■ Florida LGBTQ leaders organize national virtual town hall on racial violence.
National event by Equity Florida will address Floyd killing
Equality Florida is hosting a national virtual town hall of black LGBTQ leaders tonight to address the killing of George Floyd and a wave of deadly acts against black Americans.
The event comes as more than 400 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer organizations joined this week in signing a statement condemning racial violence and committing to the fight against it.
“The LGBTQ community knows about the work of resisting police brutality and hate violence,” said Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida, the state’s LGBTQ civil rights group. “We understand what it means to stand up and push back against a culture that tells us we are less than, that our lives don’t matter. Today, we stand up again to say ‘Black Lives Matter.’”
In addition to Smith, the town hall will feature Alphonso David, president of the national
Human Rights Campaign; Andrea Jenkins, Minneapolis City Council vice president; Michele Rayner, a civil rights attorney; and Imani Rupert-Gordon, director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.
Smith, who issued the call for the national LGBTQ statement, noted the long history of discrimination and fatal attacks against gay and transgender individuals — including what Equality Florida said were the murders of seven black transgender women in Florida in the
past two years.
On May 27, Tony McDade, a black transgender man, was fatally shot by Tallahassee police after he was identified as a suspect in a fatal stabbing. Police said the case remains under investigation.
His death followed the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery while he was jogging near Brunswick, Ga., and the fatal police shooting of emergency medical technician Breonna Taylor, who was in her Louisville, Kentucky, apartment when officers entered in plainclothes while serving a controversial “no-knock” warrant.
The town hall begins at 6 p.m. and will be streamed live on Facebook and Equality Florida’s YouTube channel. The public is asked to RSVP at bit.ly/2U1zLMD.