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 Intersections highlights NEAT’s work on issues that traditionally have not been seen as LGBTQ+. These issues, while not exclusive to our community, often disproportionately affect LGBTQ+ people. Check out all our issues here. NEAT Endorses the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act
This month, NEAT joined in a coalition letter to Members of Congress that strongly endorsed the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act of 2021. Notably, the PRO Act was also passed by the House in 2019 but never moved forward in the Senate. If enacted, the PRO Act would make important updates to long-outdated labor statutes and:
More detailed information regarding the legislation can be found on the House Committee on Education and Labor’s fact sheet. Labor & LGBTQ+ Rights Long before the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that employees were protected from discrimination based on their sexual orientation and gender identity, unions often led the way in protecting LGBTQ+ workers. “For many LGBTQ Americans, a union card is their only form of employment protection,” noted AFL-CIO union President Richard Trumka in 2018. And as we mentioned in last month’s discussion regarding the importance of raising the minimum wage, addressing financial insecurities in the LGBTQ+ community is a priority and workers’ rights are an important component of that issue. Labor & LGBTQ+ rights have a long history of cooperation and allyship, as briefly outlined by the University of Maryland, noting that after Stonewall, labor organizations in the US began to include anti-sexual orientation discrimination as part of their platforms. The American Federation of Teachers was the first union to pass a resolution, and other large unions began to join them in subsequent years. Since then, notes veteran labor activist Arsenia Reilly-Collins, unions have bargained recent contracts that include protections around pronouns, anti-harassment language, non-discrimination, health and safety, [and] expansive health benefits to include trans benefits. This topic is even the subject of the (highly recommended!) 2014 movie Pride, which depicts the true story of urbanite LGBTQ+ people in the United Kingdom supporting miners during the 1984 national strike.
On Monday March 15, NEAT hosted a day of virtual events to launch #DecisionDay and #EqualityTime -- initiatives to provide coordinated, turnkey tools for organizations and volunteers to take action related to each event. The webinars were attended by over 250 people representing 200 separate organizations such as the National Center for Transgender Equality, Trevor Project, Our Family Coalition among many others, and included a training by Bolder Advocacy on nonprofit advocacy. The first part of the event focused on #EqualityTime -- a coalition of organizations taking coordinated actions designed to help pass federal LGBTQ+ nondiscrimination protections. Led by NEAT and other Organizing Committee members such as Freedom For All Americans and the Human Rights Campaign, the event included remarks from Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI), one of the co-sponsors of the Equality Act who also played a key role in its successful passage through the House. Participating organizations learned about tools and resources available to engage their supporters in taking action in support of nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ+ Americans. Activities include phone banking, meeting with Senators, emailing or calling Senators, and writing letters to the editors of local newspapers telling personal stories of why nondiscrimination protections for the LGBTQ+ community are so important. The event also focused on organizing tools for the upcoming #DecisionDay response to the Fulton v. City of Philadelphia case awaiting a decision from the United States Supreme Court. At issue in the case is whether or not private groups that receive taxpayer-funding to provide government services such as foster care, adoption, food banks, homeless shelters, and more can deny those services to people such as LGBTQ+, single women, Jewish, Muslim, or Mormon people. These private groups claim they have a constitutional right to do so because they have a religious objection to serving these groups of people. #DecisionDay events will include a national virtual rally and Town Hall that will include a panel of legal experts who will help break down the decision and its impact. “From our days as Marriage Equality USA, providing a safe and informative space for our community to gather in response to critical Supreme Court cases has been one of our core activities. With the potential negative fallout from this Fulton decision it makes this organizing all the more critical,” said Brian Silva, Founder & Executive Director of NEAT. Following the #EqualityTime launch, dozens of organizations have signed on to participate in both the #EqualityTime and #DecisionDay campaigns. If your organization would benefit from learning more about either of these campaigns, head to #EqualityTime and #DecisionDay for more information. |
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