neighborhood | willowbl00

A couple weeks ago, a neighbor reached out to me to ask me if I’d like to be visible for the city. Our little suburban home resides in a sanctuary city, for which I am endlessly grateful and also wish had significantly more teeth. For Trans Day of Remembrance, the mayor wanted to recognize a local trans person. I’m from the midwest, and have often been seen as the only trans person in a social group, on a team, and sometimes even at a whole organization (until, of course, people see me and start feeling confident enough to come out themselves). So sure, if you are willing to give me the mic for 2 minutes, I’m happy to do The Thing.

Willow speaks about trans visibility to their city’s City Council. Transcript follows in blog post.

Here’s roughly what I said:

Hello, and thank you so much for this step in standing with trans people. I’m honored to have become a San Leandran 5 years ago, to raise my 4 year old here with my spouse, and I look forward to (hopefully) spending the rest of our years here. I am agender and queer, and use they/them pronouns.

The few trans friends I have made in San Leandro are moving away, because standing with us in a safe room is not the same as standing with us in the streets. Standing with us in the streets also means standing with the other scapegoats of this authoritarian regime, our immigrant neighbors. Some immigrants are trans folks who escaped countries unsafe for them only to find this country becoming the same. We believe this unaccountable ICE presence rounding up our immigrant neighbors could come for others next.

When the country doesn’t have our backs, our state must. Disappointingly, Gavin Newsom is throwing us under the bus. When our state doesn’t have our backs, our city must. I’m must report that our city refuses to stand against ICE when they actually show up, leaving our militarized police force only militarized against its own citizens and not against a reckless federal takeover in our neighborhoods.

So what can you do? Look at ways to demilitarize our police force— especially if they are not willing to stand with us to protect our neighbors. Stop storing sensitive data about us via things like Flock cameras that can be hacked or forced to be shared with a reckless federal force rounding up long-term residents, regardless of if they have us citizenship, kids, or are strengthening our community. Consider hiring a sanctuary consultant to figure out how to live up to our sanctuary policy with real action, not just this talk – although the talk does mean something.

I know these are medium-term actions, so here is something you can do tonight, when you get home, to promote solidarity with your trans neighbors: start using your pronouns consistently in public emails and writing. Add them to your email signature lines. Tomorrow, add them to the city website.

A reckless force has come to our city. Soon, they could be knocking on my own family’s door. With this limited official support, I continue to build solidarity with my neighbors. My neighbors have my back as I have theirs. Neighbors, please check on each other. I believe we will get through this and build something more beautiful together. United we will. Thank you.

Willow checking in at city chambers. There is a flag in the background that reads "San Leandro stands united against hate" and "A city where kindness matters"

Willow giving a speech next to Mayor Gonzalez in the city council chambers. They are both wearing suits and ties. Willow's hair is blue and they wear a button that says "fix shit up."

The back of my vest reads "Less Gender. More Throttle." And "Queers Never Die" around a skull. My button reads "fix shit up." The suit pants, vest, and shirt are bespoke from Crown Tailor, the shoes custom from Al's Attire, the tie I forget. I am also wearing secret purple suspenders from Dashing Tweeds. The fade is from a local barber shop, the dye I did myself.

I worked on this for nearly a week and a half, getting feedback from neighbors who know more about our local politics, about local concerns, and about speech writing. I am forever grateful to them for helping shape this into something that calls for responsibility without setting everything on fire (like the first draft). Thank you also to my sweetie Mark for capturing the photos and neighbor Whitney for capturing the video. The official video, including comments I made later in the session, will soon be available on Video Central.

As y’all probably know, I got married, moved to the suburbs, and had a kid. Because I’m figuring out how to be involved in local politics, I joined the neighborhood association (not an HOA). But I’m still thinking about crisis response. So the natural combination of these things was to get involved in preparedness in my neighborhood. The association has an open meeting twice a year, and I requested that the one last month be focused on disaster preparedness.

We first heard from the city emergency manager. We’re a mid-sized city in the shadow of both SF and Oakland. We have about 100k people who live here, and have 5 public works employees and 80 police. Our fire department is “on lease,” whatever that means (I didn’t want to completely derail the presentation with a deep dive into this) (also, why we prioritize having our own police but not our own fire people is beyond me). The message in this presentation was the same that I’ve heard elsewhere: folks really need to be able to fend for themselves for the first 72 hours. We were told about a risk map (state and neighborhood) and the basics of being prepared (have predetermined emergency contacts; store water, food, and other supplies). The city representative told us about their main issue being how to get the word out – emergency alerts don’t seem to be getting the job done (again, I want to know more about that), so she suggested we sign up for a thing called NIXLE alerts (text your zip to 888-777) that works if the cell towers are up. Radio is still used. We have sirens in my town, but they don’t work.

We also have resilience hubs in my town, and we heard about them from a college intern for the program. These centers keep racial equity in mind when approaching quality of life year-round. The disparity even in the urban tree canopy was called out – more affluent neighborhoods have more trees, which also means they’re cooler in heat waves. Their goal is to help groups “bounce forward” in climate adaptation. Their programming has a few arms – Community Care and Belonging, Disaster Preparedness, Climate Solutions, and Equity – during everyday, disruption, and recovery times. They also strive to have great buildings that can be useful in crisis; plus communications, power systems, and operations abilities (including conflict resolution protocols). I am clearly stoked about all this.

After hearing from the two speakers, I asked attendees to break into smaller groups and talk about what they would like to see happen in our specific neighborhood, and what questions they still had. This was amusing – the attendees hadn’t been asked to be participants beyond taking a mic to speak to a board in the past – but we got some good results! Based on the feedback folks had, I’m going to work with a small group to put together a risk and resource map of our neighborhood for our next Chili Cookoff and BBQ in August, which folks can add themselves to as resources. I’d also like to privately start collecting names and addresses of at-risk neighbors for block captains to check in on during the next heat wave or earthquake or whatever. At the same event, we’ll probably do a prize for the best go bag, and hawk this phenomenal guide another neighbor has put together for preparedness called Here Comes the Apocalypse. I am delighted by this fun visual guide and hope you check it out. I hope Jen and I get to be friends, because she’s brilliant for this.

It’s exciting to merge two things I’m so passionate about – the disaster cycle and my neighborhood. Fingers crossed we never need it, but if we do, we’ll be more ready than we would have been otherwise.

willowbl00

adventures in assimilation

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