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[Note: This session occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic shortly after the majority of university instruction in the United States had moved online. During the session, individuals joined the online meeting to intentionally cause disruption. This phenomenon, called "Zoombombing" was occurring regularly during online educational sessions at this time. The event hosts addressed the disruption and the session continued. As a result of the disruption, this recording contains language some may find offensive.] In the twelve years the Nazis were in power, the German government convicted around fifty thousand men under the countrys sodomy law, §175 of the penal code. Around ten thousand were sent to concentration camps, where approximately six thousand perished, some subjected to gruesome medical experiments. Today, memory of gay persecution under the Nazis lives on in the form of the pink triangle, a ubiquitous symbol of gay liberation that was originally the designation of homosexual concentration camp inmates. But why did the National Socialist go out of their way to persecute gay men and why did lesbians largely remain untouched by the terror? While the Nazis had run on a moralizing platform that promised to stamp out prostitution and homosexuality, the widespread persecution of homosexuals was motivated not by the eugenic concerns of the Nazis racial state, but rather by fears that gay men were naturally drawn into conspiratorial cliques and thus posed a political threat to the regime. For the same reason, the National Socialists were less apprehensive about the threat of female homosexuality. The fascist government, after all, had succeeded in driving women out of politics and the workplace and back into the home, where they posed less of a threat to society or the state. This talk traces the changing contours of the Nazis divergent treatment of gay men and lesbians, showing when and how their anti-homosexual views arose, how they waxed and waned, and how they ultimately impacted the formation of modern gay and lesbian identity, both in Germany and abroad. ; University Libraries, Virginia Tech

Erotic Resistance celebrates the erotic performance cultures that have shaped San Francisco. It preserves the memory of the city's bohemian past and its essential role in the development of American adult entertainment by highlighting the contributions of women of color, queer women, and trans women who were instrumental in the city's labor history, as well as its LGBT and sex workers' rights movements. In the 1960s, topless entertainment became legal in the city for the first time in the US, though cross-dressing continued to be criminalized. In the 1990s, stripper-artist-activists led the first successful class action lawsuits and efforts to unionize. Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa uses visual and performance analysis, historiography, and ethnographic research, including participant observation as both performer and spectator and interviews with legendary burlesquers and strippers, to share this remarkable story.

The contributors to Turning Archival trace the rise of "the archive" as an object of historical desire and study within queer studies and examine how it fosters historical imagination and knowledge. Highlighting the growing significance of the archival to LGBTQ scholarship, politics, and everyday life, they draw upon accounts of queer archival encounters in institutional, grassroots, and everyday repositories of historical memory. The contributors examine such topics as the everyday life of marginalized queer immigrants in New York City as an archive; secondhand vinyl record collecting and punk bootlegs; the self-archiving practices of grassroots lesbians; and the decolonial potential of absences and gaps in the colonial archives through the life of a suspected hermaphrodite in colonial Guatemala. Engaging with archives from Africa to the Americas to the Arctic, this volume illuminates the allure of the archive, reflects on that which resists archival capture, and outlines the stakes of queer and trans lives in the archival turn.Contributors. Anjali Arondekar, Kate Clark, Ann Cvetkovich, Carolyn Dinshaw, Kate Eichhorn, Javier Fernández-Galeano, Emmett Harsin Drager, Elliot James, Marget Long, Martin F. Manalansan IV, Daniel Marshall, María Elena Martínez, Joan Nestle, Iván Ramos, David Serlin, Zeb Tortorici

The Assisted Living Industry : Context, History, and Overview -- Policy, Licensing, and Regulations -- Organizational Overview -- Recruiting and Hiring Staff -- Training Staff -- Retaining Employees with Empowerment / David Hahklotubbe -- Continuing Education / David Hahklotubbe -- Interprofessional Practice : Issues for Assisted Living Administrators -- Business, Management, and Marketing Facilities / Joseph F. Melichar -- Financial Management in Assisted Living Facilities / Raymond Yee and Mark J. Cimino -- Legal Concepts and Issues in Assisted Living Facilities / Anthony M. Chicotel -- Accessibility, Fire Safety, and Disaster Preparedness -- Models of Care -- Universal Design and Aging-In-Place -- Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) as an Alternative to Assisted Living / Pauline Mosher Shatara -- Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Assisted Living / Benjamin Bongers -- Diversity Issues -- LGBT Issues in Assisted Living / Brian de Vries -- Physical Aspects of Aging -- Psychological Aspects of Aging -- Memory Care Units in Assisted Living : Benefits and Challenges for Administrators -- Palliative and Hospice Care / Edwin P. Cabigao -- Residents' Rights.

Abstract
In her critical review of Katie Herzog's art installation Transtextuality (Senate Bill 48), Jessica Lee Mathiason argues that the artist's collection of forty-eight portraits transforms the archive into an artwork while questioning institutional boundaries and disrupting its previous stability, position, and purpose. A reimagining of Gerhard Richter's 1972 installation of 48 Portraits of men of letters, Herzog's piece sets itself apart from the original through its commitment to materiality. While Richter removed all brushstrokes from his portraits, making them closely resemble the encyclopedia photographs he used as models, Herzog instead embraces the hand with her long, sweeping, and visible strokes. Using her unmistakable indentations, daring lines, and stylized portraiture to foreground the contractedness of art and the archive, Herzog challenges Richter's methodology and disciplinary modes of historiography, which have systematically excluded LGBT persons from our encyclopedias, textbooks, and collective memory.

