Transgender Justice: What We are Facing and How to Fight Back

The transgender community has been misunderstood, marginalized, scapegoated, and threatened with violence before the Trump administration and is now under attack more than ever before, making them targets of several executive orders. These actions include: placing restrictions on federal gender markers; reinstating and expanding the military ban on transgender servicemembers, reinstating the global gag rule, directing agencies to take action to prevent gender-affirming care, and making efforts to dictate to students, their parents and educators what they can read, learn, say, and who they can be. The current administration is part of a global war on “gender ideology.” All of us need to understand the issues and learn from those impacted to become effective allies under MAGA.

The panel will explore the current situation of the transgender community under the Trump Administration.

• What are we facing right now in the area of transgender rights and oppression?
• What is happening both nationally and locally and what are organizations doing to combat the attacks on this community?
• What can people be doing to support and work in solidarity with the transgender community?

Panelists:

Dara Adkison (they/them) is the Executive Director of TransOhio, a parent and a genderqueer trans-masculine person. They have helped grow and develop the programs TransOhio offers to the community, rising to meet the moment with mutual aid, legal services, state and local advocacy, expanded resources and so much more. In just the last year and half TransOhio has distributed over 70k in mutual aid for trans and gender expansive community members. In the first three months of this year TransOhio has scaled free legal clinic services from helping an average of 25 people a month to over 500 people. Dara has been involved with local, state, and national organizations through their legislative advocacy, mutual aid, data security advocacy, public speaking, testimony, educational efforts, and helping provide community resources for the past decade.

Myrl Beam (he/him) is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department at Macalester College. Beam’s work focuses on queer and trans movements for justice in the US since 1960. His first book, Gay, Inc.: The Nonprofitization of Queer Politics was published in 2018 by the University of Minnesota Press. Beam is currently working on two projects: the first, a history of contemporary trans movements for justice entitled Beyond the Tipping Point, is drawn from oral histories with trans activists conducted while a Fellow with the Tretter Trans Oral History Project; the second is a community-based and collaborative public history project entitled “The Long Fire at Lake and Minnehaha,” which explores the longer, queerer history of the intersection surrounding the Minneapolis Police Department’s Third Precinct, which burned during the Uprising following the 2020 police murder of George Floyd. Beam’s work has appeared in Scholar and Feminist, Space and Society, Mobilizations: A Journal of Social Movement Research, The Oral History Review, as well as the edited collection Queer Activism After Marriage Equality

Angelica Christina (she/her) is a passionate and driven Queer Latina, activist, actor, model, producer and trans consultant hailing from Spanish Harlem in New York City. Angelica is a proud alumni of the nation’s first fully accredited LGBTQIA+ high school, The Harvey Milk High School. She is a sexual assault & homelessness survivor. She is on the Board of Directors for the Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative, since 2020. Angelica is an accomplished media personality and actor having appeared on several television shows, networks, and documentaries. She has made it her mission to further educate the world on the issues that plague the trans community, to promote healing for marginalized communities and to continue to carve out space for trans and queer stories to be told.

Devon Ojeda (they/he) is the Senior National Organizer at Advocates for Transgender Equality (A4TE), where he mobilizes people to advance policies that support the trans community. A former James Marshall Public Policy Fellow with SPSSI*, Devon previously worked in the Senate under Senator Bernie Sanders and holds a Ph.D. in Community Psychology from Wichita State University, along with a graduate certificate in LGBT Health Policy from George Washington University. * SPSSI (Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues)

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