NEWS RELEASE from TRANS ALLIANCE SOCIETY
NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 7, 2008
Trans Alliance Society Launches
Human Rights Petition Campaign
VANCOUVER – Today Trans Alliance Society Chair Raigen D’Angelo announced the launch of a Human Rights Petition Campaign to amend the British Columbia Human Rights Code to specify gender identity and gender expression as prohibited grounds for discrimination. “This is an important step for us to bring focus to the discrimination that happens daily to transsexual, transgender and gender variant people throughout BC. Members of our community have no legal recourse in matters related to their gender identity or expression,” D’Angelo explained.
Volunteers will be asking people to sign the petition throughout the Pride Festivals and at other community events into the fall. Supporters and allies can also download the petition from the Trans Alliance Society website. The petition will be introduced into the Legislature at the next sitting of the House.
The campaign is the latest chapter in a 20 year long battle by numerous trans community organizations to have their voices heard in BC. Past efforts have been spearheaded by High Risk Project Society, Zenith Foundation, The Cornbury Society, BC FTM Network, and F.A.T.E, among others.
The Trans Alliance Society is a British Columbia wide non-profit organization committed to removing all forms of barriers that negatively impact the transgender community.
-30-
posted by Jamie Lee Hamilton @ 3:00 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Years Later and Still Finding Our place
Ten Years After High Risk And Still Were “Finding Our Place”. High Risk Project Society was a great thing in the 90's. We published Finding our Place which remains a seminal work in the field of trans human rigths. Given a normal growth trajectory, we realistically projected that by now we would be managing and opening Trans mobile clinics around the province. Instead, I feel a burden of responsibility for those who are hungry and cold and begging on the streets downtown, with no safe place to go. I refuse to stand silently by while revisionists, activists, intellectuals, researchers, do nothing do-gooders, head shakers and hand wringers, moralists and others delete or minimize the impact of High Risk Project Society. If you, dear reader, are motivated to establish trans friendly space and change, then I will be amply fulfilled. Nothing much has changed since the dissolution of HRP we continue to argue about who did what and when and what Nevertheless, it is a high priority to continue to advance the argument for inclusion of trans people. Otherwise, nothing will ever change we published “Finding Our Place” under the auspices of a grant by The Law Foundation of BC. Having been an invisible community for so long that all of sudden we were being invited by the agencies to participate in consultation and the agencies were using the word Transgender and Transsexual. We were foolishly delighted to see others starting to use our words. To use a term from the 60's, our issues were co-opted by wolves in sheep’s clothing, needing to be concerned, needing to appear effective, inclusive, yet diluting our message, subverting our efforts, and ultimately abolishing High Risk. To this day, little has changed. trans people are safest among the disadvantaged and best avoid those neighborhoods where status and appearances are important. So go ahead, say what you want and do what you want at the end as a long time human rights I still see that we are fighting a
Sandra Laframboise
Vancouver, BC
Post a Comment
<< Home