U.S. Is More Like Panem Every Day

Activist San Diego Hosts Program on Income Inequality April 21, “Inequality for All” showing April 26

The last time in American history wealth and income were as unequal as they are now was in 1928, just before the Great Depression. According to UC Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez, U.S. income and wealth inequality have been steadily increasing since the 1970’s. In 2012 the top 1 percent of the U.S. population received nearly 22.5 percent of all pre-tax income, while the bottom 90 percent’s share dipped below half for the first time (49.6 percent). The last time U.S. income was so unequally distributed was in 1928, when the top 1 percent got 23.9 percent and the bottom 90 percent got 50.7.

As wealth and income become more unequal, and as opportunities to move up economically dwindle, the U.S. is starting to look ever more like Panem, the dystopia of Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games books and the films being made from them. A handful of people in the Capital live lavishly, eat heartily and give themselves drugs to throw up so they can keep eating, while working-class people struggle harder every year to pay an ever-higher cost of living on wages that are staying still or going down.

Some Americans, including members of the 1 percent themselves, think this is just fine. Kevin O’Leary, host of the hit TV show Shark Tank, responded to a recent report by the British charity Oxfam that the world’s richest 85 families have as much wealth as the lower 50 percent of the entire global population by saying, “It’s fantastic. And this is a great thing because it inspires everybody. They get the motivation to look up to the one percent and say, ‘I want to become one of those people. I am going to fight hard to get up to the top.’ This is fantastic news and of course I applaud it. What can be wrong with this?”

Others, like libertarian economist Tyler Cowen, say that growing inequality is inevitable and we’re just going to have to live with it. In his book The Great Stagnation, Cowen said America’s economic future is going to be a three-class division between a super-rich 1 percent, an increasingly impoverished 90 percent and a so-called “infoclass” of 9 percent of the population working jobs requiring heavy intellectual training and talent. Cowen argues that the only chance most Americans will have for upward mobility is to work their asses off to get out of the 90 percent and into that 9 percent “infoclass.”

Still other Americans believe that the growing inequality of wealth and income were caused by deliberate policies pursued by politicians increasingly in thrall to wealthy individual and corporate contributors. What has been done, they believe, can be undone — if the people who are suffering from increasing inequality come together and get active. Activist San Diego is presenting a program with four local activists with long histories battling inequality and working to enable all Americans to have basic economic security, including access to adequate food, shelter and health care. The event will take place Monday, April 21, 7 p.m. at the Joyce Beers Community Center, 3900 Vermont Street, just north of University Avenue in Hillcrest. The speakers are:

• FLOYD MORROW, former San Diego City Councilmember.

• SANDY NARANJO, staff member, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 135.

• TONY PÉREZ, Fight for 15 Campaign and Coalition for Labor and Community Solidarity.
• ROBERT NOTHOFF, Center on Policy Initiatives.

A representative of the Center on Policy Initiatives, a progressive think tank in San Diego, has also been invited.

The panelists will be discussing the following issues:

• Why is income inequality increasing in the U.S. and San Diego?

• Is this good or bad?

• What are the potential ramifications for economic growth and the existence of a middle class?

• What, if anything, can or should be done to reverse the growth of income inequality?

Also, Activist San Diego will be sponsoring a screening of the 2013 documentary Inequality for All, featuring former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. The screening will take place Saturday, April 26, 7 p.m. at the same location as the panel: the Joyce Beers Community Center, 3900 Vermont Street, just north of University Avenue in Hillcrest. In an unusual move, Reich and his producers have encouraged people to put on informal screenings of his film to build awareness of what can be done to fight back against increasing economic inequality.

“There is this popular misconception that the economy is kind of out there, it’s kind of natural forces that can’t be changed. They’re immutable. We all sort of work for this economy,” Reich told TV host Bill Moyers last September in an interview to promote his film. “But in reality, the economy is a set of rules. There’s no economy in the state of nature. There are rules about property and liability and anti-trust and bankruptcy and subsidies for certain things and taxes for certain things. … They determine economic outcomes. If we don’t like them, we can change the rules. If we had a democracy that was working as a democracy should be working, we could adapt the rules so that, for example, the gains of economic growth were more widely distributed without a sacrifice of efficiency or innovation.”

