephews or any young person says to you holy shit that was terrible what did you do you're gonna have an answer that you're gonna be proud of and they're gonna be inspired by inspired by thank you Kate and I wanted to just conclude tonight by noting that this wraps up our Q series for the year many people know Horizons Foundation mostly for the grants that we make throughout the community and across the country and even some internationally as well but what we also do is we bring community together in lots of ways and in lots of places and one of the ways is through this Q series to look at a number of different topics in the year with this kind of panel for the last I don't know 12 years or so because the state of the movement is well and ever fresh topic it's always different it's always changing and we have the enormous enormous good fortune of being able to have such outstanding people as the folks who are here in front of us now I am deeply grateful to all of you because what it's going to take for us is for all of us to be present and we need money and we need organizing and we need vision and we need leadership and what we are seeing here is a great deal of leadership and so Brett and Maria and Chris and Ray and Kate thank you for being here tonight but more importantly thank you for everything that you do for our community and the inspirations that each of you are and I want to note especially and Ray you beat me a little bit to it but I did want to note that Kate has been perhaps our longest mainstay on this panel I think you were part of the very first panel we had which I believe was in the year about 2003 I wanted to say in 2003 I think that the in some ways the best state of the movement panel we ever had was the year what year was Lawrence I'm forgetting now it was 2003 okay that year we claimed full credit that they wanted to hand down the Lawrence decision the Supreme Court so that we could talk about it at our event but Kate has been a part of this event and has been such a leader in this movement and I know you're probably not going to go all that far but your run at NCLR has been absolutely extraordinary in history in the history of this movement and the impact that you have had in so many ways will be enduring and it is everywhere and I just want all of us to offer you and particularly everyone around the clock and finally in addition to this kind of tremendous leadership what the movement needs as you've heard repeatedly here and I think all of you know in your hearts already is all of you and all of the other people that you touch and that you inspire because this is a hard moment this is a difficult moment and as we heard two years ago on this panel right after the day after the 2016 election what we heard was you know what we've been in places like this before not exactly this place but we've been in hard places before any of the LGBTQ movement the civil rights movement and in so many other movements and we've made it to today and we're going to make it to another day and we are going to wind up with our movement where we want it to be and how where we have always deserved to be all along free and equal in this society and across the world so thank you all so very much and for everything that you do