“This was a reminder that D.C. still likes its snowstorms every now and then,” says Kierra Johnson of the blizzard that slammed into Washington, D.C., a few weekends ago — just as the National LGBTQ Task Force’s Creating Change conference was wrapping up.

“But you know what?” she adds during a post-event phone call. “The team is skilled in addressing surprises. They were on the horn with the hotel and sending out information that helped participants and staff people navigate the storm the best way they could.”

The storm did little to slow what Creating Change has accomplished for 35 years: bringing together the full breadth of the LGBTQ community and, over five days, equipping both veteran and emerging activists with the tools needed to keep the movement alive, resilient, and effective.

Johnson, the organization’s energetic — and energizing — executive director, is blunt about the moment: in the face of a rising authoritarian movement that seeks to systematically vilify and roll back LGBTQ rights — aiming first, with calculated legislative precision, at the transgender community — the work of the Task Force is more important than ever.

She acknowledges that the Task Force is one part of a broader ecosystem of LGBTQ organizations. “We all have our role to play,” she says. “But the Task Force is doubling down on its expertise and positioning to meet everyday people where they’re at, give them a place to call home, and then get politically motivated and engaged to take action. That is what it’s about.

“And it’s not easy,” she continues. “Lord knows, anybody who’s been in a relationship with us for 20, 30, 40, 50 years knows it’s very complex. We have made our own mistakes and missteps, and we’ve had our own ignorance about different things and different communities. But what makes the Task Force so valuable is that we’re a model for what it looks like to mess up and to fail forward, apply the learnings and keep being impactful and bringing people along with us.

“I said earlier this week that perfection is not a prerequisite to success. We’ve got to stop sifting our people out based on their imperfections when actually we are so perfectly imperfect. So how do we leverage our strengths towards success and liberation? And that’s what the Task Force does so well. It makes me really proud. It makes me really, really fucking proud to be here.”

For this piece, we roamed the Washington Hilton, speaking with participants, vendors, and volunteers to hear — in their own words — what matters most to the LGBTQ community right now.

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Danielle Buonaiuto

41, Doesn’t Use Pronouns
Brooklyn, N.Y.
First Creating Change

Why did you attend this year’s Creating Change?

I co-run an organization called ChamberQueer in Brooklyn. We’re a musical nonprofit that does queer advocacy through music. And we felt like showing up here would help us make the right connections to bring what we’re doing to a wider audience and find our place in the movement a little better.

Have you ever experienced anti-LGBTQ bias or discrimination?

Well, I’m pretty lucky to be a cis passing white person. So I think I can move through the world pretty unscathed. But I think in our industry — classical music –it’s a fairly conservative, little bit backwards industry. And even the way I present — with short hair and not looking as feminine as many of my other high-voiced soprano colleagues — can be hard. There’s sort of a lack of imagination as to what I might be able to do on stage. But I would say that that is way, way more pronounced for my Black and trans colleagues, who aren’t even getting in the room.

This year’s Creating Change theme is “Unstoppable.” What does unstoppable mean to you?

There are two sides of the coin. It can feel like the threat of climate crisis, the threat of disaster, the threat of fascism is unstoppable. But actually, if we keep the fire lit underneath these wonderful relationships we’re building, the collective strength that we’re building, our consolidation of our power, it’s not. We are unstoppable. And that’s what I think the message the Task Force wants to bring across.

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Ty Defoe

He/Him
New York, N.Y.
First Creating Change

What scares you about the future of the LGBTQ community?

We are at a scary time right now. But when I think about the future, I think of hope. I was in the Indigenous Two-Spirit Caucus yesterday, and there was so much hope in that room that I did not fear the future. I think we’ve been talking about the future for a long time. There’s this philosophy: If you are not dreaming seven generations into the future, you are not dreaming big enough. And so when I look at history, when I look at my transcestors, ancestors, LGBTQ+ individuals, we are here today because those folks were dreaming seven generations ahead into the future. So we are the hope made flesh.

This year’s Creating Change theme is “Unstoppable.” What does unstoppable mean to you?

