 Welcome to our interview show in which we interview LGBTQ guests who are important contributors to our community. We want to acknowledge that all things LGBTQ is produced at Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont, which is unceded Indigenous land. Enjoy the show. Hi, everybody. I'm here with a distinguished trio of editors and publishers of a new exciting publication coming out of Brooklyn called WMN Zine. We have with us Venezuelan designer artist Florencio Alvarado, American photographer Jeanette Spicer, and Swedish designer Sarah Duell. They are the Dykes Behind WMN, a publication of lesbian art and poetry. If I'm reading from their statement now, we have individually come to identify ourselves as lesbians in different ways and at various times, but found commonality between our love for WMN and interest in art and representation of marginalized communities. We're going to talk a little bit more about that later in the interview. When thinking of our own identifications, we realized that the term lesbian was in ways a signifier of the past and could even be considered radical. I consider it radical. This awareness sparked our inspiration and desire to gather and share work of other people identifying as lesbian in order to create a conversation around different terms of identification and how and why we use them. This scene is meant to provide a much needed space to show the intimacy, struggle, wonder, and everything in between of what it means to be a lesbian in this political climate and time. What an exciting project. Now we have three editors with us, and I'd like to give you a little more specific information about them individually because they're distinguished figures in their own rights. And then we'll start talking about the scene. So let's start with Sarah Duell, who is a Swedish designer who works at the intersection of art and graphic design with a focus on visual literacy and social justice. She also writes about the hidden politics of visual language. Florencia Alvarado is a Venezuelan visual artist, photographer, and designer based in Brooklyn. Everybody's based in Brooklyn, right? At this point? Yeah. Okay. Her work explores post-photography, feminism, the body, and the deconstruction of photography through digital art and collage. Jeanette Spicer is an American visual artist working with photography, video, and mixed media. Her work raises questions around intimacy, the lesbian gaze, physical and psychological boundaries, and the body as it relates to space. Welcome, everybody. Thank you. Very exciting. I have looked at the two issues that you've brought out, and I have to say they're very elegant when you mind showing them. Yeah. One is called Seasons of a Dyke, and the other show me what you got. I love those titles, but they're so elegant. When I see that you've labeled the publication a zine, my zine, I became confused because, of course, many people think of zines as stapled, mini-graphed manifestos that circulate on the street. But when I looked up the definition, I have discovered that the descriptor fits perfectly. A zine, according to Google, is a not-for-profit targeted audience with a targeted audience, limited editions, and it reflects the editor's vision. That corresponds with what you're doing, wouldn't you say? Absolutely. Yeah. You were founded in Brooklyn. Of course, my first question is, how did you happen to get together and decide to do this? Well, I think Sarah and I were first discussing having a lesbian publication, and just, we're really first discussing more the lack of the term lesbian and kind of mainstream culture and media and just conversations in the queer community. We feel like it's a term that people may be shy away from, especially since the term queer has regained a big following recently. We were just thinking about that as a concept and as lesbians and as artists, and how could we try to promote the term more, try to support people who identify as lesbian, and we're interested in other artists. We thought maybe we could create some sort of artistic platform, and then thinking about the fact that we do have a lot of privilege and we are living in a space that is filled with 8 million people and has a pretty big art platform and a lot of support here. We didn't want to just create another lesbian publication that focuses on maybe younger lesbians living in a city that's already has a huge art scene, so we wanted to think about how can we use our privilege to support other people who might not be in positions to be quite as supported as we might be artistically, and then I spoke, or we spoke, I don't really remember, with Florencia to see if she might be interested in joining as well as someone who's a photographer and a designer, so I thought it would be a nice sort of mix of different backgrounds and different visions and different artistic interests, and that's really how it started, and we would meet at different people's apartments and chat and have some dinner and go over how we want to get this thing started and what we're interested in focusing on, and then we kind of proceed that way like still to this day. COVID of course has created a little bit of you know challenge, but we usually do Zoom meetings or sometimes we will meet at a distance in person, so we're still really keeping up weekly or monthly meetings, and it's always kind of a focus on something different depending on what we're working on, but that's really how we got started and then that's our