October 14, 1943 As the result of an uprising at the Sobibor extermination camp in Poland, about 300 of its Jewish prisoners escaped, though only about 50 survived until the end of the war.Following the escape, the remaining inmates were killed and the camp was promptly closed by the Germans. Though Sobibor’s six gas chambers could exterminate 1200 people at a time, it was the smallest of the death camps. Some of the people who took part in the uprising at Sobibor (picture taken in 1944). The story of Sobibor
October 14, 1979 The first national gay and lesbian march for civil rights in Washington, D.C., drew over 100,000 demanding an end to all social, economic, judicial, and legal oppression of lesbian and gay people. More info about the March
October 14, 1981 Dock workers in Darwin, Australia, began a seven-day strike, refusing to load uranium on board “Pacific Sky” for eventual use by the U.S. military. After a week, the ship was forced to leave without its cargo.
October 12, 1492 Natives of islands off the Atlantic shore of North America came upon Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, who was searching for a water route to India for Spanish Queen Isabella.
October 12, 1945 Pfc. Desmond Doss became the first conscientious objector ever to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Doss, a Seventh Day Adventist, enlisted in 1942 but refused to carry a rifle or train on Saturdays. On the island of Okinawa, under heavy Japanese fire, he saved the lives of 75 sick and wounded soldiers by lowering them, one by one, down a 400-foot cliff. The guest house at Walter Reed Army Medical Center is Doss Memorial Hall in his honor. Read more (includes movie trailer)
October 12, 1958 A Reform Jewish Temple in Atlanta (the city’s oldest) was firebombed with fifty sticks of dynamite in retaliation for Jewish support of local black civil rights activists. The Temple’s Rabbi, Jacob Rothschild, was outspoken in his support of civil rights and integration, and was a friend of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. before he became well known nationally. From Georgia PBS
October 12, 1967 British zoologist Desmond Morris stunned the world with his book, “The Naked Ape,” a frank study of human behavior from a zoologist’s perspective. Morris had earlier studied the artistic abilities of apes and was appointed Curator of Mammals at the London Zoo. Read more
October 12, 1967 “A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority” appeared in The Nation and the New York Review of Books. 20,000 signed it, including academics, clergymen, writers. It urged “that every free man has a legal right and a moral duty to exert every effort to end this war [Vietnam], to avoid collusion with it, and to encourage others to do the same.” This document became the main basis for the federal government’s criminal prosecution (for encouraging draft evasion) of five of the signers: Dr. Benjamin Spock, Marcus Raskin, Mitchell Goodman, Michael Ferber, and the Reverend William Sloane Coffin. Read the Call
October 12, 1970 Lt. William Calley was court-martialled for the massacre of 102 civilians in the Vietnamese village of My Lai; far more actually died during the incident. The full sad story
Lt. Calley
October 12, 1977 “Regents of the University of California v. Bakke” was argued in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. The question: Did the University of California violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, by practicing an affirmative action policy that resulted in the repeated rejection of Bakke’s application for admission to its medical school? Read more
“We need cis allies to speak up for us. Vote to remove the bigots from positions of power. The biggest thing you can possibly do right now is to vote. Vote for Democrats. Because, no, they aren’t perfect, and no one is. But they are a darn sight better than the alternative.”
(Note from Ali: I’ve seen a couple of headlines that the Don’s campaign plans to run heavy anti-trans ads in the swing states. I’ve used all my free NYT articles for life, but they have a story about it. So this is of interest to All Women.)
Black trans women are a small subset of trans voters, who make up a small portion of the electorate — but they’re also longtime leaders of the LGBTQ+ rights movement who know what’s at stake.
Five years ago, Democratic presidential primary hopeful Kamala Harris stepped onto a stage at a CNN LGBTQ+ town hall in Los Angeles.
“My pronouns are she, her and hers,” Harris said in her introduction.
Offering her pronouns, which wasn’t nearly as commonplace in 2019 as it is now, showed solidarity with transgender and nonbinary Americans. It was a simple but impactful gesture for a community in the midst of an unprecedented homicide crisis, whose rights and humanity had been challenged by former President Donald Trump, who was in office at the time, and other Republicans
In standing shoulder to shoulder with transgender people, Harris began to shift a relationship that had been dogged by decisions of her past, like her support for bills cracking down on sex work during her time as a prosecutor in San Francisco and, while California’s attorney general, her state’s opposition to gender-affirming care for an incarcerated transgender woman in 2015.
