Episode 3: Well, Now Y’all Messed With The Queers: The Rise of locALL

[opening segment]

Sophie: Hey y'all. This is Sophie Ziegler. They them pronouns with Louisiana Trans Oral History Project and the Solidarity History Initiative.

Nathalie: Hey y'all. I'm your girl, Nathalie Nia Faulk, she her pronouns. I'm with Last Call Oral History Project.

In episode one and two, we laid some foundational work for y'all. We asked the questions, under what conditions do we see anti-trans and queer rhetoric come up? How has the legislation landscape looked in Louisiana before 2020? And what has it looked like since?

Sophie: And here in episode three, we ask this question, right? So what happens when the answer to those prior questions is increased state and interpersonal violence towards trans and queer people, multiple bills at all levels of government targeting these communities, and what do those communities do about it?

Nathalie: So with all of this context, over 20 21, 20 22, the state legislator are brewing up bills and something had to be done.

it turns out Sophie Trans and Queer Louisianan came together, collected the power they had, and fought back.

Nathalie: And thus, Natalie, A star is born. Intro stage right: locALL, the Legislative Organizing Coalition for all LGBTQ plus Louisinianans

Dylan: I've been doing coalition work for years and years now, and I think one of the things that was really, really clear to me about this one was that even though there was like, you know, maybe a date in like January of 2021, I think, or February, where we, we all first came together in a Zoom meeting and started to have these conversations together, it was like very much years in the making, in terms of like what it actually looked like to build the network of relationships that made this particular coalition possible.

And in Louisiana, work around trans rights and trans safety issues has been like racially segregated, culturally segregated, socioeconomically segregated, geographically segregated, like every division you can think of has been there for so long.

Peyton: we needed a team. We needed people. We needed experts from the medical communities.

It was really vital that we got our coalition together because as we've seen was like every social movement, the people involved in the movement can say stuff until they're like blue in the face, but they're already marginalized and not empowered. So they're not respected in the same way that like their allies are.

It was the first time we'd ever built coalition, so it felt really powerful to have people I had met briefly, or people I'd never met that came and it almost became like a little family.

Dietz: What we know from even like locALL was that, you know, we had a pretty robust team this year, like the year before it was maybe like what Nia like 10, 13 people who were like involved at all times.

Exactly. Exactly. That feels well. Right.

Yeah. But this year felt more like 20 to 40 people who were like around, and so like movements take time to build. And it sucks when like, you know, do we have to keep building the movement in this way? What are they gonna say next? That feels tough, but in the same way that I was waxing poetic about how I love all of organizing brains in the same space.

I think we owe it to each other as states in the south to link arms a little more closely

Nathalie: so we just heard from Dylan Waguespack, Peyton Rose Michelle, and Dietz

Sophie: all of whom we've heard from in earlier episodes.

So in early 2021 locALL came together, a group of organizers, a group of passionate individuals, and they continue to come together today to fight the fight that still needs to be fought.

Nathalie: I know that's right. I was lucky enough Sophie to be in the room with the other coalition members, and I remember we each had a certain calling

Nathalie E: Being someone that had actually been able to play in some of the roles that I would've been restricted from, I got to bring that kind of a background to the conversation and to what we were doing.

A'Niya: I think about how the south has the largest concentration of LGBTQ plus people. And I think about how in Louisiana, we have such a rich history of our trans cesters and our elders doing political work. It's such a rich history to build off of. And I really do think that in a way I don't need to speak or advocate for anybody because we are powerful enough to do that on our own and for ourselves. But there is no denying that, for some folks that whole process might feel a little bit mystifying, and so I really think of my role is demystifying that process for folks, and making it a bit easier to understand and letting folks know, "Hey, I'm here with you, not only am I a member of this community, this legislation, these laws, these rulings, they impact us together. They impact us together. So I'm gonna do what I can to like, be with you on this advocacy journey, as we try and do whatever we need to do to make things at least a little bit better for ourselves and for the people that are coming after us.

Sophie: so here we just heard Natalie of the Louisiana Trans Advocates in Monroe, Louisiana. Secondly, we heard from A'Niya of the Louisiana ACLU.

Nathalie: Yeah, and I think what's really important and cool here is that they're highlighting how each member of locALL really brought something different and we know how critical it is to have multiple strategies in reaching a solution or in fulfilling a campaign. There's no silver bullet whenever it comes to like reaching a goal or fulfilling a campaign.

