One Matador Fighting for Equality

He was brought to a place where he  would not be allowed to attend college, get his driver’s license, obtain loans, or even work legally. He began his senior year of high school undocumented, not knowing any English and gay. His classmates and friends assumed he was from the valley, like everyone else, and he was usually too scared or embarrassed to correct them.

Ronnie Veliz  is currently a California State University of Northridge student and came to the United States with his family when he was only a teenager.

Veliz distinctly remembers his parents telling him to make sure he never gets into a fight or into any trouble at school. They told him that  if a cop ever has to write his name down, it will decrease his chances of ever becoming a full citizen. Veliz understood why his parents needed him to be careful and silently endured the disrespect and bullying in hopes of a better future.

In addition to Veliz’s undocumented status, he already knew when he arrived in the United States, that he was gay. Veliz knew he would never be able to marry the person he loved in this country or become a citizen by marrying his partner.

Veliz’s mother found out that he was gay a few years earlier. She had stumbled upon love letters that Veliz had written to a boyfriend. Her automatic assumption was that someone much older, was molesting him. After Veliz explained the truth to his mother, Veliz says, “She cried so much. It might have even been easier to for her if I HAD been molested.  After that, she just chose not to talk about it and pretend it wasn’t real.” Veliz and his mother decided it was best if his father did not know. “I was way too scared to tell my father,” Veliz says, “because from a very young age he taught me that I needed be a man. He made it clear that I had a gender role and it was my job to fulfill it. I knew he would be extremely disappointed in me.”

“Being undocumented as a kid can make you feel really lonely sometimes,” says Veliz. Coming out as gay helped prepare Veliz to fight other types of ignorance, like the misinformation that often surrounds undocumented people.  Sometimes when I was young, it was little bit easier to celebrate being gay, while being undocumented was purely holding me back, says Veliz.

No federal agency documents LGBT sexual and gender identities. However, based on the Pew Hispanic Center’s estimate of 14 million undocumented immigrants and the Williams Institute’s assessment which states that almost ten percent of the United States population identifies  as LGBT, it is estimated there are over one million undocumented LGBT- identified immigrants currently in the United States.

Veliz has recently gained full citizenship status and has almost finished his BA at California State University of Northridge. As a way to give back and help other young people who are part of minorities, Veliz has created a club on his college campus called Matadors for Equality.

Matadors for Equality welcomes everyone, especially those who are part of more than one minority. Veliz founded the club because he thought it would be much more effective to fight for equality  alongside other people who are facing the same ignorance and discrimination. Veliz has found that the more people he can get to fight with him, the stronger the army will be. “So why not create the biggest, strongest army of minorities we can,” Veliz says.

The purpose of Matadors For Equality is to empower unity and rise above social injustice among Matadors (CSUN students). The Matadors for Equality members share their personal experiences about issues that directly affect CSUN students whether  they are undocumented, LGBT, part of a racial minority, have learning disabilities or are disabled, or treated as any kind of inferior class of people on campus and in society.  They also discuss current events, community service, and common interests. Their meetings and activities try to make CSUN a safer and friendlier environment for everyone.

Veliz has learned from his experience that “People are not always who you think they are.  Some of us pick your strawberries or care for your children. Some are in high school or college, and some write the news articles you might read.  People are always so much more than they appear to be.”

Snobar!

Jackson’s Profile – Best Wishes Today Jackson!!!

By definition, a contradiction is a direct opposition between two things. There is a blog on the internet with pictures of a beautiful, smiling baby girl. She is swinging on a child’s swing, wearing only her diaper and a long necklace. There are also photos of a young man named Jackson; he is the person who created the blog. Jackson writes with confidence and grace in his blog as explains himself to the world. The little girl on the swing and the young man who wrote the blog are the same person, they share the same soul.

Jackson Darling, 27, is a transgender man. His birth name was Jessica Darling and his road in transitioning from Jessica to Jackson has been anything but a straight line.

Kindergarten was Jackson’s first time realizing that his expression of self and what was expected of him did not match up. Jackson heard his mother correcting his teacher that he was not a boy, but that he was her daughter. Jackson was proud of looking like a little tomboy but it was clear to him in that moment, that his mother wanted him to be seen as her daughter. “That’s when I first saw gender with such a black and white perspective,” Jackson said. It taught him that when someone gets your gender wrong, you are supposed to correct them. When you are young, Jackson says, gender is not a concept that you know how to describe or comprehend. You are just expressed as a person. But once you start interacting with the world around you in a more formal way, gender becomes something that you are conscious of.

