Jackson Heights This Week
New Law Stands Up For LGBT Youth
Queens Tribune
1-7 July 2010

The New York State Senate passed sweeping anti-bullying legislation on June 22 that will be the first in the nation to include protection for transgender individuals.

The Dignity for All Students Act passed the Senate by an overwhelming 58-3 margin, winning support from Democrats and Republicans. Gov. David Paterson has vowed to sign the bill, which has already passed the Assembly.

“I’m thrilled that the Senate finally took action after 10 years,” said Pauline Park, chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy and Vice President of the Board of Directors of Queens Pride House. “Both Democrats and Republicans saw there was a need to protect students in public schools from harassment.” Park had been involved in pushing for passage of the bill for over adecade.

The bill requires school staff to report bullying and bias-based discrimination and harassment based on a comprehensive list of characteristics, including disability, ethnicity, race, religion and sexual orientation, as well as gender, and it requires training to deal with instances of bullying and bias-based discrimination and harassment. Park noted the definition of gender is a crucial component of the legislation, as surveys show that bullying and harassment based on gender identity and expression have become a major problem in schools.

The New York City Council passed a similar law in June 2004 called the Dignity in All Schools Act. Mayor Mike Bloomberg vetoed it shortly after, but the mayor’s veto was overridden. The Bloomberg administration and DOE refused to implement the law, claiming the City Council didn’t have authority to pass legislation dealing with schools since the state legislature authorized Mayoral Control of schools. Park disagreed.

“We didn’t see anything in the law [allowing Mayoral Control] that would preclude City Council from legislating in these matters,” she said. She noted that the state law now supersedes the city law and requires the DOE to enforce it. Park said she and other LGBT activists would be fully involved in seeing that the law is implemented in city schools.

The two laws are similar. The local law applies only to harassment and not discrimination, which state law includes, but the state law only applies to public schools while the city law also includes private schools.

Park, who lives in Jackson Heights, said the new law was especially important for Queens because of the borough’s diverse demographics.

“Biased-based harassment and discrimination is a huge issue in the diverse student population of Queens,” she said. “This law will certainly be relevant here.”

Reach Reporter Domenic Rafter at drafter@queenstribune.com or (718) 357-7400, Ext. 125.

— Domenick Rafter

This article originally appeared in the print edition of the 1-7 July 2010 issue of the Queens Tribune.

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More than 2,000 people rallied for equal rights in front of the capitol building in Albany.

New Yorkers Lobby Albany for Equality and Justice Day in Record Numbers
Constituents urge lawmakers to pass three key bills this session
By Kat Long
New York Blade
5.1.2009

Riding the momentum of recent victories for gay equality in Iowa, Vermont, Washington D.C. and other states, Empire State Pride Agenda sponsored its annual Equality and Justice Day in Albany on April 28. Pride Agenda, the statewide LGBT civil rights advocacy group, organized the daylong series of meetings with state legislators as well as a noontime rally at the foot of the capitol building. More than 2,000 New Yorkers from all corners of the state took part—the largest turnout in the event’s history. The number presented a huge increase from the first E&J Day, when 400 people participated.

“We were very strategic in identifying the districts where we wanted to make sure we had a good attendance, and we had conference calls prior to E&J Day with the individuals who had signed up to come, so we could talk to them about just how important their stories were going to be,” said Alan Van Capelle, Pride Agenda’s executive director. “Those districts included places on Long Island and in the North Country and western and central New York, so that [support] literally came from around the state.”

The day’s program was focused on having small groups of constituents meet with their elected Senators and Assemblymembers to tell their personal stories, with an emphasis on the difference pro-gay laws could make in their lives.

Three major pieces of legislation of concern to LGBT New Yorkers have a chance of passage in this legislative session, which ends June 22: the marriage equality bill re-introduced by Gov. David Paterson last month; the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA); and the Dignity for All Students Act. (See related articles in this issue for analyses of each bill).

“Anytime we’ve won something from Albany it’s because we’ve told our stories to legislators,” Van Capelle said. “The biggest goal we had to was to get as many people together to tell their stories to our elected officials.”