Today, Black transgender women, some of the same people who questioned her candidacy five years ago, are supporting Harris on and off the campaign trail. One way they have shown up is by raising money and drumming up support, like a Zoom call in August that was joined by more than 1,000 transgender people, the brainchild of veteran Black trans activist Zahara Bassett.
“I felt that we need to let people know that our voices are at the ballot,” Bassett said. “When we speak to you about our rights, about our visibility of being here, that needs to be respected.”
Bassett enlisted the help of several trans luminaries, including Precious Davis, who had long heard criticism of Harris among her LGBTQ+ peers. Davis, chief strategy officer of Center on Halsted, Chicago’s largest LGBTQ+ community center, said she knew it would be critical for Black trans women to show up for Harris, in part as a way of signaling to Black trans women and queer communities they had permission to vote for the vice president.
“We are a part of a community who have the most to lose,” Davis said of Black trans women. “Our rights and freedom are at stake. We have seen Donald Trump’s attacks against the trans community time and time again.”
Many LGBTQ+ advocates have argued that even if Harris has room for growth on LGBTQ+ issues, it’s nearly impossible to compare her with Trump, who regularly misgenders trans women and refers to trans people as “insane.”
“I will say that I would rather have a fighting chance with her than have no chance at all with Trump,” said Hope Giselle-Godsey, executive director of the National Trans Visibility March, another organizer of the Zoom call for Harris.
While she was roundly criticized four years ago for mixing up language in referring to transgender women, overall, Harris’ record on LGBTQ+ rights is largely viewed positively. She provided some of the earliest support for marriage equality of any presidential hopeful when, as district attorney in San Francisco, in 2004 she officiated a same-sex wedding in California. She also opposed so-called gay and trans “panic defenses,” where perpetrators attempted to claim that fear or disgust of LGBTQ+ people was reasonable motivation for attacking them.
She lost significant ground going into 2020 after her support of FOSTA/SESTA, a 2018 package of bills that aimed to crack down on websites used by sex workers. Transgender people are disproportionately forced into underground economies like sex work due to a lack of employment opportunities.
Trump, however, has fared much worse. During his four years as president, the National Center for Transgender Equality labeled his cabinet the “Discrimination Administration” and the media advocacy group GLAAD logged 210 attacks on queer people. He also barred transgender people from serving in the military, banned Pride flag displays at embassies and gutted transgender health care protections under the Affordable Care Act, among other things.
Channyn Lynn Parker, CEO of the Brave Space Alliance, which serves trans and gender nonconforming youth on the south and west sides of Chicago, speaks about both candidates with resignation. She, too, helped organize the Zoom for Harris, though less enthusiastically than her peers.
Parker has worked with street-based and unhoused youth for more than 10 years and has seen Democratic candidates come and go, all of them with different promises for the community; for example, Biden pledged to trans kids that he “had their backs.”
Meanwhile, the kids she works with still face the same challenges. Many are still kicked out of their homes by their own parents and they’re particularly vulnerable to the anti-trans laws and hate that has also flourished across the country.
“I have never seen a candidate where I feel completely safe, and I’ve ever been able to breathe a full sigh of relief, never,” Parker said. “So, I don’t know if Kamala is going to be any different in that regard.”
Black trans women are a small subset of the transgender voters, who make up a small portion of the electorate. An estimated 825,100 transgender adults of all races will be eligible to vote in November, according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. As of last year, 161 million Americans were registered to vote.
In recent years, advocates have invested heavily in giving credit to Black trans activists for leading the charge at the Stonewall uprising in 1969, where queer people famously fought back against homophobic policing in New York City.
At the same time, Black trans women have been overrepresented in the numbers of trans homicide victims and often underrepresented in the media.
At the 2019 LGBTQ+ Town Hall, where Harris introduced herself with her pronouns, Black trans women made headlines by interrupting the event repeatedly, noting that not a single Black trans woman had been invited to ask candidates a question.
The town hall also included a gaffe: Immediately after Harris shared her pronouns, CNN’s Chris Cuomo replied, “Mine too.” To transgender people, the moment highlighted how, even at an event centered on LGBTQ+ communities, transgender issues could become an afterthought. And in the four years since, Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, have repeatedly attacked transgender people; 176 anti-trans bills have become law; and none of the debates have delved meaningfully into LGBTQ+ issues.
The Black trans women backing Harris see the setbacks — and also an opportunity if Harris wins. Davis said she is ready to lobby Harris on trans issues the moment Harris takes the oath of office. Bassett has at the ready a wish list of policies that would make gender-affirming care more accessible and less stigmatized.
And Parker is clear about one thing: Supporting a candidate doesn’t mean agreeing with them unconditionally. It means challenging them to be better.