Jackson grew up in a progressive Unitarian Universalist family. His mother, father and older sister have always been supportive and open-minded. In high school, Jackson had both a serious girlfriend and a serious boyfriend and has always been attracted to both sexes.

Family members of transgender people go through a huge transition themselves. They have to go through many of the same steps with coming to terms with their family member’s gender. Through open communication an education Jackson’s sister, Robin Darling, has become a very strong ally for the LGBT community. It was not always easy for Robin to face the reality that her little sister was not going to be her little sister anymore. Robin attended San Francisco State and graduated with her masters in the sexuality studies program. She even did her thesis on female partners of transgender men.

A huge turning point for Jackson came when he began college at the University of California, Berkeley as an art major. He remembers signing his artwork with the name Jessica and feeling like his name did not reflect the person he was at all, as if someone else’s name was on his work.

“It was a really important time for me to discover myself and gain a sense of independence. I had to figure out how I wanted to be as a person in the world and for the first time didn’t see myself as a child living at home who was trying to please my parents,” Jackson said. “Since the things we repress never really go away, the feelings I had always been having about my body not representing who I am came back. During college, I learned that when making decisions about my life, the answers are always going to have to come from within me. I can ask people for their thoughts and advice and get support but ultimately I will know the answers to the challenges I have,” Jackson said.

Changing his name from Jessica to Jackson was a long process. First, he went by the name Jess in college. It fit him better because it was more androgynous. Then he started going by the name Jay. He thought Jess felt like too much of an association with his old self. “At work I was still going by Jess and using female pronouns but I was going by Jay with friends. There was a mix of people calling me different things so my transition into Jay was a little bit slower.” After an extensive decision-making process and deciding that he still wanted a J name, he chose the name Jackson. “It was a piece by piece process to announce to everyone. There was certainly a time where I didn’t know how to introduce myself. I would introduce myself and give people all these options of what they wanted to call me. Finally I had people who would ask what I prefer and told me that if I wanted to go by Jackson, it’s ok.”

Jackson currently works as the project manager at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center. At the center, Jackson is a leader for his employees and thousands of volunteers. One of Jackson’s employees, Marnie Florin, says Jackson is an excellent listener and even better at giving advice. “He knows how hard to push people but is very cautious of not giving someone so much responsibility that they feel overwhelmed, which is a pretty impressive skill. He’s incredibly encouraging, and always makes me feel appreciated for everything I do,” says Florin.

Florin remembers feeling overwhelmed in the beginning with her job to recruit new volunteers. “I realized that I was probably not going to hit my recruiting goal and I was really disappointed. Jackson had me write down everything I had done the past few weeks, so that I could see that I had really done a lot. I was just so focused on the numbers that I couldn’t see all the stuff I had accomplished,” Florin said.

Throughout his journey, Jackson has learned that there is not just one way to be a transgender person. Just like there is not one way to be a man or a woman, Jackson says, there is not one way to express your gender. So identifying as a transgender person does not determine who you are. If you are a trans man, you get to choose what kind of man you are. You can be a sensitive man, a man who cries, or a man who works out at the gym, or not, Jackson says. You get to decide who that is and make choices about how you behave and how you interact with people.

Aids Walk 2011

More than 30,000 people participated in the 27th annual AIDS Walk Los Angeles. The event raises money for AIDS Project Los Angeles and related service organizations. This year’s event raised more than $3 million.

This year marks 30 years since the AIDS virus was reported in five young gay men in Los Angeles. Over the years, more than 32,000 people have died of the disease in the county, according to health officials. Another 63,000 area residents live with HIV or AIDS.

One of the themes of the walk was “30 Years Of AIDS Is Enough,” referring to this year’s 30th anniversary of the release by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the first study of the severity of what would become the AIDS epidemic, based on research that focused on five men in Los Angeles who contracted a rare type of pneumonia with no apparent cause.

Celebrities and notable figures at today’s event included Drew Carey (“The Price Is Right”), Raquel Castaneda (“The Real L Word”), Barrett Foa (“NCIS: Los Angeles”), Conchata Ferrell (“Two and a Half Men”), Dot Marie Jones (“Glee”), television host Carson Kressley (current contestant on “Dancing with the Stars”), Mike Manning (Real World: D.C.).

This is a news package i did for my journalism 415 class!

A Message for the Straight People

Someone telling another person that they are not gay does not make them any less gay. Nobody likes to be called something they’re not.  So clearly, gay people don’t like when straight people tell them no, in fact, they are straight.

