- Hello. How are you beautiful? Good and you? Trans, gender non-conforming, and intersex communities continue to be discriminated against continue to lack employment, continue to be houseless, continue to be criminalized by the police so it is important that we invest in the lives of trans people. - In so many ways, we've moved forward, but in so many ways we've moved backwards. Here in California we're moving forward, but more needs to be done. When we fight! We win! When we fight! We win! When
we fight! - For both Bamby and The Translatin@ Coalition, there was intentionality around having institutional change, right? Because again, we can all learn how to survive, how to like code switch, how to be able to like, acquire certain things, to be able to like, have access to housing or health care, all of these things, but that doesn't mean there's an impact on institutional change or a system change. - and so that's why we are an organization that functions with this two arms, right? We
believe in the empowerment of our community through service provision, right, because you can't really organize or mobilize people if people are struggling with food or housing, or just the basic things that we need. - and what we do is advocate to our elected leaders like senators, assembly members, city council members, to include us in their budgets. - and then beyond that, making sure that our voice is what's dictating the budget and not just politicians or elected officials. - That's why we
push for specific laws that will benefit all of our communities across the state and so we don't want to just pass bills just to pass bills, Right? We want resources to be attached to the bills. - Another thing that we're also doing is working with the county, and we're passing a motion called the TGI motion, that directly addresses the need for collecting information about transgender, gender non-conforming, and intersex peoples because when we're not even counted, how can we ask for a direct
budget allocation? - Part of my role as a training coordinator is also to partner with interim housing providers, also known as shelters in Los Angeles County. And through this partnership, we are implementing what's called the Cultural Transformation Training Series to take a deep dive into their policies and practices to see where they can make adjustments or to see what recommendations we could bring so that they can better include and protect and serve our community. - There are days that ar
e really hard in the work and our jobs and I think there's a lot of ways that we get, you know, stressed by all of the things that kind of our community faces but it's those times where I feel like we can connect our collective efforts, that is really cool to see. Let's let them know that we are organizing, we're strategizing, and we are understanding what needs to be done politically. - What makes me so happy and excited is when we really, we really pull up, right. Like Byron says, we roll deep
and we were like, we're just there with like our trans flags and we're taking up space and we're like, visible. Transgender seniors, too. - I get to represent an organization or a group of people, right, who have like very, very, like radical and like great politics and who have and who are really rooted in the community. - I get to see the community's thoughts and efforts coming to fruition. - and so they are seeing our power, and they are seeing that we are powerful people, and that's why the
y're trying to erase the little gains that we have gotten in the past ten years but obviously, we're not going to let them. We're going to continue to push and we're going to continue to create, and we're going to continue to strive for a better world for us and for all of our society.
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