community
Snowball Countdown — Building a Community
Submitted by Barbara on Mon, 11/30/2009 - 10:48amSnowball is all about growing our community — not by handing out toasters in exchange for recruits — but by celebrating achievements, not only in the trans world, but in the greater world. Since its first event, in an attic room above the Coastal Kitchen, Snowball has called out to LGBT activists around the world and politicians who have made a difference.
Can We Wipe the Mustard from this Sausage?
Submitted by Barbara on Sat, 07/18/2009 - 10:19amI have been to a sausage factory in Milwaukee and watched them make my favorite German knockwurst. I have also been to Washington, DC, several times and watched Congress make laws. I’ve found that it’s best to watch Congress just before you are about to have a colonoscopy — when your digestive system is clear.
That thought and others entered my mind last week as I watched deliberations on the Matthew Shepherd Act this week on my favorite porn channel, C-SPAN. Deliberations that included a consternating bid to ride the expansion of the national hate crimes bill out on a pork barrel fighter aircraft bill threatened with a presidential veto. Yes, the good news is that the attachment vote to the aircraft appropriations passed in the US Senate by a startling 63-28 vote. Hate Crimes legislation has already cleared the House. But because of the threatened presidential veto against the aircraft, the passage might be in question. The White House, meanwhile, says it expects to sign the Matthew Shepherd Act into law sometime this year.
To understand how this works, you have to understand Congress as few people outside the DC beltway do. It’s getting hot and humid in the nation’s capitol. They don’t call them Dog Day afternoons for nothing. The August recess approaches and our Congress has a lot on its supper dish. More than 50 million Americans await an opportunity to get health care, Trans folks — along with gays and lesbians — pray for an end to the reign of terror against them, and about 20 conservative Republican seek to stop the national scourge of man-animal hybrids.
From Survival to Pride
Submitted by marsha on Sat, 07/18/2009 - 8:27amFriends! Welcome to Ingersoll,
We have served our communities for many years, and during those years we have seen such change!
Our whole being is about change – personal, social, in the mind and in the world - and still the power and surprise of just how change occurs brings us constant amazement and renewal.
We have come from a time of survival to one of pride, from small meetings in unknown privacy, to full partners in the greater work of building equality and fairness for all people. We attend to the individual, yet we change the world!
It is a very long way from our first public celebration in a tiny meeting room above a long-vanished restaurant on Capitol Hill in Seattle, to our established history of education outreach to legislatures, businesses and organizations local, national - across many borders - on to our recent proud march in the annual Seattle Pride Parade, Ingersoll T-shirts everywhere, singing and laughter, families, individuals, joy!
It is a long way from founding Ingersoll to my recent visit to the White House and a meeting with the President, as part of an LGBTQ Leadership Reception.
I call out thanks to all who have made Ingersoll possible, all those who have served and moved on through the years, all those who gave so much to make us thrive. Thank you, for times of struggle and times of achievement, cheers to you, brave ones.
And now, in the work of change, comes a new generation of leaders! We are fully and wholly aware of the great challenge that intellectual and generational change brings – we are linked across ages and continents, cultures and ideas – united to take the best of our Ingersoll's past into the developing present, so that we may all have a future of fairness, justice and full equality. The task is great but we are ready.
I know you will go about your self-discovery in your own way, that is the nature of the world. If Ingersoll can join you in that great adventure, we are ready! Visit us; bring your voice and intelligence to our united work.
So, I say:
More Conversation!
Educate, Organize, Take Action!
Build a Better World Together!
In the words of Robert Green Ingersoll:
“The Time to be Happy is Now,
The Place to be Happy is Here,
And the Way to be Happy is to Make Others So.”
Marsha Botzer, Founder, Ingersoll Gender Center
