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.”