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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (May 8, 2015)
Street Roots • May 8-14, 2015 travel in the United States, your family should be secure, your relationship should be recognized. J.P.: Has the deck been cleared in Oregon as far as marriage equality? Is Basic Rights Oregon moving on from that issue now? J.F.: We have some work still to do to implement the ruling from last year. So we’re working on some sort of technical administrative bills in the legislative session so that the legal decision is reflected in our statutes. That work continues ¿.. ensuring folks are actually receiving the legal recognition that is bestowed upon them by the court decision. Still, we get calls on a weekly basis from couples that are navigating systems of inheritance, or parenting, or joint mortgages, joint taxes, all these kinds of things. So there’s quite a bit of implementation work moving forward to ensure that the decision is carried out in people’s day-to-day lives. And beyond that issue, we have fo r a very long time had a much broader agenda across issues that affect LGBTQ Oregonians, primarily health care advocacy for transgender communities in this state and then, as a coalition partner with communities-of color, , working across economic issues, issues that are big on the agenda in the legislative session: the end profiling legislation led by the Center for Intercultural Organizing and the “ban the box” work by the Urban League. We’re strong coalition partners in that work, as well. J.P.: How does, the newleadershipstrwcture with the co-directors support that? . J.F.: Beautifully (both women laugh). I think that with the changes, this is a movement-wide moment. This isn’t just a Basic Rights Oregon moment for LGBTQ communities across the country. Folks are ! really looking at how we lift up the leadership of LGBTQ people of color, how we bring internal to our organization the kind of collaborative models of leadership that we seek to build in our work externally. So for us, the new leadership structure is demonstrating that deep commitment from the top position — now “positions” — in o u r organization right on down. And it’s really incredible to have a board with the vision to recognize that this is a real opportunity to think creatively, and not just rely on the structures that we’ve built through the work that we’ve done to date, but to think about what kind of structures are necessary to support the work moving forward. Nancy H aque: And I think that for us to have a transformative moment, we need our organization to transform as well. It’s exciting. It seems, in some ways, like a small change from an executive director to co-direCtors, but I think it’s larger than just adding a position. It’s really thinking about how we just do our work differently. And how we don’t just focus on sort of one person being the face of Basic Rights Oregon. I think that, for me personally, I don’t purport to have all the answers of how to move this work forward, but I do think it matters to have someone who is queer and Muslim and a person of color take on leadership in this organization to get to think about how we move this work forward in our state. • > News J.P. (to N.H.): What do you see as experiences and knowledge that you bring from previous work that may be new to the organization and benefit it? Page 9 Representatives voted 41-18 to pass it. I saw seven Republicans joined Democrats in voting for that. Why is this bill important? Is this happening here in Oregon? N.H.: I don’t feel exactly super new to JF: First of all, the bill will ban conversion Basic Rights Oregon because I was on the therapy for sexual orientation and gender board for three years and worked at an identity, so I want to make sure that’s organization, the Western States Center, explicit, as well. If folks don’t know, upstairs, that’s very close to Basic Rights. conversion therapy is any number of Oregon. I think that I have a lot of practices that aim to change a person’s experience doing organizational sexual orientation or gender identity, and development and really thinking about how it’s based on the idea that that’s a mental an organization can do better and just trying illness. You can imagine the incredible to be really helpful. That’s a lot of what my damage that it could do to someone to be role has been the past several years. So I subjected to therapies where.the premise is think I bring that experience. And beyond that the core of who you are is somehow my professional experience, I think I bring wrong and needs to be fixed. The practice my lived experience of being who I am and has been discredited by every mental health doing this work, which is hard. My queer professional association in the country and identity has never b eena part of my work yet, in spite of that fact, it persists, even really before. So it’s a here in the state of whole new thing for Oregon. And most me, actually. I feel like often those who are on can imagine the a lot of my passion in subjected to the. Incredible damage that starting social-justice therapies are young work was around it could do to someone people. We’ve had a . economic justice. I be subjected to therapic number of folks share come from a working- their personal stories where the premise is that , class family and that’s in the legislative , ; the core of who you áre is what felt important to process at hearings - somehow wrong and needs me to focus on: issues and so forth and to be fixed. (Conversion around basic fairness, within the media. So as I see it, around therapy) has been it definitely still people’s ability to discredited by every continues here today. support their families. O ne of th e key pieces . J.P.: How do you protect the LGBTQ yo u n g folks o u t there m ental health profession a l association in th country and yet, in of that fact, i t pers; even here in the