I think about unstoppable means that despite all of destruction and chaos, that at the eye of the storm, something’s being held. And in that holding, there are immense infinite possibilities of change. And I have to believe that because I believe in the power of the circle — it is one of the strongest shapes that can be made in society.

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Toni Dismuke

20, She/Her
Washington, D.C.
First Creating Change

What LGBTQ issues are important to you?

One of the main issues in the LGBTQ community is youth advocacy. I feel like we’re pushed to the side. I am 20. I’m turning 21 in the next couple of months, so I still consider myself a part of the youth. I feel like we’re addressed, but we’re not really acknowledged. I feel like most people sweep us under the rug.

There are people in politics who want to throw the trans community under the bus. How would you respond to them?

Using someone as a scapegoat is not good. I feel like people are trying to find someone to force the blame on so they could release responsibility and accountability from themselves. And unfortunately, the trans population has become that scapegoat and that target. I feel like we shouldn’t do that. Trans people are people, first and foremost. There’s nothing about them that makes them inherently bad or evil. Trans people deserve rights, and we shouldn’t have to have a debate on it.

What would you say to the people who, in our own community, insist we “Drop the T?”

I’m just at a loss for words. I didn’t know that was even a sentiment in people’s minds. The LGBTQ+ community is inclusive and is supposed to be equitable for everyone. We shouldn’t even be thinking about dropping a part of our community, because we all make up the same thing. We’re all working and striving for the same things. Stirring discourse within our own community is not helping our efforts. It’s breaking it from the inside, and we’re only as strong as our weakest link. And if we’re trying to cut off a chain, then we’re not even holding up what we support. I feel like people who think that should really reevaluate themselves.

What does “Unstoppable” mean to you?

Unstoppable means to just keep going. I feel like whether there’s obstacles in your path or people blocking you, just keep moving forward. There’s a famous quote by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I may not be saying it the exact way, but essentially he says, “If you can’t fly, run. If you can’t run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl. But all in all, just keep pushing forward.” And I feel like that’s the energy that we have to keep going in this day and age. Just keep moving, because every little progress that you make is good progress.

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Alvaro Fernandez

33, He/They
New York, N.Y.
Fourth Creating Change

Why did you attend this year’s Creating Change?

Several reasons. Creating Change is a solace. It’s a way of seeing yourself and your existence reflected in the faces of the people who attend the conference. It isn’t just community. It’s arriving to a home where you feel like you can finally be understood. You can finally feel respected and seen in the work that you lead. All of us sort of take an angle and an approach to the work that we do that all contributes to LGBTQ rights. So you get to hear from perspectives and voices from all over the country that uplift you, especially in moments like right now.

What LGBTQ issues are important to you?

I would say at the top of mind at the moment is immigrant rights. I think something that we need to pay closer attention to. A lot of our LGBTQ sisters, brothers, siblings are being attacked through crackdowns on immigration. So it makes it that much more important to not be silent — and also to not pretend that it’s not affecting our community directly.

Have you personally experienced anti-LGBTQ discrimination?

Yeah, of course. I’m a queer kid of immigrants, so I think my existence has always been at the intersection of both of those experiences. The homophobia that I’ve experienced has also always been entrenched in xenophobia that, in my experience, can’t be separated. I am everything that I am, and have carried that with me all my life.

I often say that I was never in a closet because I was never afforded one. That’s just my experience where I was always seen as being too brown, too queer, too righteous in my existence, but also always with the knowledge and with the insight that it wasn’t just okay to be who I am that was needed.

There are people in politics, even within our own community, who want to throw the trans community under the bus. How would you respond to them?

The only reason we have the rights that we have are because of the trans community and the trans elders that helped us to get to this point. Believing anything other than that is not just — in my opinion — wrong, but it’s a complete misalignment. If you care about being queer and about that existence being respected, it’s always in your best interest to advocate and take care of your trans siblings. When their rights are afforded, all of our rights are protected.

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Edward George

28, They/Them
Santa Rosa, Calif.
Second Creating Change

What LGBTQ issues are important to you?

To me, personally, the most important things are safety for my community and for my friends and people that I know. I know a lot of people who genuinely feel fear going outside and going out and talking to people, feel fear saying what their pronouns are, that they’re going to get harassed or attacked or reported. I want people to feel safe and I want people to have places that they can go that they feel safe.

