How Queers Are Organizing For Health Care Reform
Since May of 2009 QEJ has been mobilizing queers from across the country to create a collective response to the current state of health care reform. A large part of this mobilization has been focusing on the inclusion of a public option within the health care reform bill. A public option that would be available to people most discriminated against in the health care system is necessary, and immigrants, people of color, and LGBT people should organize to help save the public option in the current legislation.
Below is a list of steps and additional resources to use as a reference to create days of action in your community:
- Call your Senator! This number will connect you directly to your state’s senator: 1-877-264-HCAN (4226)
- USE THIS SCRIPT when you talk to them.
- Want to send a letter instead? USE THIS SAMPLE LETTER as a guide.
- Want the NUMBERS? READ this QUEER HEALTH CARE FACT SHEET QEJ created.
- Health Care Reform and the LGBT Community: This document outlines key concerns in regards to health care within the LGBTQ community (National Coalition for LGBT Health)
- Key Facts Race, Ethnicity and Medical Care: Want additional facts and figures? This report discusses health, health insurance coverage, access and quality of health care of racial and ethnic groups in the United States. (Kaiser Family Foundation)
More Progressive organizations working on health care reform:
Move On is a collective that strives to bring real Americans back into the political process. With 5 million members across America they work together to realize the progressive promise of our country. They are quite well known for their partnerships with celebrities and artists. They just released a new video satire of insurance companies featuring the comedian Will Ferrell. This organization hosts events across the country and facilitates community building through their website.
Health Care Now! is an education and advocacy organization that addresses the health insurance crisis in the U.S by advocating for the passage of national, single-payer healthcare legislation. By logging on to their website you can sign petitions, call your legislators and get updates on upcoming events across the country.
Mad As Hell Doctors is a group of doctors that are advocating for single-payer health care system. They are currently on a national RV tour so check out their website to view their itinerary.
Health Care for America Now (HCAN) is a national grassroots campaign of more than 1,000 organizations in 46 states representing 30 million people dedicated to winning quality, affordable health care we all can count on in 2009. They also have support from President Obama, Vice President Biden, and more than 190 Members of Congress. You can sign petitions, call your legislators and view numerous reports reviewing health care in the United States.
Here’s what progressive LGBT and people of color organizations are doing across the country around health care reform:
Service Employees International Union (SEIU) chapter in North Carolina put together a Day of Action around health care issues.
Triangle Foundation is Michigan’s foremost statewide, civil rights organization and is a leader in effective, innovative and visionary grassroots organizing and advocacy for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. They brought a contingent to a march and rally hosted by MoveOn.org and Health Care for America Now. Click here to view the press statement.
Family Equality Council works to ensure equality for LGBT families by building community, changing hearts and minds, and advocating social justice for all families. To ensure that our government provides accessible and culturally competent health care to all families they created the ad to the left (black and white version). They plan to submit the collected stories to congress.
Raising Women’s Voices is a national initiative working to make sure women’s voices are heard in the health reform debate and women’s concerns are addressed by policymakers developing national and state health reform plans. They have produced numerous publications including What women want vs what women get: Do current health reform proposals meet our needs? Check out their website for upcoming events in your area.
Women of Color United for Health Reform issued a document entitled Health Reform Imperatives for Women and Communities of Color in addition to a fact sheet.
QEJ Fall 2009 Newsletter
From Health Care to Welfare, HRC to Public TV, take a look at what Queers for Economic Justice is up to these days!
