Tech 1010 Newsletter - Issue 30
This year has been a hard one for the queer community. Right-wing media funded transphobia has led to anti-trans legislation being introduced and passed across the country. We’ve lost several of our queer and trans siblings. Our hearts are heavy, but our history is one of community and resistance (pride is a riot!). We love, celebrate, mourn, and fight together.
Many labor organizers are queer, trans, Black, brown, disabled, or from groups that fall outside of white-cis-hetero-patriarchy because we know how to build community and support each other. We have to in order to survive in this system. Miriam Frank and Desma Holcomb point this out in their 1990 Pride at Work booklet to share strategies on how unions can organize around LGBTQ+ rights: “As activists, we have something special to offer the labor movement. Organizing skills developed in the lesbian and gay community can effectively be transferred to union work.”
We organize our workplaces because we all deserve to live happy and healthy lives — labor organizing has played a key role in the advancement of LGBTQ+ rights. We wanted to share some of the history that we inherit:
In 1973, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) passed a resolution at their national convention to “repeal of state laws and school district regulations which attempt to punish acts committed by teachers in the course of their private lives.” In 1978, queer teachers and AFT members played a huge role in stopping right-wing ballot measures like the Briggs initiative that would ban gay teachers from teaching in public schools. Today, AFT continues to fight against homophobic and transphobic legislation like the Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law through mass resistance.
In 1984, the AIDS Committee of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 250 started distributing English/Spanish information booklets and trainings to healthcare workers on safety precautions that they and their patients could take to prevent HIV transmission when there was a high level of misinformation and denial about the severity of the epidemic (sound familiar?)
In 1982, the staff union at Village Voice won domestic partner benefits (first in the U.S.) for unmarried cohabiting partners.
In 2004, SEIU nurses, teachers, UAW and IBEW members mobilized and stopped a hostile amendment attempting to roll back marriage equality in Massachusetts.
We share these stories to remind us that we do have power to change the world and protect each other — but we have to stand together. We are part of this labor movement and the fight for a better future. How will we use our collective power?
Happy hot queer labor summer!
Kaarthika, RV, and Toy