process. How do you solicit individual contributions? So we do, for each issue, we have a theme and within that theme we use that in public open calls that are usually spread through social media and through word of mouth. We've found that that is the most effective way, and yeah, so it's primarily through word of mouth, and we do some outreach to help like get some sense of yeah just to like if there's people that we look up to or that we know of who are in in the group that we are trying to solicit from, we will ask them if they want to contribute or if they know more people that might know might be interested in contributing. I discovered you because I'm Facebook friends with Jed and I've been following her work for years and I'm a great follower and you know she posted that she was being published in your and your zine and it was just a pleasure to discover you and read what you're up to and the lesbian focus the whole nine yards is great I think. Um let's talk about your limited edition, oh that's wonderful. But pardon me, I know I don't want to be too specific but why not. The other um Jeb photograph is of the founders of kitchen table women of color press and that really resonated with me, that's a good one too, they really resonated with me because I was at that conference where that picture was taken. I was so I was so excited, I know, I know. Pardon me, oh sorry here this is this is that one, that one it was a beautiful day in DC and there was such promise in that series that they brought out, I have an abiding interest in women in print as you can tell, but I love it. Let's talk about the limited editions if we could. You start your first issue sold out and then you had to do another run, is that correct? Yeah so we were um I think also part why we we've also used the word zine to describe it at first was um an attempt at modest, it was trying to be a little modest because we didn't really know where we would go and what the outcome would be um even though we knew that we wanted to make something that felt very valuable and special um because we have a fairly niche audience and so we started off, we actually started off when we first started talking to the printers saying oh we're gonna just print a hundred or maybe a hundred and fifty books and then um the way that we fund the books is through pre-sales so even before the the books were printed we asked people to order pre-order their copy and that is the way that we fund the publication um and but then we realized that there was so much interest that we had to print 200 but even after we printed the 200 we realized quickly that we were gonna sell out which we did and then we had to then we printed another 200 when we printed the second issue um that we started off at a 400. We had the support of a couple of um websites, instant grant accounts that pushed our followers um like AutoStraddle they and they they did an interview to us that it was really nice and we connect to a lot of people like followers through them um that was at the beginning right of our journey and then we also had another participation with another lesbian, digital, very popular platform online and that also gave us followers and that's that's a really easy way to connect with people who's interested in a target target account information so yes I mean because of our followers the people who supported that's how how we been doing the sales the yeah well it's so elegant that before I looked up the definition of zine I was thinking you know you might have called it journal and so forth but zine has a really populist flavor too that fits with your goals I believe um you publish twice a year roughly yes and you have theme issues the first issue kind of focused on rural lesbians and the um second issue show me what you got is lesbians of a certain age 55 or older um why theme issues and not you know are you wedded to theme issues for the rest of your publication history well I think the theme sort of is the term theme shows up differently in both of the issues um so the first issue the title seasons of a dyke um we've had an open call for people that lived in rural areas of the US or smaller cities but we also wanted to have a little bit of a theme um and that played out in the title so seasons of a dyke and people could sort of approach that in an open-ended way and any kind of seasonal inspiration or something they went through and during a certain time throughout a year or season was welcome and again we do visual art and we we call it visual art and poetry but we've expanded a little more I think into prose or different types of writing we do have you know a limit we can't put a short novel in there but we it doesn't just have to be poems so I think that that's a really nice thing and so I think for now we're pretty aligned with the theme because it sort of inspires the title which then inspires the design and it really I think is the foundation of what makes it interesting and artistic for us because we're doing the design but um I think it's pretty fun to come up with the title and the theme to sort of you know show me what you got you might see that in a store and you might not know at all what this is about um seasons of a dyke is maybe a little bit more forward but I think we'll probably play with words and play with design to see what makes sense for the issue so that it's seen in the best light and that really depends on the theme but yeah I think the themes are fundamental for us and very exciting too we have