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Twitter fundraiser aids N.C. amendment fight

LGBT bloggers help raise $43,000 in single day

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Activists fighting the anti-gay ballot measure in North Carolina this week teamed up with stars of the Twitter and LGBT blog world to help raise awareness and money to keep the campaign’s ads on television.

“We actually raised $43,000 online yesterday,” said Nation Hahn, director of online engagement for the Coalition to Protect NC Families. Hahn said the effort succeeded in raising both money and visibility for the issue. “I think that both the Twitter and blog fundraising and then the match that was extended by a donor combined to bring in our highest total in one day of fundraising.”

Hahn and the Coalition are fighting to derail Amendment One, a ballot initiative to be voted on May 8 that would amend the state constitution to bar any recognition of any couple that is not a married heterosexual couple. Early voting and absentee voting has already begun. Opponents of the measure say it will affect unmarried opposite-sex couples, as well as those same-sex couples that have legally wed in other states.

On Monday, more than 50 bloggers and Twitter users from across the country organized the fundraiser. Bloggers Joe Sudbay, Pam Spaulding, Jeremy Hooper and Daily Show co-creator Lizz Winstead pledged to donate $1 for every new follower on Twitter over a 24-hour period. The participants asked their followers to re-Tweet their pledge as much as possible, generating attention and buzz. Several of the participants were able to also recruit generous donors to match their donations. The collective reach of all of the players was estimated by Courage Campaign’s director of online programs Adam Bink as “several hundred thousand.”

“It’s a little bit different than an ask for a specific purpose,” Bink said. “This one is a little more personally engaging for the person taking the action. The reason that more people can do it is because it costs one person a little bit — it costs me $25 — but the people making it possible by re-Tweeting the ask, it costs nothing. It costs a mouse click.”

“You can help the campaign without opening your wallet,” Bink added.

“This is something that’s very simple to do, and shows the power of online activism,” blogger and North Carolina native and resident Pam Spaulding told the Blade. “People take for granted that you can do damage on Twitter — people have had their careers ruined on Twitter. But you can also do positive good.”

Winstead alone donated $467 — making hers one of the most successful efforts. All the bloggers and personalities who participated, however, saw an uptick in their follower count.

“A rising tide lifts all boats, so find something that helps the cause and the person participating — which is the blogger or the Twitter personality,” said Bink, who came up with the idea for the pledge drive. “So, for example, for  me, I’ve had around 15 new followers today, which is great for me because it helps me get out more gay rights activism to more people, and it helps the campaign.”

Bink told the Blade that just from the first 20 bloggers who initiated the drive, $2,401 had been raised, with more coming from those that joined the effort later.

“The fundraiser started out as a simple pitch by Adam and the others and it turned into a significant event,” said Courage Campaign blogger Scottie Thomaston. “We had 40-50 people signing on to help us fight against Amendment One. The HRC helped, Tennessee Equality Project contributed, even straight allies dug into their wallets for this.”

“It was an awesome thing to witness,” Thomaston added.

Hahn — who said that online fundraising has been crucial to the campaign — said the money raised will go toward a combination of expanding direct mail, expanding television ad buys and online advertising.

“We’ve raised over $760,000 online from over 6,500 donors from all over the country — although 70 percent or more are from North Carolina,” Hahn told the Blade. “We believe that it sets the record for the state of North Carolina in terms of money raised for a state-wide campaign.”

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Baldwin, Pocan named on alleged Minn. shooter’s target lists

Gunman killed state lawmaker, husband on Saturday

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U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, Democrats of Wisconsin, were named on lists of targets belonging to the man suspected of killing Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband and of injuring Minnesota state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife.

The Hoffmans sustained multiple gunshot wounds and are reportedly in serious but stable condition.

Vance Boelter, the suspect, was apprehended on Sunday in connection with the shootings, which occurred on Saturday. He faces federal murder and stalking charges as well as state-level murder and attempted murder charges.

“Senator Baldwin was informed by law enforcement that she was included on the alleged shooter’s list of names,” Baldwin’s Communications Director Eli Rosen told Channel3000.com. “She is grateful for law enforcement’s swift action to keep the community safe and remains focused on the things that matter most here: honoring the legacy and life of Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, praying for the other victims who are fighting for their lives, and condemning this abhorrent, senseless political violence.”

“I recently heard that my name was in one of the Minnesota shooting suspect’s notebooks and I’m appreciative that law enforcement apprehended the suspect,” Pocan said in a statement to Channel3000.com. “I will not back down in the face of terror, however, we as elected officials, must do better to lower the temperature. That said, my schedule remains unchanged.”

The news outlet reported on Monday that Baldwin’s name appeared on a list of 70 targets, while Pocan’s name was found on additional documents. The senator and congressman are both openly LGBTQ.

Democratic U.S. Reps. Greg Landsman (Ohio), Hillary Schotlen (Mich.), Veronica Escobar (Texas), and Joaquin Castro (Texas) also confirmed that their names appeared in notebooks recovered from Boelter’s vehicle.

