Hello and welcome to another episode of Gender Stories.
I know I'm always thrilled, elated, excited, and that's true.
I get to talk to the coolest people.
But today I have some extra gratitude because I get to talk to Leigh Finke during the legislative session.
And that is an amazing privilege that I'm so grateful, Leigh, that you're here.
And in case you don't know, dear listeners, Leigh Finke is honored to serve as state representative for District 66A.
And prior to holding office, she worked as a journalist, media creator, and documentary filmmaker.
In 2022, she became the first trans woman elected to the Minnesota legislature.
And that's very exciting for me because I do live in Minnesota.
During her first two terms in office, Leah subvocated for two-spirit LGBTQIA +, equality, abortion rights, prison justice, and environmental equity.
She chairs the House Reproductive Freedom Caucus and serves as co-vice chair of the Judiciary Committee.
In her personal time, enjoys writing, painting, traveling, skateboarding, and organizing community events and exploring Minnesota's parks with her kids.
So welcome, Leigh.
Thank you so much for being here with us.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's an honor to be here and happy to be here.
Well, I am so grateful for all the work that you do for us in the state of Minnesota.
And I would love to start there from one of the things that I love about your work is the cross movement solidarity, right?
You are obviously, of course, you represent uh our communities so beautifully for trans folks, but you really show up for all of our communities, whether it's our immigrant communities.
whether it's environmental justice and the threats to our boundary waters.
And so I would really love to hear a little bit more from you about, you know, why do you feel the cross movement solidarity is so important, especially at this specific moment in time politically.
Yeah, I appreciate starting there because we are in Minnesota and we just survived what we survived with the ice occupation.
you know, I mean, a lot of this just comes from my background as an organizer and as a journalist and as a person, you know, who got, I got my start politically organizing activism wise in 2003 with the wars.
the Bush illegal wars, that's kind of where I cut my teeth.
I was just getting out of college and there was a lot of work being done around uh Islamophobia and this sort of coalescing of othering of our political opponents inside of the United States.
And as a queer person, that's something that I'm familiar with.
as I just like.
I never understood the distinctions between movements for liberation, movements for justice, this idea that, know, uh scarcity model of liberation just doesn't, it doesn't compute, right?
Like we all move together or we all gonna fall.
And if we can't see the humanity in our neighbors, and a lot of this for me is kind of built up in a sort of.
spiritual religious stew that I've kind of been baked in for my whole life.
But it does like leave me thinking like there is no distinction here, right?
And when we have neighbors in our communities who are afraid to leave their houses, we have to defend them and fight for them just like we would anybody else.
I love that and it so resonates with me and maybe it's because I also like my background is community organizing, it's more than just showing up in the streets, at least in my experience, right?
It's really showing up in community, building relationships and I love everything that you just talked about.
And I think that that's one of the things that sometimes gets lost.
um in identity politics, it's right, right?
Like we are focusing on this issue, but all our issues are connected.
And that's one of the things I love about your work is that you're always very clear that our liberation is truly tied to one another.
And, you know, I used to live in South Minneapolis and so I kept a close eye on what was happening.
My heart is still there even though I live in Duluth now.
em The militarized occupation was a lot and actually, given that you mentioned it, I would love to hear kind of how you were impacted and your constituents were impacted and what you saw on the ground in the Twin Cities.
And I know the occupation is still going on, even though it's not quite to the same scale, but like your experience of those few months.
Yeah.
so I represent my district is half of my district is the city of St.
Paul.
So some of the neighborhoods in St.
Paul, and then I have two small little suburbs and a portion of another one.
So it's, it's, very diverse.
It's right in the city.
Um, what's interesting to me is that before operation Metro of surge, we had the very first big workplace raid that ice performed, um, in The Twin Cities was in my district.
It was at a paper company that was in my district.
you know, they came in, they took 14 people, they had a judicial warrant for two, you know, and it was like this really like intense close um experience, right?
And people were there and people got pepper sprayed and the whole thing.
And then it got really quiet until Metro Surge, right?
There was one other workplace raid in St.
Paul about two weeks later, but.
It sort of just felt like, oh, this is what we're going to see, right?
They're going to do these sort of workplace, we're going to show up, we're going to take people.
And then they didn't do that.
You know, they did this other thing completely that was terrifying, obviously, for all of our Black and Brown neighbors, especially our immigrant neighbors.
I have a lot of Somali folks in my community.
And in my district, I have a lot of AAPI and Hmong.
people in my community and it just was in a way that's hard to explain.
uh you know, it was desperate, right?
I think, I feel like the idea was this, like this desperation for people who were scared and didn't know all of a sudden what they could do, what they couldn't do, so they just stayed in their homes.