And so I really like that we have people who were grassroots organizers. I love that we have people who are like really familiar with how the legislative process works and I love people who are like, actually we are here to do oral histories. AKA, I loved us.

Sophie: And oral history is, in fact, it's why I'm here and I love all of us just found our way to fit in, right? Like it's so wonderful. I said like, oh my gosh, I can't make it to all these calls, but I have a recorder and I'm used to asking questions. Let's make a podcast.

Nathalie: It was perfect. So here we have Natalie again, echoing the need and desire for building power by building base.

Nathalie E: I was the one of the few from the north part of the state, that were trying to organize for this. And so a lot of mine was trying to actually get people engaged from my area and from the north parts of the state.

Whether it be for trying to send calls or emails or whatever it may have been, to tell them, Hey, reach to your representatives. Tell 'em like, This is not good for Louisiana. It's not good for trans people. And so the largest part of what I was doing was that outreach there, because I am so far from the capital, even though I did make a couple of the trips.

A lot ended up being just trying to organize people here to call and email and to reach out to representatives, however that may be. And even whenever we had one of like town hall meetings and we were discussing how this would impact people within our state I was one of the people that was on there because I grew up playing sports.

Dylan: I, I think that the really cool strengths are that we do literally have members across this entire state. I mean, there's like not a corner of the state of Louisiana where I can't like figure out, okay, who is a trans person that we can call and be like, "Hey, what's going on in your neck of the woods right now?" right?

With the coalition, that was sort of a, like an institutional affiliation that like at some point we just weren't wearing those anymore. And so it was more about what it looked like for all of us to be working together as individuals with various connections to certain sets of resources and relationships and communities.

So my role really was to provide some advising to the coalition around the legislative process and the politics of the space and offer some of what to expect and, and things like that as sort of a legislative vet.

SarahJane: So now we're seeing an uptick in, And I don't even like this word, like specialized, but in such a great way that people are very much focused on missions. So while we all come together for legislative support, you know, when we're doing other work, we're doing our oral histories or we're working at the gender clinic or we're working in schools, right?

We're doing our things that fit the needs and the wants of the community. And then we all come together to either uplift or fight back

coordinate and coalesce all of that together in a way that everybody's voice is heard and in a way that everybody feels as if they can be educated on the legislative process and be involved in the legislative process, should they want to be there.

Nathalie: That's Dylan, board member of Louisiana Trans Advocates, one of the main organizations who were fighting for LGBTQ plus people in legislation. And one of the anchors of locALL. After Dylan, y'all heard from Sarah Jane, at forum for equality, another anchor in the early days of locALL.

Sophie: LocALL is also very lucky to have community-based community organizing efforts, focus on trans wellness and liberation as a strategy for the liberation of all. Let's hear a little bit more from both Pearl and Dietz about wellness and the liberation of our communities.

Pearl: I wanna elevate in how I combat anti-trans legislation, how I protect myself and my community from anti-trans legislation is by providing space for us to be ourselves, fully ourselves, unapologetically ourselves, and know that like we deserve healing.

I deserve healing just by existing, but certainly through all these attacks that are happening. You know, living in a state effectively wants to oust you. They want you to move, they want you to not exist.

Dietz: because so much of the legislation has been focused around bodies and I think because I work in trans health, there's, there's a lot of like, kind of immediate connection there. it immediately impacted the people who I was serving. A lot of scared parents, a lot of scared kids, because so much of the legislation was targeting, you know, trans youth, whether that be around sports access, whether that be around medical access, like young people were really put on the, the front of this like range.

And because I was in a unique position to be hearing actually in community and in conversation with more trans kids than most people had access to at any given point, you know, I'm already a politically oriented person. I'm already, you know, an abolitionist organizer. It already made sense to be doing this work because it's where my heart is at.

Liberation is the name of the game, like forever and ever. Seeing the very real fear, not just among my immediate friends and family, but statewide made me feel like we have to mobilize behind this.

Nathalie: I think what's so cool about the legislative organizing practice is that while some people are like building power from the base up, there's power to be like shifted and moved around legislators and around legislation, and I think people who do legislative organizing are important because they do just that

Sophie: I've heard this articulated in any number of ways, but one of 'em is, you know, like you need someone on the inside to open the window so you can hear the people outside chanting, right?

Just like we discussed in episode one, legislative work is never gonna li be liberatory in the sense that it's going to actually liberate us.

It's always gonna be instrumental. And so we added to all the other things that are instrumental. We're trying to move this forward and we're trying to stop all the bad bills. We're trying to get good bills. We all are working together toward that.

