In the News: San Francisco Magazine

 an excerpt from San Francisco Magazine's December Women in Power Issue  - See more at: http://www.modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/saluting-37-soldiers-of-social-change#sthash.rWFIoj0n.dpuf


One soundbyte from any presidential debate makes it clear: The country is divided as never before. From abortion to immigration to racial injustice, the clashes are fierce and the stakes are high. And if we are a society at war with itself, those pictured here are the battle-hardened commanders on the front lines. “There’s a historic consciousness in the Bay Area of the fights that have happened here,” says Celeste Faison, cofounder of the BlackOut Collective, an Oakland-based black activist group.

Within the past five years, the Bay Area has become ground zero not only for pervasive local issues like discrimination in tech and housing abuses but also for national causes like Black Lives Matter, transgender rights, and reproductive justice. Though these movements encompass all genders, an outsize number of those leading the charge are women. They organize grassroots and big-picture efforts, from advocating for groundbreaking legislation to teaching underprivileged kids to code.

Throughout the ranks, there’s the sense of a common goal. “Activists today are attracted to an intersectional framework,” says Samara Azam-Yu, co–executive director of the reproductive justice organization Access. “We’re not just about abortion or housing or immigration anymore. We’re interested in every issue and how they overlap.” The movements’ leaders include doctors, lawyers, doulas, engineers, pastors, and a self-professed “diva and screaming queen.” They’ve found strength in diversity, says Theresa Sparks, executive director of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission: “These people represent every element of our culture in San Francisco.” Whether taking to the streets or to social media, they’re shaping the future of our society.

One soundbyte from any presidential debate makes it clear: The country is divided as never before. From abortion to immigration to racial injustice, the clashes are fierce and the stakes are high. And if we are a society at war with itself, those pictured here are the battle-hardened commanders on the front lines. “There’s a historic consciousness in the Bay Area of the fights that have happened here,” says Celeste Faison, cofounder of the BlackOut Collective, an Oakland-based black activist group.
Within the past five years, the Bay Area has become ground zero not only for pervasive local issues like discrimination in tech and housing abuses but also for national causes like Black Lives Matter, transgender rights, and reproductive justice. Though these movements encompass all genders, an outsize number of those leading the charge are women. They organize grassroots and big-picture efforts, from advocating for groundbreaking legislation to teaching underprivileged kids to code.
Throughout the ranks, there’s the sense of a common goal. “Activists today are attracted to an intersectional framework,” says Samara Azam-Yu, co–executive director of the reproductive justice organization Access. “We’re not just about abortion or housing or immigration anymore. We’re interested in every issue and how they overlap.” The movements’ leaders include doctors, lawyers, doulas, engineers, pastors, and a self-professed “diva and screaming queen.” They’ve found strength in diversity, says Theresa Sparks, executive director of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission: “These people represent every element of our culture in San Francisco.” Whether taking to the streets or to social media, they’re shaping the future of our society.
- See more at: http://www.modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/saluting-37-soldiers-of-social-change#sthash.rWFIoj0n.dpuf

THE CAUSE: TRANSGENDER RIGHTS  “Fifteen years ago, a trans person couldn’t walk around the city without being the object of ridicule, discrimination, or violence. That’s different now. This year alone, San Francisco is contributing over $1.5 million to transgender programs. We’re doing more than any other city in the country.” —Theresa Sparks

Theresa Sparks, executive director, San Francisco Human Rights Commission
Before leading the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, Theresa Sparks served as CEO of Good Vibrations and then as a commissioner on the San Francisco Police Commission. "One common thread over the last 20 years is that I have the privilege of serving the good people of San Francisco,” says Sparks. “These positions have allowed me to give back to this great city a small amount of all it has given me." 

Janetta Johnson, executive director at the Transgender, Gender-Variant, and Intersex Justice Project
The TGI Justice Project serves low-income transgender women of color who are in prison, formerly incarcerated, or targeted by the police. Recently, Johnson survived three years in federal prison, and has dedicated herself to limiting the recidivism rate in the transgender community by developing new interventions and strategies.

Clair Farley, associate director of economic development at the San Francisco LGBT Center
At San Francisco's LGBT Center, Clair Farley helped build the nation’s first ever LGBT-specific economic development department from the ground up. The center has a small-business program for those interested in entrepreneurship, as well as employment services to connect LGBT individuals to employers in the Bay Area. “We try to look at our work holistically, with an emphasis on social and economic justice,” says Farley.

Rev. Megan Rohrer, pastor at Grace Lutheran Church
The first openly transgender Lutheran pastor ordained in the United States, Reverend Rohrer currently serves as executive director of Welcome, a nonprofit that has worked with San Francisco homeless since 1996. Many of those Welcome serves identify as LGBT, and Rohrer says the organization is teaming up with Project Homeless Connect to study the needs of LGBTQ people who are homeless. Through Welcome and ministerial work, Rohrer says she works “to use the power I have to advance the rights and basic survival needs of my kin in the LGBT community who continue to struggle to find affordable housing, sobriety support, educational opportunities, and jobs.”

JoAnne Keatley, director of the Center of Excellence for Transgender Health at UCSF
“I look for what’s fresh and current in the field of trans healthcare,” says JoAnne Keatley, director of the UCSF Center of Excellence for Transgender Health (CoD). She has developed numerous healthcare and service programs for the transgender community in San Francisco, as well as several federally funded research and HIV-prevention projects. During Keatley's tenure, the CoD has begun to explore access to gender-affirming healthcare on a national level.