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October 26, 2009 QEJ on PBS’s In The Life HRC & Obama Speech Welfare Warriors Update 11/7: LGBTQ Law Conference Although social change on the ground is the central drive of QEJ’s work, legislative progress remains crucial to the movement’s struggle. A conference is being held at the New York Law School on November 7th to discuss legal issues pertinent to the LGBTGNC community. Former ACLU president Nadine Strossen will join our own Reina Gossett as speaker. Click to register. 12/3: QEJ’s Reina Gossett Honored Forty years ago, the LGBTGNC movement found a voice among the billy clubs at the Stonewall Inne, and we’ve never looked Back. The Stonewall Foundation, taking its name from the bar, is honoring Reina Gossett as part of the 40 Women Stonewall Honors celebration. Reina, a member of Welfare Warriors, has shown the compassion, drive and acumen needed to keep the movement moving forward. Congrats, Reina! Click for event details. |
QEJ on PBS’s In the Life PBS’s long-standing, award-winning LGBT broadcast, IN THE LIFE, will be featuring QEJ in its season premiere in October. The episode, entitled Living on the Margins, focuses on the economic struggles of those who are not strongly represented by the mainstream gay community for reasons of gender nonconformity, race, and/or class; in other words, the vast majority of us.Watch the Show. Obama’s Speech to HRC “When Obama delivered his ‘gay agenda’ speech to the well-fed, well-scrubbed mostly white crowd of gays and lesbians at the Human Rights Campaign’s Annual Dinner on Saturday night, anyone outside of the LGBT community would have assumed by the applause that the entire “gay community” is in agreement that access to serve in the military, gay marriage, and hate crimes legislation are our primary issues. But in reality, HRC’s political agenda is not what I want. It does not speak for me, nor for the lives of many other black, poor and working class LGBTGNC people.” Read the article! Welfare Warriors Update Shelter Project Triumphs QEJ Mobilizes for Health Reform |
Shelter Project Brings Theater of The Oppressed Workshop To Residents
On October 13th, QEJ’s monthly Know Your Rights Training gathered a stunning 60 people from support groups from 5 different shelters in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Unlike other “Know Your Rights” Workshops that have focused on legal issues, skills-building, and better accessing services, this month’s training focused on conflict resolution, but using Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed methods to explore these issues, led by Kayhan Irani from Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory and the idea for the workshop was conceived by our fall MSW Shelter intern, all the way from Denmark, Kris Vinther.
What is Theater of the Oppressed?
The Theater of the Oppressed, established in the early 1970s by Brazilian director and Workers’ Party (PT) activist Augusto Boal, is a form of popular theater, of, by, and for people engaged in the struggle for liberation. More specifically, it is a rehearsal theater designed for people who want to learn ways of fighting back against oppression in their daily lives. In the Theater of the Oppressed, oppression is defined, in part, as a power dynamic based on monologue rather than dialogue; a relation of domination and command that prohibits the oppressed from being who they are and from exercising their basic human rights. Accordingly, the Theater of the Oppressed is a participatory theater that fosters democratic and cooperative forms of interaction among participants. Theater is emphasized not as a spectacle but rather as a language designed to: 1) analyze and discuss problems of oppression and power; and 2) explore group solutions to these problems. This language is accessible to all.
Participants explored situations of conflict, violence, isolation and repression. The exercises give people a chance to express thoughts and feeling in a different way, using the body.The exercises created new perspectives on conflicts and conflict resolutions. All topics for further discussions in the support groups in the shelters.
Given the huge turnout, and expressed interest in doing more Theatre of the Oppressed by attendees, we will be working to do more workshops as part of our work in the shelter system with LGBTQ people. Since we are also preparing for a campaign to challenge violence in the sheters against LGBTQ folks, this workshop will act as a method to both organize queer and trans homeless people, but to also provide some real tools to deal with the violence and marginalization experienced by the homeless.
Million thanks to all the amazing participants for creating an energetic, joyful and powerful atmosphere with lots of laughter and action, - and thanks to all the great volunteers who helped make it all happen.
Welfare Justice Campaign Needs You!
Community Update - Welfare Justice Campaign
Thank you to everyone for all your support of the Welfare Justice Campaign! To date we have collected over 1,300 petitions and postcards. The campaign has received support from New York City elected officials including Council Person Letitia James, Council Person Rosie Mendez, and Council Speaker Christine Quinn.
All of your support has been critical to the campaign. We are excited to update that we recently received word from the Human Resources Administration that the new procedure should be approved by the end of the month. This is great news as we’ve been pressuring HRA for a projected approval date for months. After over five years of organizing by Trans and Gender Non Conforming communities in New York City we are weeks away from a major step towards winning Welfare Justice! for Trans and Gender Non Conforming people in New York City.
Please continue to build support for the campaign by collecting petitions and postcards, signing up as an endorser, and getting the word out. We are always looking for volunteers for the campaign, contact mvazquez@alp.org.
Thank you!
Audre Lorde Project/TransJustice, Housing Works, Queers for Economic Justice, Sylvia Rivera Law Project
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WHAT YOU CAN DO
Join us in continuing to pressure HRA and Support Justice for Trans and Gender Non Conforming people!
1) Endorse the Welfare Justice Campaign! We are calling on organizations and individuals to support Welfare Justice for Trans and Gender Non Conforming People by endorsing the campaign today. To endorse please submit the form on ALP’s website at Endorse. If you have any questions or need a hard copy of the endorsement form please email endorse@alp.org or call 718-596-0342 x 32.
