Meet the next generation of LGBTQ+ rights activists in New York

On April 25, LGBTQ+ activists flooded the state Capitol for the first Transgender, Gender-nonconforming, Nonbinary and Intersex Day of Action. Over a hundred transgender and queer advocates made a show of force as they called on state lawmakers to approve bills that would make New York a safe haven for trans kids fleeing from hostile states and improve housing outcomes for people with HIV and/or AIDS. The effort was organized by the New Pride Agenda, a statewide LGBTQ+ advocacy organization founded in 2019. Addressing the rally, the group’s Executive Director Elisa Crespo alluded to New York’s long history of radical queer activism. “I’m not the only transgender Puerto Rican woman from the Bronx who knows how to make some noise,” she said. “Her name is Sylvia. She said we cannot hide, we cannot be in the shadows. We must be public, we must show them we are numerous.”

Crespo was referring to the pioneering queer and trans rights activist Sylvia Rivera, an early leader of the movement who took part in the 1969 Stonewall riots alongside other trans women of color like Marsha P. Johnson and Miss Major Griffin-Gracy. In the decades after Stonewall, trans women of color like Rivera were often pushed to the margins of the LGBTQ+ rights movement, which was increasingly dominated by larger and more politically savvy organizations led by white cisgender gay men.

In 2002, the statewide Empire State Pride Agenda advocated for and helped negotiate the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act, a bill that expanded the state’s Human Rights Law to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation – but did not mention discrimination based on gender expression identity. Rivera pleaded with Empire State Pride Agenda on her deathbed to expand the bill to include protections for trans people like herself. She died in February 2002, and the legislation received final approval that December. It did not include protections for trans people.

It took nearly two more decades until New York enacted the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, which codified statutory protections for transgender New Yorkers into the state’s Human Rights Law. By that time, the Empire State Pride Agenda had disbanded, leaving many to wonder what might take its place. Now, the New Pride Agenda has stepped up to protect and advance LGBTQ+ rights in New York as they are targeted across the country.

For more than two decades, the Empire State Pride Agenda led LGBTQ+ efforts in the state. Formed in 1990, the group focused much of its advocacy on passing same-sex marriage, which at the time still seemed like a pipe dream. That was the same year that New Yorkers elected Assembly Member Deborah Glick, the state’s first out LGBTQ+ lawmaker. But it would take another eight years for former state Sen. Thomas Duane to be elected as the first out HIV-positive state lawmaker and only the second out LGBTQ+ member. Representation in the halls of power was sparse.

“The Empire State Pride Agenda was founded right after when the community was still fighting HIV and AIDS,” said Emily Giske, a longtime lobbyist with Bolton-St. Johns and a prominent lesbian Democratic operative who helped pass same-sex marriage. “No one even dreamed of marriage equality being a possibility.” In 2011, they finally achieved that dream when the state Legislature legalized same-sex marriage in New York.

Then in 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case of Obergefell v. Hodges that all states had to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, making same-sex marriage the law of the land. In New York, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued a series of executive orders to enact various LGBTQ+ policies that had stalled in the Republican-controlled state Senate, including one that expanded the state’s Human Rights Law to include transgender people. In December 2015, the Empire State Pride Agenda announced that it would disband, saying it had achieved what it set out to do. “The mission was to get these policy objectives passed, and we feel we have done that,” Norman Simon, chair of the organization, said at the time.

The group’s decision to disband caught many of its own members and allies by surprise. Cynthia Dames, who had worked as a lobbyist for the Empire State Pride Agenda, said that she was “stunned” when she first learned of the news. It also led to feelings of betrayal within the larger LGBTQ+ rights community. While the group’s leaders later insisted that they had not meant to declare “mission accomplished” on LGBTQ+ rights, many in the community certainly took it that way. “Unlike the Empire State Pride Agenda, which called it quits after marriage equality, the New Pride Agenda formed because we knew the work still wasn’t done,” Shéár Avory, the statewide organizer for the New Pride Agenda, told City & State. “Trans people have historically been left behind in the LGBTQ+ civil rights movement. The Empire State Pride Agenda left us behind.”

Some saw the organization’s decision to dissolve itself as emblematic of a larger tension within the LGBTQ+ advocacy world – where mainstream organizations led largely by white cisgender gay men did not appreciate the challenges faced by more marginalized queer groups, particularly trans people and women of color.

State Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal – himself a white cisgender gay man – credited the Empire State Pride Agenda for their many successes, while noting that trans rights were never really at the forefront of the organization’s agenda. “Now, it was a different time, but they helped negotiate the passage of (the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act), leaving transgender folks essentially behind as the ship sailed to human rights equality,” he told City & State.

Giske, who is today the first out LGBTQ+ vice chair of the state Democratic Party, also acknowledged that trans rights weren’t at the top of the agenda for most prominent leaders of the LGBTQ+ movement at the time that the Empire State Pride Agenda disbanded. She said that the long fight for same-sex marriage had left many feeling worn down. “The Stonewall generation, and the post-Stonewall generation, just got tired after marriage equality,” Giske said. “It was always the same 10 to 20 people in the room.”

By 2018, it became clear to some LGBTQ+ activists that a new statewide group was needed to fill the vacuum left by the Empire State Pride Agenda. “I called together a group of people, both former (Empire State Pride Agenda) board members and other progressive young leaders, and we met in my apartment on the Upper West Side for about six months at the end of 2018,” Dames said. They determined that the number of LGBTQ+ bills passed had dropped significantly since the Empire State Pride Agenda dissolved and there had been little movement on health and human services funding. “So we decided we wanted to start a new organization called the NEW – capital letters – Pride Agenda, the purpose of which was to focus on those that were the most discriminated against,” Dames said. That meant a shift away from the largely white cisgender leadership of the past, and toward members of the community who were people of color, trans or experiencing homelessness.