The state uses public funeral practice and large-scale national mourning as an opportunity to affirm cultural and sexual norms as state values, as evidenced in state and military funerals. My dissertation, "Queering U.S. Public Mourning Practice: Funerals, Performance, and the Construction of Normativity," argues that funeral practice in fact exposes the precarity of traditional kinship and sexual practices while simultaneously constructing the heteronuclear family and heterosexuality as norms. I argue that public funerals appropriate practices and aesthetics coded as abject, socially excessive, and queer in order to demonstrate their distance from these national "others." My investigation divides loosely into two parts. I begin by juxtaposing the funerals of national heroes (Presidents Lincoln, Kennedy, and Reagan and fallen soldiers of the Iraq war) with the funerals and mourning practices of LGBT people and people of color within these sites. These first chapters propose a politics of visibility which calls attention to the relationship between the invisible and the hypervisible. In the second half of the dissertation, I turn to funeral and memorial practices already framed by difference: New York's African Burial Ground and the virtual altars devoted to the memory of Gloria Anzaldúa. With these two chapters I argue that the normative operates as a performative tool wielded to gain access and rights or as a foil to mourning practices that contest borders of memory and death.

Abstract
Chris Vargas's exhibition Consciousness Razing: The Stonewall Re-Memorialization Project commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion by smashing pervasive mythologies that erase transgender people from most retellings of the uprising and showcasing multiple artists' proposals for monuments that at least address if not remedy this absence. Stories of gay and lesbian civil rights victories that came out of Stonewall—like the dissolution of sodomy laws, the creation of employment nondiscrimination protections, and gay marriage—all tend to trace back to the rebellion, while the critical role that transgender women, many of color, played in these advances has slipped deep into unseen corners of historical memory. This forgetting is both a symptom and cause of the continued erasure of transgender people, especially transgender women of color, from contemporary LGBT activism, community, and discourse. As a gesture of amelioration, this monument implores us to reconstruct memories of Stonewall as a way of not merely supporting celebrating contemporary trans existence but ultimately shaping trans futurity.

Cover -- CZECH FEMINISMS -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- CONTENTS -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Gender, Sexuality, and Ethnicity Issues in the Czech Culture: Past and Present -- PART 1: GENDER ISSUES IN CZECH SOCIETY PRIOR TO 1989 -- 1 Situating Czech Identity: Postcolonial Theory and "the European Dividend" -- 2 The Importance of Being Nationalist -- 3 The Czech 1930s through Toyen -- 4 Women as the Object and Subject of the Socialist Form of Women's Emancipation -- 5 Women's Memory: Searching for Identity under Socialism -- PART 2: GENDER ISSUES IN CZECH SOCIETY POST-1989 -- 6 Contested Feminism: The East/West Feminist Encounters in the 1990s -- 7 Czech Women's NGOs: Women's Voices and Claims in the Public Sphere -- 8 Czech Anarchofeminism: Against Hierarchy and Privileges -- 9 Aspects of Sex and Gender in Romany Communities in the Czech Republic -- 10 The Lives of Vietnamese Women in the Czech Republic -- 11 Sex Work, Migration, and Law: La Strada and Human Trafficking in the Czech Republic -- 12 Idle Ally: The LGBT Community in the Czech Republic -- 13 Condemned to Rule: Masculine Domination and Hegemonic Masculinities of Doctors in Czech Maternity Wards -- 14 Some Issues and Challenges Faced by Elderly and Retired Women in the Czech Republic -- 15 The East Side Story of (Gendered) Art: Framing Gender in Czech and Slovak Contemporary Art -- 16 Typological Differences between Languages as an Argument against Gender-Fair Language Use? -- Bibliography -- List of Contributors -- Index.

