Thursday, March 19, 2020

National LGBTQ Task Force: On Being Resilient in Challenging Times

By Rea Carey & Kierra Johnson, Executive Director & Deputy Executive Director, National LGBTQ Task Force

First and foremost, we hope you and your loved ones are doing ok. This is an incredibly challenging time for the world, our country, communities and families. Now, more than ever, we need to draw on our LGBTQ community’s long history of resilience and support for each other.

Like many of you, our staff are adapting to the new reality of life and work. Last week, we moved all of our staff to work from home and we have cancelled or postponed all in-person trainings, meetings, events and gatherings for the foreseeable future. Zoom and Slack are our best friends. We even started a staff lunch Zoom so we can eat lunch together and stay connected!

We are staying busy, continuing the work to achieve justice and equity for LGBTQ people. We are currently assessing how to adapt some of our in-person work, like instead of canvassing for our Queer the Census work, we will now have a massive online-outreach program to get LGBTQ people to fill out the Census. But, like you, we're also taking care of children, our partners, parents, and chosen family. We are trying to keep our health up and find strength in these hard times.

Here’s a personal video from Kierra:



We are thinking of you. Especially those of you who are already sick, are at home without work, in jobs that require you to keep taking big risks, and those of you taking care of loved ones who are sick or at heightened risk. We encourage those who can to give to local funds supporting workers in need in your own communities.

While it's a little difficult to honor our tag line of "Be You" at this time, we hope you are finding ways to be the best you for this time.

You'll hear from us again soon. In the meantime, stay healthy, take care of yourselves and your family, and please stay connected to us.

P.S. Please share creative ways you are getting by and supporting each other, either by replying to this email or tagging us on social media.