How would you respond to people who are willing to politically throw the trans community under the bus?

It’s shortsighted. Whether it’s the trans community or any other part of our community that’s being targeted at any single point, if we throw one down to try and save ourselves a little bit more time, that’s just going to give us less allies when they eventually come for us.

Have you experienced anti-LGBTQ discrimination?

Yes. I’ve been harassed. I’ve been not hired at places because I’ve put my queer activism on the resume. And I’ve been yelled at for the way that I dress walking around my hometown. And I live in a very queer, open area. I think people have gotten more confident in harassment.

What scares you about the future of the LGBTQ community?

Honestly, I’m scared of how far it’s going to go. I know we’re not going to give up. I know we’ll persist. We’ve seen throughout history when people are fully completely oppressed, we can still come back from that. But I’m scared of what that oppression will look like, and I’m scared of how far it’ll get before we can start to turn it around again.

And I’m scared for the people that I care about and how many of them will make it through. I’ve already lost a few friends to suicide, to just giving up in the face of everything. I’ve had people move, I’ve had people leave the country, and I’ve had people just fully give up on living. And it’s extremely sad to me to lose those friends, but I also understand it. I just want to see all of us through, and I’m scared of how many I’m going to lose along the way.

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Ryan Grippi

33, He/Him
New York, N.Y.
First Creating Change

How would you respond to people who are willing to politically throw the trans community under the bus?

They’re going to come for us too. As a cisgender person, they’re coming for my rights just as much as they’re coming for trans rights. Our fights are directly interconnected. It’s important to realize that we have to work together because when they come for one of our rights, they come for all of our rights.

What about the people within our own community who want to remove the T all together? What do you say to them?

Oh, there’s nothing without the T. My response to those people is to understand your own history, to connect to people, to be thinking better. And I’d tell them to fuck off.

What scares you about the future of the LGBTQ community?

The advancement of AI and the way that the propaganda machine that is being consolidated by the oligarchs in this country keeps us from understanding things about ourselves. So my biggest fear right now is that the algorithms that are playing to the hand of a bigger system are going to silence our protests. I will double down and say that I think this is why it’s so important to have in-person physical demonstrations and events, because if you can see it with your own eyes on the ground, it’s happening. That’s why Pride matters. The march has to continue. It can’t just all be online.

This year’s Creating Change theme is “Unstoppable.” What does unstoppable mean to you?

We are not new to fighting for our rights and sustaining them. We have survived some of the worst regimes. When you look at our legacy, when you look at our history, you realize that we will move through this moment. We need to keep teaching, we need to keep training, but we are going to continue on and we will survive. Oh, let’s not quote Gloria Gaynor. She’s canceled.

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Isaac James

25, He/Him
Washington, D.C.
Second Creating Change

What LGBTQ issues are the most important to you right now?

What I’m most concerned about is young LGBTQ voters and their ability to exercise their right to vote. We know that there are barriers to the ballot box for many young LGBTQ voters, including voter ID changes and attempts at erasing transgender identity from the government records in certain states.

What scares you about the future of the LGBTQ community?

I guess I’m more frightened by the kind of anti-LGBTQ swing of many people in power on both sides of the aisle, seeming to want to scapegoat trans members of our community or doubling down on anti-LGBTQ bias and discriminatory policies. There was a survey recently that showed that for the first time Americans are becoming more anti-gay. We’re going backwards, literally, in public sentiment and public opinion, which is frightening in the response it will likely garner from those who have power.

What gives you hope?

Spaces like Creating Change give me hope to see the community come around with shared ideas and visions and dreams for the future. I think seeing younger and older members of the fight for LGBTQ equality be in one space, talking about different ideas, ranging from youth organizing to electoral politics, to how art can be an avenue for social justice, gives me encouragement. There’s a lot of work to do, but there’s always been a lot of work to do and it doesn’t scare me to continue diving even deeper. I think this political moment requires our community to draw from the strength that we’ve always had, but to continue fighting.

