Shaquille Blackstock
        Staff Writer

The Fair Housing Initiative met on Wednesday, Oct. 28, to discuss LGBT advocacy and how to better address access to fair housing for LGBT individuals as well as other minorities in Greensboro.

The discussion, “Housing and the LGBTQ community,” was facilitated by Kevin Williams, Greensboro Human Relations Commission Chair, and featured a panel of speakers to address community housing concerns.

Following Williams was a six-person panel discussion hosted by Jody Clayton, who spoke about the role of advocacy in advancing LGBT community issues.

“As well as being so vocal, advocacy can take another form, as silent listening to other opinions, even those that we do not like. It’s important to be able to say, ‘I want to see where you are coming from, and gain a new understanding.” Clayton explained.

“Living life with integrity, changing the opinions of those who may not like us or our community, and making them see us in a different light are all forms of advocacy and goals that we should aim for,” said Clayton.

Each member of the panel provided an example or definition of what they thought positive advocacy looked like, and then opened the floor to audience members to voice their perspective about the advancement of LGBT advocacy.

One woman in the audience, Sandra O’Connor, said, “Support of a community is a clear cut way to think about advocacy. One can be an advocate and an ally at the same time. My clearest example of advocacy comes from the fight against Amendment One a few years ago. That consolidation within the community, even though it initially ended in a negative way, [with] the passing of the Amendment, was still an example of advocacy, because so many people turned out to express their solidarity with the LGBTQ community. The passing of marriage equality later was an incredible result [of advocacy] that surprised and delighted so many of us.”

Alex Moseley followed O’Connor to discuss the many forms advocacy can take.

“Advocacy can take many forms. Recognition of everyone is one key aim. It can also help in personal lives. I had a best friend whose mother joined a church. Because of her relationship with her daughter, and their relationships with the LGBTQ community, she was able to help some of her church family change and evolve their viewpoints on the community. Join in anything that is for LGBT, racial justice, income wage equality and other issues of equality. There is always something to be learned, some deeper way to engage in other ways of thinking,” said Moseley.

Fellow audience member Ren Chicoye called attention to issues of inclusivity of non-binary gender identities in the workplace.

“Another way to help advocate for people, and to help increase visibility of others is to point out to managers on forms [that] certain language may be non-inclusive to racial or sexual minorities; like on job applications that only ask about two genders. We need to move towards a society that has equal options for everyone. We have to put pressure on the middle man, so that we get these issues mentioned to people at the top,” said Chicoye.

“There is a great polarization of politics in this country, and it hurts all sides. We can’t just presume that Republicans are against the LGBTQ community. We ought to give them a chance. We are given this life to learn. We have to seek out and try to understand new perspectives. Sometimes people are not aiming to intentionally discriminate against others; they just don’t know to look out for those groups to give them credit. They may not know enough about other identities to give those groups their fair recognition. Sometimes educating or changing a person’s opinion can be just as simple as an act of reaching out to make people understand and see things in a new light,” said audience member, Kelton Hollister.

The event closed with audience member Ken Keeton who underscored the importance of crediting grassroots advocacy for recent advances made within the LGBT and Black Lives Matter movements.

“We have to bring grassroots activists in to have a platform, and to be able to be heard by a greater audience, before people get upset and a fuss gets made. Often, like in Ferguson and Baltimore, people get angry over instances of discrimination where they feel as though they are not being listened to. Whenever this happens, it’s easy for the media and for people outside of that societal context to write things off, to say that the protesters are just violent and deserve what’s coming to them, but that is not true to the movement or to the causes of these frustrations.

It would be more productive to ask, ‘Why are people stopping things?’ or ‘Where is this anger coming from? For instance, there is a trans immigration movement staging what they call, ‘Shut it downs.’ So that politicians have no choice but to listen. They go to certain speeches or events and they shut the whole thing down, because they feel as though their issues aren’t being heard or represented fairly. Bigoted actions cause bad reactions, and it’s a vicious cycle that we should work to end,” said Keeton.