POLITICS
Two LGBTQ Advocacy Efforts Aim at Albany
Equality New York, New Pride Agenda are lean and ambitious... with striking similarities
BY PAUL SCHINDLER
As the coronavirus crisis keeps New
Yorkers indoors and nearly every
public event statewide canceled or
postponed, two LGBTQ-focused
groups are pushing to keep the queer community’s
agenda in front of Albany lawmakers —
as the Legislature heads toward the June end
of session and reelection bids for the new term
beginning January 2021.
Equality New York (EQNY) and the New
Pride Agenda (NPA) are both relatively new advocacy
efforts — though it would not be fair to
say that either is brand new. What is, instead,
most striking is that both are aiming for their
greatest visibility at a time when visibility is a
damned hard goal to realize. But if they are
successful, one or both may become household
names among folks on the LGBTQ street as
well as powerbrokers in the state capital.
EQNY, the older of the two groups, is leading
the effort for the fi rst LGBTQI Virtual Day
of Action. A follow-up to last year’s Equality &
Justice Day in-person advocacy effort, in which
EQNY teamed up with the New York Transgender
Advocacy Group (NYTAG) to bring 250
activists to Albany, the virtual activism will
include a webcast of elected offi cials’ remarks,
an hour of call-in efforts to state senators and
assemblymembers, and a series of webinars on
critical agenda goals: the repeal of a loitering
law, dubbed “Walking While Trans,” which often
targets transgender women of color assumed to
be soliciting sex work; the implementation of
transgender civil rights protections for incarcerated
trans folks; the implementation of comprehensive
sex education in the schools that
takes account of LGBTQ and intersex lives; and
the adoption of a bill of rights for LGBTQ people
living in long-term care facilities. The day will
end with a focus on youth activism.
Out of a long list of policy goals that both
EQNY and NPA are pursuing, the four webinar
topics are the issues participants will focus on
in their calls with legislators. Amanda Babine,
who was named EQNY’s executive director earlier
this year after two years as policy director at
NYTAG, explained that activists in Albany last
year pushed at least six issues, but that constrained
by having to do phone advocacy the
group decided to narrow the list this year. The
issues selected, she explained, were the results
of collaboration with the nearly fi ve-dozen LGBTQ
and allied organizations that are members
of EQNY’s coalition.
Among the sponsoring organizations for the
May 7 advocacy push is NPA, which focused on
several of these goals as well as other items on
COURTESY OF THE NEW PRIDE AGENDA
Ahmed Mohamed is a community organizer at the New Pride
Agenda.
EQNY’s agenda in a mid-March press release
announcing its formal arrival on the scene.
The groups’ cooperation in next month’s advocacy
efforts and the likeness in the issues
they emphasize inevitably raise the question of
what separate roles the two advocacy organization
aim to play. Both efforts clearly come in
response to the abrupt shuttering of the Empire
State Pride Agenda in late 2015. ESPA, with a
nearly 25-year history, had achieved marriage
equality in 2011 and saw the US Supreme
Court extend that right nationwide four years
later, but it struggled to pass a transgender civil
rights law. In its October Manhattan gala that
year, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced new
executive regulation that would achieve administratively
much, though not all, of what the
long-stalled Gender Expression Non-Discrimination
Act (GENDA) aimed to do through state
law. Barely a month later, ESPA said it was closing
its doors.
Criticism of the ESPA decision was quick
and harsh. Matt Foreman, a former leader of
the group, lamented that it was “an abrogation
of a fundamental obligation that an organization
has to its constituency… And, it plays into
the national narrative that the job is done, and
people look to New York…. Millions of dollars
were spent on building up this brand, and now
they are just throwing it away.” Contrasting the
situation here with the aggressive pursuit of a
broad array of LGBTQ-focused goals in California,
Foreman said New Yorkers would miss the
opportunity to advance “lived equality.”
Many seasoned advocates in New York clearly
shared Foreman’s view. In 2016, Gabriel Blau, a
non-profi t strategy consultant with top leadership
experience at the Family Equality Council
and the Hetrick-Martin Institute, and family
law attorney Brian Esser co-founded EQNY,
and quickly built an advisory council of roughly
two-dozen activists who refl ected a broad geographic,
racial and ethnic, gender identity, and
age diversity. From there, the group forged relationships
with the dozens of groups statewide
now part of its coalition.
As Babine describes the group’s mission, it
is to “build power” by leveraging the experience
and strengths of its coalition members, acting
as a “trusted, connected” convener and networker.
Until her hiring, most of EQNY’s efforts
had been carried out in a volunteer fashion.
NPA got its start later, informally more than
a year ago. Its co-chairs are Cecilia Gentili, who
formerly held a senior policy position at Gay
Men’s Health Crisis and is on the board of the
Translatina Network, and Doug Wirth, the CEO
of Amida Care, a nonprofi t health and coordinated
care plan for New Yorkers on Medicaid
with chronic conditions. Another key player is
Cynthia Dames, a longtime government affairs
consultant who did lobbying for ESPA on issues
including marriage. Dames is currently the
group’s project manager as it transitions to a
staff headed by an executive director.
Signifi cantly, the two organizations are stepping
up at a time when LGBTQ wins are once
again happening in Albany. Since the Democrats
captured the State Senate in November
2018, the victories have included GENDA, a
ban on conversion therapy practiced on youth,
the barring of gay and transgender “panic defenses”
in murder cases, and the legalization of
compensated gestational surrogacy.
While people affi liated with both groups have
suggested, off the record, distinctions between
the two, the similarities in their public postures
are more compelling. Leaders affi liated with
both emphasize grassroots reach, diversity,
and inclusion — all aimed at unleashing the
statewide community’s size but also tackling
its many unaddressed and divergent needs.
Issues of concern to transgender, gender-nonconforming,
and intersex New Yorkers are at
the fore in a way they never were until the fi nal
several years of ESPA’s life, and the social justice
and economic inequality realities affecting
both communities of color and non-urban New
Yorkers are also emphasized. And both EQNY
and NPA envision lean staffi ng rather than the
re-creation of a multi-million dollar organization
on the scale of the Old Pride Agenda at its
zenith.
Babine, looking to the next year or two in
EQNY’s life, sees a staff of up to fi ve, including
herself, with two people in the city, one in
Albany, and the other two in western New York.
➤ EQNY & NPA, continued on p.19
April 23 - May 6,6 2020 | GayCityNews.com
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