A Transgender student Jay Alfie is a student at Allen High School. He is graduating this year and Allen ISD refuses to announce Jay during the commencement ceremony, instead calling out his Dead Name (legal name before transitioning). The parents have met with the appropriate people to try to get this resolved, but leadership in Allen ISD will not agree to announce Jay. Let's see if we can change their minds.

My close friend is gay and I believe in his cause. Nobody should be terminated just because of their sexual orientation. With the new administration of Donald Trump, many gays fear their rights will be diminished based on his campaign style as well as his treatment of immigrants. It is still legal for companies in 28 states to fire employees for being gay or transgender, and notwithstanding Trump's manifest hostility to LGBTQ rights, there are signs that the political winds are blowing over that map in a more inclusive direction. No states have changed their state nondiscrimination laws since the November election. In the Lambda Legal's case on behalf of Kimberly Lively, an instructor at Ivy Tech Community College was fired for being a lesbian. In a groundbreaking, 8-3 decision, the full Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation violates federal civil right law. This law is Title VII of the Civil Right Act of 1964, the federal law prohibiting employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin, and religion. We need to change the laws in all 50 states to protect all LGBTQ people so that we all can have the same equal rights as our founding four fathers wanted us to have.

When I was talking about my belief of how many genders there is I ended up getting in trouble and I realized that I am not allowed to voice my opinions and I want others opinions to feel safe about their beliefs

It's unAmerican.

After the opening of The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, I was made more aware of how often lynchings still take place. I was baffled. How can someone be opposed to anti-lynching!? After making calls and sending emails, I have yet to get a response from my senators or representatives. The people want answers and solutions.

Ever since presidential election controversies in Florida ('00) and Ohio ('04), there have been grave concerns about the integrity of proprietary voting systems from corporate vendors. The 2017 DEF CON security conference called them a “national security threat”. Open-Source Paper Ballot Voting Systems are more secure and transparent. And, after one county develops a system, the whole state could use it for free. That’s why Assemblymember David Chiu and Senator Scott Wiener, working with the California Clean Money Campaign, submitted a state budget request for $8 million in matching funds to help counties develop them. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon and Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins are key to this funding. Ask them to fund open-source voting now!

Your community and your kids are at risk. Sexual human trafficking is a growing problem in the United States, in every state. That’s why we need a single federal office responsible for coordinating this fight across the entire government. With leadership from the President and Congress, we can and will win this fight against those that exploit children for sex.

Racist, xenophbic lawyer Aaron Schlossberg was recently caught on camera yelling at women speaking Spanish and saying they should be "kicked out of my country." Another instance shows him yelling at a couple on the street "I'm a citizen here. You’re not. You’re an ugly f***ing foreigner, so f**k you!" Civil rights advocate Shaun King also reports that more than dozen other people have come forward to share stories about being "targeted & harassed" by Schlossberg. It should come as no surprise that Schlossberg donated hundreds of dollars to the Trump campaign and is now apparently one of the many bigots emboldened by the administration's racist and xenophobic agenda. We demand a full investigation into Schlossberg's racist and xenophobic history and for him to be disbarred so he can no longer practice law.

As a student progressive activist, allowing for strong minded students and young people’s voices to be heard and listened to, is an extremely important issue to me. I think that student political activism and engagement is integral to our democracy, and the best way to activate the students is to activate their rights to vote!

USA FH'S current system favors junior women over junior men and is not only discriminatory on the basis of gender but also represents economic discrimination by taking away from young men the dream of representing their country internationally and ultimately in the Olympics. Imposing training fees for young men only should be stopped.

In one of the busiest intersections in all of Virginia, on the corner of Prince St. and George Washington Pkwy., sits a monument "in memory of the confederate dead." Nowhere on the monument does mention that the confederate army enslaved free people, raped enslaved women, or were personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of loyal Americans. It does NOT say, "May we never forget the evil for which they stood." This monument to sickening monsters can apparently only be removed by an act of the state legislature. This needs to be a legislative priority and it needs to go now.

The Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics has requested a revision to the National Crime Victimization Survey information collection that raises the minimum age at which respondents will be administered questions on their sexual orientation and gender identity. Per the requested change, the minimum age for these questions will be raised from 16 to 18 due to concerns about the "potential sensitivity" of these questions for young teens. Join Northwestern University's Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health (ISGMH) faculty and staff in explaining why the requested change in procedure would be extremely detrimental to the health and safety of sexual and gender minority (SGM) youth. ISGMH has conducted numerous peer-reviewed studies on this topic, and there is no evidence that teens are uncomfortable answering questions about their sexual orientation or gender identity - in fact, they reported being more comfortable doing so than posting their pictures on social media or going to the eye doctor. There is mounting evidence that SGM youth are at grave risk for violence and victimization, yet they are barely represented in research. This void in research means that every opportunity to collect data is crucially needed in order to understand their experiences. In eliminating questions that assess SGM status among adolescents under 18, the DOJ is rendering SGM adolescent victims of crime nearly invisible, which in turn diminishes efforts to identify and provide targeted resources for these youth. View ISGMH's complete letter here: https://isgmh.northwestern.edu/2018/05/08/isgmh-submits-formal-response-to-proposed-changes-to-the-national-crime-victimization-survey/ UPDATE: ISGMH delivered 176 petition signatures to Jennifer Truman on May 11. We encourage you to continue signing this petition and speaking out against the DOJ's proposed changes to the National Crime Victimization Survey.