If you are eligible to vote, be sure to cast your ballot today if you haven’t already! To find information on polling locations, registration, and your rights on election day, visit vote.org
For nonpartisan information on what’s on the ballot this election, check out Vote411 or the League of Women Voters Guide.
Additionally, Capital Metro is waiving fares all of today to help people get to the polls. For more information on transportation to polling locations in Austin, click here.
Kristen Woollery is an up-and-coming artist. Her work pays homage to her Afro-Trinidadian roots, and her style is also influenced by her upbringing in Brooklyn, New York. Woollery uses bright and vibrant colors to convey the “strength, resilience, and beauty present in her culture and represented in her work.” To check out her work, follow her @lowkey.krissi on Instagram, and to support her work, visit her website.
The Arab and The Gay is a podcast that breaks social norm and conjoins the perspectives of two underrepresented voices in American media — the Arab and LGBTQ+ communities. The two hosts share their feelings with each other, talk about current events, and reminisce over funny, sad, and thought-invoking memories. Topics include anything ranging from U.S. presidential elections to their first loves to interviews with other community members.
Written and directed by Minnesota-based David Buchanan, Black In Minneapolis is a film made in 2019 that focuses on the struggle between the police and Black Americans. It starts off with Joe, a Black American that doesn’t want anything to do with the law or politics, and just wants to live a quiet life following the rules, and his brother, a deeply-involved young man dead-set on changing the way Black Americans are treated and portrayed. After Joe witnesses the unjust death of his brother by a cop, it sparks something in him — a voice longing for equality. In an interview with the Minnesota Spokesman Recorder, Buchanan said “It’s [the film] told by Black people. I’m a Black man, we had two Black producers—a Black man and a Black woman. All the cast was Black, 90%, aside from the cops.” Additionally, interviews with real people who have experienced police violence are included in the film. Black In Minneapolis really opens up discussion on how just the police system really is, and the inequalities Black Americans face from the ones who are supposed to protect them.
Starting October 4th this year, Austin ISD has its own tutoring program for grades 1-12 at designated branches of the Austin Public Library. The student/tutor pairs will meet Monday-Thursday anytime between 2:50 to 7:50 p.m. at either Carver Branch Library or Little Walnut Creek Branch Library. Tutoring is a great way to achieve mastery of your learning as well as a meaningful way to teach others who are struggling. For history on the VICTORY tutoring program, refer to this video. To sign up to become a student volunteer, refer to this link.
Keep Austin Beautiful is an organization that aims to promote Austin’s biodiversity and protect its unique wildlife. The initiative has been around for almost 40 years and was started by Mayor Ron Mullen. Every month, there are several opportunities across Austin to clean up parks or creeks. Keep Austin Beautiful makes sure to list these opportunities on its website. So whenever you have the time, check it out as a fun way to help out the community.
The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous protests made by the LGBTQ+ community in response to a fateful police raid at the Stonewall Inn, located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. At the time of the protests, same-sex relations were illegal in more than 100 countries and every state of the United States had anti-sodomy laws.
Half a century after the Stonewall riots, gay sex remains illegal in 69 countries and can be punished with death in 7 nations. The data analysis from LGBT+ rights groups ILGA, Lambda Legal, Stonewall, and external sources found 13 countries decriminalized gay sex in the 1970s and 26 in the 1990s. But in the 1980s, only 5 nations decriminalized gay sex due to the global HIV/AIDS epidemic dissuading others from taking action. Twelve countries removed laws punishing same-sex relations in the 2000s, and 13 have lifted bans since 2010. However, the pace of change has stalled due to immense conservative and religious backlash. Gay sex remains illegal in 32 of 54 countries in Africa and in 10 Middle East nations while same-sex relations are outlawed in 18 countries of the Asia-Pacific region. Progress has also stalled in Europe due to conservative backlash and anti-gay rhetoric in some political campaigns.