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Carina Linares

24, She/Her/They/Them
Utah
Second Creating Change

What LGBTQ issues are personally important to you?

I think that our activism has to center around Black feminism, Black liberation. And so, that’s really where mine comes from, but also Indigenous activism and feminism. So just organizing Black and Indigenous folks is the most important thing. That’s what I center my activism around, and I think that brings in the liberation of all of us.

Have you experienced anti-LGBTQ discrimination in your own life?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’m in Utah, and all my friends are queer and trans. So, definitely, from as simple as walking down the street with my friends and being called dykes or going to a restaurant and getting a bunch of stares because I’m with some of my trans friends, things like that.

And in Utah there is also this kind of silent hatred — you’ll get stared at, you’ll be kind of treated differently, but it’s not like someone’s coming up to you saying like the f-slur or something. Little things like that, I think, make it difficult. A lot of my friends experience difficulty getting jobs, as well, a lot of discrimination there to the point that some of them have had to just create their own businesses.

What does unstoppable mean to you?

I think right now, in this age and in these times, unstoppable really means standing in the face of things that make me afraid. So standing in the face of ICE, standing in the face of different things that might get us arrested or might get us in “legal trouble.” But we have networks, we have organizers who will get you out of jail, who will help you with legal funds and stuff like that. So I think that makes me feel unstoppable. Just being a queer person in Utah makes me feel unstoppable. I think even that act is already radical in itself.

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Christian Lopez

32, He/Him
Miami, Fla.
First Creating Change

Have you experienced anti-LGBTQ discrimination in your life?

All the time. I have so much intersectionality and people always have a problem with something. I’m gay, I’m effeminate, I’m ghetto, I’m aggressive, I’m overly opinionated. I have the Cuban-Puerto Rican immigrant narrative. I have an accent. I present a certain way. I’m visibly queer. I’m visibly gay. I can try to present as masculine as I want to and try to deepen my voice as much as I want to, but at the end of the day, my wrist still flicks. So yeah, I’ve experienced it. Yeah, I’ve had people tell me they were going to beat my ass if I flirt with them. Yeah, I’ve had all of those things.

What does unstoppable mean to you?

If you knock me down, good luck if I get up. If you swing, don’t miss.

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Cathy Marcello

50, She/Her
Washington, D.C.
First Creating Change

What LGBTQ issues are important to you?

My personal issue is advocating for the military families who have LGBTQ youth. I like to say that the Venn diagram of where military families live and where all the anti-LGBTQ laws are is not a Venn diagram, but a perfect circle. We have families who are ending their military careers, who are being forced to get out of the military, forced to live apart because they have trans kids. We have many, many thousands of families like that, and they can’t live in the states where the service member has to live for their job.

What scares you about the future of the LGBTQ community?

I feel like we are living in a moral panic about the existence of trans people. We’re seeing, obviously, the purge in the military. We’re seeing the denial of healthcare. And I don’t know how we get out of a moral panic. And if you’re willing to destroy careers and attack veterans and remove veteran healthcare just because they’re trans, I don’t know what the limits are. And it really scares me that I don’t know how we’re going to turn that around.

What gives you hope?

Creating Change. Seeing so many folks interested in the fight for equality within the military and veteran community has been really uplifting.

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Bailey Merlin

32, She/Her
Boston, Mass.
First Creating Change

What LGBTQ issues are important to you?

Bi+ issues are very important to me because they are incredibly intersectional. Thirty-three percent of the trans community identifies as bi+, about a third of bi+ women identify as BIPOC, and so many of us are disabled, but bi+ people suffer the highest rates of mental illness, mood disorders, substance use disorders, poverty, chronic illness, domestic violence, and other things that are currently being studied and looked into. And we need more resources now because bi+ people represent 58% of the community and if 58% are not being serviced, then what are we doing?

Define bi+ for us.

Bi+ is an umbrella term that means bisexual, pansexual, omnisexual, polysexual. Basically, if you’re attracted to more than two genders, you live underneath the umbrella.

How would you respond to people in our community who are insisting that we “Drop the T.”