2) Sign the e-petition and get others to sign. http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/endtransphobianow/
3) Collect HRA Postcards. We are also collecting signed postcards to send to HRA. You can either:
· Make your own copies - Download the HRA Postcard, print it, sign it, get others to sign and mail the signed postcards to TransJustice, ALP, 85 South Oxford Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217. Download postcard here
Or
· Request postcards - Contact Mya Vazquez at 718-596-0342 x 23 or mvazquez@alp.org , tell us how many you want and where to mail them to.
4) Get involved with the campaign. To volunteer with the campaign or get more information contact mvazquez@alp.org
TransJustice, a project of the Audre Lorde Project, is one of the first community organizing groups created by and for Trans and Gender Non-Conforming (TGNC) People of Color in New York City. The Audre Lorde Project is a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two-Spirit, Trans and Gender Non Conforming People of Color Community Organizer Center based in Brooklyn, New York.
Campaign Background
Since 2005, Trans and Gender Non-Conforming (TGNC) communities in New York City have been urging the Human Resources Administration (HRA) to address the rampant Transphobia, discrimination, and harassment that Trans and Gender Non-Conforming people in New York City face when seeking to access welfare/public assistance.
In June of 2008, a week before the Fourth Annual Trans Day of Action (annual March organized by TransJustice of the Audre Lorde Project) which was set to protest at HRA headquarters, HRA officials agreed to meet with TransJustice to hear community concerns. After this first meeting with HRA in the Fall of 2008, TransJustice formed a committee of organizations including the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, Housing Works, Queers for Economic Justice and others, to develop a HRA procedure to address transphobic discrimination at HRA. To date HRA has not approved this new procedure.
In 2005 the New York City Human Resources Administration and a Citizen Advisory Transgender Sub Committee developed Best Practice Protocols for Working With and Serving Trans and Gender Non Conforming Employees and Clients (the new procedure is based on this document), these protocols sat on the shelf for years and were never implemented nor adopted by HRA. This cannot happen again.
10/29: Act Queer! Teleconference on Drug War and Queers
Act Queer! Teleconference: The Drug War & Queer Communities
Queers for Economic Justice would like for you to join us on a national conference call on the drug war, and LGBTQ organizing strategies around these issues, as part of our ongoing monthly series on racial & economic justice issues that impact poor/low-income, people of color, disabled, LGBTQ communities.
Many studies show that LGBT people are disproportionately likely to use or abuse drugs, including alcohol. And many poor and low-income queer people, especially Black and Latino, come from communities that are specifically targeted by the War on Drugs within the US, and then find themselves policed and stopped & frisked for drugs and sex work in and around “gay” establishments.
Internationally the proliferation of opium and heroin is being used as a partial justification for the War in Afghanistan, and other drugs for ramping up the Drug War at the US/Mexico border here in the US. Despite the ways the Drug War shapes the lives of many queer communities, the issue of queers and drugs usually gets reduced to meth use among white gay men–which many reactionary activists and health officials have used to call for closing of bathouses and increased policing of bars and clubs.
QEJ is a partner of the International Drug Policy Reform Conference of the Drug Policy Alliance this November 12-14 in Albuquerque, NM, and want to invite you to this pre-conference call on the Drug War and the LGBT Community.
Please RSVP to this call. Supporting materials will be sent out in advance to those who RSVP.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
2pm-3:30pm EST/11am-12:30pm PST
Conference Call # (712) 432-0600
Password: 751219#
Presenters include:
gabriel sayegh, Drug Policy Alliance (Obama Administration & Drug Policy Reform)
Miss Major, Transgender, Gender-Variant, & Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP) (Transgender Prisoners, Sex Workers and the Drug War)
Kenyon Farrow, Queers for Economic Justice (The Drug War’s Impact on HIV/AIDS Epidemic in Black Gay Men)
Lynn Paltrow, National Advocates for Pregnant Women (Reproductive Justice and The Drug War)
This call is the 5th of a new monthly series called in our national coalition-building work called Act Queer! The purpose of the Act Queer! teleconference series is to connect grassroots LGBTQ, racial,and economic justice organizations with national queer and/or allied coalitions and organizations to share information and strategies on racial and economic justice issues. The first call on Healthcare and the LGBT Community, can be heard here. The second call on Police, Prisons, and Queer Organizing can be heard here.
QEJ Featured on PBS’ In The Life!
PBS’s long-standing, award-winning LGBT broadcast, IN THE LIFE, will be featuring QEJ in its season premiere in October. The episode, entitled Living on the Margins, focuses on the economic struggles of those who are not strongly represented by the mainstream gay community for reasons of gender nonconformity, race, and/or class; in other words, the vast majority of us.