with the one that we're working right now we we knew that we we made lists at the beginning remember we used to we made a list with like lots of stuff that we were interested and there's so many things that need to be you know addressed and get more light and information and discussion so it's just it's it's it's good for us also the theme theme is very interesting because we learn we get to learn through every different specific things that we are committing we uh we learn and that's one of the most important and rich part of the process for us I think too well yourself supporting so would you mind telling us a little bit about how you raise funds to bring out each issue so as we mentioned before we we primarily do pre-sales um so as we are announcing the issues or we're closing up the issues we ask people to pre-order copies um but we have also just recently started um selling uh t-shirts as well as handkerchiefs um as a nod to the on our backs flagging handkerchiefs um in 18 different colors you can wear in your back pocket um or not you can do it you can wear you can use however you want in many ways you can use them in many ways and um so that has selling the books and selling the merchandise have helped us sustain ourselves um and the project and the audience can get purchase this merchandise by going to wmng.com correct and the whole lineup also in our instagram we are updating with news and collaborations with some other um platforms or stuff we have we've got an invitation to design like an special t-shirt recently so we are selling through also a t-shirt like a special design through them uh we are full of ideas wonderful so we are um always trying to update stuff in a website on social media just you can follow everyone can follow us there and get to know more of our little and big projects well the interview time is elapsing but before we go uh i'd like to ask each of you for a final message to our audience and before you start thank you so much for coming this has been great thank you thank you um yeah i think that one of our main since so much of our work is um relies on support like just followers and support a word of mouth and people talking about the project um just i want to encourage everyone who sees this to follow us on instagram follow our updates on our website um as we release the open call for the next issue to spread the word about that issue our open calls are always free so we when whoever fills the criteria so we set for each theme uh are welcome to apply we are also you know so welcome to email us if you have any questions all that information is on the website very good yeah we also have a website that we are uh like a feature like a kind of a blog that it's growing uh with collaborations from writers or interviews filmmakers we want to also grow in like we want to create an archive there like a digital archive um so that's another thing maybe sometimes uh not everyone fills on the open calls team but we are always uh accepting and very open to publish and take a look of poets writers to publish them in our website so that's another thing that we and also um we are starting to make um zoom talks artist talks through zoom uh which is we have we'll have one really soon and it's going to be really exciting with a photographer lola flash so that's all that's also very interesting we want to get more involved into more education educational stuff digitally i mean we assume because of the circumstances but it's also like a new way to connect and promote some other lesbians folks uh friends works jeannette yes uh so i'll probably just go off of what flancy and sarah already said which is um all of those things but also we have and the artist talk is on november 17th um so we have a way that you can register on our website it's the right on the front page it's super easy and so that'll be tuesday november 17th at five p.m eastern time with lola flash who's a lesbian photographer and um so the i guess the last thing that i'll say is that our next theme is going to be you know we don't have a title yet we haven't opened the open call but we are looking to work with people who identify as lesbian and as disabled who make visual art and poetry or prose pieces so for anyone listening if anyone identifies that way it's an international call or you know someone who might be interested we will be looking for people to submit very very soon within the next few weeks wonderful well editors and publishers of w m n zine thank you for joining us thank you for having us thank you and tonight we have preston allen who is the proud author of the coven son yes and we'll have your site up i mean we'll have your website up so people can go and order the book um and see the interview so let me tell you a little bit about preston he's a government licensed professional and author of the coven's son while a background of fantasy costume construction and acting for the world renowned vacation resort he is now adding author to his list of achievements preston graduated top of his class from palm beach state college in his free time he enjoys traveling foreign countries exploring interesting cuisine and visiting theme parks so welcome to the show preston thank you great to be here so you're a florida person have you lived there all your life or did you transplant there we came down to florida with my family when i was about 10 from pennsylvania and we've been here ever since okay and and you've been in the mosling in the lauderdale area and i