Front Cover -- Creating Digital Faces for Law Enforcement -- Creating Digital Faces for Law Enforcement -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- About the Author -- Acknowledgments -- Author's Note -- Appendix Section -- Introduction -- DISCOVERING FORENSIC ART -- NEXT STEPS -- WHAT NOW? -- MY MENTOR -- TECH ARTIST -- LEARNING TO CREATE DIGITAL FACES -- EXECUTING MY VISION -- MAKING THE LEAP TO DIGITAL -- FACING A DIGITAL FUTURE -- FORENSIC ARTISTS OF THE FUTURE -- GOING BACK TO SCHOOL -- 1 - Pencils to Pixels -- IDENTI-KIT -- EARLY POLICE SKETCH ARTISTS -- FEDERAL FORENSIC ARTISTS -- PHOTO-FIT -- FACES -- SKETCHCOP FACETTE FACE DESIGN SYSTEM SOFTWARE -- 2 - Getting Started -- HOW TO POSITION YOURSELF TO BECOME A FORENSIC ARTIST -- BUDGETARY CONSIDERATIONS -- MARKETING/SELF-PROMOTION -- TECH TRENDS -- GOING BACK TO SCHOOL -- NEGOTIATING YOUR DEPARTMENT'S SUPPORT -- DEVELOPING MENTORS -- PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS -- DEVELOPING YOUR OWN STYLE -- PUTTING YOUR SKILLS TO WORK -- THE BUSINESS SIDE OF FORENSIC ART -- EQUIPMENT CONSIDERATIONS -- 3 - When, Where, Why, and How? -- WHEN? -- WHERE? -- WHY? -- HOW? -- 4 - The Eyewitness -- SEXUAL ASSAULT -- INTERVIEWING LGBT -- IMMIGRANTS -- INTERVIEWING CHILDREN -- STAGES OF CHILD DEVELOPMENT AS THEY RELATE TO INTERVIEWING -- Preschool Ages of 2-5 Years -- Latency Ages of 5-11 Years -- Teen Ages of 12-17 Years -- PREINTERVIEW -- CHILD INTERVIEW PREPARATION INSTRUCTIONS -- THE INTERVIEW -- ELDERLY EYEWITNESSES -- 5 - The Interview -- PREPARING FOR THE INTERVIEW -- THE EYEWITNESS -- INTERVIEW LOCATION -- MEETING THE EYEWITNESS -- THE COGNITIVE INTERVIEW -- INTRODUCTION -- RAPPORT -- HUMOR -- GROUND RULES -- OPEN-ENDED NARRATION -- PROBING MEMORY CODES -- REVIEW -- CLOSE -- KEY REVIEW POINTS WHEN CONDUCTING THE EYEWITNESS INTERVIEW -- RAPPORT BUILDING/INFORMATION GATHERING -- CONSTRUCTION PHASE

"Queer South Rising: Voices of a Contested Place is a collection of essays about the South by people who identify as both Southern and queer. The collection's name hints at the provocative nature of its contents: placing Queer and South side-by-side challenges readers to think about each word differently. The idea that a queer South might rise undermines the Battle Cry of "The South's Gonna rise Again!" embedded in the collective memory of a conservative South. This rising does not refer to a kind of Enlightenment transcendence where the region achieves some sort of distinctive prominence. It suggests instead ruptures, like furrows in a plowed field where seeds are sown. The rising Whitlock envisions is akin to breaking and turning over meanings of Southern place. The title further serves to remind readers of the complexities of the place as it calls into question notions of a universal, homogenous LGBT, queer, identity. Queer South Rising is the first truly interdisciplinary collection of essays on the South and queerness that deliberately aims for multiple approaches to the topics. This collection is intended for a wide audience of "regular" folks. Essays explore multiple intersections of Southern place--religion, politics, sexuality, race, education--that transcend regional boundaries. This book counters conventional scholarly texts; it invites all readers interested in the South and queer themes to engage with the narratives it holds--and perhaps question their assumptions. Whitlock has sought, in collecting these essays, to seek out a diverse group of authors--across disciplines, professions, and interests--to shatter perceptions about a nostalgic, romanticized Southern culture in general."--Publsiher's description.

Part I. New archives, new epistemologies -- 1. Out back home: an exploration of LGBT identities and community in rural Nova Scotia, Canada / Kelly Baker -- 2. Horatio Alger's queer frontier / Geoffrey W. Bateman -- 3. Sherwood Anderson's "shadowy figure": rural masculinity in the modernizing Midwest / Andy Oler -- 4. A classroom in the barnyard: reproducing heterosexuality in interwar American 4-H / Gabriel N. Rosenberg -- Part II. The rural turn: considering cartographies of race and class -- 5. The waiting arms of Gold Street: Manuel Munoz's 'Faith healer of Olive Avenue' and the problem of the scaffold imaginary / Mary Pat Brady -- 6. Snorting the powder of life: transgender migration in the land of 'Oz' / Lucas Crawford -- 7. Outside forces: black southern sexuality / LaToya E. Eaves -- Part III. Back and forth: rural queer life in circulation and transition -- 8. "We are here for you": the it gets better project, queering rural space, and cultivating queer media literacy / Mark Hain -- 9. Queer interstates: cultural geography and social contact in 'Kansas City Trucking Co.' and 'El Paso Wrecking Corp.' / Ryan Powell -- 10. Epistemology of the bunkhouse: lusty lumberjacks and the sexual pedagogy of the woods / Peter Hobbs -- 11. Rethinking the closet: queer life in rural geographies / Katherine Schweighofer -- 12. In plain(s) sight: rural LGBTQ women and the politics of visibility / Carly Thomsen -- Part IV. Bodies of evidence: methodologies and their discontents -- 13. (Dis)locating queer citizenship: imaging rurality in Matthew Shepard's memory / E. Cram -- 14. Queering the American frontier: finding queerness and sexual difference in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Colorado / Robin Henry -- 15. Digital oral history and the limits of gay sex / John Howard -- 16. Queer rurality and the materiality of time / Stina Soderling.

