Thank You—Now Let’s Fight
I awoke today feeling a profound sense of thanks, clarity, and absolute resolve to keep standing up and moving forward. Before I tell you that we are ready for what is next, let me be thankful.
As a transgender person, I am so thankful today for all of the transgender people and our loved ones, present and past, who have done the real hard work of educating America. Teaching our families, our classmates, our coworkers, and those in our faith communities about who we are. That is the work that has always advanced us fastest and best.
And I am bolstered with the gratitude I feel for President Obama and all the amazing people who have served in his administration. For the first time in American history, a president has not only recognized us, but embraced us, and worked with us to make American policy and culture better and safer for us.
President Obama has talked about us as if we were family, talked with us as equals, and encouraged us—in fact pushed us—to push him for change. President Barack Obama should know for all his years that he has changed the trajectory of the transgender community and has actually saved lives.
I would especially like to thank the committed NCTE staff members, led by Policy Director Harper Jean Tobin, who served trans people every day, working with advocacy allies and government officials to improve more federal policy than any movement ever.
But what is next? Let me tell you about our clarity and absolute resolve.
NCTE is ready. We know that the Obama years have made trans people lives better. But they have not made us complacent or lazy. We know that we are sailing into rougher waters, and in fact, we do not yet know how rough. We are ready.
This is our country and we will insist on moving forward and protecting lives. Of course, there will be attempts to take back advances and even to make new policy to hurt us, and some of these efforts might succeed. But NCTE will be there every single time standing in the way. We will stop bad policy. When we can’t stop it, we will slow it down. When we can’t slow it down, we will mitigate the damage. And when we can’t do that, we will prepare carefully for when we can change it later. We will lose some, but we will be there fighting every single time.
You can help by checking in with our Fight Back Center and mobilizing when we send up signals for your help.
And remember, we will not cede forward progress either. We have not come this far to only come this far. We will continue to look for opportunities to use our state governments, our local governments, and even our federal government to make good policy that advances the lives of transgender people.
And we will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with all of our allied organizations and movements, using solidarity as our sturdiest shield against what might come.
Of course, I am extremely concerned that many good people are going to be hurt by this incoming administration, but I am not quitting and NCTE is not quitting.
This year, 2017, is historic. This is the year we will have taken our progress, stood together with all our allies and still moved forward through harsher times. Together.
In solidarity,
Mara
Mara Keisling
Executive Director, National Center for Transgender Equality
P.S. I hope you continue to be with us, and stand with us, and more than ever, support our work financially.