was in south florida in west palm beach um until i was about 21 and then i moved up to orlando which is where i'm at right now right well that that accounts for the theme parks maybe so did you always think of yourself as a writer or is just something that sort of came to you later in life or on and off um when i was growing up i always had like interest in writing short stories and things like that um but i never really pursued anything um and there was a large gap where i really didn't do anything at all but definitely from around i'd say probably 10 to about 20 is when i really was interested in it and then you kind of just came back to it yeah i came back to it after um after a conversation with my husband who really pushed me to get this book out because i kind of started it when i was 17 and just never did anything with it yeah well it's out now and it sounds just incredibly uh interesting uh so you do you did fantasy costume construction yes and what was that about was that like uh for horror films or it was it was for competition um it was at the you know the cosplay conventions but back when i was doing it i i think honestly i might get some slack for this but now it's more of a popularity contest rather than it is about construction of the costume itself um but back when i did it it was really about hand-making garments and so i have i believe it's six awards um for construction of those costumes and what and what were they like costumes for they were from like comic books or Japanese anime or video games anime yes i have yeah um and i and you graduated from palm beach state college uh was your major in english or did you know it was cosmology really yes i'm a makeup artist and hairstylist great and that accounts for the costumes too right i mean yeah anything you know artistic related i was always into and i did all the wigs for the for the costumes to match the characters so is there an lgbtq theme in your book there is a lesbian character who is the owner of the metaphysical shop where they buy all their supplies um i wanted to incorporate that in there somewhere but i didn't want it to be a main focus of the story uh because i wanted kind of the main character to be who you want them to be so i kind of left that very neutral so this this would be considered fantasy yes fantasy and magical realism so i i i get the difference between like fantasy and science fiction is like um making up your own countries and you're all not that science fiction doesn't do that either but i'm always a little can you explain you know like what is the difference between science fiction and fantasy i mean i know it when i see it but it's kind of like in mine in my mind i feel science fiction is going to be more um more future-based or if it is current times it's more technologically advanced than what where we're currently at um whereas fantasy is more of like that magical uh you know fairies and mushrooms and and dragons and things like whereas the sci-fi would be more of like the outerworldly and scientific aspect of things yeah that's what i was you know like i was thinking you know it's it's it's kind of like a combination but i i think it's probably more science fiction i think of is like machinery and stuff too like yeah yeah and things like yeah and like um you know technological advancements from other planets and galaxies and things like that it's funny that you mentioned that because just yesterday i found that the book was actually categorized i think it was on um apple books it's categorized under science fiction fantasy and i had never seen my book under that category before well i guess you know it could probably fit into both but i i think of fantasy is kind of like creating spaces creating worlds and people within those worlds and you know doesn't necessarily be even recognizable as earth although it could be yeah yeah that is entirely possible mine is is definitely set in our world but it's kind of like a world no one else sees um so you continue you want to write another book is there going to be a series or is this yeah so the idea is going to be every other book will be a sequel to this one so the one i'm working on right now is going to be its own standalone unrelated to the coven sun and then based on the success of that we'll do a sequel to coven sun and ultimately um the goal is a trilogy for the coven sun so could you tell us a little bit about the book um before you read for us cool um so the book is basically it's about the first witch that has been born as a male in over 250 years um when you think of which you think of generally it's women women with the hats and in everything with the cloaks categorize men as warlocks which is actually historically inaccurate so warlock is actually a witch who has almost betrayed their coven and gone solo so it's technically not gendered and a lot of people call men warlocks even though that's incorrect um and so i wanted to kind of put the world of witches into a male perspective um rather than having it so much female dominated but in this world it is female dominated so they don't know what to do with the first witch that's born as a male huh and so that's that's basically what the theme of well that's really interesting i had no idea that you know i always think of male witches as warlocks and not as witches um so is that come from a like a Celtic tradition of you know or like why do we get the idea then that you know is that that was just women you know like i know the warlock thing