Using methods of critical queer genealogy and discourse analysis, Injury & Resistance historicizes the HIV/AIDS epidemic through four lenses—activism, criminalization, memory, and "post-AIDS" queer health—in national and transnational U.S. locales from 1987 to the present. Unlike in the 1980s, when white middle-class gay men were the most visible demographic of what was known as the "gay plague," today's American AIDS epidemic is becoming more and more racialized. And unlike 30 years ago, HIV today is a chronic condition that is effectively treatable with antiretroviral drug regimens. Concurrent with the medical survivability of HIV/AIDS, queer Americans have won legal rights to marry, serve openly in the military, and adopt and raise children. Meanwhile, however, for many the AIDS crisis has remained just that: a crisis. If current patterns persist, today one in two African American gay men will become HIV-positive within his lifetime—amidst a healthcare landscape in which racial, regional, and socioeconomic disparities abound. To date, little scholarly work has attended to how the epidemic's American histories, having fueled an LGBT politics of individual "equality," have in fact produced these stark simultaneities in which HIV is a chronic reality for some but has remained an emergency for others. Indebted to Michel Foucault, Injury & Resistance historicizes this evolution through a queer "history of the present" that explores the non-linear and asynchronous motions between and among AIDS past and HIV present. In the absence of a multitemporal critique, I argue, we risk ceding the urgency of HIV/AIDS to the past and preclude confronting what is an ongoing public health epidemic. Sources include oral histories from the ACT UP Oral History Project, memoirs of survival, activist photography, medical science statistics and publications, public health campaigns, newspaper records, and documentary film, as well as archival holdings from the Smithsonian National Archive Center, the Archiv der Sozialen Bewegungen (Archive of Social Movements) in Hamburg, Germany, the Special Collections at the James Branch Cabell Library at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), and the New York Public Library, among others. This diverse body of sources re-contextualizes national and transnational U.S. AIDS histories that anticipate an ongoing crisis with peculiar dualities: yesterday yet today, ghostly yet present, and acute yet chronic. Arranged loosely from past to present, the four chapters and epilogue present evidence, readings, theories, and speculations, listening for past and present echoes of HIV/AIDS histories that reverberate in experiential chasms between injury and resistance. Chapters present a critical genealogy of feminist activism in the New York chapter of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) from 1987 to 1993, explore a 1987 West German court case against African American ex-soldier Linwood Boyette for alleged HIV transmission, trace Derridean hauntology and queer temporalities in two AIDS memoirs and the National AIDS Memorial Grove, place narratives of "post-AIDS" queer health in relation to neoliberal LGBT rights politics, and consider Uganda's 2011 "Kill the Gays Bill" as a transcultural circulation of U.S. anti-queer affect and violence. Throughout, this dissertation insists that the ongoing HIV/AIDS crisis, with its rich histories of resistance and dissent, must again become cornerstones of contemporary queer culture and politics.

"A highly personal collection documenting the early months of artist Julia Kaye's gender transition. Instead of a traditional written diary, Julia Kaye has always turned to art as a means of self-reflection. So when she began her gender transition in 2016, she decided to use her popular webcomic, Up and Out, to process her journey and help others with similar struggles realize they weren't alone. Julia's poignant, relatable comics honestly depict her personal ups and downs while dealing with the various issues involved in transitioning-- from struggling with self-acceptance and challenging societal expectations, to moments of self-love and joy. Super Late Bloomer both educates and inspires, as Julia faces her difficulties head-on and commits to being wholly, authentically who she was always meant to be"--Page 4 of cover

