Organizing for the Year Ahead: Countering Anti-LGBTQ Persecution and Violence in 2023
Featuring civil rights and gun safety advocate Brandon Wolf, Communications Manager of the Transgender Education Network of Texas Gin Pham, PRA Senior Research Analyst Heron Greenesmith, and organizer Kwyn Townsend Riley. In this briefing, we will establish what’s likely to happen over the next year in anti-LGBTQ organizing and ways that our partners are organizing to defend, restore, and expand LGBTQ rights. We will learn together from last year’s anti-LGBTQ organizing, wins, and losses and how our movements responded in 2022. The conversation will conclude with a prognosis and plan of action for the year ahead, concluding with ways for you to engage in the struggle with us.
For this roundtable discussion, we were joined by:
Brandon Wolf: Brandon Wolf is a nationally-recognized LGBTQ civil rights and gun safety advocate. A survivor of the 2016 shooting at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, he has been a leader in the movement from his position as co-founder and Vice President of The Dru Project, an LGBTQ youth organization and an Advisory Board Member for the Ban Assault Weapons Now campaign and National Organization for Victims Assistance. He currently serves as the Press Secretary for Equality Florida.
Gin Nguyên Pham: Gin Nguyên Pham is the Communications and Outreach Manager for the Transgender Education Network of Texas (2020-). They were also a Health Promotions Specialist at AIDS Services of Austin and The Q (2018-2019). They have provided and helped build various community spaces for queer and trans individuals in Austin, Texas through Gender and Sexuality Center at The University of Texas at Austin as well as being a Co-founder of AQuA (Austin Queer Asians).
Heron Greenesmith: Heron Greenesmith, Esq. is a Senior Research Analyst here at PRA and a policy attorney with over a decade of LGBTQ advocacy experience. Currently monitoring anti-LGBTQ advocacy, movements, and leaders with PRA, Heron is also adjunct faculty at Boston University School of Law and an Editorial Board Member at the Bulletin of Applied Trans Studies.
Kwyn Townsend Riley: Kwyn Townsend Riley is named by her grandmother, Corky Scott. She is a proud Chicagoan, godmother, Scorpio and poet. As a organizer she envisions a future for all and fights with a Black queer feminist lens as a member of BYP100. Currently, she resides in Virginia and is working within Higher Education.