“We’re going to provide you with all the necessary tools and resources and individuals to help you to get this right,” she said. “If you don’t use those tools, meaning the individuals who are providing you with the level of access and education needed, then shame on you.”
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One of the most disturbing things about billionaire tech leader Elon Musk’s insistence on backing Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is that he’s the CEO of X, the massive social media platform which reported more than 170 million daily active users worldwide on its mobile app in February 2024.
Considering many of X’s Black users — who have made Black Twitter a thing of legend over the years — don’t believe that Trump has our best interests at heart, some have attempted to create other digital spaces for us to shed that X business, and they’re being helped by the likes of Kerry Washington.
Washington is throwing a major investment into SPILL, a Black-owned Twitter alternative created by Alphonzo Terrell, one of the nearly 4,000 employees laid off from the social media platform formerly known as Twitter when Musk acquired the company in November 2022 for $44 billion.
Rather than sulking over his job loss, Terrell linked with friend and former co-worker DeVaris Brown to formulate a plan to make something for us, by us.
“I called [Brown] and I said, ‘I think it’s time to build and if we do this together, I think this can be really successful,’” Terrell told CNN in a September 2022 interview.
Since its 2022 launch, SPILL has grown its customer base to more than 200,000 users. One of the most unique features of the app is SPILL Spades, a live, multiplayer Spades game the company says keeps users engaged for an average of 30 minutes.
In addition to her financial contribution, Washington has hosted live conversations on the platform known as “Tea Parties.” The actress says she’s proud to support a platform in which underrepresented groups are top of mind.
“In a digital world where marginalized groups, especially Black, Brown, and LGBTQIA folks, rarely feel prioritized, SPILL stands out,” Washington said in a statement. “I’m proud to be part of this community as both a user and an investor.”
Terrell says as the company keeps looking for ways to stand out, he is confident SPILL will make a big splash in the social media space.
Nico Romeri, 17, joined an amicus brief supporting a policy that bars school personnel from disclosing students’ gender identities – and won
When Nico Romeri came out as transgender at 14 years old, he first shared the news with his closest friends and a therapist. The private conversations he had outside of the home helped him feel more comfortable to then approach his parents, who supported his transition. If anyone else had revealed his gender identity to his family on his behalf, he said it would have been disruptive to his coming out process.
“I really wanted to have a one-on-one discussion with them, where they knew I trusted them and they trusted me,” Romeri said. “Having that break of trust before you’re confident enough to tell other people is a huge deal.”
A recent ruling helps ensure that other trans students will have the protection to come out to their families when they’re ready. The case came about in May 2022 after a New Hampshire mother inadvertently learned from a teacher that her child used a different name and pronouns in school. The parent argued that the school policy, which advises school personnel not to disclose a student’s transgender status, infringed upon her ability to raise her child as she sees fit. Along with his mother, Heather, Romeri joined an amicus brief in support of the school policy.
In August, the New Hampshire supreme court upheld a lower court’s ruling on the school district policy, affirming trans and gender nonconforming students’ rights to privacy concerning their gender identities and presentation at school. The decision is the first such ruling to come out of a state supreme court, and according to Chris Erchull, senior staff attorney at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, the ruling could set guidance for other states and federal courts fighting similar cases.
“When there’s no US supreme court precedent, federal courts have to look around at what other courts are saying for precedent,” said Erchull. “So it is going to be very powerful and persuasive.”
Erchull, who filed an amicus brief in the case, said it was critical for students to have a supportive framework that allows them to explore their gender identity in school.
Hearing that [my children are trans] from someone else would have been not good for our relationship
Heather Romeri
“It’s not a public school teacher or administrator’s place to make a decision about how and when to talk to families about these really intimate, sensitive matters,” he said. “It is in the best interest of everyone if the information comes from the student when the student is ready, on the student’s own terms.”
Policies on LGBTQ+ students’ right to privacy varies by school district throughout the nation. In 2015, the New Hampshire school board association issued a model policy to protect the privacy of trans students and to prevent discrimination, which was adopted by 48 of 196 school districts and charter schools, according to a 2020 ACLU New Hampshire report.
The policy was rescinded in 2022 due to conservative pushback, but some school districts, including Manchester, the largest in the state, continue to advise school personnel not to share a trans or gender nonconforming student’s identity to others without the child’s consent. In July, California became the first state to ban school district policies that require staff to notify parents when a child changes their name or pronouns.
Revealing a child’s gender identity or sexual orientation to their family when they’re not ready can lead to suicide and the child getting kicked out of their home, he added. LGBTQ+ youth are 120% more likely to experience homelessness than their cisgender and heterosexual counterparts.