state o is really public education. It’s, not the kind 0FiKing 'thaT~9' often. sees the light of day. These are therapies that are happening behind JEANA HAQUE, closed doors, and so C O -D IR E C T O R , BASiC>RK3_HT5 the campaign to pass the legislation is as much about raising J.F.: What has been awareness as it is clarifying that if you’re done is that there have been a number of licensed — you practice mental health in the legislative efforts to address bullying over state of Oregon — you are prohibited from the years. The most recent effort was in continuing this legacy of harm and damage 2009. Basic Rights Oregon led a coalition of that’s been done to so many people. over 40 organizations to pass the Oregon Safe Schools Act. It does address J.P.: The Oregon Health Plan decided to cyberbullying and I think was even updated start covering gender-reassignment procedures. a couple of years later to strengthen that Was this a big victory? .provision. It sets clear requirements for school districts to address bullying in N.H.: Huge victory. schools. But what we’re finding is that because those policies are — like any J.F.: Huge victory with the Oregon Health policies in the school systems — left without Plan. We’re one of the first states in the a lot of resources for enforcement, then it’s country to have a Medicaid program that pretty spotty in terms of how school covers transition-related care for districts are doing in addressing bullying. transgender Oregonians, including services This gets at building the tools and that are specific for youth, which is a really empowering the community to do that exciting part of that decision. And we have a implementation work that is a little bit really strong task force of community newer terrain for us and is part of what we’ll members, health care providers and be looking at. Also ensuring that we’re advocates that have come together to work connecting those conversations with the on the implementation of that policy. The really urgent needs to dismantle the school- care has been excluded from coverage for so to-prison pipeline. We don't want to be in a long there’s a lot of work to do to build situation where we’re trying to address the competency among providers, to strengthen impacts of bullying and harassment only to the network so that folks can actually access find that that leads to reinforcing the the care, to provide policy guidelines and problems that we’re seeing with the school- connect folks to resources around best to-prison pipeline and criminalization of practices. youth. J.P.: Looking at the website, I saw that Basic Rights Oregon was looking to also J.P.: The Legislature is considering banning sexual orientation conversion therapy. support the movement to raise minimum wage and to “ban the box” or ask on job The Senate is considering it. The House of from bullying, including cyberbullying? And I ’was hoping you could A talk about what's been done and what still needs to be done. ' ~ applications about past convictions. Is this mission creep? Is it still central to the organization’s goals, or is it starting to creep out a little bit? N.H.: I don’t think it’s mission creep at all because we all have lots of different identities. I think there’s plenty of LGBTQ people who are making minimum wage who need a raise, and there are a lot of LGBTQ people who are really victimized by things like having the box “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?” on job applications. So I think it speaks to who we are, which is a diverse movement. These issues are central to LGBTQ folks. And it’s also part of being a good coalition partner, is supporting organizations that are fighting for those policies. J.F.: I just want to lift up what Nancy was saying about the impact on LGBTQ people. There are disparate impacts when you are a minority that is discriminated against. LGBTQ people are more likely to live in poverty. Our youth are more likely to be homeless and drop out of school. Those contribute to folks more likely to be working in minimum-wage jobs. Folks turn to crimes of survival and are targeted by law enforcement, often based on sexual orientation and gender identity. So you are more likely to see previous convictions within an LGBTQ population. J.B.: I was hoping you guys could talk more about the profiling piece you mentioned. That’s obviously been big in the new sall around the. country. What does the organization hope to accomplish in Oregon to prevent police profiling? J.F.: We are part of a large coalition; J working to pass the end-profiling legislation this session. The Center for Intercultural Organizing is the lead partner in that coalition. The bill aims to, at the very minimum, shed some light on what’s happening with profiling in this state. So it’s structured to collect information to specifically define profiling so that we have a common and shared understanding of what we’re talking about, and it directs the Attorney General’s Office to consider that data and report out any patterns that emerge from that, which would help inform next steps: figuring out what kind of training might be necessary, what kind of interventions might be possible, where there’s opportunities to improve the relationship between communities and law enforcement. And certainly what we know both anecdotally and from national statistics is that there’s a lot of misunderstanding among law enforcement about LGBTQ identities and that folks are often targeted based on their gender presentation, based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. N.H.: And right now the bill is inclusive. It talks about race, it talks about gender identity, it talks about sexual orientation, as well as religion and national origin. Just the language of the bill itself as it is how is a great example of coalition building and partnership and that it is a larger umbrella than you might think when people just say “profiling.”