stems from hollywood's kind of vision of what a male witch is um i actually don't know the history of them being just women off the top of my head i believe i've read it once or twice as to why um but no i don't actually know the answer to that yeah probably it's like just some historical thing that just got distorted more than likely you know and like and you know because when we think of witches we think of like i don't know witch burnings and you know yeah exactly yeah yeah okay so would you like to read us something sure i will read um the prologue that way you can get like a basic idea to set the pace of what the book's about the room was alive table shook lights swayed instrument spell the delivery nurse with long painted nails and sweat dripping from the tip of her nose steadied the wailing woman from falling off the gurney she lifted the arm rails and clicked them into place providing the laboring woman with something to hold on to giving her bruised handsome relief from the woman's vice like grip the other two nurses awaited further instruction from the doctor who steadied himself at the feet of the patient looking more like he was ready to catch a football than a baby hold the gurney steady he instructed one of them the floor trembled as the earthquake gained strength the door to the room swung open it was the father without a word he ran to the woman and wrapped his arm around her and wiped the dampness from her forehead plaster from the ceiling flaked onto the floor all around them nurse the doctor yelled as he reached for the platform of tools on wheels that had just rolled out of reach during the commotion the nurse hurried back to the table and put it into place the panting woman screamed for her hospital bed despite being comforted by the father of her baby she wanted a natural birth free of any forms of treatment that would ease her pain she wanted her baby untouched by pharmaceuticals that could be transferred into the child's body from her own she thought it selfish to want to numb the joys of childbirth but at this moment between heavy breathing shaking walls moving ceilings and excruciating pain that could only be described as being ripped in two she began to regret this decision one more push the nurse with the long seemingly out of code acrylic nails said urging the soon to be mother with one final blood curdling scream the woman pushed her baby completely out just as a blinding flash of lightning cracked across the sky from the window on the far end of the room there was a deafening pop as the cabinet just behind the doctor tore halfway from the wall and crashed onto the foot of the nurse holding the bed still she screamed in pain it's a boy the father the doctor said clearly relieved that the ordeal was over the first baby i've ever delivered during an earthquake he smiled obviously exhausted and shaken the father beamed with pride on seeing his new baby boy for the first time the doctor handed the woman her baby as the nurse tinkered with the fallen cabinet mustering the strength to move it from her colleague's foot what is this made of she questioned as she struggled to heave the cabinet off the doctor glanced back oh he said as he turned back to the parents the father smiled and shook the doctor's strong clammy hand the mother's long strawberry blonde hair was plastered to her forehead from sweat but a weight was lifted from her shoulders she held her baby in her arms knowing full well that the earthquake they had experienced was not natural it was her son wow that's awesome thank you well thank you for coming on the show we really appreciate it and please buy Preston's book it sounds awesome and we'll look forward to reading it and when you do your next book i hope you'll come on again oh great yes i'd love to hey thank you and good luck all right thank you so much thanks for having me bye bye bye bye bye okay we're off all right hey that was great you did a great job oh good thank you and it's gonna be on not this week but next so i will send you the um the video so you can put it around or do whatever you like with it um and we do put it up on the florida site which is where i think we saw you oh yeah and we put it all over the country so hopefully you know you'll get some play yeah and i'm certainly gonna get it i love fantasy and i like our also um and less science fiction for some reason i don't know why i'm not a big science fiction person either you know but i think i first started reading um fiction i mean uh fantasy with um some of the early women writers were doing some fantasy like what was the one where it was king author's court and morgan do you know about that it was written about in the perspective of morgan in king author's court and it was this whole fantasy world of of her and king author and um and i really enjoy that so i sort of got into fantasy then but anyway um good to see you yes thank you someday we'll be in florida again we hope uh my cousin lives in orlando okay and um we often we have friends who live in lauderdale so we could down there frequently oh yeah but how far is orlando from lauderdale it's a good distance it's probably about three hours do you haven't been gazing around your your place i know you had paul's and all that so that really brought everyone together and uh yeah they're that completely changed orlando like big time i can imagine and and like um i just read recently then another bar closed in orlando um i can't remember the name of it it was one of the oldest bars