Equality Arizona Updates Equality Arizona

Civic Advocacy
On Thursday, June 8, Governor Hobbs announced her veto of SB 1040, a bill that would have restricted bathroom access for transgender students. This action marks a full decade of failure for anti-trans bathroom bills in Arizona, a particular obsession of state Senator John Kavanagh. Governor Hobbs kept her veto letter brief, writing:
SB1040 is yet another discriminatory act against LGBTQ+ youth passed by the majority at the state legislature. As I stated in my veto letter for SB1001, I will veto every bill that aims to attack and harm children.
Today, June 12, the legislature will return from nearly a month’s recess to complete some unfinished business, and with a high probability that the legislature will adjourn sine die as soon as the end of the week, we should expect the few remaining anti-LGBTQ+ bills to be sent to the Governor soon, most notably four anti-drag bills — SB 1026, SB 1028, SB 1030, and SB 1698. 
Action Alert: Housing Supply
Two major bills on today’s calendar are SB 1161 and SB 1163, which bring much needed reform to Arizona’s historically racist zoning policies. By expanding options for affordable housing, these bills are an important first step towards fixing our housing supply crisis. It’s been a long fight to keep these bills alive and moving forward, and we can’t let up now. Today’s action will be to finalize any amendments or debate before advancing the bills to their final vote on the House floor. Call your representatives today to ask them to take our housing crisis seriously and to vote yes on both bills.
Political Power
Bodily Autonomy Night with NARAL AZ
6:00pm - 9:00pm June 14, 2023 | register
Join Equality Arizona and NARAL Arizona for a detailed training on lobbying and advocacy, followed by a film screening and pizza party. Learn how to fight for bodily autonomy and LGBT rights, and make some new friends in the movement!
Location: Kobalt Bar (note: this is a 21+ location)
Equality Arizona is working to make local government more accessible to the LGBTQ+ community. To support our efforts, consider becoming a paid subscriber.


Media & Events
Banned Book Club
6:30 pm - 8:00 pm June 19, 2023 | register
As book bans sweep the nation, one great way to push back is to read! Our banned book for the month of June is Bigger Monsters: An LGBTQ+ Post-Apocalyptic Zombie Tale, by Eliza Andrews. Join us at Brick Road coffee on June 19 to discuss the book with our book club host Vanessa Marie!
Location: Brick Road Coffee
Queer People Fit: Walking / Running
6:00 pm - 8:00 pm June 22, 2023 | register
Join Equality Arizona and FrontRunners & FrontWalkers Phoenix at Tempe Town Lake for Queer People Fit, our ongoing outdoor event series designed to give LGBTQ+ people a space to come together to build community and to find a sense of belonging.
Location: Tempe Town Lake
Queer People Fit: Breathing Exercises
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm July 1, 2023 | register
Looking for a safe space to share with queer friends? With the summer heat making it difficult to spend time in nature, we’re heading indoors to focus on some other aspects of fitness that are often overlooked. This month we’ll be learning and practicing some helpful breathing exercises with Noémie Luce.
Location: Escalante Community Center, Tempe


Get full access to Equality Arizona at equalityarizona.substack.com/subscribe

It’s the start of Pride Month, so we’re shaking up our usual format to talk about the big picture of what’s happening in Arizona, why we do what we do, and how you can get involved. And because it’s Pride Month, we’re going to extend a special invitation to join us as a monthly donor; make sure to choose your favorite sticker design so that we can mail it to you with a thank you letter!
What We’re Seeing in Arizona
We have a lot to celebrate this month, and even just one year ago, that was not a guarantee. Heading into the 2022 midterm elections, we had seen a record number of anti-trans bills introduced in the legislature, two of which were ultimately signed into law. Candidates for statewide office ran on explicitly anti-LGBTQ+ platforms, and the final vote margins were razor-thin, but in a few key races, we won. So this year, we’re able to celebrate the defeat of bills like SB 1001 — which would have prevented teachers from using the pronouns and names their trans and non-binary students request, unless they chose to out those students to their parents in order to obtain written permission — and plan ahead for ways we can use our political power to make proactive change for the LGBTQ+ community.
However, a concerning trend we have observed is that, following these historic victories, the general perception is that — despite escalating legislative, verbal, and physical violence against the trans community — things will be fine, and that if we continue to make electoral gains, LGBTQ+ rights and protections for bodily autonomy will be secure. We don’t think this is a safe assumption at all. At the hyper-local level, in school districts across the state, we are tracking a growing and dangerous trend of anti-trans extremism, instigated by governing board members and activist groups who are content to disrupt all regular business in their districts in order to diminish academic and social opportunities for trans students. Furthermore, as we have seen recently with some corporate allies, this kind of sustained harassment can bleed off support for our community very effectively, and this is already happening at the local level. In the Washington Elementary School District, board members capitulated to the Alliance Defending Freedom, an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group, over the decision to end a voluntary contract with Arizona Christian University, another anti-LGBTQ+ institution. In the Mesa School District, board member Lara Salmon Ellingson resigned after facing extreme backlash for publicly supporting the district’s trans-inclusive policies. 
Why We Do What We Do
Unchecked, the strategic advantage of the approach our opposition is taking means that we should not and cannot safely take even our state-level gains for granted. Rather, we need to be investing actively in neutralizing anti-trans extremism at the hyper-local level. Our opposition’s advantage stems in no small part from the reality that many people have very limited awareness, and often little to no knowledge of or experience with trans people — especially when it comes to trans kids — and as long as trans people remain an abstract idea to most people, we can easily be turned into a debate with disastrous consequences.
Existing strategies for civic engagement at the legislative level are unsuited to the task at hand; we cannot risk legitimizing an essentially illegitimate debate. “To oppose something is to maintain it,” from Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness is perfectly apt to the situation. “To oppose vulgarity is inevitably to be vulgar. You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk a different road.” We believe that the path we need to take is very specific. If anti-trans extremism relies on abstraction, we must make our lives concrete, connecting directly with local community members and meeting them where they are, holding space for any messy emotions and preconceptions they might have abo