Trans* Community Celebrates a Big Victory

60 Rally in Hillcrest Feb. 24 as Attempt to Repeal Trans* Students’ Rights Bill Fails

by MARK GABRISH CONLAN

Copyright © 2014 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s Newsmagazine • All rights reserved

Respect Gender Pronouns

Jay and the Trans* Flag

Autumn Sandeen

Daniela

Putting Up the Trans* Flag

Lyn Gwidzak (center) with dog

Simon says …

Ezekiel Reis Burgin

Nemo

Group shot

Holly and Daniela

Overpass Light Brigade: “Trans* … ”

Overpass Light Brigade: “ … Power”

Trans* Children Deserve Love

Son of Fire

On February 24, the long wait for Transgender students in California and their allies ended. In 2013 the California state legislature had passed AB 1266, the School Success and Opportunity Act, which gives Trans* students in the state’s public schools the right to be treated as members of the gender they identify with, not the one into which they were born. Specifically, it allows Trans* students to use restrooms assigned to their gender of identification, and to compete in sports based on their perceived gender identity. But radical-rights groups like the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) and Pacific Justice Institute (PJI), which helped put California’s anti-marriage Proposition 8 on the ballot in 2008, mounted a referendum campaign to put the School Success and Opportunity Act before the state’s voters.

San Diego Trans* activists and their supporters, including SAME Alliance (formerly San Diego Alliance for Marriage Equality), Canvass for a Cause (CFAC) and Black and Pink San Diego, sponsored no fewer than three rallies to call public attention to the issue. The first took place on November 22, when the California Secretary of State’s office was expected to announce whether the radical Right had collected enough signatures to put AB 1266 on the ballot. Based on a sampling of the submitted petitions, they hadn’t, but they came close enough to demand a count of every single petition form. Trans* activists called a second rally January 11, in hopes the count would be finished by then and they would know whether the basic rights of Trans* students would go before the state’s voters.

The Secretary of State’s office didn’t have the count completed by January 11, but they announced that they’d issue a final ruling February 24. So the same group of local activists called another rally for that date, held like the January event at Sixth and University in Hillcrest, either to celebrate the failure of the referendum effort or launch the campaign to persuade California voters to support Trans* students’ rights. As things turned out, the event was a celebration; less than half an hour before its 5:30 start time, the Secretary of State’s office announced that the referendum against the School Success and Opportunity Act had fallen 20,000 signatures short of making it to the ballot.

Daniela, the Trans* activist who had spoken especially movingly at the first rally in November, was chosen to MC. “I wrote this before I knew what the ruling was,” she said, “but the fact that the opposition even tried to have a petition against this law brought about a lot of much-needed awareness about our community to the people. Without the opposition realizing it, they were planting seeds in the people’s minds and hearts that our community exists. We are here and we’re not going anywhere.”

According to Daniela, the opposition’s primary argument against the bill — that non-Trans* male students would use it as an excuse to use the girls’ restrooms and peep at them — “hasn’t happened once in the 10 years this policy has been in effect in Los Angeles.” She advised the non-Trans* people at the rally “how to be an awesome ally of the Trans* community: first, use your Transgender friend’s preferred gender pronoun. And make sure when you’re allowed to use their preferred gender pronoun because not all Trans* people are out to everybody. Call out transphobic language when you hear it. Don’t be silent. It plants a seed in their heads and brings awareness.”

As at the previous two rallies, the organizers set up an open mike but asked that only Transgender people use it. The next speaker identified herself as Sahaila, and said, “So often we hear our opposition talking in the name of ‘love,’ and in the name of God, but we see all of these divisions set up in society to hinder our love and connection towards one another. That’s not right. Although we are here to stand up for Transgender students and Trans* rights, it’s important to realize that the issue we are up against right now isn’t necessarily transphobia. Transphobia isn’t necessarily the root of our suffering.  Racism, misogyny and sexism aren’t the root of our issues. The pervading issue, the main thing that’s wrong here, is ignorance, fear and bigotry. We need to destroy this tree of ignorance from the root cause, right now.”

“I’ll be honest: I came here tonight expecting to have to give a speech about how we would have to bounce back from defeat,” said the next speaker, Transgender therapist Ezekiel Reis Burgin. “But that’s not the case. … Every year, every day, we are moving towards justice, towards equality, towards a better world. Burgin cited two Transgender heroines as especially powerful examples of the growing acceptance and opportunities for Trans* people: author Janet Mock, whose book Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love and So Much More became a New York Times best-seller; and actress Laverne Cox, who plays a Transwoman in the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black.