Introduction: Multiple perspectives on diverse aging experiences / Anne-Marie Séguin, Véronique Billette, and Patrik Marier -- Muths and realities about seniors / Ignace Olazabal and Julien Simard -- Living on easy street?: the myth of the affluent senior / Patrik Marier, Yves Carrièr, and Jonathan Purenne -- Older adults: allergic to social change? / Julien Simard and Ignace Olazabal -- "That's surprising, at your age!": the myth of digital disinterest / Kim Sawchuk, Line Grenier, and Constance Lafontaine -- Grey-haired neurons: does an accurate memory have to become a memento of younger days? / Maxime Lussier, Manon Parisien, Nathalie Bier, and Sophie Laforest -- Do most very old Quebecers live in residential long-term care centres? / Anne-Marie Séguin, Isabelle van Pevenage, and Chloé Dauphinais -- Age-friendly cities: a panacea for aging in place? / Meghan Joy, Patrik Marier, and Anne-Marie Séguin -- Seniors and their cars: choice or necessity? / Paula Negron-Poblete and Anne-Marie Séguin -- Challenging the myth of older homelessness as chronic homelessness / Victoria Burns -- Are penitentiaries suitable places for older inmates? / Michel Gagnon and Michel Dunn -- Older adults living with mental health problems: "nothing more can be done with them" / Ginette Aubin and Bernadette Dallaire -- Aging with intellectual and developmental disabilities: the myth of the eternal child / Daniel Dickson -- Older adults are not affected by HIV/AIDS: the origins and consequences of a misconception / Isabelle Wallach -- Aging, sexuality, and the "cougar" myth / Milaine Alarie -- Sexual assault of older women: an unthinkable reality / Mélanie Couture, Milaine Alarie, Sarita Israel, and Marie-Pier Petit -- Are older adults safe from conjugal violence? / Sarita Israel, Mélanie Couture, and Marie-Pier Petit -- Living longer: years of retirement or years of work? / Yves Carriére, Patrik Marier, Jonathan Purenne, and Diane Galarneau -- Older workers: a societal problem? / Marie-Michèle Lord and Pierre-Yves Therriault -- Do older adults have all the time in the world? / Isabel Wiebe, Anne-Marie Séguin, Philippe Apparicio, and Véronique Billette -- Can one enjoy a happy retirement without volunteering? / Julie Castonguay, Julie Foriter, Andrée Sévigny, Hélène Carbonneau, and Marie Beaulieu -- The social participation of older people: get on board, as they used to say! / Émilie Raymond, Julie Castonguay, Mireille Fortier, and Andrée Sévigny -- How older adults experience bereavement: does greater frequency make death easier to bear? / Valérie Bourgeois-Guérin, Isabelle van Pevenage, Jeanne Lachance, Rock-André Blondin, and Antonin Marquis -- Palliative care for those dying of "old age": unmet needs / Isabelle van Pevenage, Patrick Durivage, Véronique Billette, Patricia Friesen, and Eleonora Bogdanova -- Do older adults wish to die at home (and can they)? / Isabelle van Pevenage, Patrick Durivage, Anne-Marie Séguin, and Laurence Hamel-Roy -- Are families abandoning older relatives? / Isabelle van Pevenage, Zelda Freitas, Patrik Marier, and Pam Orzeck -- Multiple autonomies: navigating the world of home care services / Norma Gilbert, Annette Leibing, and Patrik Marier -- LGBT older adults: who is there to support them and care for them as they age? / Julie Beauchamp, Shari Brotman, Line Chamberland, and Ilyan Ferrer -- Care provision to older immigrants by their families: when discrimination creates barriers to services / Ilyan Ferrer and Shari Brotman -- Conclusion: Public policy issues and the complexities of aging / Patrik Marier, Anne-Marie Séguin, and Véronique Billette.