Many, many folks in our community didn’t want the T included, but they don’t realize that if you don’t include the T, why are you here? What is your point? Do you just want to perform what white patriarchy looks like? Do you just want it like, “Oh, we’re like everybody else?” Is that what queerness means to you? Is that all you want is your rights? That doesn’t make you a good person, that doesn’t make you a good community member, and you don’t deserve to be a part of it.

Have you ever experienced anti-LGBTQ discrimination?

Yeah. I think that bi+ people face what’s called bi-erasure and bi-antagonism, where they are excluded from the community because we are seen as traitors to the community. “Oh, you’re basically straight,” or, “You’re trying to use the queer community as cover to make yourself feel special.” And as a result, bi+ people are given few resources.

Personally, I have been told, “Oh, you’re bisexual. You don’t belong here. Get out,” which made me not want to engage in queer community for a long time. And it wasn’t until in the last couple of years, I’m like, “You know what? I’m the B, and I deserve to be a part of this movement and we need all hands to move the movement forward.”

What scares you about the future of the LGBTQ community?

I fear for our collective safety, but I also fear for the fact that we are going to be frightened away from each other, that we are going to get really siloed and say, “Only these issues matter,” because then we stop reaching out.

That’s when trans exclusion really happens, like, “We can only focus on gay issues. We can only focus on lesbian issues or bisexual issues.” People fall by the wayside. We lose political power. We lose political momentum and ultimately we fail. We have more rights stripped from us. We do live in fear. We live in danger. And if we don’t work together, if we don’t reach across the aisle, if you will, then all of our rights will be taken from us. Every single one of us.

What does unstoppable mean to you?

In the face of fascism, we are still here. We are still gathering. We are still meeting. We are still teaching. We are still learning. The world outside of this room is a scary place for queer people, and despite that, we are still together and we don’t have any intention of going anywhere.

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Bryan Stanton

41, They/Them
New York, N.Y.
Second Creating Change

There are people on the political right who want to throw the trans community under the bus. How would you respond to them?

There’s a couple of things I would say. One is I tend to focus on human beings being human beings and that we are all a part of this human race and it’s not our differences that make us enemies. Our differences actually can pull us together.

And so that’s my general response, but then I also think about people who shout “All Lives Matter” and then all of a sudden some lives don’t, and the hypocrisy of that. I think that we can all find common ground with things that we value innately, and if we just keep going back to those human values, then we are creating a bridge as opposed to a divider.

What gives you hope for the future?

Queer people. I think the future is queer. The younger generation is increasingly more queer and I think that in queerness, we actually showcase more of humanity than we see from our cisgender heterosexual counterparts.

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Muriel Tarver

57, She/Her
Little Rock, Arkansas
Fourth Creating Change

What LGBTQ issues are most important to you?

Inclusion and diversity. And because I work in a trans-led organization, and I worked side by side with Miss Major for years, although I’m not trans, I got an opportunity to see firsthand a lot of the struggles that the trans community, specifically trans women of color. I have developed a soft spot for trying to help and assist and care for trans women of color.

What scares you about the future of the LGBTQ community?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing scares me about the future because I look around me and there are so many emerging young people coming up who are fired up about all of the obstacles and they are prepared to do the work. And so as long as you have people who are willing to fight like their lives depend on it — because it does — there is no reason to be afraid because you know that there is someone there who is going to do the work. They’re excited. They’re ignited. They just need support.

And so we have to do our parts. If you’re afraid to be out on the front lines, then do what you can to support. Donate money, stuff flyers, make phone calls, whatever it is that you can do because there are people who will fight as long as they have someone that is in the background who is the wind beneath their wings. So be that wind if you can’t be that person on the front.

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Kasen Truth

33, He/Him
Baltimore, Md.
First Creating Change

What scares you about the future of the LGBTQ community?

The people we’ve got in office right now, like how they are actively stripping our rights left and right.

What gives you hope?

The fact that we’re not taking that shit lying down. We’re pushing back even more than what we were probably fifty years ago.

What does unstoppable mean to you?

Unstoppable means I show up as resilient as I possibly can. I know when I don’t have the mental bandwidth, I have folks around me that are riding around me to help me to keep pushing towards the finish line. I have a community that also, we’re passing a torch when we see another person getting burnt out. So just like making sure that you have that community around you that’s also pushing you in the moment that you feel like you can push yourself.