Burgin said he is currently writing two essays on Transgender issues for upcoming books. “One is a textbook on social issues and political practice,” he explained, “and my chapter is focused on Trans* communities — not the ‘LGBT’ [Queer] communities, Trans* communities. This is going to be taught to young social workers and therapists who are going to go out into the world. This is going to be one more brick in the wall against bigotry. They’re going to be learning that Trans* communities matter, that we’re real, that we’re not just the end of the ‘LGBT.’ We are actually here, different, vibrant, present and unique.”

The other book Burgin is contributing to, scheduled for publication in May, is Manning Up: Essays by Transsexual Men on Finding Brotherhood, Family and Themselves. “Again,” he said, “it’s just essay after essay of us telling our own stories and being the diverse, unique, vibrant people that we are. There’s not one Trans* narrative. You’ve seen that with Janet Mock, with Laverne Cox, with me, with everyone here. We’re all different. We’re all unique. We all have interests, not just Transness.” Burgin said that just by being out and about in the world, people like Mock, Cox and himself are advancing the cause of Trans* equality every day.

“I think we’re done with explaining ourselves and finding good places to go pee,” said Nemo, the final speaker — referencing the most basic human need addressed by the School Success and Opportunity Act. “We now have the option for a lot of Trans* youth to have that childhood a lot of us lacked: to be treated the way they want to be treated. Under our government, education is mandatory. For those of us who are studying history, we know how that’s been used. A big part of it has been assimilation and indoctrination. At the same time, as a Queer, education saved my life. It gave me a way of understanding things nobody around me was saying. It gave me a way of understanding that I’m a person, in a way nothing spiritual or social around me was saying.”

After about a half-hour’s worth of speechmaking, the local activists chanted various slogans upholding rights for Transgender people. At least one of the slogans — “Gender’s chosen, don’t you see? You can break the binary” — highlighted divisions within the Trans* movement between mostly older Transgender individuals who see themselves as men born in women’s bodies, or vice versa; and mostly younger people who are exploring gender identities that are between male and female. The “binary” — the idea that people are either male or female, and there is nothing in between — is taken for granted by most people, including many who identify as Transgender, but it’s increasingly under challenge by newer Trans* activists.

SAME Alliance Statement on the Sochi Olympics and the Fight for Queer Justice

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • for SAME Alliance, www.samealliance.com, e-mail info@samealliance.com

We, SAME Alliance of San Diego County, strongly condemn the International Olympic Committee (IOC)’s decision to hold the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, at a time when Russia’s government is mounting a massive campaign of repression not only against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people but against anyone who advocates for their rights or presents them in a positive way. We also condemn the IOC’s decision to hold the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, when half the world’s reported hate murders of Transgender people occur in Brazil. We call on the IOC never again to hold an Olympics in a country that does not guarantee full equal rights, including marriage equality, for its Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people.

We question the sincerity of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s pledge that no Lesbian, Gay or Bisexual people would be arrested or harassed during the Sochi Olympics. Already there has been at least one report of an Olympic security person harassing and detaining a spectator for holding a rainbow Pride flag. When both the Winter and Summer Olympics were held in Nazi Germany in 1936, Adolf Hitler made a similar pledge with regard to Jewish people participating in or witnessing the Games.

We call on all U.S. corporations involved in sponsoring the Sochi Olympics, including McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, to acknowledge the controversies surrounding the Games and stop advertising the Sochi Olympics as a worldwide celebration of sportsmanship and good will. We call on these companies to publicly oppose and condemn the harsh Russian laws targeting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people. We urge individuals to consider the unwillingness of such companies to consider the dark side of the Sochi Games when making their personal purchasing decisions.

We call on all Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender athletes participating in the Games to make public gestures of support for equal rights similar to those made by Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who publicly protested racial discrimination by raising their fists in the air during medal ceremonies in the 1968 Olympics.

We see the anti-LGBT legislation of the Russian government and the wanton murders of Transgender people in Brazil as just part of a worldwide campaign against the rights, and indeed against the very existence, of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people. In the U.S., Canada and most of Western Europe, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people are successfully struggling for expanded civil rights, including the right to marry. In the rest of the world — in Russia, Uganda, Nigeria, India and many other countries, including some with ostensibly democratic governments — Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people are fighting for their sheer survival against both government repression and the vengeance of private mobs. Even worse, many of these countries justify their legislative attacks on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people by saying they are defying the “loose” moral codes of the West — when in many cases it was Western powers, during the age of colonialism and outright imperialism, that imposed these laws on these countries in the first place. We pledge to support, in whatever ways we can, the struggles of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people in these countries against these laws.

