Current Actions

We believe that education and training in anti-racism work is an ongoing process. Given this, we are committed to continuing to be engaged in learning and taking action to live out this commitment. We also know that our education is a starting place and should never be the end point; our actions are important as well. In the interest of transparency and learning in public, we have decided to share the steps that our group takes in this area. The items listed below are based on our group level commitments and engagements. 

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2021: 

• Last semester, we made a commitment to better center the expertise of Black academics and other people of color by ensuring we follow and cite their work. This can make a difference in terms of citation counts and reviews for faculty members and so we are continuing to do this with any publications from our team. We also have each added to this list of articles to better promote BIPOC authors: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1i7Eacoyv9VVg2lBbCV-KJZg4nSGvR_VZFOysOyOGG8g/edit?usp=sharing

• We prepared a new Pride post series to celebrate individuals who are BIPOC and doing research in trans health or researchers who center the experiences of BIPOC communities in their research. We also created some posts that centered BIPOC activists to amplify their work and history. 

• Committed to ongoing education efforts via viewing and having discussions about the Anti-Racism & Racial Healing Webinars & Resources | diversity.ucsf.edu

• Team made a recent donation to research on anti-Asian bias (https://www.gofundme.com/f/fighting-covid19-antiasian-racism-with-research?utm_campaign=p_cp_url&utm_medium=os&utm_source=customer). 

• We started working together as a group to advocate for a legislative change related to Michigan’s laws related to name changes in the state. As it currently stands, individuals who change their name legally are required to publish this name change in a newspaper. This adds cost to the process of changing a person’s name and is an invasion of privacy. Given that economic hardships disproportionately impact trans people of color, we view this as an action that can decrease barriers to a legal name change particularly for this group. We started engaged in these efforts Spring 2021. 

• Our director, Jae Puckett, has continued to provide pro-bono evaluations for LGBTQ+ people of color in the Lansing area who are seeking asylum that are in need of these services or for individuals who are seeking a letter of support for gender affirming medical care. They have joined the Physicians for Human Rights Network to further these efforts.