We’re excited not only for the expanded awareness the program will provide, but also to be a part of such a professional, thoughtful, and above all moving program where many of our ally organizations in NYC are also featured including FIERCE, Gays and Lesbians of Bushwick Everywhere (GLOBE), Audre Lorde Project, and the Sylvia Rivera Law Project.
QEJ Mobilizes Queer Left on Health Care Reform
Back in May when we launched our Act Queer Monthly Teleconference Series on Racial & Economic Justice issues and the Queer Community, we had no idea that our first call on health care reform, was going to be one of the first of such calls open to the LGBT community to discuss the impact of the upcoming health care reform’s impact on queers around the country.
Just a few months later when the “townhall meetings” on health care reform happened in August, Interim Executive Director Kenyon Farrow began a series of conversations with Suzanne Pharr, long-time anti -right-wing strategist and member of Southerners on New Ground (SONG) and Rebecca Fox, Executive Director of the National Coalition on LGBT Health. Not only were we outraged at the racism being exhibited at the townhall meetings and dis-information campaign being waged by the Right, but also at the lack of a response from the LGBT community on this issue, given the impact of health care on LGBT folks.
We convened several national calls in August and September to strategize what to do. We ultimately decided to call for all queer organizations, large and small to organize their bases to call their Congressional Representatives to push for a public option in the final health care proposal, and to create or join existing progressive health care mobilizations happening around the country. We created and collected several resource materials for groups to use, including fact sheets, call script, sample letter, and got a convenient 800 number from Health Care for America now which will allow people to call toll-free to their representatives offices without having to know their local or D.C office numbers. We also requested that the National Equality March organizers include a speaker on the importance of healthcare reform to LGBTQ communities, a request that was declined.
Some of the groups that have been involved in this work include QEJ, The National Coalition on LGBT Health, Esperanza Peace & Justice Center, Astraea Foundation Movement Building Project, Gender JUST, Equality California’s Health & Human Services Network, National Gay & Lesbian Taskforce, Family Equality Foundation, Triangle Foundation, QueerToday.com,
We are also collecting some of the work that queer organizations and organizers are doing on the issue, that has not been very visible, so check out our page How Queers Are Mobilizing Around Health Care Reform!
Welfare Warriors: Organize, Educate, Research, Make Movies
The Welfare Warriors have been busy organizing, doing political education, research and making a movie!
Organizing
We continued our work in the Human Resources Administration (HRA) campaign advocating welfare justice for trans and gender nonconforming people. We joined Trans Justice, Housing Works, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, and others in meeting with an HRA deputy commissioner. Our goal was to push a policy against transphobia at HRA sites defending trans and gender nonconforming people’s access to vital services like public assistance. We are currently organizing a set of actions to confront the rampant discrimination at HRA and implement a procedure that would confront transphobia and discrimination.
In July, the Welfare Warriors held their three-week-long, intensive “Train the Trainers” organizing school, facilitated by Welfare Project consultant Kai Lumumba Barrow and hosted by the Brecht Forum. We met daily to develop strategies to prevent burn out, further our political analysis concerning systems of power, concretize plans to support wealth redistribution, and build our organization skills against racism, classism, ableism and gender oppression. Our methods included compelling workshops, role playing and popular education.
As part of Train the Trainers, Kai facilitated a week-long campaign training workshop aimed at stopping transphobic violence in the NYC shelter system. The workshop helped us focus our goals, obstacles and strategies of an 18 month campaign. The school culminated in a group writing of the Welfare Warriors Manifesto and a surprise soapbox speak-out at Sheridan Square Park marking the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion and drawing connections between the conditions low-income queer, trans and gender nonconforming people face today and the conditions that helped spark the Stonewall Rebellion. Watch the October 2009 Edition of PBS’s In The Life to see footage from the Train the Trainers Organizing School.
Political Education
In August the Welfare Project launched Connecting Communities. Part political education session and part town hall, Connecting Communities is an ongoing series of discussions making connections between the issues and experiences of people navigating the welfare system and other institutions. Our first meeting, planned by welfare project interns Ash Hammond, Mel King, as well as Welfare Warriors Dwayne Bibb and Sandie Green, addressed trans and queer reproductive justice issues in the welfare and prison systems.
Miss Major, a Stonewall veteran and organizing director of Transgender, Gender Variant, Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP) in California, Terry Boggis, Center Kids Director at the NYC LGBT Center, Mya Vasquez Trans Justice coordinator at Audre Lorde Project and Stephanie Rivera of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project all spoke to an audience of sixty about topics ranging from trans experiences in prisons, violence at the HRA office, and queer parenting to reproduction in the face of eugenics. For the event we also published article on Reproductive Justice for Queer and Trans Communities in the Prison System and the Welfare System written by Ash Hammond, which has drawn trans people into the discourse concerning reproductive justice, state-sanctioned reproductive violence, and how communities can fight back.