Finally, we call on the IOC to allow Transgender athletes in future Olympics to compete in the gender with which they identify and be given the rights provided to California public school students by the recently passed AB 1266.

Submitted by Mark Gabrish Conlan • January 28, 2014

SAME Alliance is an open and democratically run grass-roots organization dedicated to Queer liberation and the struggle for social justice through activism, education and support for broader movements.

SAME Alliance Goals and Objectives include:

1) An end to all legal and extra-legal penalties for all sexual expression between consenting adults worldwide.

2) Extension of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to ban all discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.

3) Full legal recognition of all marriages and intimate relationships between consenting adults without regard to their biological or self-perceived gender.

4) Comprehensive immigration reform in the U.S., including a path to citizenship for all immigrants and the right of U.S. citizens in relationships with foreign nationals to sponsor their partners for immigration purposes.

5) Full protection for all workers who wish to organize into unions and bargain collectively with their employers, including immediate recognition of any union once it has enrolled a majority of the workers in a workplace or bargaining unit.

6) Immediate freedom and full exoneration for Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, John Kiriakou, Lynne Stewart and all other political prisoners in the so-called “war on terror,” and an end to all use of torture, deliberate targeting of civilians and drone strikes against civilian populations in the so-called “war on terror.”

More information is available at www.samealliance.com.

Transgender Day of Remembrance Draws Over 300

Somber Event Features March Through Hillcrest, Program to Honor Victims of Anti-Trans Violence

by MARK GABRISH CONLAN

Copyright © 2013 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s Newsmagazine • All rights reserved

At the Center, prior to the march

Lighting the candles for the march

“Vibes watchers” helped keep order

Leading the march with the banner

Marching

Carrying the Transgender flag

Candi Samples, reigning Imperial Court Empress

Holding the flag

A Sister of Perpetual Indulgence

Flying the Trans flag from the Pride flagpole

Leather leaders at the flag ceremony

The Blessing by the Sisters

Monica Helms

Todd Gloria

Todd starts the reading of the names

Volunteers lined up to read names

Kristin Beck

The altar set up to honor victims on the Day of Remembrance

“I don’t understand how this happens, and how we let it happen,” said self-described “warrior princess” Kristin Beck at the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance Wednesday, November 20 at the San Diego Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community Center. A veteran of the U.S. Navy’s elite SEAL Team 6 before she transitioned from male to female last year, Beck was speaking about the litany of names of over 65 Transgender people officially reported murdered throughout the world between November 2012 and November 2013. The names, read by volunteers from the audience (including this reporter) and punctuated by the solemn ringing of a bell after each one, are the centerpiece of the Day of Remembrance.

Day of Remembrance events occur throughout the world. People who want to put one on download the list of victims by logging on to the official Web site at http://www.transgenderdor.org/memorializing-2013 and organizing a public ceremony including the reading of names. “The event is held in November to honor Rita Hester, whose murder on November 28, 1998 kicked off the ‘Remembering Our Dead’ Web project and a San Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999,” the site explains. “Rita Hester’s murder — like most anti-Transgender murder cases — has yet to be solved.”

Though organizers of the San Diego event said they would be honoring as many as 101 victims, the official list at the Day of Remembrance Web site contained 65 names. Of these, 33 — more than half — were killed in Brazil, which tallies with other statistics. According to the Trans Murder Monitoring Project in Europe, of the 265 known murders of Trans people worldwide between November 2011 and October 2012, 126 took place in Brazil. The country with the next highest number of victims in the 2013 Day of Remembrance list was the United States, at 15, followed by Mexico (six), Turkey (three), Malaysia (two) and Colombia, Guyana, Venezuela, Honduras, Jamaica and France (one each).

The ways in which the victims of anti-Transgender violence were killed makes for even grimmer reading. Of the 65 victims listed on the site, 26 were shot, 17 were stabbed, 13 were beaten either with fists or blunt objects, seven were suffocated or strangled, four were burned, four were bound, four were stoned, three were beheaded, two were drowned, two were run over by cars or trucks, and one each was scalped, tortured, dismembered, hanged or thrown off a bridge. The cause of death of one victim, “Maiara” Castro da Silva of Porto Velho, Rondônia, Brazil, is unknown because her body was dumped, and by the time it was discovered it was in such an advanced state of decomposition it was impossible to tell how she died.