On today’s episode of the Arizona Equals Conversation, we’re joined by Shae from Arizona Trans Together for a wide-ranging discussion about mutual aid and community building, hormone therapy and its gatekeepers, and the overlaps between neurodivergent and trans communities.
Links
* Arizona Equals Celia
* Arizona Equals Jesse & Gabe
* Brick Road Coffee
* AZTYPO
* one-n-ten
* Erin’s Informed Consent HRT Map
Full Transcript
Jeanne
From Equality Arizona, you're listening to the Arizona Equals Conversation. I'm Jeanne Woodbury. I'm the interim executive director at Equality Arizona, and each week on the show I talk with a queer person living in Arizona about their story and their communities. Today's guest, Shae, is a friend of mine and a friend of Equality Arizona. She's also one of the founders, along with Celia, who we spoke to on a previous episode of the podcast, of a group called Arizona Trans Together, which meets at Brick Road Coffee every Friday night. As someone who grew up in Tempe and didn't have the first idea of how to find trans community, I'm constantly amazed at what that community has grown to be in honestly a really short amount of time. Shae dedicates a lot of her time to community building and to mutual aid, and it was really nice to get to know her a little bit better through this conversation. I feel like something I should preface going into this is that at a lot of points it really is a trans conversation for trans people, and we even recognized that at the time, but it was special for me and it's really cool to have that recorded here for people to listen to because it's unique and it's important and poorly understood. Something else really special was getting to reflect on both of our first days on hormones, and something that makes that extra special is, even though we recorded this conversation almost a month ago, we're releasing it on June 1st, which is actually the fifth anniversary of the first day I started taking hormones. And so that's pretty exciting for me, and it's neat how the timing lined up for this. It's also the first day of Pride Month, and that means it's a great time to support organizations like Equality Arizona and organizations like AZTYPO and one-n-ten that Shae mentions later in the interview. And beyond supporting nonprofit organizations like us, it's a time to invest in community, to invest in mutual aid and direct support. We gotta be there for each other. All right, let's roll the tape.
Shae
Hey everyone, my name is Shae. My pronouns are she or they. I don't have an official job, but I do a lot of organizing stuff with EQAZ on occasion and with something that I helped start and I help organize called Arizona Trans Together. It's a nice little community building project we've been doing for going on eight months now. Started with like 10 people and it's blown up to nearly 200. Meet up at Brick Road Coffee every Friday, 6 to 10 p.m. It's been a lot of fun.
Jeanne
Yeah, I noticed that there's been some nights at Brick Road where it's just full to the door and then people are out into the street basically. It's definitely something that has grown a lot in a short amount of time.
Shae
Yeah, it's nuts. I think on Trans Day of Visibility we had 45 people there all at once. And that's like basically at capacity for Brick Road Coffee. It's a really small space.
Jeanne
Yeah, it's a nice sized coffee shop, but it doesn't handle, you know, 100 people.
Shae
It really doesn't. I love the space though, don't get me wrong.
Jeanne
Yeah, I know, I love Brick Road, and that's where the group kind of got started, right?
Shae
Mm-hmm. It started with Celia, who was actually on this podcast a while back, and myself, we started going to the Queerizona meetups on Wednesdays. And then we started meeting other trans people there, and we decided to make a group chat on Discord. And then as soon as we hit the max limit, 10 people, we were like, "Hey, what if we start doing our own thing? And why d