in florida oh yeah parliament house parliament house yes yeah they didn't make it that good is there any is there any other places to hang or is it kind of just yeah there's there's a the big place that kind of replaced pulse is called southern knights uh and that one just really replaced pulse they took all their bartenders in and all their um security guards and everything and they all work there now oh great okay presto we'll hang in there all right cooler weather yeah oh i can't wait please send some of the warmer stuff up here i can have it we have a friend who lives in um plantation yeah okay there was a lot of uh flooding down there oh yeah they got they got hit by that storm did you no not really because we're so centralized we just got a lot of rain but that's it well enjoy the amusement parks i haven't been to disney since i don't know my kids are really little oh wow well now it's not the time to go anyway so yeah take care all right thank you oh hi during the final days of the most recent legislative session there was a new group within the legislature that looked at coming together and actually doing some important work and it's the social equity caucus and this was part of their mission statement the mission of the social equity caucus is to focus deliberately on improving outcomes for marginalized peoples it is not enough to get rid of institutionalized inequality we aim to institutionalize equity and inclusivity so to talk to me talk with me about this caucus and how it's going to work and how we could get involved please help me welcome back to all things lgbtq representative emily cornhouser from windom 21 welcome emily thank you it's so nice to be here with you ish as much as we can these days and it's been a long time since you've joined us it has it has so i was gonna say first congratulations on your reelection thank you i understand you might have had some nominal opposition but first and foremost what was it like trying to do a campaign in the era of covet so it wasn't just doing a campaign in the era of covet which has its own serious complications it's all was also doing a campaign while we were legislating so usually the legislative session wraps up in april or may and then we have the whole summer and fall campaign but we were still legislating through september this year and so there are more ethical quandaries that get wrapped up in that process but also just you know we're a citizen legislature so many of us myself included had a job and then there's campaigning and legislating in a pandemic a lot of extra constituent service especially when unemployment insurance access and then for those of us with families at home we're at home with our entire family which has its blessings certainly but also takes up a lot more time it's you know the choice between a lunch meeting and a meet and lunch with the family it becomes a little more complex than sort of up and mumpiliar and then there's also what became the huge issue about childcare yes because all of the the resources to which you would traditionally turn were gone so i have a 15 year old and to be honest when he was home doing school rather than at school it actually saved he's very responsible and so like the house was cleaner and the dishes were more done and he would like prep dinner and stuff so it was actually i'm not in that category it was it's very nice when he's at home um but to get back to your original question the campaigning for me was really hard because i love campaigning i loved it so much more than i thought i would during my first campaign because it was about really like connecting to people and hearing their stories and learning my community and walking down the road knocking on doors that's to me like the heart of campaigning it's really intimate neighborhood parties and it's sitting on people's front steps with them and none of that was available um and so in some ways i ran what is a much more traditional campaign i sent out mail um it was much more detailed than i think campaign mail usually is i didn't send sort of those flashy postcards with the picture on them i sent a letter um with much more language and detail and then i sent a handwritten postcard i called people on the phone many people and um i hosted a zoom community conversation every saturday which i've always done um since the pandemic started and before that i did that in real life so that was and then like a lot of social media you know thrilling instagram posts compelling facebook i don't it's it was certainly a lot um emptier than it usually is i was gonna say what one of the brief conversations we were having before we started taping was how zoom during the session changed how decisions get made how information is gathered you know because you were there on zoom it was limited who could participate in those committee meetings how can you take some of the things that you were just just describing as part of your campaign and bring that with you when you go back into session in january because most likely this coming session is also going to be a zoom oriented process mm-hmm so there are a lot of real benefits to the zoom democracy in terms of transparency and access especially for folks like me who are living in braddleboro and i'm my constituents are two hours away from montpelier so all of our committee meetings were available on youtube and so i had constituents that would watch my committee meetings and then follow up with me via email afterwards and never would have