LBGTQ community rallies to help those affected by COVID-19
Kendra Hayes, a trans woman of color, had just started to get her life together. Recently homeless, she finally found a job as a prep cook at a
Fort Lauderdale restaurant, along with a place to live.
Three weeks later, the coronavirus came.
The restaurant closed, leaving Hayes with nothing. “My landlord put a three-day notice on my door that I had to pay rent or they would start the eviction process,” she said.
Hayes, 42, reached out to Transinclusive Group, a Broward County organization for transgender and gender-nonconforming people.
“They had fliers up on the internet that if anybody needed help, contact them, fill out the application and someone would contact them shortly,” Hayes said. “Less than 24 hours later, I was contacted. They came and brought me funds — cash — so that I could pay my rent, of which I was greatly appreciative.”
With $100 from Transinclusive and $25 from Arianna’s Center, another South Florida trans group, Hayes cobbled together enough money to pay her rent for one month. “Every dollar helps. Every cent helps,” she said.
The COVID-19 crisis has devastated many in South Florida’s large LGBTQ community.
Among the first reported deaths in Miami-Dade County, on March 27, was Israel Carrera, a gay 40year-old North Miami man. The first law enforcement officer to succumb in Florida, Broward Sheriff’s Deputy Shannon Bennett, was gay.
LGBTQ GROUPS HELPING OTHERS
But through years of working together and shared life experiences — many rooted in an earlier health crisis, HIV/AIDS — South Florida’s network of LGBTQ groups and activists have begun helping each other to help a community once again in need.
“This pandemic is affecting not just young people, but LGBTQ folks across the board. Particularly those who are the most vulnerable,” North Miami social worker Landon “LJ” Woolston said. “Young people. The aging, our elders. People living with HIV. People in our community who are experiencing or at risk of homelessness. And trans and nonbinary people. And people of color. Undocumented people. There are lots of groups. And then we talk about intersections: People who have more than one oppressed identity.”
Woolston, who identifies as “both queer and trans,” said many established LGBTQ groups have been slow to react to the sudden health crisis.
Free of red tape, Woolston and other social justice organizers on March 15 launched the COVID-19 South Florida Mutual Aid group on Facebook. Already, there are 840 members.
“The coalition is primarily queer and trans led, but serving anyone in the group who is in need,” Woolston said. People can donate through Cash App at $SouthFLMutualAid. “In the past three days alone, we have purchased over $1,000 worth of groceries for people. Young people, undocumented folks and people who have tested positive for COVID.”
Among aid offered: meditation services; used books “sprayed with Lysol, aired out and in Ziploc bags”; free meals for students; and “a cheap place to live” in a North Miami “hippie commune.”
Four years ago, Woolston met Tatiana Williams, now Transinclusive’s cofounder and executive director.
Transinclusive, incorporated in 2017. began as a weekly support group at the Pride Center at Equality Park in Wilton Manors, according to Williams.
“When you speak about the trans community — our community is marginalized and disproportionately impacted. We’ve been dealing with this in our community even before COVID happened,” said Williams, a trans woman.
Last year, the national AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) gave Transinclusive money for an emergency fund that would help members pay for medical appointments, prescriptions and emergency hotel stays. The organization has also recently received funding from Destination Tomorrow, the Bronx LGBTQ Community Center and Our Fund, a Broward-based LGBTQ philanthropy foundation.
Since the pandemic began, emergency requests have jumped from three to 15 a week, Williams said.
Now, many members are newly unemployed, facing homelessness and need help paying bills, she said.
“That put the organization into the position either to scale back or seek additional funding to meet the community needs,” Williams said. “AHF has been supporting the fund prior and asked whether we need additional assistance. And I was overwhelmed when Our Fund stepped up to the plate.”
OUR FUND CREATES RESILIENCE FUND
As COVID-19 struck,
Our Fund quickly created a “resilience fund.”
“Community foundations are great and they’re essential, but I wouldn’t associate the word ‘nimble’ with them in any circumstance,” said David Jobin, CEO/president of Our Fund, the nation’s thirdlargest LGBT community foundation after those in San Francisco and Seattle. It has an annual budget of $600,000 and assets based on market conditions of $16 million to $17 million.
Our Fund contacted its 27 recipient agencies and asked what they needed most. All 27 replied in a single day, and one week later, Our Fund board members met via Zoom and reassigned $150,000 in restricted funds to be used for a matching community grant.
“We released those funds with a one-to-one match: Every dollar we got, our board-restricted fund matched. We needed to raise $300,000,” Jobin said.
So far, Our Fund has raised $310,000 including the board match.
