Connect with us

Local

Remembering trans victims

Annual events include candlelight vigil

Published

on

Jessica Xavier, Transgender Day of Remembrance, Washington Blade, gay news
Jessica Xavier, Transgender Day of Remembrance, Washington Blade, gay news

Cities across the U.S. remember transgender crime victims each November. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Organized by First Unitarian Church of Baltimore and the Transgender Response Team, the 15th annual International Transgender Day of Remembrance will be observed on Nov. 20 between 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the Sanctuary of the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore, 12 W. Franklin St., Baltimore. This memorial event includes an Interfaith Memorial Service; the reading of the names and a candle lighting ceremony.

The Transgender Day of Remembrance was created to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. The event is held in November to honor Rita Hester, whose murder on Nov. 28, 1998 kicked off the ā€œRemembering Our Deadā€ web project and a San Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999. Rita Hesterā€™s murder ā€” like many other anti-transgender murder cases ā€” has yet to be solved.

Although not all those represented during the Day of Remembrance self-identified as transgender, each was a victim of violence based on bias against transgender people.

ā€œI pray for the day that we add no more names to the list or candles to light in honor of our trans* brothers and sisters,ā€ said Donna Plamondon, a member of the Trans* Response Team and a candle lighter for this yearā€™s event.

ā€œTransgender Day of Remembrance is extremely important,ā€ said Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. ā€œIt gives transgender individuals and LGBT community advocates an opportunity to raise public awareness about this special group of people, bring attention to crimes against them and honor the memories of those whose lives ended due to issues relating to their sexual identity or expression. Transgender people deserve love and respect. Therefore, each year on Nov. 20, I take time to think about and honor the victims of violence rooted in hate.ā€

The Mayor is hosting a press conference and proclamation reading earlier that day at 11:30 a.m. at City Hall in the Rotunda, 100 N. Holliday Street, Baltimore.Ā  The public is welcome to attend.

A Transgender Day of Community will take place on Saturday, Nov. 23, from 11:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Enoch Pratt Parish Hall, 514 N. Charles St., Baltimore.

Advertisement
FUND LGBTQ JOURNALISM
SIGN UP FOR E-BLAST

District of Columbia

GLAA releases ratings for only four of 10 D.C. Council candidates

Defends decision to base scores on non-LGBTQ issues

Published

on

Council member Robert White scored a nearly perfect +9 on GLAAā€™s rating system. (Blade file photo by Michael Key)

GLAA D.C., formerly known as the Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington, announced on Oct. 8 that it has issued ratings for only four of the 10 D.C. Council candidates running in the cityā€™s Nov. 5 general election.

Under a policy adopted earlier this year, GLAA only rates candidates that return a GLAA questionnaire, the responses to which GLAA uses to determine its ratings. In resent years, GLAA has also limited its ratings to D.C. Council candidates and candidates for mayor in years when a mayoral race takes place.

The GLAA ratings for the four candidates, three of whom are incumbent Council members, include Council members Robert White (D-At-Large) +9; Christina Henderson (I-At-Large) +8.5; and Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4) +9.5. Ward 7 Democratic candidate Wendell Felder received a rating of +2 rating.

Felder is running for the seat being vacated by Council member and former D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray (D), a longtime LGBTQ rights supporter who is not running for re-election.

Under the GLAA rating system, the candidate ratings range from a +10, the highest possible score, to a -10, the lowest possible score.

When GLAA, a nonpartisan LGBTQ advocacy group, began its candidate ratings in the 1970s, it based its ratings on the candidatesā€™ positions and record on specific LGBTQ-related issues. But in recent years, with D.C.ā€™s local government having long ago passed LGBTQ supportive nondiscrimination legislation, the group has based its ratings on issues raised in its candidate questionnaire that are mostly non-LGBTQ specific.

