NORTHAMPTON, Mass.--Over 70 people rallied here on the steps of City Hall on May 3 to demand the passage of a transgender-inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would bar employment discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the United States.
Such discrimination against transgender people is legal in 38 states, including Massachusetts, while employment discrimination against lesbian, gay and bisexual people is legal in 29 states.
The rally was called by the Western Massachusetts chapter of Equality Across America (EAA), a grassroots network of LGBT civil rights activists determined to build a movement for full federal equality.
The rally focused on transgender inclusion because although protections for transgender people have been included in the most recent version of the bill, there are reports that the language specific to gender identity has been rewritten, and the updated version has yet to be released.
Organizers stressed the need to reach out to the 89 percent of the population who oppose employment discrimination to pressure Congress to stop stalling and pass ENDA now, and to challenge the right wing's tactic of opposing ENDA by shamelessly scapegoating transgender people.
Bet Power, a long-time transgender rights activist and founder of the East Coast FTM Group, pointed out, "We need to get the language of ENDA so we can be sure we're supporting a trans-inclusive [bill]." Power reminded the crowd of the scandal in 2007, when U.S. Rep. Barney Frank and the Human Rights Campaign broke their promise and supported a version of the bill that dropped protections for trans people.
Several other transgender activists spoke at the rally; many shared stories of times when they've been fired, not hired, or passed up for a promotion because of their gender identity.
"I'm the last one hired, the first one fired...I'm 45 years old, have over seven years of higher education, and I've never been promoted at a job. We deserve financial security," Trystan Dean, a lead organizer for the New England Trans United march and rally, said.
Lorelei McLaughlin, the reigning Miss Trans New England, added, "I'd go into a place with a 'help wanted' sign, give them my resume, and they wouldn't even look at it." McLaughlin shared that earlier in life, as a white man, she had no trouble getting jobs she was underqualified for, but more recently, has had to struggle to find work for which she is overqualified.
Power pointed out that he's "been fired for coming out about who I've slept with and for my gender identity...This is a very hard economic time, and we're suffering extreme poverty because of who we are."
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THE OUTRAGE of several speakers was palpable, as was the sense of urgency and a refusal to wait any longer for equal rights.
McLaughlin said, "we need a trans-inclusive ENDA now to secure basic human dignity."
Jessica St.-Claire, who said she is "proudly married to a transsexual," shouted: "It's the 21st century people, wake up...We're not in the Stone Age anymore! If they expect every American to pay taxes, they should get individual identity rights."
Her spouse, Elle St.-Clair, said, "Every day someone commits suicide, someone loses their job, parents are removed from their children, all on the basis of their gender expression. It's time to stop this."
Autumn Sandeen, a transgender Navy veteran who was arrested last month after she and others from GetEQUAL chained themselves to the White House fence in an act of civil disobedience to call for a repeal of "don't ask, don't tell," sent a solidarity statement from San Diego that was read at the rally:
Now it is not only time to redouble our efforts at lobbying our own Congresspeople into passing a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act, but it is also time for direct action. It is time for public rallies like this one; it is time for nonviolent civil disobedience.
We need to create a tension that tells our Congresspeople that there is an urgency of now in our push for our employment civil rights on a national level. When it comes to employment protections for all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, we must send the message to Congress that we will no longer are willing to wait, nor are we willing to take the tranquilizing drug of incrementalism.
Several participants spoke about the need to fight for full equality and to stand in solidarity with other struggles, especially immigrant rights, in response to the recent attack on immigrants in Arizona, SB 1070.
Chants included "Trans/gay/immigrant/women's rights under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!" and "What do we want? Full equality! When do we want it? Now!"
The need for everyone to stand up for ENDA and equal rights on the job for LGBT people, and to make the connection between that and other struggles against discrimination, was driven home by one of the passersby, who joined the rally. "No one has rights until we all have rights!" they said.
Organizers called on rally participants to join them in Boston on May 22 at a rally at the State House to demand passage of the statewide Transgender Civil Rights bill and full federal equality as part of the national Harvey Milk Week of Action.
Originally published at Socialistworker.org. Also published in Dissident Voice.