Nathalie: Yes, that's, it reminds me of the, like you have to create things that serve you while preserving the things that exist, that also serve you while destroying the things that are coming for you. It has to be a multi-tiered front like you're saying. We're all in this together

Sophie: It would be nice if we didn't have to do it, but we do.

Nathalie: Yeah. Right, right. And so speaking of that, I'm like, we have the legislative organizing and complimenting that is the direct action.

There are plenty of organizing happening on the grassroots side, and we hear from some of our folks, particularly Toni and Serena

Toni: I guess it was When we felt that there was something that we could do to help join with the people already on the ground leading the work and just raising more vocal support here in New Orleans where we had a base of people that we had been able to mobilize for things like demonstrations and phone zapps before. The real name campaign has a lot of socialists in it and was founded specifically by Marxist Feminists.

we're not just idealists, we're, Lenists specifically. When we saw this happening, we knew that on a practical level, a defeat for trans people materially is a defeat for any movement for liberation.

But, we like know from our readings of Lenin, that a great strategy to use the legislature is a arena of struggle, just like struggling in like a school, struggling in public dealing with the police, the legislature is just another site for struggle like any other, and that, that gives you the opportunity to not diefy it and feel like this is the arbiter of what is possible and what's impossible, but at actually just another place to, to yell at someone and call 'em out their name.

So our main goals was to, one, make sure that we didn't contribute to any losses to trans people.

Cause like I said any losses such trans people is like a loss for the whole movement. There was a lot of conversations to be had about like If we go up and, blow up the spot in a way that's not, in alignment with what organizers in Baton Rouge are doing, because this is not our neighborhood, If we're not careful, we could, potentially undo something that someone's already been done, just out of ignorance.

So we figured that, the health of the movement was more important than just like rushing through an action. So we did some like creative like sports Day at the Capital where we invited people to just have a ball game at the capital. Because, anything that builds community is like building real, like radical power.

Serena: You've gotta go at it with a lot of different approaches, right? For example, we weren't gonna rely on like a lawsuit or we weren't gonna rely on a friendly politician or a team of lobbyists. You know, uh, it. By all means, Sue, sue the legislature, get together your team of lobbyists, by all means. I'm not gonna tell you not to, but what we, what we wanna rely on is we wanna rely on the people to go out there and to light the fire under their feet. That means bring people out to protests, phones apps, that means direct actions, that means civil disobedience if necessary.

Ed: so we opted for, I guess, civil disobedience. Um, the members of the campaign got together, uh, and in the coming weeks we had a lot of discussions about trust and capac capacity and. What people were willing to do and at what risks they were, um, willing to take.

Like we had someone doing media, someone who was prepared to handle things if we got arrested.

And as the session was starting, we were going to drop the banner. we had material prepared to recite the reasons why this was wrong morally and ethically, why this was going to harm, uh, Louisianans and Louisiana children and then to be arrested. We were prepared to Be peacefully like handcuffed and brought away somewhere until our, our bail was posted.

It's was a white banner with big black text, protect trans youth. I wanna say it might have been visible for all of about 10 seconds, but that's, that's really all we needed. They had just finished, the chaplain had just finished with the opening prayer

I think like the video that was recorded of this, you can start to hear us in the balcony, and from the balcony you can see every single state representative and their aids turn around and looking at us. The acoustics was like, not great. You couldn't hear what we were saying, but you knew exactly what we were there for.

We clearly weren't threatening, we were being disruptive, but it was pretty obvious that we weren't a danger to anybody.

We had these security officers like grabbing clothes, arms, And, uh, trying to push us off. Um, at least I, I can only speak from what I recall experiencing in that moment is that no one said I was under arrest, I wasn't moving. Um, I, I wasn't being aggressive, but. I wasn't moving either.

As we were pulled down the staircase of the balcony, I can at least recall myself and I know other people were saying, We're going peacefully.

You, you don't have to push us. You don't have to shove us.

I don't think that how it was handled was safe for anybody in the building. Um, I don't know. The legislative session would've been disrupted anymore if they waited three minutes for us to have just been removed through arrest.

It was just a lot more brutal than even we would've anticipated.

once we got down the stairs, we were led outside. There were state troopers there kind of like waiting for us, I guess, to just be a means to not let anyone back in.

It must have been like some head of security. I remember him saying something along the lines of, that's not the right way to do it, to not have respect for the system and not have respect for other people's voices.

