National Center for Transgender Equality Action Fund

John,

On Trans Day of Visibility, we hosted a community webinar on
which  we discussed How We're Adapting: NCTE's Response to
COVID-19. During the call my colleagues and I spoke about what NCTE
and the NCTE Action Fund are doing during this time and how our
priorities are shifting because of it. If you have time, please take a
moment to watch the full 1-hour video recording here

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. Below are some points from the call that I wanted to make sure that
we highlighted for you:

1.       The National Center for Transgender Equality
(and our connected political organization, the NCTE Action Fund),
has  no intention of stopping our work. We are taking
precautionary measures, using different tactics and delaying certain
projects, but we are absolutely proceeding with the work needed to
advance trans equality.

2.       Since March 12th, we've been a fully
remote organization. NCTE recognized this threat early on, and has
taken the necessary steps to protect our staff and our broader
community by putting workplace policies in place to allow us to do our
part to flatten the curve.

3.       We recognize that this is a very difficult
time for a lot of people. You might have a lot of questions or be
wondering where you can go to find help. We've done our best to
compile these resources on our website
at transequality.org/covid19
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. Please check back often as we are updating it frequently. If you
have suggestions for other resources, please let us know.

4.       We've been actively engaging with
Congress as they attempt to respond to COVID-19, including on issues
of sick and family medical leave, the government's economic
response, calling for a release of people who are incarcerated or in
immigration detention, and several other issues that affect the most
marginalized within our communities.

5.       As a matter of public safety, we've
cancelled all in-person events for the foreseeable future. This
unfortunately includes our annual Trans Equality Now Awards, our
largest fundraising event, which was scheduled to take place on June
9th in Washington, DC. In lieu of in-person celebrations, our staff
has been hard at work developing a new way to celebrate the
accomplishments of our community through online webinars. We
anticipate releasing a new schedule of online events shortly.

6.       As many of you know, NCTE is the organization
that conducts the U.S. Trans Survey (USTS), and we were on schedule to
start collecting data for the USTS this September. However, in order
to attain a representative sample, NCTE partners with several hundred
organizations (in 2015 we partnered with more than 800). Right now,
many of these organizations are-rightly so-focused on the
response to COVID-19 and ensuring the safety of our community. Because
doing responsible outreach for the survey conflicts with the
responsibility of all of us to focus on this current pandemic,
we've made the difficult decision to delay the USTS until 2021.
We hope to collect data as soon as it is safe and responsible to do
so, but due to the uncertainty of this crisis, we can't predict
exactly when that will be.

7.       Our political work through the NCTE Action
Fund could not be more critical now, and we will absolutely not stop.
While we are unaware if or when we'll be able to deploy
on-the-ground organizers to assist in presidential and other
campaigns, we will continue to utilize our digital, web and social
media platforms to mobilize trans voters. If this situation makes
anything clear, it's that now more than ever, we must Transform
the White House.
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These are challenging times, but one thing that I am absolutely
confident about-based on the tens of thousands of trans people I
have met-is that we are resilient people. We haven't faced
anything like COVID-19 before, but we-as communities and as
individuals-have faced so much more. Stay indoors whenever
possible, continue to practice social distancing, and seek any help
that you need. As awful as this situation currently is, we will get
through it, together.

Stay safe,

     Mara Keisling
     National Center for Transgender Equality 
     Executive Director



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