Creating Change carries a legacy of bringing together LGBTQIA+ leadership from all over the nation to one city- to teach, learn and experience each other for the last 38 years. Stepping into a space that holds 2-3000 people who have embraced their Queerness and often made it an extension or the centerpiece of their work isn’t an experience that is easy to adequately verbalize. Breaking the 4th wall a bit to speak in 1st person as an individual who has shared that space, opposed to just a journalist that is reporting on it, feels important. Creating Change and the hotel it lives inside of each year feels like a living, breathing thing. After so many days together, you almost feel like you live there. Each day full of activities from sunrise to nearly sunrise again makes every day feel like three. All of those people that climb out of your email, DMs, and zoom calls- to standing in front of you, arms outstretched to embrace you is more beautiful and overwhelming than I know how to put words to. Creating Change feels more like a city than a conference. It is an ecosystem that only includes community and that is both refreshing and staggering. There are co-workers, friends, enemies and exes. There are lovers, strangers, former business associates, allies, accomplices, entities with competing goals, shared dreams and shared fears. There are endless possibilities and endless work to be done. There is a space to teach and endless things to learn. 

(December 5, 2024) - Today, equality org, Gender Liberation Movement (GLM) led dozens of social justice activists and allies in a “Bathroom Sit-In” at a congressional bathroom. The bathroom was positioned very closely to Speaker Mike Johnson’s office who is implementing Rep. Nancy Mace's policy banning Trans people from using restrooms in government buildings. Protestors with banners that read, “FLUSH BATHROOM BIGOTRY” and chanted from inside the Women’s restroom and down the halls were arrested by Capital police. Chelsea Manning, GLM co-founder Raquel Willis, abortion liberation activist Renee Bracey Sherman, and other social justice leaders were among the individuals that were removed and detained by police.

The fear is that the proposal to expand bill H. RES. 1579 would ban bathroom access for Trans people in all federal buildings and could extend to educational institutions, museums, and other public landmarks. Opponents of the bill insist this move will not only compromise the safety of Trans women but put everyone including cis-gender women at risk.

Watch the full interview with Javannah Davis on Blaque/OUT Mag TV on Youtube

Photos by Alexa B Wilkinson