AFTER DECADES of waiting for protection for LGBT people from discrimination on the job, a transgender-inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) is likely to come up for a vote in the House of Representatives in the coming weeks--but still lacks enough votes to pass both houses of Congress.
This is the time for activists to turn up the heat and press Democrats in Congress and the Obama administration to keep their promise and pass ENDA this spring.
The bill has wide support--there are 199 co-sponsors for the legislation in the House of Representatives, including six Republicans. In the Senate, there are 46 co-sponsors.
But passage in the Senate is expected to be difficult. For one thing, the Republican bigots are escalating their rhetoric against what, disgustingly, they call the "bathroom bill," as Sherry Wolf reported at SocialistWorker.org:
Find out more about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and how to get involved in the campaign to pressure Congress at the ENDA Now Web site.
Get involved with local events around the Harvey Milk Day week of action as well as the movement for LGBT equality at the Equality Across America Web site.
While polls show that 89 percent of the population support workplace equality for LGBT people, fear-mongering and transphobic stupidities are being spread and echoed by right-wingers. Now that it is less palatable to openly discriminate against lesbians and gays, transgender people have become the primary targets of the cultural cretins...
One widely circulated form letter to congresspeople on Congress.org states, "The thought of my child or grandchild in a bathroom with a transgender (sic) is repugnant to me." Tellingly, this note doesn't even modify the adjective transgender to refer to an actual person--as if "a transgender" is some alien species and not a human being who deserves respect and equal treatment.
But there's a further problem--16 Democrats in the Senate have yet to sign on to ENDA. The Democrats have enough votes to not only pass the bill, but avoid a filibuster if they get all their senators to support it.
The Democrats have no excuse for not passing ENDA now. Our movement needs to call them out publicly on this and demand that they "put up or shut up."
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LGBT ACTIVISTS are getting organized to push the issue of ENDA into the spotlight.
In April, members of the GetEQUAL group disrupted and were escorted out of a House Committee meeting after they called for action on the legislation. At the May 1 demonstrations for immigrant rights, many LGBT grassroots groups organized contingents to march in solidarity with immigrants and their native-born allies and to raise their demand for an all-inclusive ENDA.
Other groups, including Western Mass. Equality Across America, of which I am a member, are planning protests in support of ENDA, as well as organizing for the Harvey Milk Week of Action to demand full federal equality for LGBT people.
Rep. Barney Frank, the openly gay Democratic member of Congress who said that the 200,000-strong National Equality March was a "waste of time at best," called Get EQUAL's ENDA action a "stupid thing to do." He wants activists to stick to formal channels, and call and meet with their representatives, asking them nicely to support the basic civil right to not be fired on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
Politicians are aware of this issue and why it matters to us. Those who don't support ENDA or who drag their feet do so because they calculate the political costs of inaction as less than those of action. It's up to us to change the terms of this equation, and that will take more than phone calls and polite visits. We have to act now before ENDA dies again, as it has every time since it was first proposed in the 1990s.
When you lobby a politician, they can tell you anything they want in private, and it's nearly impossible to hold them accountable unless you're a major donor who can use campaign contributions as leverage. Instead of lobbying in private, we need, through protest and direct action, to call out representatives and senators in public and demand they make a public stand on ENDA.
More than small acts of civil disobedience, we need to build a broad movement that includes the active participation of large numbers of people. That's a real possibility on this issue given the hundreds of people who attended recent Equality Across America conferences in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., not to mention the quarter of a million who marched on DC last October.
Barney Frank and other Democrats say they're "working hard," and Obama claims he's a "fierce advocate" for LGBT rights. But they need to tell us what they're doing and why ENDA isn't a top priority for Democrats.
What does it mean that Barack Obama is a "fierce advocate"? He has said numerous times that he supports repeal of "don't ask, don't tell"--in his State of the Union address, he said he'd repeal it this year. Yet behind the scenes, he's been less than committed.
To get a sense of what "fierce advocacy" really looks like, consider what Obama did when it came to getting "antiwar" Democrats in the House to vote for funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in June 2009. The war funding bill passed with only 30 of 256 House Democrats voting against--20 "antiwar" Democrats switched sides and voted to fund the wars.
