Rising Up For Justice: Deploying the Law for Transgender Justice

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FEATURING SHELBY CHESTNUT - Our nation and our world is overrun by billionaires and bigots, but they are few and we are many. On this series, exclusive to subscribers of Rising Up With Sonali and viewers of Free Speech TV, we’ll hear from organizers in the movements for social justice, and dig into the nuts and bolts of values, strategies, tactics, narratives, and building power. 

This week on Rising Up for Justice, Shelby Chestnut, Executive Director of the Transgender Law Center joins us. Shelby has more than two decades of movement leadership in community organizing and policy advocacy for LGBTQ+ and BIPOC communities.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: Let's start with what it is that Transgender Law Center actually does, what your goals are. It's seems like it's very clearly in the name that you work on behalf of the rights of transgender people and you work, I imagine in the legal realm. Tell us more what exactly this organization does and also maybe delve into the history. How long has it been around? 

Shelby Chestnut: Yeah. Transgender Law Center is the largest national trans-led organization working to advocate for self-determination for all people, not just trans people. We are a little over 20 years old. We first started as a one-time grant project of the National Center for LGBT Rights, which was formerly known as the National Center for Lesbian Rights. We first started in the Bay Area, then we went to statewide in California, and then in the mid 2010s became more of a national focused organization. 

And at this point we now have about 50 staff working at the intersections of legal advocacy, impact litigation, movement building and narrative change work. We do mostly national work working with grassroots partners in states, and leaders in states, but we also do some level of global advocacy through some of our coalition work. 

We organize, empower, and build the infrastructure needed for trans liberation in this moment. That means creating the world that we deserve, that will work for everyone rather than fix the systems that are broken that we've inherited.