Nikki Calma, program supervisor for Trans Thrive
Trans Thrive is a drop-in center by and for the transgender community in San Francisco. The center, a program of the Asian & Pacific Wellness Center, offers everything from HIV prevention to counseling and health services. “We use a holistic approach,” says Calma, aka Tita Aida. “We want to address the issues that people here immediately need: housing, employment, healthcare, social support, and HIV testing.”

Felicia Flames, transgender pioneer and activist
Better known as Felicia Flames, activist and icon Felicia Elizondo has been fighting for transgender rights for well over 50 years. “I’m a Mexican spitfire, a screaming queen, and a diva,” says Flames, a 29-year surveyor of AIDS and a Vietnam veteran. Flames, 69, participated in the Compton’s Cafeteria Riots of 1966, a turning point in the LGBT movement and one of the first recorded riots over violence against the transgender community. “The people who started the cafeteria riots and Stonewall were transgender people of color,” says Flames. “We need to remember who sacrificed their lives. We went through a lot to get where we are now.” 

- See more at: http://www.modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/saluting-37-soldiers-of-social-change#sthash.rWFIoj0n.dpuf

In the News: The Gaurdian

Transgender woman jailed for eight days sues Iowa hotel

Meagan Taylor jailed after hotel staff at the Drury Inn called police to report ‘men dressed like women’ were engaging in prostitution, ACLU complaint alleges

s hotel in Brentwood, Missouri. Photograph: Paul Sableman/flickr 
Lauren Gambino in New York 
Tuesday 10 November 2015 16.52 EST Last modified on Tuesday 10 November 2015 17.03 EST

A transgender woman was jailed for eight days after staff at the hotel where she was staying with a friend called the police to report two “men dressed like women” were engaging in prostitution, according to a complaint filed by the ACLU on Tuesday.

Last July, Meagan Taylor and her friend, both black transgender women, spent the night at the Drury Inn in West Des Moines, Iowa, on their way to Kansas City for a funeral. But Taylor ended up spending the next eight days in a county jail for possessing her hormone drugs without a copy of her prescription, according to the ACLU’s complaint.

After the women checked into their room, staff called police to report that they suspected the two hotel guests, described as “men dressed like women”, were engaging in prostitution, according to the lawsuit. The next morning, the women were woken up by loud bangs on the door.

The lawsuit alleges that the Drury Inn discriminated against Taylor based on her gender identity and race, a violation of state law which defines gender identity as “a gender-related identity of a person, regardless of the person’s assigned sex at birth”.

For Meagan, a stop at a hotel on the way to a funeral landed her in solitary confinement because she is black and transgender,” said Chase Strangio, attorney in the ACLU’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Project, in a statement. “This type of profiling of transgender women of color is all too common and is part of the cycle that results in 41% of black transgender women having been incarcerated at some point in their lives.”

In the complaint, Taylor describes her ordeal as “humiliating, scary and traumatizing”.

She said that the hotel staff were suspicious of her and her friend from the moment they arrived, casting “disgusted” glances their way and whispering about them as if they weren’t there. At one point, the front desk clerk asked to make a copy of Taylor’s ID card even though the hotel had already processed her payment, she says in the complaint. The ID reflected Taylor’s birth name and gender because she said that she could not afford to legally change her name and update her documents.

West Des Moines police said that they were notified of “two males dressed as females who checked into the Drury Inn”, and that the hotel staff expressed concern about “possible prostitution activity”.

When the police searched their hotel room the following morning, the found no evidence of prostitution. However, Taylor was arrested and charged with possessing her hormone pills without a copy of the prescription, as well as two other charges.

She spent eight days in Polk County jail, several of them in solitary confinement, before activists raised enough money to post bond.

All charges were later dropped.

“As a black trans woman, I am used to unfair and discriminatory treatment, but this was extra upsetting because we were paying customers at a hotel and on our way to a funeral,” Taylor, 23, wrote in a post published on the ACLU’s website. “I felt like I had no rights.”

The jail Taylor was held at did not have a policy for transgender people, Taylor described in the post.

When they did the pat down, they had a woman pat down my top half, but a man pat down my bottom half, as if I’m not one person but two,” she wrote of her experience.

She said, however, that the jail had made attempts to accommodate her while she was there and had contacted an LGBT organization for assistance. They have since begun the process of creating a policy for housing transgender inmates in the prison.

But at the time there was no such protocol, and as such she was placed in a medical unit away from the other women in the general population. There she was given access to a telephone and video conferencing, but said she felt isolated and lonely.

Local residents staged a small protest in support of Taylor outside the Drury Inn following news of her arrest. Pastor Megan Rohrer, who heads Welcome, a San Francisco-based LGBT outreach program, raised over $5,500 to cover Taylor’s $2,000 bond and for fines related to an earlier charge. The additional funds will be used to help Taylor pay for her name change and an ID that matches her preferred gender identity.

“When I came out as transgender, I expected I would experience some discrimination, but I didn’t know how strong it would be,” Taylor wrote. “When something bad happens, I try to think about things and sort out why they happened. When this all happened, I knew exactly what it was: the racial profiling, the transgender profiling, the harassment, the solitary confinement. I knew why it was happening, and I knew it wasn’t right.”

The Drury Inn did not respond to a request for comment.