The banter back and forth between political organizations about ENDA is fueled with anger and he-said-she-said. It’s like fire! So, let them duke it out. But, what we do know is that further rifts will cause additional divide between organizations and communities, and that would be counter productive.
Now is the time to take a breath, dust off you knees and gear up for a push—a push to continue to educate people about gender identity, transgender and intersex issues and, also, the difference between gender identity and sexual orientation.
Now is the time to get involved with organizations. Now is the time to share your voice. Now is the time to take that anger, dismay and disappointment and turn it into something else:
community strength
community togetherness
community support
Now is the time to get involved and let your voice be heard!
The LGBT community is one community, and we want to move forward, together, in one bill.
Current Online Petitions:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/transgender_inclusive_ENDA/
http://www.nosubstitutes.org/
Websites for information:
The Task Force: http://www.taskforce.org
National Center for Transgender Equality: http://www.nctequality.org
PFLAG: http://www.pflag.org
HRC: http://www.hrc.org
To find your US Rep:
http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW_by_State.shtml
or
http://clerk.house.gov/member_info/index.html
To find your Senators, visit: http://www.senate.state.oh.us/senators/index.html
TransOhio
http://groups.google.com/group/transohio
http://www.transohio.org
TransOhio@wowway.com
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Insist on a transgender-inclusive ENDA!
Tell Congress you’re watching: You want a transgender-inclusive ENDA passed this year!
Last week, leadership in the House of Representatives announced they were moving forward with a nondiscrimination bill that would not have protections for transgender people. The outcry from the LGBT community was united, and intense. We stood together and said we would rather have no ENDA than a bill that left some of us behind.
You changed the course of Congress. On Monday, the House leadership announced that the committee vote that was scheduled for this week was postponed. But that doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods yet. We need to make sure that every single member of Congress has heard from constituents, urging him/her to support a transgender-inclusive ENDA. We also need to make the specific request: oppose any effort to weaken the bill, including by stripping or modifying any of the transgender protections.
Call your Representative TODAY at (202) 224-3121 and ask him/her to “support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), H.R. 2015, as originally introduced – a fully inclusive bill that provides workplace protections to gay, lesbian, bisexual, AND transgender individuals.”
If your Representative says s/he supports the bill or is a cosponsor, please follow up with:
“Thank you. I urge you to fully support ENDA (H.R. 2015) as introduced, and to OPPOSE any effort to weaken the bill, including by stripping or modifying any of the transgender protections.”
—
“The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say ‘I’. And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say ‘I’. They don’t think ‘I’. They think ‘we’; they think ‘team’. They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but ‘we’ gets the credit…. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.”
— Peter F. Drucker