Name: Lincoln DePietro
Social Justice Group: 2023-2024, LGBTQ+ and Housing Issues
Date of Fieldwork: January 31, 2024
Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):GLITS: Ceyenne Darslow
Type of Fieldwork: [69]
What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork?:
Me, Ezra, and Jules met with Ceyenne Doroshow, the head of GLITS (Gays and Lesbians In a Transgender Society). She started out by saying that Glits is a human rights agency; it helps everyone in the spectrum. It looks like affordable housing, it looks like education. Everything should be equal for everyone. People need a college education no matter their sexuality. We asked her about other organisations for LGBTQ+ people that she recommends. She recommended Project Abigail (aka Stand Dev), Swop Behind Bars (which I had a very hard time trying to spell), Black Trans Liberation Kitchen, and Bridges for Life.
She said that while there are some good organisations, she doesn’t like too many of them because they really don’t help! I asked her about why this is a lesser known issue, and she responded by saying this isn’t something the government prioritises at all! However, the thing I found the most interesting about GLITS, is when Ceyenne talked about how she got to GLITS. As a kid, she ran away from home to save her life because she was afraid her parents would kill her when they found out she was identified as female. She hurt herself to prevent them from hurting her, and back when she was a kid, there were lots of organisations for gays and lesbians, but none for transgenders.
She introduced Ezra, Jules, and I to her dog, saying, “I think someone else thinks they’re being interviewed!” with a laugh. She then said in certain states, if a trans woman’s ID is female, they would be refused a house there until their ID is male. Other stories she mentioned included finding a woman a house when hers was on fire. She found it crazy that there were so many housing organisations out there and so few were for “our people.”
When doing a speech that raised a couple of million dollars, she bought a building for someone to live in. When working with Stand Dev, she found Tara and Jeremy (Ezra’s parents) to be very authentic. She found Jeremy to be very chatty and very smart. She looked at all parts of Project Abigail and loved it. She’s doing all this without the infrastructure. Project Abigail gave her that infrastructure. Ceyenne needed guidance, in which Tara gave her, and not only that, she found Tara to have a great fashion sense, continuing to say that if you want to be friends with her, you need to have a great fashion sense. She said that Ezra’s grandmother made the best cookie, and she felt like she had a family.
Overall, it was a great experience to work with GLITS