Among the issues raised in the GLAA candidate questionnaire this year include asking candidates if they support decriminalizing sex work among consenting adults; removing criminal penalties for possession of drugs that are currently illegal for personal use; increased funding for programs to reduce drug overdose deaths; and ā€œaddressing concentrated wealth in the Districtā€ by raising revenue ā€œthrough taxing the most wealthy residents.ā€  

Just one of the nine questions on the questionnaire asks about a potentially LGBTQ-specific issue. The question asks if the candidate supports sufficient funding in the cityā€™s budget for the D.C. Office of Human Rights to adequately investigate cases of discrimination. The Office of Human Rights has investigated LGBTQ discrimination cases and could investigate those cases in future years.

GLAA President TyrONE Hanley has argued that each of the specific issues it raises in its questionnaire has an impact on LGBTQ people and should not be dismissed as non-LGBTQ issues.

ā€œWe believe all of the issues are LGBTQ issues as they impact LGBTQ people,ā€ he told the Washington Blade. ā€œLGBTQ people are disproportionately impacted by the lack of affordable housing, incarceration, and overdoses,ā€ he said. ā€œTo ignore the questions in our questionnaire would mean abandoning LGBTQ people who are most impacted by the failures of our government and community inaction.ā€

The D.C. Council candidates that were not rated because they did not return the GLAA questionnaire included Council members Christina Henderson (I-At-Large), Brooke Pinto (D-At-Large), and Trayon White (D-Ward 8). The non-incumbent candidates who GLAA did not rate include Rob Simmons (R-At-Large), Darryl Moch (Statehood-Green Party-At Large), Noah Montgomery (R-Ward 7), and Nate Derenge (R-Ward 8).

Under its policy of only rating D.C. Council and mayoral candidates, GLAA also does not rate candidates running for the D.C. Board of Education, Delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives, and the shadow U.S. Senate and U.S. House seats, which are unpaid offices with no voting authority in Congress.  

Among those who disagree with GLAAā€™s focus on non-LGBTQ specific issues for its candidate ratings is gay Democratic activist Peter Rosenstein.

ā€œGLAA has moved from asking candidates questions related to the LGBTQ+ community to asking general questions,ā€ Rosenstein said. ā€œI donā€™t believe that is their role, or that anyone consults the GLAA ratings anymore before they vote,ā€ he said. ā€œMy recommendation is we as a community thank GLAA for all their past work, when activists like Rick Rosendall ran the organization, and now they should close their doors and disband.ā€

The questionnaire and candidate ratings can be accessed at glaa.org.

Continue Reading

Business

Delve Deep Learning harnesses AI to revolutionize public affairs work

LGBTQ-owned D.C.Ā company makes tech accessible for clients

Published

on

Kyle Huwa and Jeff Berkowitz of Delve Deep Learning

From senior federal officials like White House staffers and lobbyists who need to keep abreast of international and domestic politics, to bookstore owners who need to stay informed on the latest news to provide an engaging and relevant space for customers, the city of Washington depends on the news.  

One queer-owned start-up in the nation’s capital has recognized the need for fast and extensive information collection and is working on a solution. The start-up, Delve Deep Learning, is taking steps to make finding all information on any topic as easy as a Google search through the monstrously powerful tool of AI.   

Two executives from the new information start-up Delve Deep Learning sat down with the Washington Blade to discuss how their work is attempting to change the way professionals think and work in the capital.  

To grasp how Delve is transforming the way Washington operates, it’s essential to first understand what Delve is. 

ā€œAbout 10 years ago, [I] founded Delve,ā€ Jeff Berkowitz, founder and CEO told the Blade. ā€œIt is a competitive intelligence and risk advisory firm focused on helping public affairs professionals navigate all the different stakeholders and complex policy issues that they have to deal with.ā€  

Kyle Huwa, Delveā€™s research manager, offered a simpler explanation of their work: “Delve is a consulting company specializing in public affairs intelligence.” 