FOOD GIVEAWAYS
Not all LGBTQ philanthropy is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Twice a week, Dawn Cohen Holloway of Pink Catering and Pink Subs in Oakland Park gives away more than 50 meals to hungry people on nearby Wilton Drive in Wilton Manors.
“The one thing everyone needs to do, is they need to eat,” said Holloway, who distributes the food with friends Howard Andrew and Victor Lords.
“People are lining up to sponsor” the food giveaways, Holloway said, including writer and comedian Bruce Vilanch, who donated dozens of meals.
“We don’t make any money from this,” said Holloway, a bisexual woman who lives with and helps care for her elderly mother, adult daughter and 4-yearold grandson.
“It’s a lot of work. The shopping, the preparation, the distribution. But I’ll tell you what, it’s worth it. We see the same people and they’re very thankful. It’s two meals a week they don’t have to worry about. They’re mostly bartenders and servers, cooks. Anyone who is in the service industry, we’re giving back to,” she said.
Milancita Rodriguez of Kendall is a well-known LGBTQ events promoter in South Florida.
“We are survivors. We invented new things in this world to survive,” said Rodriguez, 67, a transgender woman who moved to South Florida nearly 30 years ago.
This month, she survived COVID-19.
Four days after attending the March 8 Winter Party in South Beach, Rodriguez thought she was having an asthma attack. “But then I started feeling weak.
That’s not asthma. I could not even walk. That was my first sign that something else was happening to me.”
On March 22, her good friend Robert Lamas, a nurse, took Rodriguez to South Miami Hospital, where she was treated for pneumonia. Within a week, she was in the hospital’s intensive care unit, on a ventilator after being diagnosed with COVID-19.
“They quarantined me. Nobody could visit me,” Rodriguez said. “It was horrible. I have had so many experiences in my life, bad and good. This one was the most horrible experience I could mention to you.”
She later posted to friends on Facebook that March 31, “I felt that my body couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t stand another injection, pill or fluids entering my vein anymore. I asked the doctor to stop treatment and send me home to die in peace. They immediately called Robert to let him know of my decision.
“Robert called me back and began to read me all the messages that you had left me. I started crying and I realized there was more than one reason to keep living, to keep fighting for my life. It was your messages, full of love and good wishes that encouraged me to continue fighting.”
Rodriguez remembers little during the time she was sedated on the ventilator. “When I woke, I looked at the ceiling and I said, ‘Where am I? This is not my house.’” She returned from ICU to a regular room on April 3 and was discharged three days later.
Many of her friends are now either sick or out of work. Said Rodriguez: “This is the moment to open our hearts to other people.”
The Miami-based Hispanic LGBTQ group Unity Coalition|Coalicion Unida is doing just that, she said.
‘EMERGENCY NEEDS’
“People have emergency needs right now,” said Herb Sosa, Unity Coalition’s president/CEO. “People in our community who live paycheck to paycheck, especially in the hospitality industry. We’re talking bartenders, waiters, drag performers. They found themselves unemployed overnight. Add to that, a big part of their income on a good day was based on tips.”
Sosa said Unity Coalition has launched a “Micro Giving Emergency Tips Fund for South Florida LGBT Hospitality Workers.”
“The most important thing for people to know is that 100 percent of every penny that comes in we put right back into the community.” Sosa said.
“To date, we’ve raised several thousand dollars and given from $100 to $300 to a few dozen individuals,” he said. “There’s an application process. We have an independent review panel that evaluates each application on its merits. Each day, based on funding availability, we give money out.”
Sosa credits two community partners, Gay Vista Social Club (a Miami-based nonprofit group of young aspiring philanthropists) and Lambda Living, a Jewish Community Services program targeting LGBTQ people 55 and up.
Gay Vista Social Club, according to executive director David Quiñones, has raised about $5,000 in two years “to provide scholarships for LGBT millennials and individuals through Unity Coalition,” as well as to support “sustainable housing and social programming geared to LGBT seniors through Lambda Living.”
Lambda Living in January introduced an online program to meet the challenge of providing services to seniors throughout Miami-Dade County.
It’s perfect for helping the hundred or so Lambda Living participants stay in touch during the COVID crisis.
“There are exercise classes, weekly men’s and women’s groups, financial seminars, virtual hugs (a weekly group that allows attendees to talk about how they’re doing during this time and whether they need support in some way),” Brown said. “We also have special programs, such as a presentation about Miami Beach scandals.”
Something else North Miami-based Jewish Community Services operates, not just for LGBTQ people: Miami-Dade County’s 24-hour, seven-day-a-week Switchboard 211 crisis helpline in English, Spanish and Creole. Dial 211 from landlines, 305-6314211 from cellphones.
“With the call, you don’t need to do this alone,” Brown said.