been able to do that when we were in montpelier so that's a really incredible plus in access what's challenging is um and what i think you're more familiar with is really being in the state house and the level of access that gives you so while people still had the same ability to testify via zoom formally the circle of folks that were sitting in the committee room usually and watching testimony who technically weren't witnesses and didn't necessarily have an official voice would often catch people on the way out of the door or um often a lobbyist would raise an eyebrow to me during someone else's testimony to signal that they had another story to tell um those like smaller more intimate subtle interactions are really gone when a few people are on zoom together and everyone else is just watching via youtube and that's really hard so i've been thinking a lot about how we can make more of those open spaces with each other um you know the cafeteria you mentioned before we came on is a place that i would honestly it's a little overstimulating for me it's a little too much like the high school cafeteria i tend to not go in there very much it's so many people talking that i can't really focus on individual conversations um but i think we can make more open zoom spaces like that with each other um using technology so maybe that's just like every day from 12 30 to 130 there's one open zoom room that people can pop in and out of to see if they can find each other or maybe that's like an end of the day five o'clock like people can all go into a zoom room with a cup of tea or a drink so like do you compress at the end of the day and find each other um there's you know technology like slack that a lot of offices use to keep sort of you know ongoing different conversations going so there are opportunities for that um i was on a fairly large zoom call yesterday and i was texting with a friend of mine during the zoom call and a third person who is in that big zoom call texted us both and said i can see that you two are making each other smile and she's like noticed that the smiles were sort of like on a timed back and forth as if we were texting each other and so i think there are when we give into the technology a little bit i think there are more opportunities than we're than we think at first but it still is it's really hard and it's um in some ways more it's in ways that's a lot more vulnerable so you had also mentioned that in addition to you know all of the social networking that you were just referencing that you're also doing a weekly zoom presentation can you tell me that can you tell me about that yeah so it's called the Montpelier happy hour i started doing it with a local reporter named Olga Peters um she had a regular radio show in Brallo bro for a long time and right before right after i was elected she left that radio show and we had been planning on having me come on you know every two weeks or so um to just talk about politics and when she left that radio show we said well and she actually went to work for our local weekly the comments we said well maybe we should make our own thing and so we have a weekly show it's called the Montpelier happy hour because we originally would talk sort of at the end of the day on fridays and we have a signature cocktail and it was very exciting now it tends to be really early in the morning on fridays and so we toast our tea and coffee cups but um it was originally on community radio and then we turned into a podcast and since we've been in covid we started using zoom video and so we i put it up on my youtube page we do a facebook live event of it and we send it to our local community television station and they turn in into a tv show there so that's been really fun it's an hour long we talk about sort of the stories and theories behind legislation that's happening and try to like really unpack unpack them on pelier pulling the curtain back and this this is what the wizard has been up to mm-hmm okay so building on that tell me about the social equity caucus because looking at the narrative that i got sent via fair and impartial policing it's just something that our communities would be very interested in and there's already a work group in process mm-hmm yeah so the social equity caucus was started um about a year and a half ago by Kevin coach christie who's a rep from hurtford black man he's been the legislature for quite a long time he's on the judiciary committee and um i think he originally invited people who he knew identified as part of some marginalized population and so i don't know if i was invited for my Jewishness or my queerness i never asked him um because you're a woman or because i don't think it was because i'm a woman because it wasn't there were other women who were in invent i don't really know i never asked him um but he invited a collection of people and um began to sort of have conversations about what social really like integrating social equity into legislation would look like in the state house and then it's a new caucus so it was hard for it to find it's like right time every caucus has its time in the week um and it's all very those times have been the times for those caucuses for a very long time everyone knows that that's that caucus is time and it sounds ridiculous to anyone outside of the building but like culture and history is very important in the vermont state house so um but that's also one of the things that this group is trying to work to change exactly exactly so it was