Delve provides its clients with a monitoring program to keep track of challenges they may face as well as on-demand research tools to help respond to those challenges. Their clients, which range from industry associations to policymakers, use this information to look to the future to find the best path forward using AI.  

ā€œPublic affairs professionals have the daily and weekly task of staying on top of any number of issues for their clients and their companies,ā€ Huwa said. ā€œFrom news articles to bills, regulations, press releases, social media posts, from stakeholders. There’s just an overwhelming load of information that they have to process. What we’re doing is taking all of that information, bringing it into one place, and using AI models to really surface the content that is most relevant to what public affairs professionals need to know.ā€ 

The ā€œmost relevantā€ information, Huwa explained, widely varies per client. Some uses of Delve include watching the progress of a piece of legislation through a state government, an old forgotten regulation passed by a government organization, or news on current events in another part of the world. Regardless of what they are tracking, Delve wants to make finding what their clients are looking for easier.  

The program, Berkowitz explains, was started initially to help its own employees but was soon found to be valuable more broadly.  

ā€œThe platform really started as an internal tool at Delve,ā€ Berkowitz said. ā€œWhen Chat GPT 3.5 came along, we started to see the promise of generative AI. It’s the first technology I saw where it can’t replace our team members, but we can train it just like we can team members and make it a real co-pilot for the analysis that public affairs professionals need to do every day.ā€

It soon became evident that this application could change the way research in public affairs is conducted. 

ā€œIt really became clear that this was something that every public affairs team needs and that we didn’t necessarily need to be the intermediary between the technology platform and them,ā€ Berkowitz added. ā€œWe could really imbue the AI models with our approach and methodology, and put it directly in their hands.ā€ 

This in turn, the duo explained, saved precious time and money for their clients to more effectively research what needed to be done next.  

To understand how this saves precious time and money for their clients, Huwa explained how it differs from any general web search. 

ā€œHistorically you do this with keywords, right?ā€ Huwa said. ā€œYou might search in Google with a keyword, but with keywords, you have to really guess exactly the right keywords. Sometimes your search return would be too broad, other times it would be too narrow because you didn’t guess all of the keywords that impacted your issue. With AI, we’re able to really go beyond keywords and identify the content, the news, the bills, etcetera, that a user is looking for in the same way that an analyst would use critical thought to find and sift through content. Once we surface that content for users, we’re helping them organize it into reports. We’re helping them draft language insights about that content. It’s really a way to save time and help them get to those insights more effectively.ā€  

Berkowitz told the Blade time is extremely valuable to those in the public affairs sector. Many of which are working against the clock to push their candidates, policies, or thoughts into the spotlight before their opponent.  

ā€œOur mission is to save public affairs teams 1 million hours in the next five years because they spend too much time trying to figure out what’s going on in the world and how it impacts their organizations or clients,ā€ Berkowitz explained. ā€œRight now, they spend two plus hours a day, on average, that’s 25% of their work week, which only leaves them 75% of their work week to do 100% of their actual job, advocating on behalf of their clients or their organizations.ā€

This information in turn allows Delveā€™s clients more time to develop strategies to deal with potential issues ahead.  

ā€œOur goal is to make sure that that surprise is no longer the standard for public affairs teams, because that’s really the reality today,ā€ Berkowitz said. ā€œThere’s just so much information flying at them so fast that it’s impossible to keep on top of everything.ā€ 

While extremely helpful in surfacing information, there are other aspects of AI that have some people scared ā€” particularly when it comes to abusing AI to promote misinformation as truth.  

Berkowitz said he is not worried about their platform being misused.  

ā€œFor our platform there’s not really a great risk because there’s no access to the prompt,ā€ he said. ā€œThat’s all behind the scenes in the workflows. It’d be difficult for somebody to misuse our product. But more broadly, misinformation has been with us for longer than AI has been around. If I was working at a Chinese or Russian troll farm, I would be worried about losing my job to AI, but misinformation has been with us for a long time. It’s going to continue to be with us.ā€ 

The way to deal with misinformation, Berkowitz said, is to inform people on how to spot it.  