Sometimes straight people tell gay people they are straight, because they feel like they are helping them .  For that reason, I want to explain something. This way in the future those concerned, well-meaning people don’t try to help someone in such an offensive way.

Just like in everything else, sexuality is not black and white. For a lot of people sexuality  is a whole lot more grey and fluid. Trying to fit everyone into categories of gay, straight or bi is only as clear as calling all people black, white or asian. It just does not work. There are so many other types of people out there. Even though it would probably be easier to call everyone  black, white or asian it would be completely inaccurate. It is just as inaccurate to call everyone gay, straight or bi.

Humans change over time and the same goes for attractions and relationships.  Some people (like me) are attracted to people NOT gender.  A pansexual is someone who has the potential for attraction to people of all gender identities and sexual orientations. For a pansexual, gender and sex are insignificant in determining whether or not they will be attracted to someone.

The Kinsey Scale can help make the topic of sexuality more clear. Alfred Kinsey was one of the first scientists to conduct large-scale scientific tests into human sexuality and he came up with something called the Kinsey Scale. The Kinsey Scale rages from 0, meaning exclusively heterosexual, to 6, meaning exclusively homosexual and it looks something like this:

0- Exclusively heterosexual with no homosexual

1- Predominantly heterosexual, only incidentally homosexual

2- Predominantly heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexual

3- Equally heterosexual and homosexual

4- Predominantly homosexual, but more than incidentally heterosexual

5- Predominantly homosexual, only incidentally heterosexual

6- Exclusively homosexual

They found that sexual behavior, thoughts and feelings towards the same or opposite sex was not always equal across time. Though most men and women reported being exclusively heterosexual, and a percentage reported exclusively homosexual, many individuals disclosed behaviors or thoughts somewhere in between. People

The Kinsey Scale doesn’t do justice to all the possibilities of people’s sexuality but it at least gives a little bit clearer understanding that there is at least more than three. People can be anywhere on the spectrum or on a completely separate spectrum of their own. My tiny description of sexuality does not even touch on transgender people and all the other ways people are.

Obama Will Be in West Hollywood Today!

President Obama is going to be at the House of Blues in West Hollywood today for fundraising events.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department warned motorists to expect major traffic delays throughout the afternoon and into the evening not only in West Hollywood but also in surrounding areas in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills.

The impact could begin as early as morning rush hour; San Vicente Boulevard will be closed between Santa Monica Boulevard and Melrose Avenue from 6 a.m. Monday to noon Tuesday.

Other closures: Sunset Boulevard from Doheny Drive to Sweetzer Avenue; Santa Monica Boulevard from Doheny to La Cienega Boulevard; and La Cienega from Sunset to Rosewood Avenue.

Motorists hoping for shortcuts will be disappointed. Shutdowns will be in effect on Olive Drive from Sunset to Santa Monica Boulevard, on Holloway Drive from Sunset to La Cienega, on Fountain Avenue from La Cienega to Sweetzer Avenue, and on De Longpre Avenue from Fountain Avenue to Flores Street.

West Hollywood’s Ban On Fur

West Hollywood has passed an ordinance that forbids the sale of fur.

Although this is a small city, a mere 1.9 square miles with about 36 thousand residents, lawmakers hope this will set a national trend.

The ordinance does not include leather and fur used in furniture, the New York Times reports.

“This is a tiny city, so it’s mostly symbolic,” a councilman and the sponsor for the ban said. “I think the impact will be heard from here to Fifth Avenue. People will talk about what a fur ban means in a new way.”

This is not the first time West Hollywood’s city council has used legislation to illuminate social issues. The sale of dogs and cats in pet stores, sale of inexpensive handguns, and cat de-clawing are some of the peculiar bans the council has previously implemented.

While animal rights activists proclaim the ordinance a victory, West Hollywood retailers are anything but thrilled. “It would absolutely diminish the city as a fashion capital,” Genevieve Morrill, president of the West Hollywood Chamber of Commerce said of the ban.

A  study by the Fur Information Council of America says 45% of fashion retailers located in West Hollywood sold fur.

“People are still buying fur. If people were not buying it, stores wouldn’t want to sell it. So the animal rights lobby is trying to force through a ban on a legal product,” Keith Kaplan, executive director of the Fur Information Council of America said.

Council members noted that shoppers who want furs can buy as many as they want at boutiques just a few blocks away in Beverly Hills.

But city council members are not influenced. The city is still awaiting a financial impact study before the council takes a final vote in October.