If they were acting as "fierce advocates" for the LGBT community, Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress would do what it takes, and not prioritize war over equality. It's up to us to force their hand and not let them get away with paying lip service to our cause while they drag their feet and toss us crumbs.
Originally published in Socialist Worker.
WITH UNEMPLOYMENT and underemployment a devastating reality for millions and millions of people in the U.S., federal protection from job discrimination for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people is more important than ever.
But the inaction and broken promises of the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress shows that winning equality on the job will require more than overwhelming popular sentiment opposed to any form of workplace discrimination. It will require pressure from the grassroots.
Official unemployment was 9.7 percent in January (16.5 percent for Blacks and 12.6 percent for Latinos)--16.5 percent if you count people working part time because they couldn't find full-time employment. Economists estimate that there are approximately six people looking for work for every new job opening.
This bleak jobs landscape amplifies the destruction caused by employment discrimination on the lives of LGBT people.
In 38 states, it's legal to fire or not hire someone because they're transgender, and in 29 states if they're gay, lesbian or bisexual. Every day, millions of LGBT workers face a horrible choice: remain in the closet on the job, or come out and face legal harassment, discrimination or termination.
In 2007, Kenneth Roswell, a gay man working at a Hess gas station in Lee County, Florida, complained after a training manager told him that "gays are sick" and "should all be taken out and shot." He was transferred to a store in a dangerous neighborhood, and eventually fired a few months later, according to the Naples News.
When Roswell went to the Lee County Equal Opportunity Office to file a complaint, he said he was told that "gays are not a protected group"--so that even if Hess had fired him for being gay, there is no law making it illegal. Roswell continued to face harassment from Hess after his termination. "Any place I apply, they give me a bad reference," he told the News. "I'm about to lose my home [and] my car."
Nor are LGBT workers safe from discrimination after they punch out. In 2000, Peter Oiler says he was fired after 20 years on the job as a truck driver for the Winn-Dixie grocery store chain when managers found out that he sometimes cross-dressed when not at work, and identified as transgender.
Sue Kirchofer wasn't allowed to name her partner as a beneficiary on a life insurance policy in 1994, and was "told to remain invisible" about her sexuality by her Seattle employer, she told Newsweek. She was fired months later after her employer found out she had played soccer in the Gay Games in New York City.
Then there's the largest employer in the U.S.--the Department of Defense. The Pentagon discriminates against its LGBT employees with its "don't ask, don't tell" policy--over 13,000 people have been discharged under don't ask, don't tell since 1994, and partners of LGBT people killed or wounded receive no benefits.
Without federal protection from employment discrimination, LGBT people are forced to rely on a shoddy patchwork of state and local laws and company policies against discrimination--and plenty of states, counties, cities and towns where discrimination is perfectly legal.
What protections do exist are easily rolled back. In September, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer eliminated state domestic partner benefits. In Virginia, within his first month of taking office in January, Gov. Bob McDonnell signed an executive order eliminating protection from discrimination for lesbian and gay state employees.
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A 2008 Gallup poll showed that 89 percent of Americans support equal rights for gays and lesbians on the job. Support for workplace equality has been running at 80 percent or higher since 1993, and was at 56 percent as far back as 1977. Public opinion on this issue is far in advance of politicians.
The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) was first introduced in Congress in 1994, but never made it out of committee.
ENDA, which at the time included protection from employment discrimination for gays and lesbians, but not transgender people, represented a narrowing of demands from efforts stretching back to the "Gay Rights Bill" of 1974--which would have added lesbians and gays to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Since then, ENDA has been introduced in every session of Congress but one, only to die in committee, fail to pass or be put off. In 2009, ENDA didn't even come up for a vote--despite the Democrats overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress and the promises of Barack Obama as a candidate to be a "fierce advocate" for the LGBT community. In fact, in an open letter published during his campaign, Obama promised that he would "place the weight of my administration behind the enactment of...a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act."