Research & Documentary
As part of polishing up our Welfare Warriors documentary, we’ve screened a rough cut and fine cut of the film, which captures our process and stories of our community members surviving violence, challenging injustice and building a sense of community over the last few years. We will also release the results of our 18 month research project through the documentary before disseminating our findings through a zine, report and a class at La Guardia Community College this coming November.
Shelter Project Builds Movement By Building Community
It was a great summer for the Shelter Project.
We completed five shelter groups. Each weekly session was originally scheduled to last an hour, but we often surpassed the schedule; our volunteers and interns just didn’t want to leave. The six week time frame was expanded by two weeks for the same reason, and we can’t seem to limit ourselves to eight weeks either. The program’s strength lies not only in its basic mission of helping the homeless community, but in honoring the humanity of its participants; their stories of homelessness, of heartbreak, of losing a partner to the system’s bureaucracy, of losing their families to ignorance are rendered all the more powerful when you realize that without QEJ, there would be no safe place to share them.
The residents also shared things they felt could be improved upon in the shelter system. Much of the attention was paid to conflict resolution, but there was also concern about the basic safety of each shelter. The group empowered the residents not only within themselves, but within a structure than can often seem massive and inhuman.
While organizing shelter residents to make changes in their individual shelters, a large part of our work is also to help build community. Homelessness in general can be very isolating, and shelter system does not encourage community. So not only do we work to build community among the shelter residents who come to our meetings, but we also work to bring them out of the shelters and into community spaces.
PRIDE PARADE
This past June, about 50 of our folks from the shelter system marched as the QEJ contingent for NYC’s Pride Parade.
In May we started organizing for Pride. The shelter residents were excited to actually march, many of whom had never attended the parade. Everyone wanted to help, and we decided on painting t-shirts for the parade. The shelter staff approved, and everyone got a taste of what Pride’s really about: fun and healing.
All of QEJ pitched in on the day of Pride. We drove vans and picked up folks, brought them to the staging area, shared a fantastic breakfast, and distributed Pride flags. As we neared 5th Avenue, the anticipation grew. This was their time. They hit that avenue, some of them on foot and some of them in a provided van and car, full of a very personal pride. They were members of a community first, and homeless a distant second.
Special thanks to those who helped with pride: Deanna for the van, Emily and Lyndsey for the car, Aine and Maija for the great breakfast, and every one of QEJ’s staff, volunteers, interns, and board members, old and new.
QEJ’s First Annual BBQ for LGBT Shelter Residents, Families & Allies
In September, we held our first QEJ picnic for the homeless. Welfare Warrior Dwayne Bibb and shelter volunteer Jessica Valdez advertised, organized the five shelters, and even got a few other recovery shelters involved. About sixty homeless queer folks cooked and ate together, learn to make soap and practice self-defense, and just had a good time together. Special thanks to those who helped with the picnic: Hsaio and Ronica and everyone from our community who showed up in support of the LGBTGNC homeless.
Shelter groups often get framed as therapy. And while the intimacy and recuperation found in the groups is remarkable, their greatest achievement has always been the unique, unbreakable bond these residents share. Not a bad way to start a movement.
Kenyon Farrow on Obama & Human Rights Campaign
On the eve of the National March for Equality, President Obama spoke to the Human Rights Campaign in Washington DC, and laid out his gay policy agenda for his adminstration. But does that agenda speak for the rest of us? Kenyon wrote an opinion piece for The Grio.com, proclaiming “HRC doesn’t speak for me.” He writes,
When Obama delivered his “gay agenda” speech to the well-fed, well-scrubbed mostly white crowd of gays and lesbians at the Human Rights Campaign’s Annual Dinner on Saturday night, anyone outside of the LGBT community would have assumed by the applause that the entire “gay community” is in agreement that access to serve in the military, gay marriage, and hate crimes legislation are our primary issues. But in reality, HRC’s political agenda is not what I want. It does not speak for me, nor for the lives of many other black, poor and working class LGBT people.
Given the fact that we’re in a long recession where hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost in almost every month of 2009, and national unemployment numbers are at nearly 10 percent, why are we not talking about the issues that most people are concerned about - health care and the economy - and their impact on the LGBT community? The truth is, for many people at that dinner who could afford the cheapest ticket at $250 a plate, jobs and wages are of little concern.
To read the rest of the article, go to THEGRIO.COM.