Navigating challenging and complex civic spaces is nothing new for local organizations working to advance the rights and inclusion of LGBTI communities. Join NDI Senior Program Officer for Citizen Participation for a conversation with three partners from across the globe working to sustain their advocacy for equality and inclusion, while tackling some of the unprecedented challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Whitney Pfeifer: Navigating challenging and complex civic spaces is nothing new for local organizations working to advance the rights and inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex communities. Regardless of the levels of tolerance and legal protection in a country, these groups know how to quickly adapt and utilize innovative approaches to maintaining their work and advocating for change.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic has forced organizations to cancel Pride events, training, and in-person advocacy efforts, LGBTI organizations have been quick to respond and adjust, playing an integral role in meeting the basic needs of LGBTI individuals while utilizing online creativity to stay connected and sustain LGBTI community building.
Today, we are joined by three partners from across the globe, each working to sustain their advocacy for equality and inclusion, while tackling some of the unprecedented challenges posed by the pandemic.
We'll be speaking to each of these local partners to discover how they have successfully built digital communities that achieved real-life results. Welcome to DemWorks.
In Panama, Fundación Iguales is working to shift social attitudes towards greater respect and acceptance of LGBTI communities. Part of this process includes collecting stories of how LGBTI communities are being impacted by COVID-19 and its response, demonstrating that as humans, we are all impacted by the pandemic, regardless of how we identify. We spoke with Ivan to learn more. Ivan, thank you for joining us.
Ivan: Thank you.
WP: Could you tell us a little bit more about the LGBTI community in Panama and the types of challenges LGBTI individuals face in building and maintaining a community?
I: We are a country between Costa Rica, who just last month legalized civil marriage for same sex couples, and Colombia, a country with equal marriage since April 2016. We're a part of that less of the 30% of Latin Americans who live in a territory where marriage equality is prohibited. Moreover, are known for public policies that takes into consideration LGBTI persons.
The challenges, there are many. As a gay person, for example, I'm not protected by any non-discrimination law, or the gender identity of the trans community is not part of what is respected by the government. There is unfortunately still a lot of stigma and discrimination for being queer.
We're a small country where there's a strong control from conservatives and religious groups, but what are the good news, I guess? The civil society is finally organized, and organizations like Fundación Iguales are doing a marvelous work promoting the respect of our human rights, creating community, helping the LGBTIQ community to be more visible, and therefore more respected by the general public.
We start a legal process to have marriage equality in Panama since 2016. We are very optimistic we will conquer in the courts and in the public opinion, by strategic innovative and emphatic messages of equality.
WP: You alluded briefly to how Fundación is contributing to building and strengthening the community in Panama. Could you discuss the facts a little bit more about how Fundación is contributing to and strengthening during these uncertain times?
I: First of all, with positive messages and with a clear presence in national conversations about the measures during the pandemic, highlighting the reality of LGBTI persons. We have had a very tough situation with restriction based on sex to restrain mobility of people here in Panama, and that had impacted dramatically the trans community and the nonbinary community of Panama, in some cases affecting their access to food and medicines. Yes, to be able to even go to the supermarket and buy bread and milk.
We decided to join forces with other organizations, specifically with an organization called Hombres Trans Panamá. It's an organization conformed by trans men to create a solidarity network. The network was created for two main activities. The first one, it is to assist directly trans and non binary people who register for humanitarian assistance. We already covered 120 people who were in need of food and medicines.
The second part of that program is an online survey to register discrimination cases for the trans community during the quarantine time. We have already had the report of 26 cases, mostly of trans person who were restricted to enter supermarkets to buy food because their gender identity or expression did not match what the police "expect" from them that day. That report was sent to the government, to regional organizations that monitor human rights, and we hope that impact possibly their lives.
For other programs that Fundación Iguales is promoting during this times of pandemic, one that is very important is a series of podcasts called Panademia LGBTIQ+, a program of Fundación Iguales with [foreign language 00:06:20], which is an independent group of journalists to highlight stories of LGBTI persons during these times, telling their stories, especially the trans community.
WP: That sounds like a lot of excellent work and strengthening the collaboration between groups has been really effective, I think, in this COVID pandemic situation.
I: Indeed.
WP: You alluded briefly to these podcasts. Are there other forms of technology that Fundación is using to continue the work that you're doing?
I: Yes, and that's very interesting because we have to reinvent our work, basically. Just before COVID, we finished a super nice, unprecedented program going through the different provinces of Panama that we call the human rights tour, with the idea to be more democratic on the contents of human rights, specifically talking about Inter-American Court of Human Rights decision on equal marriage and gender identity, the Advisory Opinion 24. It was such a success and we planned to right away continue around the whole country. With this situation we have, being confined at home with mobility restrictions, we have to change all that, but we were lucky to have a strong presence in social media with a robust content that we were able to share and build from it. Also, our capacity of doing initiatives jointly with other NGOs like I mentioned before and you highlight, were also key to show the work that we were doing on respecting human rights.
That coordination and collaborations, like the podcast example, the solidarity network, the level of infographic videos and social media interactions of Fundación Iguales are very solid. Since we dedicate an important part of our work to be present in national and international platforms for political participation, that allowed us to be more visible and not to be forget during these complicated times,
WP: It sounds that you've been able to pivot pretty smoothly and quickly, despite I'm sure what have appeared to be challenges that we're all facing during the pandemic.
Would you be willing to talk about kind of the role and benefits of partnering with international organizations such as NDI in your work?
I: When I started Fundación Iguales, I was very privileged to know that working with international organizations like NDI was essential. I lived almost eight years in Washington, D.C., And before that I studied in New York City, and I worked for almost eight years in multilateral organizations. That experience gave me a different look to understand how, and how specifically a country like Panama, a country with so many challenges, with the lack of the government support and local support, I would say, organizations and enterprises and so on ... so for me, it was very important to know that a key part of my work was to knock some doors abroad because it's essential to boost the work that we do here. Definitely, without the help, assistance, donations and more important, the moral support of embassies and organizations like NDI, our work would have been way more difficult than what actually is.
