Weekly Roundup
Tuesday: when the House Education Committee decided to give SB 1040 a hearing, it meant continuing a decade of destructive debate over trans people’s access to bathrooms. We showed up in numbers and used the opportunity to contrast the resilience of our community with the petulance of the bill sponsor.
Wednesday: with a committee deadline looming, the House Government Committee pushed through three moral panic bills: SB 1028, SB 1030, and SB 1694. In discussion, we pushed the sponsor of SB 1028 and SB 1030 to admit that he was trying to encourage a moral panic.
Thursday: during the House floor session, we were welcomed by members of the LGBTQ+ Caucus to celebrate the eve of Trans Day of Visibility alongside our partners at NARAL.
Friday: on Trans Day of Visibility, we published a new episode of Ask Smart People Smart Questions about the criminalization of LGBTQ+ life and how our jails and prisons isolate and invisibilize incarcerated queer and trans people.
Civic Advocacy
A chaotic legislative session continues next week with SB 1001 on the agenda for the House Appropriations Committee after a last minute swap from the House Education Committee. For context, this maneuver makes little sense: SB 1001 doesn’t appropriate any funds from the budget, so it just doesn’t fit the Appropriations Committee. Really, it’s just a cynical move to push an unpopular bill that otherwise couldn’t get a hearing.
What the bill does: SB 1001 makes it illegal for teachers and other school employees to respect the pronouns of a trans or non-binary student without written parental permission, and for students who do have parental consent, it prevents schools from requiring employees to use their correct pronouns.
What you can do about it: The House Appropriations Committee will be meeting at 10am today, Monday the 3rd, in House Hearing Room 1. It’s a long agenda, which means public comment will be limited. It also means they’re counting on not very many people showing up to sit through the whole thing. Let’s prove them wrong, and make sure trans kids can see that they have community support. To make the experience a little more accessible, we’re working to provide a separate space to step away from the committee meeting when you need to.
Civic Advocacy Jam
11:00 am - 12:30 pm April 8, 2023, Mesa Public Library | register
Queer voices deserve a place in the policy-making process that goes beyond the debate over our basic rights, which is why we’ve designed this ongoing series to give you the tools to craft legislation, draft viable bills, and engage in the policy-making process as an active contributor.
Political Power
LD 17 — There is a recall campaign in the works for Senator Justine Wadsack, the sponsor of a number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills this session. They’ll need to collect a good bit more than 30,000 signatures to trigger the recall election. Successful recalls are rare, and there is no guaranteed outcome, but flipping this seat would shift the Senate to an even balance between parties, so the stakes are high.
Media & Events
Media & Events Team Meeting
6:30 pm - 8:00 pm April 6, 2023 | register
Join our Media & Events volunteer team at Kähvi Coffee + Cafe in Phoenix for our monthly meeting. Far right extremism is on the rise in our local school districts — targeting minority students, teachers, administrators, and school board members — and it thrives on misinformation and a lack of accountability. We’re building a program to track this phenomenon and to tell the real story of education in Arizona.
Check out our events calendar!
We’ve got a full calendar posted for April, May, and June. Check out our weekly coffee socials at Brick Road in Tempe, our Queer People Fit nature walks, our monthly panel discussions, and our banned book club! It’s all live on equalityarizona.org/events.