This month, Rep. Barney Frank, the first openly gay member of Congress and a sponsor of ENDA, said that the bill is "on track in the House," but that "some provisions protecting transgender people were hot topics," and that he's "less certain the bill will pass in the Senate."
So ENDA has yet to be passed despite the fact that: (1) The Democrats, who claim to support LGBT civil rights, control Washington; (2) Equal rights on the job have been supported by a majority of Americans for over 30 years; and (3) the working class faces a jobs crisis that greatly amplifies the impact of employment discrimination.
Frank and the mainstream gay rights organization, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) took a lot of heat in 2007 when Frank introduced, with HRC support, a version of ENDA that dropped protections for transgender people--just months after they were first added to the bill.
This move was especially disturbing given that transgender people are disproportionately impacted by employment discrimination, poverty and unemployment.
The National Transgender Discrimination Survey, conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, found that transgender people "experience unemployment [and poverty] at twice the rate of the population as a whole." Some 97 percent faced "harassment or mistreatment on the job," including one in three respondents who reported having to "present in the wrong gender to keep [their] job."
Now, Frank seems to be threatening to drop transgender protections again.
The argument that ENDA would be "easier" to pass without protection for transgender people--and that this should be acceptable to us--boils down to the idea that lawmakers will act based on concessions and moderation from our side, rather than firm demands and pressure, that the road to equality must be slow and gradual, and that if we ask for "too much, too soon," we will only scare people away.
The claim that ENDA is being held up because of trans-inclusion is dubious, since a non-inclusive ENDA failed to pass for 13 years following its introduction in 1994. Secondly, social movements historically have made gains precisely when they have stuck to their principles and confidently confronted those in power from the grassroots.
Labor won the right to organize through militant struggle, including mass strike waves and factory occupations. The African American civil rights movement abolished Jim Crow segregation by firmly rejecting ideas of Black inferiority and by directly taking on structures of white supremacy. Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in the U.S. in 1973, was decided in the context of a militant women's rights movement unapologetically demanding the right to choose.
Our movement, in order to build the unity and solidarity necessary to win full equality, should stick to our principles of equal rights for all and reject any attempt to divide us. We must build grassroots organizations such as Equality Across America to pressure Congress to pass a trans-inclusive ENDA as part of our demand for full LGBT civil rights. And we should offer no apologies and accept no delays: civil rights are not negotiable.
By demanding equal rights now--acting as equal people have the right to act--the LGBT movement will gain confidence, draw in new people looking to struggle for a better world and spur masses of people to question their transphobia and homophobia.
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THE STRUGGLE for LGBT equality on the job is one that impacts all working-class people, not just those in the LGBT community. Whenever one section of the working class is subject to discrimination and oppression, it's a threat to all workers.
Like undocumented immigrants, LGBT workers in states and localities where discrimination is legal can be targeted by employers if they protest abuses at work, try to join or organize a union, or otherwise stand up for the rights of themselves and their co-workers.
In her book Sexuality and Socialism, Sherry Wolf chronicles an inspiring example of solidarity between LGBT activists and the Republic Windows & Doors workers in Chicago, largely immigrant and Latino, who carried out a factory occupation in December 2008 took on their employer and Bank of America to win a severance deal owed to them:
The day before the Republic victory, according to Wolf, hundreds of activists "rallying for equal marriage rights as part of the national Day Without a Gay initiative...linked their march with the Republic protest outside Bank of America."
Soon after, Raúl Flores, representing the Republic workers, attended a gay marriage forum, where he said, "Our victory is yours...now we must join with you in your battle for rights and return the solidarity you showed us."
The connection between the Republic occupation and the upsurge for LGBT civil rights is no coincidence, nor is it anything new, as Wolf points out.
In 1977, Harvey Milk and other gay activists joined the Teamsters in boycotting Coors--and the next year, they had labor support that was key to defeating the Briggs Initiative, which sought to ban gay and lesbian teachers and their allies from California schools. Unions such as the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union took on homophobia, racism and red-baiting as far back as the 1930s.
Developing these links and standing in solidarity with one another as we struggle for our shared interests is the key to winning LGBT equality on the job, full civil equality, rights for immigrants, and social and economic justice for all workers.