ā€œThe best defense against that is a more educated populace,ā€ he said. ā€œThe more we help folks understand what’s real and what’s not. I think that’s going to keep getting more challenging as AI gets more effective in creating videos, creating avatars, creating these different forms of content.ā€ 

ā€œOur platform’s job is to surface all of the content that’s out there,ā€ Huwa added. ā€œI think it’s an ongoing process that that kind of everyone in the data space is confronting, to figure out how you sift through, how you address misinformation when there are more than a million news articles coming online every day.ā€ 

Berkowitz pointed out that in some cases misinformation may be what the client needs to find and if AI doesnā€™t show it, it would be significantly less helpful.  

ā€œIt depends on folks’ use cases,ā€ Berkowitz said. ā€œSome folks really only want those trusted news sources and trusted sources of information, and we’re giving them the ability to filter, to only get those. If you’re doing reputational issues as a public affairs professional, you need to see the crazy stuff, even if it’s not true, right? We’re going to surface that stuff, even if it is misinformation because we need to flag it so that the folks that have the ability to correct the record can address that.ā€  

While they do not fear the potential for misinformation on their AI platform, they are concerned about training the system to avoid bias. 

ā€œI think especially when it comes to AI, there has to be an extra sensitivity to having diversity of experiences and backgrounds in representation,ā€ Berkowitz said. ā€œThese AI models, especially these foundation models, are trying to create this foundation of knowledge of the world. If you’re only including certain types of experiences, you’re not going to get the true foundation of the world.ā€ 

One reason Berkowitz and Huwa care deeply about preventing prejudiced thinking to impact their AI models is because of their identity as gay men and their experience with prejudiced people.  

ā€œAs LGBT founders, if you look at some of the core values that we’re bringing into Delve Deep Learning, one of our core values is to build with precision and transparency,ā€ Berkowitz added. ā€œI think being able to be open and clear about what we’re doing is certainly something that can be a challenge for a lot of LGBT folks growing up. One of our other core values is to make sure that we’re building without silos ā€” that it’s a very collaborative process, and everybody is includedā€¦ Isn’t it great making sure that we’re kind of building without those walls in place? I think that that sort of comes from the ethos that I think a lot of folks that identify as LGBT wish they had in more spaces.ā€ 

Huwa sees their experience as gay men almost in parallel to being a start-up founder.  

ā€œI think some of the journey as an LGBT person is figuring out how to confront challenges,ā€ Huwa said. ā€œI think starting a business that’s really pressing into a new area, a new technology, and trying to be on the cutting edge of that technology is just the process of taking risks and overcoming challenges.ā€ 

Huwa also referenced the support Delve got from Growth Lab, a startup accelerator that provides mentoring, education, and networking opportunities for companies founded by LGBTQ entrepreneurs, for their help in providing resources to confront their challenges. 

ā€œHaving Growth Lab as a resource and having other people who’ve experienced being both LGBT founders and starting a business, which is a big undertaking, right?ā€ Huwa said. ā€œI think one of the benefits of being a co-founder and LGBT identifying is that you do have that community that can support you. Growth Labs has been a great resource there. It’s nice to have that community support.ā€ 

With support from organizations like Growth Lab, the tech industry is increasingly embracing diversity.  

ā€œI think for LGBT folks specifically, tech is fairly inclusive, particularly in the political tech space,ā€ Berkowitz said. 

Huwa went as far as to say that he would encourage anyone within the LGBTQ community to start looking into technology and the possibilities within AI to make their world a better place.  