WP: As NDI, we like to partner and collaborate with our partners and recognize you as the experts and provide the technical assistance and guidance as needed. So it's good to hear that this has been beneficial for Fundación. My last question is about what's next for Fundación?
I: We're very focused that we want a social change for our country in a social change for good. We want a Panama where all persons will be respected and where they can all be happy. We want Panama to join the club of countries where same sex couples can have the support and protection of the government, and more importantly, where society in general welcomes their families. We're trans persons can fully live and decide about their dreams and lives. And we're going to conquer that by strategic campaigns, with messages, with empathy.
WP: Thank you, Ivan, for taking the time to speak with us. We look forward to seeing what Fundación is able to do in creating a safer and more equal space for LGBTI communities in Panama.
I: Thank you, it's been a pleasure.
WP: For more than 35 years, NDI has been honored to work with thousands of courageous and committed democratic activists around the world to help countries develop the institution's practices and skills necessary for democracy's success. For more information, please visit our website at www.ndi.org.
You've heard about how an organization is engaging with communities and collecting stories to plan for future advocacy efforts from Fundación Iguales. But what happens when you are in the middle of a project, when things get disrupted? LGBTI communities in Romania successfully organized to prevent an amendment to the constitution that would ban same sex marriage that was put to a referendum in 2018. In the aftermath of these efforts, there was a need to establish priorities moving forward and create space for dialogue within the community about the next steps for the overall movement. Mosaic organized different segments of the LGBTI community, including transgender communities, LGBTI, Roma, women, and older people to build consensus around an advocacy agenda moving forward.
In the midst of these community outreach efforts, COVID-19 happened. Vlad Viski, executive director of MosaiQ is with us. Vlad, thanks for joining us.
Vlad Viski: Thank you for having me.
WP: Can you tell us a little bit more about your project?
VV: Between 2015 and 2018, in Romania, there was a national campaign to change the constitution and ban gay marriages, initiatives which were supported by conservative groups and a large share of the political party. For three years, in Romania, society has been talking, probably for the first time in a very serious manner, about LGBTI rights, about the place for the LGBT community in society. This conservative effort ended with a failure at the polls for the referendum to change the constitution, only 20% of Romanians actually casting the vote for this issue when the minimum threshold of votation, of turnout, was 30%.
This was possible with quite a successful campaign coming not from not only from MosaiQ but from other LGBTI organizations in Romania throughout the country. We all kind of went on the boycott strategy, we're actually asking people to boycott the referendum because human rights cannot be subject to a popular vote.
Once the referendum in 2018 failed in Romania, there was a question in the community. What should we do next? How should our agenda look like for the next couple of years? We at Mosaic, we really tried to focus and we really thought the issue of intersectionality as being extremely important. This is how the idea of this project started, Engage and Empower was the name of the project. It focused on six groups within the LGBT community: transgender people, LBTQ women, elderly, people living with HIV, Roma LGBT people, and sex workers.
WP: Could you talk a little bit more about how the organization is trying to maintain momentum in this community building efforts, despite what's going on with the pandemic?
VV: We at MosaiQ, we had to reimagine some of the projects that we were involved in, so that included canceling events or postponing them or rescheduling for the fall. But the problem is also that we don't really know the timeline for this story or when it will end. We've had issues related to personal issues of people in the community. People living with HIV were not getting their treatment due to the fact that hospitals were closed except for the coronavirus. Then we've had issues related to sex workers not being able to work anymore. The issue of poverty has been quite an important issue. A lot of people have been laid off, a lot of people were not able to pay rent, a lot of people were either in unemployment benefits, and so on.
At the personal level for us and as an organization, all of a sudden we got a lot more messages from people asking for help. We've tried to help them on a case by case basis. We are not a social health kind of organization, but we've tried to fix as many problems as we were able to. Then throughout this, and actually talking about issue of intersectionality and the issue of the project and the way we work with the Roma LGBT community, what we've witnessed throughout this pandemic and the lockdowns, especially, was an increase in violence, against Roma people from the police. So together with colleagues from civil society, especially Roma groups, we had to monitor hate speech in the media, monitor cases of abuse and violence from the police, and also make statements and letters to official institution, to the president and the prime minister and so on. So for us, it was an issue of also solidarity with other groups affected by the pandemic.
WP: I believe that you've had to move some of your activities online, correct?
VV: That was another part, which we kind of tried to make the best out of the situation. We felt that there were a lot of young kids, for example, who, because schools were closed, they had to go back and live with their homophobic parents. A lot of organizations, LGBT organizations in Romania were not able to have the Zoom meetings with their volunteers because they were living with homophobic or transphobic parents so they could not reveal what they were doing or who they were talking to. So the issue of depression and psychological pressure that comes on people being locked down, people trying to survive throughout this pandemic, we decided to have a campaign online, which was called MosaiQ Quarantine, and that included parties online in order to support queer artists who were not able to earn any money because there were no gigs. We organized these online parties and we paid them and we supported their work.
Then we had the zoom talks with, or like talks online, with all of the organizations and groups in Romania, LGBT groups, to kind of better see the situation on the ground in different cities in Romania. That was for us extremely important because we felt like there was a need to have this dialogue within the community.
Then we had the all sorts of posts on social media and different kinds of events. We also talked with organizations from the region, from the US, from Moldova, from Russia, to kind of see what the feeling also over there.
So for us, it was quite an exercise to take advantage of the fact that using social media and using online tools, we were able to reach out to people who otherwise would not have been able to participate in our events, being so far away.
WP: It sounds like Mosaic has certainly stepped up to the challenges. Could you just briefly talk about what NDI support has meant to Mosaic?
