{"id":45496,"date":"2016-11-07T19:38:18","date_gmt":"2016-11-08T01:38:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=45496"},"modified":"2016-11-07T19:38:56","modified_gmt":"2016-11-08T01:38:56","slug":"lgbtq-in-lakeview-voters-parade-to-the-polls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/lgbtq-in-lakeview-voters-parade-to-the-polls\/","title":{"rendered":"LGBTQ voters in Lakeview parade to the polls"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Teresa Manring and Mariah Quintanilla<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cars honked and pedestrians cheered and stared as local LGBTQ activists paraded from Replay Beer & Bourbon in Boystown to a local polling place for early voting Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cOut of the bars and into the streets!\u201d leaders yelled through megaphones. They invited passers-by and lingering Cubs tourists to join the group of about 50 people marching to Chicago Public Library\u2019s Merlo branch on West Belmont Avenue to cast their ballots.
\n[vimeo 190637873 w=474]
\n\u00a0The LGBTQ community has made tremendous political progress in the past few years. In 2010, Congress voted to repeal \u201cDon\u2019t Ask, Don\u2019t Tell,\u201d a law that prohibited openly LGBTQ individuals from serving in the military. In 2014, President Obama signed an executive order protecting LGBTQ employees of federal contractors from workplace discrimination. And in June, 2015, the LGBTQ community won its battle for nationwide marriage equality in the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

Though the tide has turned in favor of LGBTQ communities in the U.S., activists at the event stressed that the fight is not over.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to act and we have to act now. We have to do this as a wider family and community,\u201d said Derek Bagley, development director at Chicago Votes and co-organizer of the event. \u201cIf we don\u2019t, we run the risk of setting ourselves back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bagley said the massacre at Pulse nightclub in Orlando last June, when a\u00a0lone gunman killed 49 people and wounded 53 others, demonstrated that there is still more work to be done. \u00a0Bagley called gay bars and nightclubs \u201csacred spaces for the queer community.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that LGBTQ groups need to continue fighting for healthcare rights and on behalf of more marginalized members of the community, such as transgender people. More than half of LGBTQ people experience health care discrimination, according to a 2009 Lambda Legal survey<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Safety itself is still at stake for transgender people, said attendee Jodie Gardner, who is a regular at Replay and came out to march with her friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur trans brothers and sisters have the highest murder rate of any subsection of the queer community and that\u2019s appalling,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

In fact, 72 percent of LGBTQ victims of homicides related to hate violence were transgender women, according to a National Coalition of Anti-Violence report<\/a>. The majority were transgender women of color.<\/p>\n

\u201c[This election] is extremely vital to everyone I care about and everyone they love and care about,\u201d Gardner added.
\n\"LGBTQThe march was the first time Ryan Willing of Organized Grime Crew, a nightlife promotional organization, was involved in anything political. He\u00a0co-organized the event with Bagley and\u00a0decided to participate this year because this election may affect him personally, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy husband is not from America. That\u2019s one of the reasons why this year\u2019s election has definitely made me focus a lot more on politics than I did before,\u201d he said before the march.<\/p>\n

Immigration has been a contentious issue in this year\u2019s election, fanned by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump\u2019s anti-immigrant rhetoric.<\/p>\n

The event was billed as nonpartisan, but many attendees were eager to share their views on which presidential candidate they believed would best represent their interests.<\/p>\n

\u201cLove Trumps Hate\u201d and \u201cTrump is Going Down\u201d signs bobbed above the heads of the group as they made their way down Halsted Street in Lakeview. \u201cMake America GAY Again,\u201d was splashed across one attendee\u2019s hat.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a queer person of color I have a lot of rights at stake,\u201d said The Vixen, a Chicago-based\u00a0drag queen\/performer\/activist with colorful braids and gold, sparkly eyebrows, standing outside the polling booth. \u201cThe Republican presidential candidate is not in favor of my kind of people,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

The Vixen said she already cast a ballot for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, but she marched in solidarity with friends to ensure they knew how important it was to make their voices heard.<\/p>\n

\u201cI told them: don\u2019t vote for Hillary, vote for yourself. Because at the end of the day, it\u2019s gonna affect you on the microbial level. It\u2019s really gonna trickle down to your freedom and your individual rights,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Chicago Votes is promoting voter outreach, registration and education in preparation for the election. The non-profit organization aims to get young people and other marginalized groups to the polls.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re out in Roseland, we\u2019re out in Englewood, we\u2019re out in Boystown, we\u2019re getting those people that are often marginalized,\u201d said Nicole Johnson, field and outreach manager at Chicago Votes, who lives in Englewood. \u201cWe\u2019re going all across the city to make sure that people use their voice at the polls.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson said the issues faced by the LGBTQ community are not so different from those faced by other marginalized groups.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis event is important to me because, again, as a black woman, as an ally with the LGBTQ community, we are here today to affirm our humanity,\u201d she said. \u201cWe wake up this way, we can\u2019t change our identity and we\u2019re prideful in that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photo at top: Ryan Willing of Organized Grime leads LGBTQ activists through Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood to a local polling place. (Mariah Quintanilla\/MEDILL)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Teresa Manring and Mariah Quintanilla Cars honked and pedestrians cheered and stared as local LGBTQ activists paraded from Replay Beer & Bourbon in Boystown to a local polling place for early voting Saturday. \u201cOut of the bars and into the streets!\u201d leaders yelled through megaphones. They invited passers-by and lingering Cubs tourists to join […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":45497,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[766,2941,28,675,2582],"tags":[482,395,192,1198],"class_list":["post-45496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-election2016","category-fall-2016","category-general-interest","category-social-justice","category-spring-2016","tag-election","tag-lgbtq","tag-promo","tag-voting"],"yoast_head":"\nLGBTQ voters in Lakeview parade to the polls - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/lgbtq-in-lakeview-voters-parade-to-the-polls\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LGBTQ voters in Lakeview parade to the polls - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Teresa Manring and Mariah Quintanilla Cars honked and pedestrians cheered and stared as local LGBTQ activists paraded from Replay Beer & Bourbon in Boystown to a local polling place for early voting Saturday. \u201cOut of the bars and into the streets!\u201d leaders yelled through megaphones. 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