ā€œComing from the technical side, I would advise anyone even remotely interested in learning more about AI to just dive in and start learning how to prompt well and start testing out the different tools,ā€ Huwa said. ā€œThe great thing about AI as a technology is that it is really accessible to everyone ā€” for LGBT individuals, for anyone underrepresented in the tech space. Also you have access to these tools and can start learning how to use them. I think that can be really helpful as you look for a job, as you think about maybe trying to start and create a startup yourself.ā€

Continue Reading

District of Columbia

D.C. to celebrateĀ LGBTQ History Month

Mayor Bowser says city is proud to be in forefront of progress

Published

on

The annual High Heel Race is among events planned to honor LGBTQ History Month this year. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser released a statement on Tuesday, Oct. 8, announcing she and her administration would be celebrating LGBTQ History Month 2024, which takes place each year in October, among other things, by hosting at least three LGBTQ events.

ā€œWashington, D.C. is proud to be in the forefront of LGBTQIA progress,ā€ the mayor said in a press release announcing the cityā€™s support for LGBTQ History Month. 

ā€œAs we celebrate the history of the LGBTQIA+ community and prepare for World Pride 2025, we stand united in our D.C. values and our dedication to creating a city where everyone can thrive,ā€ she said.

The mayor was referring to D.C. being selected as the host for the LGBTQ World Pride celebration in June 2025, which came about after her administration worked closely with the Capital Pride Alliance, the group that organizes most of D.C.ā€™s LGBTQ Pride events, in submitting a bid to the international LGBTQ group that selects the host city for World Pride.

ā€œThis event will coincide with 50 years of Pride celebrations in D.C., reinforcing the cityā€™s commitment to visibility and economic development for all,ā€ the mayorā€™s press release says.

It says under Bowserā€™s leadership, the D.C. Mayorā€™s Office of LGBTQ Affairs ā€œhas become one of the nationā€™s most well-resourced offices dedicated to supporting the LGBTQIA+ community.ā€ It points out that the office ā€œhas awarded over $1.3 million in community grants, provided housing choice vouchers to LGBTQIA+ residents, and hosted a range of impactful events and programs.ā€

Japer Bowles, the LGBTQ Affairs Office director, says in the mayorā€™s press release that he is ā€œproud to serve with leadership that empowers our LGBTQIA+ community and acknowledges our contributions to the District and our national movement for human rights.ā€

Bowles adds in his statement, ā€œThis month, we are reflecting on our progress while also shaping our present and building our future. D.C. is the District of Pride, and our community is integral to our D.C. values.ā€

The three LGBTQ events the press release announced included an online virtual LGBTQIA+ Estate Planning seminar held on Tuesday, Oct. 8, the day the mayorā€™s press release was issued. LGBTQ Affairs Office official Gaby Vincent said about 15 or 20 people participated in the event, which was facilitated by Rebecca Geller of The Geller Law Group.

The next event planned is a two-day World Pride Workshop scheduled for Monday, Oct. 21, and Tuesday, Oct. 22, at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library at 901 G St., N.W. ā€œThis two-day event will unite government agencies, local businesses, and community leaders to lay the groundwork for an unforgettable celebration,ā€ the mayorā€™s statement says.

The statement adds, ā€œWhether youā€™re an ANC Commissioner, business owner, or event organizer, this workshop will help you plan impactful, legal, and licensed events for World Pride 2025.ā€

The third event announced is the cityā€™s 37th Annual 17th Street High Heel Race scheduled for 6 p.m. on Oct. 29, which takes place on 17th Street between P and R Streets, N.W. The event was initiated by one of the gay bars located on 17th Street as a Halloween costume event, but in recent years, under the Bowser administration, it has been organized by the mayorā€™s office.

ā€œThe Annual 17th Street High Heel Race is a time to celebrate the diversity of D.C.ā€™s LGBTQIA+ community and join thousands of spectators cheer on costumed drag queens, drag kings, and community members as they race down 17th Street, N.W,ā€ the press release says. ā€œFilled with local drag entertainment and much more, you wonā€™t want to miss this lively D.C. tradition!ā€

Continue Reading
Advertisement
Advertisement

Sign Up for Weekly E-Blast

Follow Us @washblade

Advertisement

Popular