sort of funny to see it immediately come up against that like what's the right time what's the right place how do we run ourselves um and from the beginning coach christie who um has really like just owned this process so i feel a little bit funny telling the story without him but um from the beginning he was really clear that it was important for community members to have as much a seat at the table of this caucus as legislators and all of the caucuses have some degree of lobbyists who attend and inform the discussion but this was much more holistic and so when we went um into the pandemic and everything shut down the social equity caucus kept on meeting and many other caucuses didn't and so that was a really important part of its sort of strength and um energy and then you know parallel to the pandemic the murder of george floyd and the incredible increase in the degree of national attention going to black lives black lives matter um criminal justice reform violence the new jim crow all of that was really incredible and the amount of political pressure that legislators who had not been thinking about these issues as much um we're experiencing from their community really meant that we were at a turning point as a legislature around these issues and that was really really exciting and so the work of the social equity caucus became much much more important during that time to our peers and building off that i mean one of the conversations that i had started with you is so how did we get from us lgbtq plus communities actively involved in works such as this how would we access the caucus and how can we contribute to that so the meetings are every wednesday morning at eight a.m kevin coach christie um manages the mailing list and sends out invitations a little bit earlier in the week via zoom um folks are welcome to get in touch with me and i can forward their email if they don't want to do the googling and or i can send you the contact information after this whatever works um and then people can just attend and participate the definitely the emphasis right now is on race we have picked up other issues as well so when we were looking at um extending benefits to migrant labor um because of the federal benefits that was certainly an issue that came before the social equity caucus we um when outright vermont's funding was going to be cut um during the session social equities caucus came together to take a look at that and so issues when they come through um the social that are relevant the social equity caucus definitely picks up i mean this sounds like a very opportune time for the lgbtq plus communities to become actively engaged in a process such as this because dealing with institutionalized racism within our communities is something to which we've waited too long to really pay attention also hearing you describe how the the equity caucus looks at pieces of legislation i had wish i had known about this when they were doing the older vermont's bill because one of the issues that we had and we had presented to the committee was that when they do not identify a mandate to reaching out to underrepresented communities we get forgotten yes so you also have an incredible interest in total issues of equity looking at you know part of your campaign stuff talked about financial resources being equitable and sufficient equal access to healthcare education affordable housing you had served on ways and means during the last session you were hoping to go back onto ways and means i am i was assigned to commerce when i first got to the legislature and actually right at the beginning of the pandemic i was reassigned to ways and means and that's been really exciting um sort of right at the crux in some ways how we define households how we define families how we define beneficiaries i get really i get really excited about tax policy because i it's for me it's the crux of civilization like we come together and pool our resources for the greater good like that's that's the point of civilization right and so that's taxes and so talking about taxes in that way i think is really important and having someone who's looking at taxes from the perspective of marginalized communities i think is also really important so you know one piece in the governor's recent order about um you know people sticking to their households i was really struck by um how unnuanced the definite the implied definitions were of family and household and how many people get left out by that or just don't even think of their own lives in that way and i think that extends to how we tax social security benefits how we understand health insurance how we understand you know taxes related to health insurance payments um the emphasis on marriage all of that stuff becomes very important as vermonters age um as new vermonters come so it's fun we have a great deal of work to do thank you for writing for office for coming back as we're running out of time such a short show we it's 15 to 20 minute interviews we do three on on each show but one of the things that i would like to invite you to do invite you to participate in is i would like to have a conversation with several out legislators about the lgbtq plus communities in vermont's involvement in the political process and how we increase that let's do that and with that thank you for coming back thank you for the work you're doing and i'll be looking for you on zoom sounds good okay thank you for joining us we'll see you in two weeks but in the meantime resist