tl;dr: As of today, we officially got *multi-year* funding for staff in NYC’s public hospitals to help trans, gender non-conforming, and non-binary (TGNCNB) people find affirming care.
With the amazing work of City Council members, the TGNCNB Solutions Coalition (which Bowen Public Affairs works with) successfully advocated for $390,000 a year baselined (multi-year funding) for TGNCNB health care navigators in the NYC FY20 budget!
The big annual City Council budget document (the Schedule C) came out today, and solidified: $390,000 to support TGNCNB people in the pursuit of the best possible health care within public hospitals (Schedule C says $390,000 for “transgender healthcare training,” but that funds the aforementioned navigators).
It is vital to give applause to the community organizers and leaders who made this work get to this point. Bowen Public Affairs Consulting owes all the work it has done to the people mentioned below.
Many rounds of applause and love for the TGNCNB Solutions Coalition Steering Committee for YEARS OF WORK (Steering Committee members named in alphabetical order): Sasha Alexander, Kaleb Dornheim, Bianey Garcia, Cecilia Gentili, Cristina Herrera, Mateo Guerreo-Tabares, Kimberly Mckenzie, Briana Silberberg, LaLa B Zannell.
Anything the Coalition achieves, love goes to this crew for building community, holding community forums where community members said they wanted these navigators in the first place, for getting money and resources to make this work happen, thinking it through, strategizing, making sure the evolving policy fits the community’s needs, testifying at hearings and getting other folks to show up to hearings, and doing all of this while organizing rallies, and healing community.
On the City government side, thank you to Council Members Carlina Rivera and Mark Levine for holding the initial hearings that led to this funding, for helping us craft the vision for this funding, and for working with your colleagues to make it real.
Thanks to many other Council Members for pushing this hard, including Diana Ayala, Majority Leader Laurie Cumbo, Finance Chair Danny Dromm, Stephen Levin, Francisco Moya, and Helen Rosenthal.
Also, thank you to Speaker Corey Johnson for shepherding through two budgets now with monumental spending for the TGNCNB community. Thank you to the LGBT and Women’s Caucuses for supporting this!
Also, many many staff made this possible. You are stars.
Our movement has an obligation to pursue economic justice, and if we don’t make a full-court press for government dollars, we’re leaving money on the table. Thanks to everybody who sees that, and is making that reality happen.
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