Those numbers add up to more than 65 because many of the victims were attacked in multiple ways. Perhaps the most shocking case on the list was that of Evon Young, age 22, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who was tied up, beaten with fists and other objects, choked with a chain, suffocated with a bag taped over his head, shot, set on fire and thrown into a dumpster. Cemia “CeCe” Dove, 23, of Cleveland, Ohio was stabbed multiple times, tied with a rope to a block of concrete and thrown into a pond. Dwayne Jones, 16, of Jamaica was beaten, stabbed, shot and run over by a car. The sheer viciousness of these crimes and the mix of murder methods suggests the combination of hate and fear motivating their perpetrators, their desire to be as brutal as possible and to vent their anger out on their hapless victims as extensively as they could.

The Day of Remembrance in San Diego consisted of a march that began and ended at the Center at 6 p.m. and was originally scheduled to loop through Hillcrest to Fifth and University, then return. The march leaders moved the line at a fast clip but instructed the marchers to stay on the sidewalks and obey all traffic signals, which slowed things down so much the turnaround took place several blocks earlier than scheduled. The rush was due to the need to get back to the Center by 7 for the formal program in the Center’s large auditorium, which featured an extended blessing by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and an appearance by San Diego City Council president and acting mayor Todd Gloria.

Apologizing for coming late to the event — “I’ve got citywide responsibilities these days,” he said — Gloria called on Lesbians, Gay men and Bisexuals to do more to support their Transgender brothers and sisters. “To the extent that the kind of violence that we are memorializing today is acceptable in some communities, it comes from the fact that we do not do enough to support our Transgender brothers and sisters,” Gloria said. “The fact that you are here tonight sends a strong signal that we do not support hate and violence against those in our community — our community — and we will stand up against it. When the unthinkable happens, we will remember those who are lost.”

Another featured speaker was Transgender activist Monica Helms, who designed the Transgender Pride flag — a series of alternating stripes of pink, blue and white — and who displayed the prototype during her talk. “The reason I created this was because the person who created the Bisexual pride flag said the Trans community should have a flag of their own,” Helms recalled. “I tried to figure out what I should do, and it hit me one morning exactly what it should be. The light blue is the traditional color for baby boys, pink is the traditional color for baby girls, and the white in the middle is for those who are undefined or neutral gender; those who feel they are either both genders or neither gender; and those who are transitioning.” Helms also boasted that, no matter how the flag is flown, its pattern is the same.

Helms spoke with a sense of pride in how far her creation has reached and in how many places it’s been flown. “Today I saw a picture of the Equality House that’s in front of Westboro Baptist Church [pastured by anti-Queer minister Fred Phelps], and they had painted it the Trans flag colors,” Helms said. “I’ve seen this flag flown in Pride parades in Finland, Serbia, Turkey, Taiwan and all kinds of other places in the world. I’m just flabbergasted that this turned out the way it did. I’m very honored and humbled that all of you have accepted it as our flag.” As part of the Day of Remembrance ceremony, the rainbow flag that usually flies from the Pride flagpole at University and Normal was briefly taken down and replaced by the Trans flag, which was then lowered and folded, military-style, and used as part of a memorial altar during the program at the Center.

“Injustice anywhere in the world is a threat to justice for all of us,” said Kristin Beck at the beginning of her presentation — paraphrasing the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “I look up on this board, and I look at the names, and I look at what’s happening to my brothers and sisters. I just weep, man. I’m just really torn up. As a veteran, I’ve lost a lot of my brothers and sisters in combat. But we were in combat. These are just young, innocent girls and boys. One was a 13-year-old. I don’t understand how this happens, and how we can let it happen.”

Transpeople Organize Rally Supporting AB 1266

Anti-Discrimination Bill Threatened by Radical-Right Referendum

by MARK GABRISH CONLAN

Copyright © 2013 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s Newsmagazine • All rights reserved

Alfie flies Trans flag at rally

“Support Trans youth”

James (center) & Cathy Mendonça (right)

Cathy with the “Black & Pink” banner

Crowd

James

Daniela

Trey (center)

“Binary thinking is obsolete”

Alfie Padilla

The Sister

“Trans children deserve love”

Ezekiel Reis Burgin

Flag bearer

The “spiral hug” that ended the event

Braving darkness, cold, the threat and — briefly — the reality of rain, 60 Transgender people and their supporters turned out in front of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Flag at University Avenue and Normal Street in Hillcrest Friday, November 22 for a rally in support of AB 1266. Also known as the California Success and Opportunity Act, this is a bill the California legislature passed this summer, and Governor Jerry Brown signed into law August 17, which would add to state law protecting public school students from discrimination the following: “A pupil shall be permitted to participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions, and use facilities consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil’s records.”