The groups of amateur lobbyists included heads of major labor unions, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, and everyone in between, Van Capelle said, which showed a depth and breadth of participation that hadn’t been seen in previous years.

For some E&J Day participants, it was their first chance to meet face-to-face with their elected representatives and make a personal investment in the democratic process. For others, this year offered a chance to lobby with the wind at their backs.

Pauline Park, chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA), told the Blade this was her eleventh year of lobbying in the capitol. She personally met with legislative directors for Senators Carl Kruger (D-Brooklyn), Joseph Addabbo, Jr. (D-Queens) and Hiram Monserrate (D-Queens), the latter from her own district.

“I felt it was especially important, as the chair of a statewide transgender advocacy organization, to meet with centrist Democrats who have not yet taken a clear position on legislation important to our community,” Park said. “It is precisely with Addabbo, Kruger and a few other moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans that we will find the votes to bring marriage, GENDA, and Dignity bills to the floor of the Senate and get them passed.”

Based on her meetings, Park felt that the Dignity for All Students Act would be the easiest of the three to pass, “as it is difficult for even the most homophobic or transgenderphobic politician to argue that kids should be subject to bullying in school.” She also had high hopes for GENDA based on polls that suggested most New Yorkers support laws banning discrimination, but felt marriage equality could be the biggest hurdle, based on feedback from legislators.

Van Capelle said that while we as voters have no control over which bills come up for votes first, it’s our responsibility to work the legislation we want to see made into law.

“This is a unique moment in our movement that did not happen by accident. We’ve worked for this moment, and we saw the fruits of it on Tuesday.”

He added, however, that E&J Day 2009 was the “starting point, not the finish line.”

This article originally appeared in the New York Blade on 1 May 2009; the Blade is now defunct.

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Gov. David Paterson, Pauline Park of NYAGRA & Michael Silverman of the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (TLDEF)
(photo courtesy of Michael K. Lavers)

On Dec. 16, Gov. David Paterson signed an executive order (Executive Order No. 33) prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity or expression in state employment.

As the chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA), I was invited to join the governor on the dais along with a number of other activists as well as elected officials. And I was invited to make a statement on behalf of NYAGRA that was included in the press release issued by the governor’s office announcing the executive order. The New York Times broke the story of the executive order the day before the signing ceremony. Several media outlets covered the event. Gay journalist and blogger Michael K. Lavers filed a report about the executive order for Edge Boston as well as on his own Boy in Bushwick site.

Gov. Paterson with Pauline Park
(photo courtesy of Laura Vogel)

Here is the text of the press release from the governor’s office quoting me:

Pauline Park, Chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA), said: “Governor Paterson has taken an important step in helping members of the transgender community secure full legal equality under state law in New York, and we applaud him for this historic executive action. In extending protections from discrimination based on gender identity or expression in State employment, the Governor creates momentum for enactment of the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA). We in NYAGRA call on the State Senate to follow the Governor’s lead and take action on GENDA now.

(NYAGRA is a co-founding member of the GENDA Coalition, which is coordinated by Ejay Carter, the transgender rights program organizer at the Empire State Pride Agenda.)

The governor with Pauline Park at the signing ceremony.
(photo courtesy of Michael K. Lavers)

Gov. Paterson should be commended for taking this important step.  It’s now up to the New York State Senate to pass GENDA so that all transgendered and gender-variant New Yorkers are protected from discrimination under state law.

8.13.25: update:  the former governor endorsed NewYork City Mayor Eric Adams for re-election, shattering the regard I once had for David Paterson; I can’t see any legitimate reason for him endorse the most incompetent and corrupt mayor in this city’s history but pride I once felt in meeting the former governor and participating in the event at which he announced the signing of his executive order has vanished; David Paterson is a shadow of his former self, which in all honesty wasn’t all that much to write home about; he was a mediocre governor at best & the small steps he took on behalf of LGBTQ rights were virtually his only achievements as governor (Kelly Mena, “Paterson backs Adams as Mamdani faces hostile reception on Staten Island,” NY1, 8.14.25).

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