OUR COMMITMENT TO YOU

UCSF is deeply committed to providing care for LGBTQ+ people and their families that isn’t just equitable as crucial as equity is.

We’re committed to giving you care that’s warm, welcoming, and knowledgeable, too.

That’s why we’re a longtime Equality Leader in HRC’s Healthcare Equality Index and why we offer a uniquely wide range of support for our LGBTQ+ patients and employees.

We look forward to warmly welcoming you and offering the great, supportive care that you and your family deserve.

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Trans Institute gathering overflowed with our abundance, and the rest of the conference has benefited from the inherent wisdom that we bring with our presence.”

Johnson, a bisexual Black woman who has led the task force since 2021, apologized for the situation.

“I’m sorry that we had to get here,” she said as Ross returned to her seat for the closing plenary. “There’s a responsibility. I stepped into this position fully knowing we have some work to do.”

Attendees

Conference workers weren’t the only ones unhappy about how Creating Change played out.

Attendees received a push alert announcing two separate debriefings at 8:15 p.m. February 20 and at noon February 21, the last day of the conference. The Bay Area Reporter attended Monday night’s hour-and15-minute debriefing that attracted about 40 conference attendees.

Creating Change Conference director Danny Linden, who took on the role in June 2021, along with the task force’s Mayra Hidalgo Salazar, deputy executive director, and Sayre Reece, senior strategist, listened to attendees as they talked about problems they experienced throughout the gathering.

Many attendees had similar experiences as conference workers with misgendering, anti-Blackness, and anti-Muslim microaggressions from hotel staff, workshop leaders, and other attendees and no way to report the incidents. They echoed the protesters in wanting cultural sensitivity training for hotel staff.

Attendees expressed frustration with logistical issues, such as poor Wi-Fi, a lack of signage and readable maps in the conference app and booklet, small rooms for popular sessions and too large of rooms for other workshops, a lack of food breaks during daylong institutes, not enough time for sessions, and many canceled sessions. Some were unhappy with how the sessions were presented, describing a disconnectedness from the presenters and desiring more interactive workshops.

Others wanted more networking and self-care events in-between sessions, ways to make it easier using technology to share contacts, and to get out, connect with, and explore the city through the conference.

A Black disabled queer woman said she had to “navigate this space in pain because it wasn’t set up for me,” describing long trips to accessible bathrooms located far away from where she was at the conference, small rooms with no space for her to park her chair inside, and no access to power plugs to charge her electric wheelchair outside conference rooms. “I feel like, why am I even here? This is not for me,” she said.

One man expressed he was excited to come to San Francisco. He anticipated the spiritual sessions would be “energetic” only to be “disappointed.”

“One thing about LGBTQ+ people is that we are so drained spiritually that this could have been like a major opportunity to get that energy back,” said the man, who was disappointed by the spirituality workshops, many of which combined faith and spirituality, lacking the uniqueness of each category. He said he hopes Creating Change recognizes the difference between faith-based, spirituality, and wellness.

Three Muslim South Asian students expressed their disappointment in the lack of South Asians and Muslims and workshops beyond the one they presented at the conference.

A Spanish-speaking transgender woman described through her translator a bad hotel experience where she was forced to pay the market rate for two nights that she believed she had already booked at the conference rate or be homeless for two nights of the conference. She wasn’t allowed to rebook the rooms at the conference rate.

Task force staff immediately started working on correcting her situation during the debriefing.

One of the two experienced conference organizers who attended the debrief suggested requiring a cutoff for canceling a workshop and tapping into backup experts onsite to fill in for cancellations.

An attendee said they liked some of the social events, such as the game space and ball.

Taking on the system

“Creating Change describes itself as the nation’s foremost political leadership and skill-building conference for the LGBTQ movement and claims to be building a future where everyone is free to be themselves in every aspect of their lives,” Ross said, “but they cannot possibly hope to do so if it continues to exclude its most marginalized community members.”

Ross demanded that the task force “not scapegoat its Black and Brown transgender, nonconforming, and otherwise marginalized staff” simply because a Black bisexual woman now leads the organization. “We ... can’t just let them slap her face on the top of this problem.”

“We have to take it to the whole system,” she continued. “We demand that the task force commits to supporting the leadership of these staff members and the labor in a coalition with their communities to shift this gathering to a space that builds towards our collective liberation.”

Ross challenged attendees, “We all call upon the cis folks in this room. Do you love us enough to be angry with us?”

Creating Change attendees who did not attend the debriefs should look in their email for a post-conference survey, Cathy Renna, the task force’s communications director said. She added there will also be other opportunities for attendees to express their concerns and what worked for them. t

Volume 53, Number 08

February 23- March 1, 2023 www.ebar.com

PUBLISHER Michael M. Yamashita

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