Um, and I think in that moment I came to the realization that, I hadn't put into words yet is we we were there because we couldn't have respect for a system that is being weaponized to harm and erase trans people in the state.

Everybody walked away without arrest. Everybody walked away without serious physical injury. We actually came back to the steps after being told not to come back and did a press conference with four or five different media sources.

Nathalie: First off, shout out to the real name campaign for their powerful, powerful, powerful work. And this, this need for like disrupting power and doing it in a way that is actually meant to build the power of other people, um, is very important because, You need people chanting outside so that the people inside, when they open that window, they actually are hearing what actually needs to be done.

And not in a cute way, not in a polite way. People have suffered in silence for years, and I think it's really important to have people who actually are like, we're not actually here to appease you. We're not gonna talk sweet to you. We're here to disrupt what you are doing.

Sophie: Yeah, that's exactly right. And again, what we're seeing is just so much of that spectrum of possibilities represented altogether in locALL, it's just like really affirming, right? And I don't know.

Do we stand a chance, Natalie? I don't know, like, like, it's tough to live in Louisiana.

But just think about all the, the wonderful things that have come together in reaction to the shenanigans . I just,

We're gonna pick on the trans folks who aren't bothering anybody.

And we're all like, wait, what? And like suddenly we're all together.

Nathalie: Exactly. And now we have all of these connections across the state that feel really good. And now even when we're not just like fighting a the good fight or whatever, locALL has actually helped to create a network of people who can just be there love on each other and supporting each other. And that feels like it'll last way beyond any legislation.

Sophie: And I, I think there's just so many wonderful things to say about locALL, and in a lot of ways this episode is sort of a celebration of them. Let's go ahead and end with some clips about how folks think of locALL from within locALL.

Corrine: I see the coalition that has come up this year and I feel better than ever like better positioned than ever that we more and powerful people than we ever have before to, to show up. And, really the thing that I'm most proud of is that this is a much broader, wider, diverse group of folks who are working together now than we have five, six years ago.

And like that is the way forward and is what is going to give us the lasting capacity to fight this stuff back is to have much wider group of folks who are coming in, learning how these things work, getting involved, being passionate about it. And it's really exciting to see.

Pearl: I would say something I'm very proud of bringing into spaces that combat anti-trans legislation is the urge and the energy for a leaderful movement of finding what all of our strengths are individually and then supporting that. Um, you know, cuz it's thing of like Power Rangers, they all came together to make that mighty morphin jawn, you know what I'm saying?

Like it didn't just take the yellow Ranger, it didn't just take the black Ranger. Like everyone had to come together with their specific traits and qualities and create this fist of a movement. So that's like something I'm proud of and something that I can do in session, out of session at any time.

SarahJane: honestly, I think for me, the past two sessions have been the most beautiful and the most remarkable, because it has been surrounded in community and coalition and, I think that Louisiana has always been ready for that type of work.

And a lot of that goes to the fact that the people in our community now have capacity, now have time. There's an expansion of resources within community that allow people to have the time to volunteer, right? Like there's been so much of our community that has to work and work and work and survive.

We're now seeing joy and, and love. And I, and I think that that's really what pushes this community work forward.

Dietz: I have been really inspired by the intentionality that locALL put forth in particular to fight just as hard for each other, maintaining our wellness mentally, physically, spiritually, as we were fighting against the bad things. To me, that felt like it was almost always in pretty close balance. And I don't think that that's awfully common with legislative planning. I think there's all kinds of other organizing that really holds that at the front, but I have not witnessed, you know, and I, it.

I've been living in new Orleans for 10 years. And I was involved in like some legislative stuff, you know, here and there as it had popped up but I, I had never been in a space that was that intentional and what model making that is, you know, like what beautiful, positive modeling that is for how we ought to fight for that and curate that in other spaces in our lives. So I'm really grateful for that.

Sophie: And so there you have it everybody. The Legislative Organizing Coalition for all LGBTQ Louisianans was birthed as a direct response to the community's call for a broad strategy on keeping trans and queer people safe in this state.

Nathalie: We wanna take a second to honor the organizing legacy in which local was created and honor all of y'all doing this work. We love y'all.

Sophie: We are now in 2023. The legislative session is going, things are Hmm, bad again so find where you fit in this right. Reach out to your local, trans and queer organizers, organizations, find where you can help. Let's get together. There's space for everybody. There's a need for everybody.

Nathalie: Bye y'all.

Sophie: Bye y'all.