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Renee Truth

31, She/They
Baltimore, Md.
Third Creating Change

What LGBTQ issues are important to you?

I am very much motivated by trans issues. My partner is trans.

How would you respond to people who are willing to politically throw the trans community under the bus, to erase the T.

I say that it’s completely preposterous and it’s a whole bunch of made up stuff because we cannot divorce those identities. They’re so interconnected — our movement started with the voices of trans and non-binary folks at the forefront.

What does unstoppable mean to you?

Unstoppable does not mean that you don’t get tired, but it means that you keep pushing when you are tired, that you alwayscontinue to do the work, continue to do learning, continue to show up for others around you.

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Alok Vaid-Menon

34, They/Them
New York, N.Y.
Seventh Creating Change

What LGBTQ issues are most important to you?

There’s so many, but I think anti-violence, first and foremost. We’re seeing a lot of increase in physical violence and murder against our communities, especially trans and gender-nonconforming people. So that feels top of heart. And then I think second, misinformation, which I feel like is the root cause of a lot of the issues we’re facing.

And then there’s just rampant fake news about us that is spreading all over media and all over social media that’s leading people to believe absolute falsehoods about our personality and our integrity.

And the third I’ll say is non-discrimination. We’re seeing places like Iowa remove gender identity from civil rights protection. So we’re seeing the erosion of a lot of our fundamental non-discrimination protections.

How would you respond to people who are willing to politically throw the trans community under the bus?

I just kind of feel sad for them because they have an understanding of equality that doesn’t work. The truth is that true acceptance isn’t conditional. And if the only way that you’re being accepted is by disavowing the very people who have been fighting for you since the very beginning, then the acceptance you’re having is very fickle and fleeting.

We can’t, in this moment, mistake any of these superficial claims to integration as real substantive equality. What we’ve seen in the past few years is that progress is not a given, and there’s been a kind of whiplash/backlash where we’re losing things that we thought we’d gained. And so the strategy of kind of trying to pursue respectability at the cost of unity, it doesn’t actually work, historically speaking. So I kind of feel pity and sadness because their vision of justice is so shortsighted.

What scares you about the future of the LGBTQ community?

I’m feeling a lot of fear these days. What I’m fearing is that we have become such a convenient scapegoat for people to blame everything on. And it just feels like as the economic conditions in our country and our world get worse, we’re going to see an intensification of homophobia and transphobia because it’s so easy for the powers that be to villainize us.

So I’m just feeling a lot of grief and a lot of fear about how easy it is to warp reality and take what is a very small community and to label us with this kind of existential scarlet letter.

What gives you hope?

Coming here and meeting other queer and trans people in person. And I think that’s why this conference is so powerful. A lot of this work is happening right now online, and that’s important, but it’s not the same thing as being able to be in the room with other people who feel the same way, other people who express the same fears. There’s something that is really calming about just being physically present with one another.

Have you experienced discrimination in your own life?

Regrettably, I have. I think that one that’s often not spoken about is that professionally, I feel like as a trans person, me and my peers have to work ten times as hard as a lot of our colleagues in order to get access to the same stages and opportunities because a lot of people see us as a political risk or liability.

So people who would normally curate us don’t, because they’re afraid of potential backlash, and it’s all anticipatory. And so then we just have to be ruthlessly excellent, which takes a toll. Sometimes I just wish that we could just chill and relax, but we always have to be on our toes and we always have to be working really hard to correct for people’s biases around us.

This year’s Creating Change theme is “Unstoppable.” What does unstoppable mean to you?

I think, in the context of this conference and our movement, we come from a legacy and a tradition that is ongoing and that has survived attempted eradication and is still here. And I think that that’s important to say because even though we’re up against ominous forces, bad faith actors, we’ve been up against those actors for a very long time and we’ve still managed to find a way to persist. So to be unstoppable now is to pay homage to that legacy of resistance and remember that we are going to keep going because we always have.

For more information about the Task Force or to get involved, visit www.thetaskforce.org.