Emergency Rally at Stonewall

This reportage illustration is from a rally in front of the Stonewall Inn in New York’s Greenwich Village recently. The community came out in support of the trans-gender kids that will be affected by the new administration’s position rescinding protections that had allowed transgender students to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity. Read about that here in the NY Times. These kids are among our most vulnerable populations, and will now potentially be subjected to more discrimination and harassment without this government protection.

Many people got up and spoke emotionally at the rally about their own experiences with discrimination, and a few mothers stood up and spoke in defense of their teenaged children.

And now, the repercussions are beginning…from the New York Times, Monday morning:

“WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it would not hear a major case on transgender rights after all, acting after the Trump administration changed the federal government’s position on whether public schools had to allow transgender youths to use bathrooms that matched their gender identities.”

Read the whole article HERE.

Why remove protection for any of our citizens?

More drawings from the rally below. I wanted to give these drawings a feeling of graffiti and the street, to reflect the fact that so many of the homeless teenagers in New York City are actually LGBTQ kids, who have been turned out by their families because of their sexual identity. If that bothers you as much as it bothers me, please consider donating to the Ali Forney center, whose mission is “ to help homeless Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning youth be safe and become independent as they move from adolescence to adulthood.”

(From the website. Donate HERE.)

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A few local politicians were there, wish that more would speak out in support of these kids.

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Sign from the rally: “It never was about bathrooms like it never was about water fountains.”

And here is a photo of me drawing these on-site, courtesy of @nyindivisible and @artistsfordemocracy:

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Comments (2)

  1. Sharon Roy

    Your art work and your political viewpoints are an inspiration to me. I recently learned of you through viewing some videos of the Manchester Urban Sketchers Symposium and your chat with Danny Gregory regarding the habit of daily drawing. Now that I am retired, I have cultivated the habit of “a drawing a day” and have been at it for just over a year. I have been relying on books and videos as my primary teachers, but just recently joined a community of sketcher who meet one evening weekly. Many thanks for posting this blog.

  2. Veronica

    Thank you Sharon! It is nice to have a community of like-minded people to meet with and draw, I’m glad to hear that you’ve found such a group. Hope to meet you at a future USK symposium. Best, Veronica

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