For Heather Romeri, it is crucial that students make their own choices about who they disclose their gender identity to and when. “Two of my children are both trans, so they have both been able to come to me at their own time when they were ready to disclose the information they needed to,” she said. “Hearing that from someone else would have been not good for our relationship, not good for … our children [being able to come] out safely and happily.”
Nico Romeri has trans friends who haven’t shared their gender identity with their parents because they fear for their safety, Heather said. “They really believe they will be hurt or they will be kicked out of their house,” she explained. “They have [seen] others who have tried to come out to their parents, and it’s had negative repercussions to them emotionally.” She sees the victory of the New Hampshire ruling as a prime example for other states considering policies for LGBTQ+ students’ rights.
Now 17, Romeri said that he joined the amicus brief to support his friends who don’t have the same supportive environment to transition. “It’s really important to represent the people that can’t voice [their identity fully] and to keep the laws in place.”
A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit from a Denver Public Schools parent who sought to force the district to honor his request to display “straight pride” flags in his children’s classrooms.
Nathan Feldman brought suit on behalf of himself and his two children, alleging discrimination and a violation of the First Amendment stemming from DPS declining to add a straight pride flag in his children’s classrooms alongside displays of LGBTQ pride flags.
In a June 26 order, U.S. District Court Judge Regina M. Rodriguez determined the pride flags amounted to the government’s own speech, which the First Amendment does not regulate. Therefore, a decision by DPS not to display a flag did not violate Feldman’s rights.
“DPS policy reflects careful consideration about what views can be expressed and that any expressions must reflect DPS’s policy of equality and inclusion. Accordingly, the Court finds that DPS has maintained control over the flag displays,” wrote Rodriguez, an appointee of President Joe Biden.
Feldman filed suit after school administrators allegedly allowed “non-binary and non-cisgender students to have flags displayed that represent their genders but not allowing Plaintiffs to have flags displayed that represent their genders.” He asked for damages of at least $3 million and for an order allowing him to display the straight pride flag.
A “straight pride” flag. Source: Feldman et al. v. Denver Public Schools et al.
DPS, in moving to dismiss the lawsuit, noted Feldman’s allegations were contradictory, as he simultaneously asserted “each” classroom at Slavens School had a pride flag and that “not all teachers displayed these flags.” Nonetheless, the district argued the display of flags constituted government speech, as DPS policy endorsed the use of LGBTQ pride flags as “symbols consistent with the District’s equity-based curriculum.”
“Plaintiffs assert that passing a resolution recognizing LGBTQIA+ students or staff without providing equal recognition to those who don’t so identify is an actionable distinction. Not so,” wrote the district’s attorneys.
Feldman responded that individual teachers at his children’s school made the decision to display pride flags. Therefore, DPS was not in control of the displays and they did not constitute the government’s own speech.
In August, U.S. Magistrate Judge Scott T. Varholak recommended that Feldman’s claims be dismissed. He cited a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision involving Boston’s practice of allowing private entities to fly flags outside city hall. The court did not find such circumstances amounted to speech by the government.
However, wrote then-Justice Stephen G. Breyer, “when the government speaks for itself, the First Amendment does not demand airtime for all views.”
“Here, DPS selected the Pride Flag, and not Plaintiffs’ Flag, as representing the message that DPS wished to convey,” Varholak wrote in deeming the flag displays governmental expression. “Conversely, there is no allegation that DPS had a history of accepting for display other flags submitted by the public.”
In this 2018 file photo, a supporters of the LGBTQ community fly a Pride flag in the Colorado Springs PrideFest Parade.
(Jerilee Bennett/The Gazette, File)
As for Feldman’s sex discrimination and equal protection claims, Varholak noted that unless there are allegations of unequal treatment, there is no legal claim based on the absence of a flag representing cisgender, heterosexual students.
“Plaintiffs plainly disagree with DPS’s selected messaging, and phrase this disagreement in constitutional terms,” he concluded, “but ultimately fail to allege any injury except exposure to a flag that they do not feel represented by.”
Feldman objected to portions of Varholak’s analysis, but Rodriguez, the district judge, concluded Feldman was either raising new arguments for the first time or had failed to show why Varholak was mistaken.
To the claim that displaying a flag is discriminatory when it repesents a different group’s sexual orientation or gender identity, “Plaintiffs offer no legal support for their argument,” she wrote, “and the Court finds none.”
Attorneys for both parties did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The case is Feldman et al. v. Denver Public Schools et al.
