About 100 people turned out on Dec. 12 at D.C.’s Eaton Hotel to listen and ask questions to a panel of six LGBTQ rights advocates who discussed the impact on the LGBTQ community of the election last month of Donald Trump as U.S. president and a Republican majority in both houses of the U.S. Congress.

The event, which was hosted by the Washington Blade, was entitled, “Charting Our Future: LGBTQ+ Advocacy & Resilience in a Changing Landscape.”

“There are a lot of complicated issues that are coming for our community in the next four years, ” Washington Blade editor Kevin Naff told the gathering in opening remarks. “And we’re hoping this will be the first in a series of events. So please share your feedback with us,” he said.

The Blade organized the event in partnership with the D.C. LGBTQ+ Budget Coalition, HME Consulting & Advocacy, the Eaton Hotel, the D.C. LGBTQ+ Community Center, Capital Pride Alliance, and the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs. Heidi Ellis, CEO of the LGBTQ+ Budget Coalition, served as moderator.

The panelists, who presented a wide range of views, including optimism and concern over the incoming Trump administration, included: 

• D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5), the Council’s only openly gay member

• Jordyn White, Vice President of Leadership, Development, and Research for the Human Rights Campaign Foundation

• Remmington Belford, Vice President of the Black Gifted & Whole Foundation, a member of the D.C. Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs Advisory Committee, who serves as press secretary for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

• Tyler Cargill, Outreach and Training Specialist for the D.C. Office of Human Rights

• Preston Mitchum, CEO of PDM Consulting, a D.C.-based “multipurpose Black queer owned and operated consulting firm.”

• Ava Benach, immigration attorney and founding partner of Banach Collopy law firm

• Reginald ‘Reggie’ Greer, Senior Adviser to the U.S. Special Envoy to Advance the Human Rights of LGBTQI+ Persons at the U.S. State Department.

Parker, like most of the panelists, expressed both deep concern and optimism over what may happen in the next four years.

“I will be honest with you,” he said. “We have a Republican president and  Republicans control both chambers of the Congress. And they have said they want to install a level of oversight over the District that will not bode well for the folks in this room but also for the District,” he said.

“I’m concerned about our trans siblings, especially our Black and Brown trans siblings,” Parker said. “The last thing I will say quickly, though, is that we are not hopeless. And in thinking about advocacy and resilience in our title today, that’s what this community is all about. That’s what we’ve always known.”

The D.C. gay bar Uproar located in the city’s Shaw neighborhood at 639 Florida Ave., N.W., has issued a GoFundMe appeal seeking financial support as it struggles to pay rent and utilities.

The GoFundMe appeal, which was posted by Uproar’s owner Tammy Truong, says its goal is to raise $100,000. As of Dec. 10, the posting says $4,995 had been raised.

“For over nine years Uproar has been an integral part of the D.C. LGBTQIA+ community,” the GoFundMe message says. “It has been a place of refuge for many people and has been a space where people have been allowed to express themselves freely.”

The message adds, “We have recently faced unexpected challenges and are asking for help from the community that we’ve given so much to. We want to be able to continue to pay and support our staff and our community. All donations will be used to pay for these unexpected costs and will be used to improve the space for staff and patrons.”

On its website, Uproar provides further details of the unexpected costs it says it is now faced with.

“Due to significant increases in insurance costs for 2025, we’ve had to deplete our reserves from our summer sales,” the website message says. “As a result, we are now struggling to cover rent and utility costs through the winter.”

The message adds, “Our top priority is to ensure that our amazing staff, who are the heart and soul of Uproar, are fully supported. We are committed to keeping them fully employed and scheduled during this difficult time so they can continue to provide for themselves and  their families.”

Uproar, which caters to a clientele of the city’s leather and bear communities, has faced challenges in the past when the local D.C. Advisory Neighborhood Commission voted to oppose the routine renewal of its liquor license.

In November 2019, ANC 1B voted unanimously to oppose the license renewal of Uproar and 22 other liquor serving establishments in the U Street-Florida Avenue area on grounds that they have a negative impact on “peace, order, and quiet” in the surrounding neighborhoods. The city’s liquor board nevertheless approved the license renewals for Uproar and most of the other establishments.

Local nightlife advocates criticized the ANC’s action, saying it was based on an anti-business and anti-nightlife bias that requires bars such as Uproar to expend large sums of money on retaining lawyers to help them overcome the license opposition.

The Uproar GoFundMe page can be accessed here:

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser joined District Police Chief Pamela Smith and Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice Lindsey Appiah in crediting a series of stepped-up crime fighting and crime reduction programs put in place over the past year with bringing about a 35 percent reduction in violent crime in the city over the past year.

Bowser, Smith, and Appiah highlighted what they called a significant drop in overall crime in the nation’s capital at a Dec. 9 news conference held at the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department headquarters’ Joint Operations Command Center.

Among other things, the city officials presented slides on a large video screen showing that in addition to the 35 percent drop in overall violent crime during the past year, the number of carjackings dropped by 48 percent, homicides declined by 29 percent, robberies declined by 39 percent, and assaults with a dangerous weapon also dropped by 29 percent.

“I want to start by thanking MPD and I want to thank all of our public safety teams, local and federal, and the agencies that support their work,” Bowser said in noting that the improved crime data this year was due to a combined effort in adopting several new programs to fight crime.

Bowser also thanked D.C. Council member Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2) who introduced legislation backed by the mayor and approved by the Council in March of this year called the Secure D.C. bill, which includes a wide range of new crime fighting and crime prevention initiatives.

In response to a question from the Washington Blade, Chief Smith said she believes the stepped-up crime fighting efforts played some role in D.C. police making arrests in two recent cases involving D.C. gay men who were victims of a crime of violence.  

In one of the cases, 22-year-old Sebastian Thomas Robles Lascarro, a gay man, was attacked and beaten on Oct. 27 of this year by as many as 15 men and women at the D.C. McDonald’s restaurant at 14th and U Street, N.W., with some of them shouting anti-gay slurs. D.C. police, who listed the incident as a suspected hate crime, arrested a 16-year-old male in connection with the case on a charge of Assault with Significant Bodily Injury.

The other case involved a robbery and assault that same day of gay DJ and hairstylist Bryan Smith, 41, who died 11 days later on Nov. 7 from head injuries that police have yet to link to the robbery. Police  have since arrested two teenage boys, ages 14 and 16, who have been charged with robbery. 

Smith said the police department’s Special Liaison Branch, which includes the LGBT Liaison Unit, will continue to investigate hate crimes targeting the LGBTQ community.

“And so, I think that what we will do is what we have been doing, which is really making sure that the reports are coming in or the incident reports are coming in and we’re ensuring that the Special Liaison Branch is getting out to the communities to ensure that those types of hate crimes are not increasing across our city,” she said.

Smith added, “We will continue to work with the community, work with our members, our LGBTQ, our other groups and organizations to ensure that we are getting the right information out and making sure that people, when they see something, they say something to share that information with us.”

Data posted on the D.C. police website show from Jan. 1-Oct. 31, 2024, a total of 132 hate crimes were reported in the District. Among those, 22 were based on the victim’s sexual orientation, and 18 were based on the victim’s gender identity or expression.

During that same period, 47 hate crimes based on the victim’s ethnicity or national origin were reported, 33 were reported based on the victim’s race, and six were based on the victim’s religion. 

The data show that for the same period in 2023, 36 sexual orientation related hate crimes were reported, and 13 gender identity or expression cases were reported.