In 2019, the New Pride Agenda officially formed, with Dames as program manager and just one full-time staff member. And in 2021, once the organization had the money to truly begin staffing up, the search began for an executive director who could lead the New Pride Agenda in that new direction.

In early 2021, Elisa Crespo was running in a special election for New York City Council District 15 in the Bronx. She ran on a progressive platform and would have made history as the first trans person elected to the City Council. After losing the special election race in March, Crespo chose not to run in the Democratic primary for the seat later that same year. Instead, a few months after the special election, she found herself running the New Pride Agenda.

Crespo said she “randomly” received a call from Imara Jones, the organization’s co-chair, encouraging her to apply for the executive director position. “What I give the board so much credit for was taking a chance on me and allowing a trans person to step into this role,” Crespo said. “And I think that the work that we do in terms of public policy work, statewide advocacy, obviously is not new. What’s new is people like me in positions of power, people with my story and experience being in these positions.”

Crespo grew up in a working-class home in New York City with her mother, who was in an on-again, off-again abusive relationship with Crespo’s stepfather. She relied on food stamps in the past and was a recipient of Medicaid. As a teen, Crespo engaged in sex work. She is HIV-positive and was formerly incarcerated. “I bring all of those intersecting, marginalized identities with me into this work,” Crespo said. “So the things that we advocate for at the (New) Pride Agenda, these are things that we have firsthand experience with, whether it’s me or anyone else on the team.” Those other team members include Program Manager Kei Williams, who uses they/them pronouns and helped found the Black Lives Matter movement, and Avory, the statewide lead organizer who is a Black and Indigenous nonbinary trans femme. “Our voices deserve to be heard, our stories deserve to be known, and more importantly, we deserve a seat at the table,” Avory said.

Dames said the board of directors for the New Pride Agenda did not necessarily go out of its way to hire a trans woman of color as executive director, nor did they have any particular person in mind when considering applicants. “(It was) not a conscious decision, it was an organic decision,” she said. Before Jones brought up Crespo, Dames and others were not familiar with her. “While she didn’t have the experience of management of nonprofits, she understood the community,” Dames said, calling the match a “fortuitous” one. “If we need to help (her) regarding mentoring, in terms of management or budgets in the nonprofit world, we’d be happy to step up to the plate, as we all have been mentored at different times,” Dames said, adding that Crespo’s hiring was “a gift.”

Crespo said that overall, her reception upon becoming a leader of a statewide LGBTQ+ rights organization has been positive. “I think I’ve become a bridge between, sort of, former leaders and new, emerging leaders,” Crespo said. But that’s not to say it wasn’t without its own challenges. She said some questioned whether the New Pride Agenda would only hire trans people – which it hasn’t – and suggested the group focused too much on trans issues and not enough on broader LGBTQ+ ones. “I don’t know if those critiques will ever go away,” Crespo said. “Because I think my representation, my being at the helm of the organization, is responsible for the assumptions of these people.” She said the “tragedy” of the work she’s doing is that the resources of the queer community have historically gone to a “certain demographic,” and that it has been a challenge to get people to support the work New Pride is doing “even if they can’t see themselves reflected in it.”

Attacking trans and queer rights seems to have become the topic du jour for conservatives around the country. Florida made national news last year when Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law the “Don’t Say Gay” bill that restricted any discussion or mention of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools up to the third grade. That law has since been expanded to cover grades all the way through high school.

Since then, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Texas and many other states have enacted laws banning or greatly restricting access to gender-affirming care for minors. These laws criminalize doctors who provide gender-affirming care and threaten to remove children from parents who support their trans identity. More states are considering “bathroom bans,” which prohibit people from using public restrooms that do not match their assigned sex at birth, as well as bans on drag performances in public spaces. “It seems the far right is really leaning into this,” Hoylman-Sigal said. “So the New Pride Agenda is going to be crucial in our fight back.”

In a progressive state like New York, the anti-queer policies of conservative states may seem like a faraway problem. But even here, members of neo-fascist groups like the Proud Boys have targeted drag story hour events at public libraries, while the once-moderate Republican Party has taken a hard right-wing turn. Far-right agitator Gavin Wax has for the past several years reshaped the New York Young Republican Club, as its president, in the image of Trumpian populism. “I think what’s happening right now across the country is a wake-up call for New York, which prides itself on being the progressive capital of the nation,” Avory said. “New York is really the front-line defense of civil rights and our fundamental freedoms – and even here in New York, it has seeped into our own backyard.”

For Crespo, to fight back is to return to the radical roots of the early queer movement. It’s one of the differences between Empire State Pride Agenda and New Pride Agenda – the latter doesn’t just focus on political advocacy but also runs programming for the community. “I think much of what the community has done is focus on acceptance and assimilation,” Crespo said. “And I really think we really ought to tap back into the roots that were presented by the Sylvias and the Marshas, we need to focus on social and economic justice, we need to focus on housing, on unemployment, on health care.” The New Pride Agenda conducts policy advocacy work, but it also runs financial literacy workshops, support groups and voter education initiatives, in addition to training public health ambassadors on HIV and AIDS prevention for high-risk individuals and sex workers. In the near future, Crespo hopes to add career preparedness. “The organization is one that we see strongly should not just be a political advocacy organization, but should be a social justice organization that really improves the quality of life of our community,” she said. Because at a time when queer rights are under attack, not just surviving, but thriving, is itself radical resistance against those forces trying to deny your existence.