Though the bill nowhere uses the term “Transgender,” nor does it specify that the “facilities” it mentions include school restrooms, most of the opposition has focused on the alleged “danger” of allowing students to use restrooms based on their sense of their own gender rather than their biological organs. “No 13-year-old girls should have to have the continued apprehension of a boy seeing them naked in the locker room,” said Brad Dacus of the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI), one of the groups currently organizing a referendum campaign to give the state’s voters a chance to decide whether or not to allow AB 1266 to take effect.

James, an activist with Canvass for a Cause (CFAC) and Black and Pink San Diego — two of the groups, along with SAME Alliance, that sponsored the November 22 event — MC’d the rally and explained the importance of beating back the referendum. “Already one of the most vulnerable communities as far as bullying and houselessness,” James explained, “Trans youth are now literally being driven to suicide and harassment by Transphobic organizations like the Pacific Justice Institute and the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). … Over the past few months, they have been running a media smear campaign against Trans youth and lying to get this issue on the ballot.”

The AB 1266 support rally was held November 22 because that was supposed to be the deadline by which the California Secretary of State’s office would be certifying whether the referendum made it to the ballot or not. But that was still up in the air when the rally took place. James announced that the referendum sponsors had turned in 547,984 signatures — short of the 620,000 they claimed in their press releases — and need 504,000 valid signatures to put the issue before voters.

Signatures can be invalidated for several reasons — the signer is either not eligible to vote or not registered at their current address, or the signature was illegible or didn’t contain enough information to verify whether the person was registered or not — and what the Secretary of State usually does it select some of the petitions at random, check them against voter registration records, calculate what percent of the signatures on the petitions they did check were valid, and apply that to the total. If there’s a near-miss, sponsors can ask for the time-consuming process of validating all the petitions, not just a sample. Given the tightness of the margin, 92 percent of the signatures on the anti-AB 1266 petitions would have to be valid to put the referendum on the ballot. That’s higher than usual, but not unachievable.

James said one purpose of the rally was to get people to sign pledge cards promising to be part of the campaign against the referendum if it makes it to the ballot, and to continue to defend AB 1266 if the referendum fails but the opponents keep trying to sink it. “There is a Plan B to Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) not being successful in getting AB 1266 to qualify for a referendum: it’s file a federal lawsuit,” states a post on the Transadvocate Web site, http://www.transadvocate.com. “And it appears that they’re ‘ambulance chasing’ for another Jane Doe to bully: they’re asking for potential plaintiffs to contact them.”

“We are up against organizations with ridiculous amounts of money,” James said. “I like to say they have a whole lot of dollars but not a lot of sense. But what we have is spirit and people power, which is a whole hell of a lot more than what any dollar can do. We need you to volunteer so we can counteract the negative media storm … the anti-Trans are pushing onto the public. We need to have face-to-face conversations and voter outreach to make sure everyone understands that this bill supports our youth.”

Rally organizers invited a few speakers and then opened the mikes for everyone who wanted to address the crowd — but they stipulated that only Transgender people would be allowed to speak at the event. The idea was to bring forward people who aren’t usually heard in public venues and allow Transgender people to speak for themselves instead of having Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual or straight supporters speak on their behalf. “I’ve never done anything like this in my life,” said Daniela, one of the first speakers. “I’ve given talks at schools, but I’ve never actually talked at a rally, so this is pretty exciting.”

After thanking the crowd for coming out despite the bad weather, Daniela said, “I’m really excited about AB 1266. It’s really awesome, because we are one step towards being more equal. But I would like to say that I really feel that none of us are equal unless all of us are equal. … Sometimes I personally don’t feel like I’m a strong, independent woman. Sometimes I feel like I’m being discriminated against. Sometimes I feel like I’m being harassed, especially when I’m kicked out of restrooms or I’m denied health care. A lot of people deny my gender identity. It’s tough. But right now at this moment, I definitely feel like a strong, independent woman. Because I am very strong, I am very independent, and I am very woman.”

