DC Trans Coalition

URGENT HELP NEEDED! (again)
The Montgomery County Board of Elections certified the signatures that the anti-LGBT extremists collected to take away rights for the residents of Montgomery County, so the heat is on now! We have 10 days to file a lawsuit disputing the validity of the signatures, and we need your help! We've had a stellar group of people coming in all week to help, and we are getting in the next batch of signatures next week and so we'll need all hands on deck again!

The hours to volunteer are as follows:
Monday, March 10 - Thursday, March 13 from 10am-8pm
Friday, March 14  - 10am-6pm
Saturday/Sunday (March 15-16) hours: to be determined

**if you have a laptop that has the program Microsoft Access and
wouldn't mind bringing it in to volunteer that would be very helpful
(or if you want to loan it to us that would be great too!) **
Where: National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's headquarters in
Washington, DC
1325 Massachusetts Ave, NW, 6th Floor (note: The building reads "Nat'l
Air Traffic Controllers" and after office hours, you need a cell phone
to call to get let in)

Send an email to Anna, at saverightsnow@gmail.com, or call (202)
639-6330 to sign up for a specific time. We need you!

Some background information:

Last November the Montgomery County Council (Maryland) unanimously
passed a law to ban discrimination on the basis of gender identity and
expression. Anti-LGBT extremists created a campaign of scare tactics
to collect 25,000 valid signatures (even creating an outrageous
website www.notmyshower.net). The opposition turned in more than the
required amount of signatures to the Board of Elections in hopes of
putting this issue on the ballot in November, which if passed, would
take away rights for the residents of Montgomery County.

We need to stop them! Equality Maryland has hired an attorney to make
the case that many of these signatures are invalid, and the law
shouldn't be put on the ballot.

A public hearing has just been announced for the addition of gender identity to the hate crimes legislation of DC. It will take place January 3rd at 10am. If you have testimony or want to testify, get in touch with us ASAP at dctranscoalition@gmail.com -- they need tetimony by 12/28.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 3, 2007 – 10:00 A.M.

THE JOHN WILSON BUILDING
1350 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, N.W.

COUNCIL CHAMBER - ROOM 500

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20004

Hey everybody,

Grab a friend and c'mon down to:

Know Your New! Improved! Rights with the DC Metro Police
This is a community forum by the DC Trans Coalition to inform us about the General Order the MPD has issued and how we enforce and demand our new rights.

Saturday, December 15th
3pm-5pm
@ St. Stephen’s Church
1525 Newton Street NW,
Washington DC
(Near Columbia Heights Metro, and bus lines S1, S2, S4, H8, H3, H4, 54, 53 and 52)

Find out about our recent victory on our rights and the Metro Police Dept., what it means for you, and where we’re going to bring the fight next!
For more information about the Coalition, or to get involved, email dctranscoalition@gmail.com

Tell your friends, spread the word!

Here's the MPD announcement and link to the PDF version of the General Order that went into effect October 11th. Click here:

http://newsroom.dc.gov/show.aspx/agency/mpdc/section/4/release/12001/year/2007

After many meetings and lots of hard work, we won General Order PCA 501-02, "Handling Interactions with Transgender Individuals", the most progressive order in the country. It was covered in the Post, the Examiner, and on WAMU radio.

Read on the Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/15/AR2007101501258.html

Listen at WAMU:

http://wamu.org/audio/nw/07/10/n16071017-18020.ram 

On DCist today:

http://dcist.com/2007/10/16/mpd_to_be_more.php 

And Queerty (a blog):

http://www.queerty.com/news/dcpd-gets-trans-friendly-20071016/

Once we get a final version with Chief Lanier's signature, we'll post it here so you can download it.