The difference in the fight for LGBTQ+ rights can be summarized by the West moving onto surrogacy and adoption laws as well as intersex and trans rights, while Africa and Asia fighting for fundamental legalization of gay sex and marriage equality. However, it’s important to note that each continent has unique challenges for its LGBTQ+ citizens. In Europe, gay sex has been decriminalised across the continent and 28 nations out of 44 allow some form of same-sex marriage or civil unions. So, the attention has moved onto the recognition of transgender and intersex issues. Asia has shown some signs of change as evidenced by India legalizing gay sex. On the other hand, Malaysia and Indonesia remain stagnant. In Africa, South Africa is the only country to allow same-sex marriage. Additionally, the Catholic Church remains resistant to homosexuality.
Previous colonial laws and cultural conservatism are the reasons for many African countries’ severe legal punishment for having gay sex/being gay. For example, the sentences are 14 years in jail in Kenya or the death penalty in Sudan and parts of Somalia and Nigeria. Hopes of growing liberalization stemming from Botswana decriminalizing same-sex relations were tempred by Kenya upholding its ban. In Tunisia, gay sex still remains punishable by three years in jail. Lesbian and bisexual women face more issues like corrective rape in places such as Cameroon and Senegal. In Zimbabwe, homeless boys have been selling their bodies to survive on the streets due to the political and economic problems following the ouster of former dictator Robert Mugabe in 2017. A refugee crisis on the Kenyan-Ugandan border has been exacerbated by LGBT+ migrants fleeing Uganda where the Ugandan parliament in 2014 passed the Anti-Homosexuality Act.
In Latin America, the Catholic Church and the evangelical movement are frequently critical of gay rights. Jair Bolsonaro, the president of Brazil, has been vocal about his disdain for the LGBTQ+ community. His lack of support has enabled targeting of the community. In fact, the data agency Trans Murder Monitoring (TMM) reported that Brazil recorded the highest number of 167 reported killings out of the estimated 369 murders of trans people in one year. Globally, the number of trans people killed has ticked higher recently, with 295 murders recorded in 2016 and 325 in 2017 in contrast to 138 in 2008. Central and South American was the overwhelming majority (2,530 deaths) in a total of 2,982 deaths reported between 2008 and 2018 according to TMM. However, there is some optimism for change as seen by Ecuador legalizing gay marriage.
In Asia, progress in India and Taiwan (both legalizing gay/same-sex marriage) had sparked hope that change can happen in some of the Muslim-majority nations like Indonesia and Malaysia. Indeed, the lower house of Bhutan's parliament unanimously passed a bill in the first step towards decriminalising homosexuality. Thailand and possibly Vietnam might pass marriage equality laws, and potential laws for same-sex partnerships are under consideration by legislatures in Nepal and Japan. However, regress is happening at the same time: the Muslim-majority countries (Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia) and countries with well-organised, heavily conservative Protestant churches (Singapore and South Korea) have continued to crack down on LGBT+ rights.
Europe remains at the forefront of LGBTQ+ rights since gay sex is legal in all 44 countries and a form of same-sex marriage or civil union is allowed in 28 countries. The focus has now switched to transgender and intersex issues and thanks to the tireless work of advocates for the human rights of transgender and intersex people, the number of governments adopting legal gender recognition laws and discussing how to ban intersex surgeries has increased. Yet in Britain in particular, transgender rights have been overshadowed by an increasingly toxic debate over whether they encroach on those of other women. Elsewhere in Europe, Georgia has canceled plans to hold the country's first Pride march after a wave of political unrest left hundreds injured and due to opposition from extreme right-wing groups and the Orthodox Church.
The Stonewall riots remain a symbol of empowerment to the LGBTQ+ community. Many campaigners - from non-governmental organizations and the business community - remain optimistic for the future but recognize there is still much work to be done. The recent advances have inspired more activists to continue fighting for LGBTQ+ rights. Although it has become common to presume that the fight has largely been won, activists must not become complacent as it’ll still take monumental effort and activism to ensure that the world is truly safe place for those out of the closet.
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