Another speaker, Trey, recalled his own traumas coming out as Transgender in high school. “I sent my teacher an e-mail, actually,” Trey said. “I was under the naïve impression that being Transgender is no big deal. … I asked her to use the right pronoun and the right name, and she was more or less supportive. But it’s not just your teacher you have to worry about. It’s also the rest of the staff and the students. And I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one here who, when faced with public restrooms, feels panicked.”

Trey said his ability to function at school dropped when the supportive teacher “was removed from her job” and “replaced with another teacher who did not respect my pronouns and did not use my proper name. So while I was at school, I had either to avoid using the restroom or to use the women’s room, which made me feel like I was taking a massive step backwards.… If I had had the support then that I do now, I really would have had a lot smoother transition, and I would be a lot more at peace with my mental health now.”

Alfie Padilla, who unlike Daniela is an old hand at speaking at political events, used her turn to rally the crowd and call on them to get as “fired up” as the opponents of AB 1266. “See how many crazy people signed that petition?” she said. “That’s not good, not good. The opposition, they’ve not only got millions of dollars, they’ve also got a lot of churches in their pocket, which is not good. … One crazy church got 46,000 signatures alone. These people drove hours and hours to get these petitions in. Some people drove up to five hours just to go drop off these petitions to take Transgender kids’ rights away. I can think of much better things to do with five hours than taking Transgender kids’ rights away! Let me tell you, these people are active. And we need to be just as active. Actually, we need to be a little more active.”

According to Alfie, AB 1266 is important not just to middle school and high school students but “all the way down from kindergarten to 12^th grade. There are elementary school kids who need a place to pee! People need a place to pee! Jesus. Not only that, be all know how bad the bullying can get in the restrooms. You want to know what I did? I skipped! Because it’s awful. You know what I wanted? An education. And I didn’t really get it, because I skipped. And that’s what we really need to avoid. I read something today that one in six Transgender students drop out, and that’s three times more than the average dropout rate.”

Alfie also said that it wasn’t just “straight conservative people” who signed the referendum against AB 1266. “Part of the LGBT [Queer] community signed that petition!” she said. “We can all try to act like that didn’t happen, but it totally did. As I always like to say, there’s ‘G’ really big over here, and then ‘L,’ and ‘B’ over here, and then the ‘T’ is like somewhere really small, like over on another page. It’s like a different font. It’s a little like a comic strip, and this is serious. It’s like real life! So keep these conversations going. Keep it up. Keep it on Facebook, if you do that. Blog it. Keep it people’s mouths, because this fight has just begun.”

“I’m one of the older people in the community,” said an unidentified speaker in the nun’s-habit drag of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. “Back in the early 1990’s there was a TV show called Ally McBeal, and they only had one fricking bathroom! Anybody could use it. I don’t understand why people are worried over where people poop. … If you’ve felt uncomfortable for years, and now you accept who you are and need to poop in the ‘other’ bathroom, then you should poop there, because everybody poops, and should feel comfortable doing it. It’s a normal biological function.”

“We are in the heart of the Queerest area of San Diego, right? And I see a problem,” said Ezekiel Reis Burgin, a counselor who works with Transgender and Queer people and can be reached through the Web site www.socialjusticehealing.com. “There is Gossip Grill right there, and how many people are in there right now drinking their homoerotic drinks and eating their homoerotic food — I don’t know if any of you guys have read their menu, but they’re pretty homoerotic — but they don’t give a shit! They don’t give a shit about what’s going on in the Trans community! And that’s what we need to be doing. We need to be going to the Gossip Grills, to the Mo’s Café or whatever it’s called. We need to be reaching out to the community that supposedly includes us — but doesn’t — every day of the year.”

“Out of the bars, and into the streets!,” the crowd chanted in response — consciously or unconsciously echoing one of the earliest Queer liberation slogans from the 1970’s, when middle- and upper-class Gay men who frequented fancy bars thought themselves as distant from the Queer-rights struggles of the political radicals and gender outlaws that started the Queer liberation movement.

“No matter what happens with [AB 1266], our struggles are not over,” said James to wrap up the event. “Tonight is a call to action for us to talk to everyone we know and organize however we can to ensure and tackle issues for the Trans community: safe schools, housing and job discrimination, harassment and assault, and access to health care. Right now, we see that our youth need our support.”