Civic Advocacy
Each month we host two Civic Advocacy Jams, the centerpiece of our strategy to make policymaking and local government more accessible to the queer community. In just an hour and a half, we take real problems from our lives and transform them into policy solutions. It's a little like a hackathon, but it's not just for policy nerds — if you've ever looked at a system and thought "we could be doing this better," this is the event for you. Our next event will be held on June 3 at the Tempe Public Library, and we’ll be bringing the Civic Advocacy Jam back to Tucson on June 17!
Civic Advocacy Jam
12:30 pm - 2:00 pm June 3, 2023 | register
Join us on June 3 for another Civic Advocacy Jam! Queer voices deserve a place in the policy-making process that goes beyond the debate over our basic rights, which is why we’ve designed this ongoing series to give you the tools to craft legislation, draft viable bills, and engage in the policy-making process as an active contributor.
Location: Tempe Public Library
Equality Arizona is working to make local government more accessible to the LGBTQ+ community. To support our efforts, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Political Power
It’s time to start ramping up our field program for voter registration and deep canvassing, and we need your help. Stop by one of our upcoming volunteer team meetings to learn more and discover your way to make a difference.
Volunteer Team Meeting
5:00 pm - 7:00 pm June 1, 2023 | register
Wherever decisions are being made in Arizona, it’s our job to make sure LGBTQ+ people are involved in that process. At Equality Arizona, our team of volunteers is tracking policy from the school board level to the state legislature, designing policy and writing bills, sharing stories, hosting events, and organizing our community to build political power for the long term. The world is made up of a series of decisions — join a team working to make the world differently.
Media & Events
Queer People Fit: Emotional Fitness
10:00 am - 11:30 am June 3, 2023 | register
Looking for a safe space to share with queer friends? With the summer heat making it difficult to spend time in nature, we're heading indoors to focus on some other aspects of fitness that are often overlooked. This month we'll be learning about emotional fitness with Rose Gold.
Here's a rundown of the topics we'll cover:
* The Five Core Emotions & The Three Emotional Zones of the Body
* Centered Breathing — how to turn fear into excitement
* Nonviolent Communication — practical tools for emotionally intelligent conversations
* Fear Melters — movement patterns for each of the four main trauma responses
* Non-Verbal Movement — BDP (Brief Dance Party 🌈🎉) and Old Story, New Story partner exercise
The Queer People Fit series exists for LGBTQ+ people to build community and to find a sense of belonging. Move with us to build the movement for equality!
Location: Escalante Community Center, Tempe
Banned Book Club
6:30 pm - 8:00 pm June 19, 2023 | register
As book bans sweep the nation, one great way to push back is to read! Our banned book for the month of June is Bigger Monsters: An LGBTQ+ Post-Apocalyptic Zombie Tale, by Eliza Andrews. Join us at Brick Road Coffee on June 19 to discuss the book with our book club host Vanessa Marie!
Location: Brick Road Coffee, Tempe


Get full access to Equality Arizona at equalityarizona.substack.com/subscribe

On this week’s episode of the Arizona Equals Conversation, we talk with Canella Caro, a student at ASU who plan to be a history teacher, about hope in uncertain times, the process of learning empathy, and the culture of right-wing echo chambers online.
The Arizona Equals Conversation is an interview podcast collecting the stories of LGBTQ+ people living in Arizona. To listen to past episodes of the podcast, or to sign up to be a guest on a future episode of the show, visit equalityarizona.org/stories.
Full Episode Transcript
Jeanne Woodbury
From Equality Arizona, you're listening to the Arizona Equals Conversation, a podcast about queer people and queer communities in Arizona. I'm Jeanne Woodbury. I'm the interim executive director at Equality Arizona, and each week on the show, I talk with a queer person about their story. Today's interview with my guest, Canella Caro, is something really special. Early on when I was planning this series, I kind of made a promise to myself not to ask the really typical coming out questions like, what changed in your relationship to your family? What changed in your relationship to your friends? Things like that, because it falls right into the narrative that I think people project onto queer people. That it's all about this one moment. That it's all about showing the world who you've always known yourself to be and damn the consequences. And it's not to say that that isn't actually a very common part of people's experiences, but there's so much more going on. And that idea of projection is something we actually ended up talking about in a very different way in relation to Canella's experience as an immigrant and the story people expect from them because of that. But even beyond that, this isn't a story that fits an easy narrative. This is a story about radically reevaluating your relationship to queer people and queer community as part of a longer process of radically reevaluating your relationship to yourself. And it was special for me as an interviewer to hear that story because it's something that I share and it's not something I've found that I have in common with a lot of people. It's also really fascinating because we talk a lot about right-wing echo chambers and the effect that alt-right influencers like Ben Shapiro can have on very, very young people using the internet. There's a lot of complexity here, and I'm so appreciative of Canella for sharing all of that so openly on the podcast. I think that you'll all really enjoy this episode, and I want to get right into it. So let's roll the tape.
[BEEP]
[TYPING]
[CLICK]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Canella Caro
Hello, my name is Canella. I go by she/they pronouns. Yeah.
Jeanne Woodbury
Cool. Thanks for being here. While I was struggling to get this audio set up to work, You mentioned you've worked as an audio engineer before, which made me feel kind of terrible.
Canella Caro
No, don't worry, I suck.
(both laughing)
Jeanne Woodbury
— But —
Canella Caro
There's a reason I don't do sound anymore.
Jeanne Woodbury
Where were you doing that work?
Canella Caro
Oh, it was an internship for this like itty bitty venue down in like downtown Tucson.
Jeanne Woodbury
Oh, cool.
Canella Caro
Yeah, the venue used to be like this abandoned hotel that this guy turned into like a bunch of shops. They had a bunch of little artisan shops and played a bunch of live music, and I helped out the main sound guy with that.
Jeanne Woodbury
That's really cool.
Canella Caro
Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
Jeanne Woodbury
How long did you work there?
Canella Caro
I started working there in February last year and then stopped in July of the same year.
Jeanne Woodbury
Oh, okay. Yeah.
Canella Caro
Yeah.
Jeanne Woodbury
And was that to move up here to Tempe?
Canella Caro
Yeah, and also I was not being paid.
Canella Caro
(both laughing) And once I needed the internship for a project I was doing for my high school.
Jeanne Woodbury
I see, okay.
Canella Caro
And once that project per