VV: I think the project funded by NDI was extremely important, both for the community ... right now, we have an active Roma LGBT group. We have all of these, the issue of intersectionality being put on the agenda. We have the [inaudible 00:19:36] sports, which is a sports club run by women who is also trying to grow based also on the support that Mosaic has offered through NDI. We've had, at the Pride last season, the first Roma LGBT contingent putting the issue on the agenda. So for us, in many regards, this project kind of focused us more on this intersectional approach to activism and the need to include all voices within the community. The trust that they had in us was very important.
WP: I'm glad to hear that it's been a fruitful partnership, both for NDI and Mosaic. Vlad, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us.
VV: Oh, that's it.
WP: We'll be back after this short message.
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Before the break we heard from two partners using digital platforms to create and support communities. But how are groups sustaining their online networks and communities once created? Rainbow Rights trained paralegals in the Philippines on legal issues related to sexual orientation and gender identity and how to support LGBTI communities. Through Google Classroom, these paralegals formed an online network to help communities facing discrimination and violence. Eljay, welcome to our podcast. Could you tell us a little bit more about the paralegal support project?
Eljay: Yeah. One of the main components of our community paralegal program is to create a national online platform wherein all of the trained paralegals of our organization will be able to share their experiences, their cases, and they could also refer some of the difficult cases to us. So that's the main idea. It's just that it gained a deeper significance in this COVID-19 pandemic that we're experiencing because a lot of legal organizations hurried to do to do what we had been doing in the past year, which is to create an online platform.
Right now, even though there's a lot of problems in the Philippines barring the central autocracy, we have been maintaining the platform. People are still referring cases to us and we are working on those cases. Part of the deeper significance that it has is in the Philippines, human rights violations have increased because of the lockdown. So it became a source of reporting documentation for these human rights violations during the lockdown. We did not expect that it will evolve that way but we're happy that it has, and despite some connectivity issues in the Philippines, it has been reaping as well.
WP: So when you're talking about the program, there've been increased human rights reports, is that generally more broad human rights abuses? Or are we talking specifically to the LGBTI community?
E: Yeah, we accept every report on numerous violations, but we take on the LGBTI human rights violations specifically. When we receive human rights violations that is not really in our lane, so to speak, we refer them to bigger organizations. We have seen increased numerous violation against the LGBTQI community here.
WP: You had mentioned that Rainbow Rights fortunately had organized the training for the paralegals before the pandemic hit and already have a plan in place to use online platforms, which was Google Classroom, to create this network across the country. You've briefly referenced what the current situation is like now, but could you go a little deeper into that? What kind of challenges is Rainbow Rights facing in continuing to engage with the community?
E: As I have mentioned, maybe a bigger challenge is the connectivity issues in the Philippines. We don't have good internet here, and that's a challenge. It's also challenged to keep the interest level of our paralegals and keep them engaged. That is also challenged because they have bigger problems now. Because of the pandemic, they're thinking of their health, they're thinking of their livelihoods, and that is a challenge during these times.
However, before the pandemic, we also saw that we had to be creative at the level of interest, so that's a challenge. The situation, it's working. Overall situation's working. We have referrals, we continue to share modules in our platform, refreshing their memory on the training. We also try to be light. There are some light moments so that they be so that they keep themselves also, the interest level is high and that they see us and they trust us in maintaining this platform.
WP: You alluded to the fact that it's often difficult to maintain interest of your paralegals when engaging online.
E: Basically, we had a two-pronged approach on this. One is to find the people who has a genuine interest to serve the community. So in our selection process, we have chosen people who have track records of service in their communities. The other side of the approach is to build on the spirit of camaraderie, friendship, and community solidarity between us. So even before the pandemic, we have been setting up calls and checking on them, even adding them on Facebook and Twitter just to continually engage with them. I think that's a big part of our strategies. We're also looking to ... I think in my personal view, I think a lot of what they do is labor, so I think in the future, we will be able to compensate them for their efforts in their community and we're looking into that as well.
WP: That's really interesting. Could you speak a little bit more to the role and benefits of partnering with international organizations such as NDI in your work and as well as helping to sustain this national network?
E: Yeah. I think it's invaluable. Foreign support, foreign funding support such as the NDI had been really great for us. We have been envisioning this project for a long time and NDI gave us the opportunity to really implement it. They also gave us a level of freedom in how to execute the program because there's a recognition that we in the ground know how to solve our problems. But there's also a lot of technical support aside from the funding. Like in digital security, NDI has given us a lot of resources, even given us a training for this and how to secure our online platforms. They also provided a lot of coalition building resources. So there, and I think we are also sharing what our experience with NDI to our other funders, because I think with NDI, we had a lot of freedom and we had a lot of support because you guys always check on us, so that's great.
WP: Well, I'm glad to hear that NDI is taking care of our partners. Thinking about how June is Pride Month for a lot of communities around the world, and Pride is often equated to the community of LGBTI people around the world how would you say Rainbow Rights efforts have contributed to strengthening the community in the light of the violence and the discrimination that LGBTI people face on a daily basis in the Philippines?
E: Since 2005, Rainbow Rights has been doing this approach wherein we come ... a top down approach at the policy level, but we also complement it with from the grassroots, bottom up approach. We make sure that whatever we bring at the policy level, it is informed by our grassroots services. I think that's one of our biggest contribution, is to really complement policy with experience on the ground. Most of the policies that we've pushed for is really coming from what our experiences and what are the real needs of the people that we serve in the communities. I think that's one of our biggest contributions in our approach. We're not just the legal, we don't just bring cases to court. We don't just bring legal expertise, but we also inform it with community level approaches and grassroots approaches.
WP: Well, thank you LJ again for taking the time to speak with us and telling us a little bit more about how Rainbow Rights is contributing to a holistic support system to the LGBTI community in the Philippines.
E: Thank you so much for this opportunity.
WP: Thank you to Ivan, Vlad, and Eljay for sharing their experiences and for the work you're doing to advance LGBTI equality and inclusion, and thank you to our listeners. To learn more about NDI or to listen to other DemWorks podcasts, please visit us at ndi.org

Rainbow Rights Paralegal Training



A Conversation With LGBTI Activists on Community-Building

Democracy (General), Podcast Listen LGBTI Pride National Democratic Institute NDICountries: All Regions