Other Democrats who were reportedly targeted but whose offices have not yet provided confirmation as of Tuesday afternoon include LGBTQ congresswoman Angie Craig, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, and Attorney General Keith Ellison, all from Minnesota, along with U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski of Illinois, and U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri.

Walz called the shootings a “politically motivated assassination.”

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Trump anti-trans EO used to deny health care to Democrats, unmarried vets

Veterans warn impacts will be felt disproportionately by women and LGBTQ people.

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President Donald Trump (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

New rules would allow doctors at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to deny care to unmarried veterans and Democrats at hospitals across the country, pursuant to President Donald Trump’s anti-trans executive order, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”

According to the Guardian, which was first to report the hospital guidelines on Monday, they apply also to psychologists, dentists, and other providers — allowing for individual staff to refuse care for veterans on the basis of characteristics not covered under federal law, which proscribes discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, and sex.

Doctors can also be barred from working on VA hospitals based on their marital status, political party affiliation or union activity, per documents reviewed by the Guardian. The agency confirmed changes to the rules came in response to Trump’s executive order.

Specifically, per the paper:

Until the recent changes, VA hospitals’ bylaws said that medical staff could not discriminate against patients “on the basis of race, age, color, sex, religion, national origin, politics, marital status or disability in any employment matter”. Now, several of those items — including “national origin,” “politics” and “marital status” — have been removed from that list.

Similarly, the bylaw on “decisions regarding medical staff membership” no longer forbids VA hospitals from discriminating against candidates for staff positions based on national origin, sexual orientation, marital status, membership in a labor organization or “lawful political party affiliation.”

Experts warn that changes to the guidelines may lead to situations where, for example, doctors may question patients about whether they attended a rally for a political candidate or in support of gay rights, potentially denying care on those bases or because of the reasons given for seeking care, such as cases where the patient may report a rape or sexual assault.

Veterans warn impacts will be felt disproportionately by women and LGBTQ people.

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New LGBTQ+ Archive to save scrubbed federal resources

Trump’s anti-DEI crusade seeks to erase entire communities

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President Trump’s attacks on DEI have led government agencies to scrub their sites of LGBTQ content. A new initiative aims to preserve the information. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

Generally, when someone says, “The internet is forever,” it is not a positive statement. 

But for Shae Gardner, policy director at LGBT Tech, it has become a lifeline as she and her team have spent the last couple of months tracking down documents removed from government websites.

After a series of anti-DEI and LGBTQ executive orders, thousands of pages across the federal government have been removed or altered—with LGBTQ topics taking a big hit.

The LGBTQ+ Archive, launched by LGBT Tech last month, aims to restore lost resources about the LGBTQ community into a centralized hub. They have tracked down approximately 1,000 documents—all available as downloadable PDFs and sorted by agency—but know that more are missing. Users can submit missing documents or requests for missing documents. 

Archived resources range from the 2023 Equity Action Plans mandated under Biden to HIV resource sheets. 

Sid Gazula, LGBT Tech’s Google Policy Fellow said reviewing the documents scrubbed from the Department of Health and Human Services was striking. “You have these important documents related to people’s health. Health isn’t subjective,” he said, “The fact that an executive order could take away all this information was very eye-opening.”

For Gazula it made an already urgent project more urgent. “We, as a community, need access to these resources,” he said, “The archive presents a mechanism to get that access out there.”

The LGBT community has a long history of engaging in archival work, explained K.J. Rawson, professor at Northeastern University and director of the Digital Transgender Archive, in an email. He described archives as “key avenues for preserving and making accessible queer and trans history.”

Since mainstream archives often erase or misrepresent the LGBTQ community, Rawson pointed out that LGBTQ archives “fight against this trend and wrest control back into LGBTQ+ hands,” citing Cait McKinney’s phrase “information activism.” 

Gardner feels appreciative of the history of LGBTQ preservation, which guided their work: “I want to make it abundantly clear that we are not the first or only organization doing this sort of preservation work.” She also mentions the Internet Archive, a non-profit library of web pages, which was invaluable during their research.

When the Blade asked about the LGBT Archive, Rawson described it as “crucial!” He elaborated that, “the overt erasure of LGBTQ+ people––but especially trans people––from federal websites has been a hostile move that’s one part of larger efforts to strip us of our humanity and our history.”

Beyond creating a record for the future, the archive is also useful in fighting for LGBTQ representation today. Gardner explained that numerous journalists and advocacy groups have already been using it. Gazula, who is a student, shared that some of their professors said it was an important resource for academic work. 

To access it, users have to create an account. Gardner said this is not for marketing. Instead, they want to “put a stop gap between us and malicious actors and attacks on the site” and have a basic understanding of who is using the site. She assures users that the data is backed up on servers globally, but encourages folks to download freely from the archive. 

“We decided that we wanted every document and resource on it to be a PDF that they would be able to save it themselves,” said Gardner, “This is not only meant to be very user-friendly, but is also meant to help with those resources being dispersed and being kept.”

“It is the history of our community,” Gardner continued, “we deserve to have continued access to it.”

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