Action Alert
On Monday, half a dozen anti-LGBTQ+ bills cleared their final vote in the legislature. Among these was SB 1001 — the first bill of the session — which threatens to rob trans and non-binary kids of life-saving affirmation and support. Governor Hobbs has already publicly pledged to veto SB 1001, but as it and other anti-LGBTQ+ bills are sent to her desk over the next week, it’s important to use your voice to make the case for more thoughtful, empathetic, and people-centered policymaking.
Three things you can do today
* Call Governor Hobbs at (602) 542-4331 to thank her for being an ally and to ask her to veto all anti-LGBTQ+ bills, including SB 1001 and SB 1040 — an anti-trans bathroom ban.
* Share this post to social media (or write your own post!) to let your friends and followers know that anti-trans bills are not normal, and definitely not okay.
* Talk with your friends and family about what’s happening in the legislature. One of the biggest harms these bills create is to turn queer and trans people into a subject of popular debate, so it’s important to intervene in those conversations to remind people that we’re people too.
Civic Advocacy
With the state budget wrapped up, the legislature met last Monday for a marathon floor session, voting on well over 100 bills in a single day. While in other years it might have been typical to adjourn sine die (meaning a vote to end the session until next year, unless called back for a special session by the Governor), the legislature voted instead to adjourn until June 12. It’s likely that they’ll use this time to negotiate outstanding concerns, and then move the final products of those negotiations quickly upon their return next month. The biggest procedural advantage this decision gives Republican leadership in the legislature is that they won’t have to rely on the Governor to call special sessions on any topics they might want to address.
Among the many bills that received floor votes on Monday was every remaining anti-LGBTQ+ bill introduced this year. Check out last week’s update for a full run down. Nearly all of those bills passed, including pronoun and bathroom bans for trans kids at school and four different drag panic bills. Notably, SB 1323 and SB 1694, two bills sponsored by Senator Hoffmann (which threatened teachers and banned inclusive policies, respectively) failed, with Representative Cook voting against both. A problematic internet privacy bill, SB 1503, failed to even receive a vote, despite being scheduled with the rest.
Political Power
Coming off of a major victory for their voter education and get out the vote work in Tempe, it’s a great moment to celebrate our friends at Arizona AANHPI for Equity!
Their Vision
“We envision an Asian American Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) community that is working together to shape its future as a part of the broader racial justice movement and advance our community towards a common purpose of well-being for all.”
How to Support AZ AANHPI for Equity
* Make a donation! Community power building needs direct support.
* Sign up to volunteer. They have a lot of great campaigns to plug into!
Media & Events
We’ve got three great events coming up this week before we head into Pride Month, and there’s a little something for everyone, from conversations with experts, to fitness with friends, to designing your own model legislation. If you’ve been waiting for the right moment to get involved in queer community organizing, this is your week.
Ask Smart People Smart Questions: Substance Use
6:30 pm - 7:30 pm May 24, 2023 | register
With each installment of Ask Smart People Smart Questions, Equality Arizona convenes a panel of experts to talk about the bigger picture of the big issues that affect the LGBTQ+ community in Arizona. With LGBTQ+ people more likely to experience mental health issues, homelessness, and harassment, our community reports rates of substance use and abuse at