And, you know, we had people getting scooped up when they went to take their garbage out into their alley, you know?
mean, people don't have this, I feel like people outside of the Twin Cities have read about what we saw, but it was like a legitimate.
operation that can only be understood as a militarized occupation.
You use that word, right?
People in trucks watching alleys, you know, setting up people getting Airbnbs across the street from schools so that they could see when pickups were being done.
You know, in just in my one district, we had, you know, our networks that were all communicating and it was just like a constant terrorism.
And then as we saw the responses to the observers, it was a terrorism of everyone, right?
Then it was like, we're terrorizing people by forcing them into their home and if they come out, we scoop them and, but kidnap them really.
But then also, you gonna be, once they murdered Renee Good, you know, a queer woman who was out with her wife when protesting what was happening, it just felt like everything had fallen off the rails and everybody was in danger all the time.
You know, seeing Renee and what happened to Renee and Becca really impacted the queer folks in the community.
Me and my wife, you know, we had to have real conversations about being in the streets and what does it mean?
And there was this, this composing of this thing that was just like completely out of control, out of anyone's ability to control, including the feds.
These are just abusers and violent men.
acting out in whatever way they wanted, knowing that the president and his cronies would just lie to the public in order to protect them.
It's very difficult to express what, just as a representative, there are only so many things I could do in that time.
One of them was help track people who got kidnapped.
Right?
So I was actually less in the streets and I was more trying to coordinate with people.
I got a lot of calls from people who were like, my friend got taken.
I don't know what to do.
And so I'd start the little pathway for them to try to find out where they got deported to and how they could get in touch with the federal agencies, you know, talking to Senator Smith's people, talking to Omar Ilhan Omar's people, just like all of this coordinating all of this chaos.
all of it at the same time, like we just had thousands of people, thousands of people taken from their homes, from their families, a small percentage of them criminals.
I mean...
You were here for this.
was brutalizing on every single level, most of which was on the people who were being abducted and whose families were being destroyed.
Oh, absolutely.
It was horrifying and it was so...
It was so scary.
you know, it's hard to talk about this without feeling emotional.
um You know, I'm light-skinned, but I'm an immigrant.
The minute I open my mouth, especially in Minnesota, where there is always like, where are you from?
But where are you really from?
And especially with the militarized ice presence, like my family wasn't letting me go anywhere without somebody with me.
Because, you know, it's that fear.
And it was, I don't think it, I think it's hard for people.
who haven't experienced a militarized ICE presence and also who haven't experienced the system be what it is, because the system is quite hostile in the so-called US to immigrants, at least in my experience.
I'm a naturalized now, but I've had to deal with the immigration system for a long time.
And I think one of the things that was hard for me was to see how many people still couldn't believe that the system could be this brutal.
It wasn't hard, honestly, for me to believe the system was this brutal because even with my own privilege around education and how I'm racialized, I still experienced plenty of microaggression from the immigration system over the decade plus before I got neutralized.
But I think for a lot of American white people, it was really hard to wake up to the reality.
that this system is brutal, is unjust.
It doesn't really target criminals.
It's really about reinforcing.
all the terrible things that we are kind of reckoning with now in some ways.
that's why I love your work so much, because I think that when you speak publicly, as well as on the floor, during the legislative session, you make those connections.
It's not just about, oh, here's a few bad apples in ice, right?
No, it's like the whole system is deeply unjust.
and it's not working the way that people think it works.
I don't know if that makes sense, but yeah.
it does make sense.
I think, you know, when Metro Surge was at its peak, we, and, you know, Renee got murdered and Alex got murdered and, you know, 3,700 people were deported, ah you know, successfully deported in air quotes.
uh There was, you know, it was 20 degrees below zero, 55,000 people marched through downtown Minneapolis.
So there is this notion of like something that happened during that time made it so that everyone did.
Everyone here understood, right?
We trained what 20,000 constitutional observers, like the numbers of people who responded and who, and we've always had this organizers always talk about knowing your neighbors and meeting your neighbors and.
That happened for real.
Like people for real met their neighbors and they got into signal chats and they learned what their blocks were like and who on their block needed to keep, you know, support.
em And it was really remarkable, you know, in a way that this isn't silver lining.
This is just the reality of what happened in response.
And I think it really does lay the groundwork for.
And I think that one of the reasons that happened in Minneapolis is because of what happened to George Floyd, right?
And we had the uh global racial uprising started in Minneapolis and we organized in a way that people were not really ready for what we could do.
And then this time it was completely maximally larger than that.
And it was an amazing time.
I've talked about this with my colleagues, right?
Yeah.
It was a terrible time to live through, but it was an amazing time to be in Minnesota at the same time.
So it was something, you know, they'll write, they'll make movies about this, right?
Like this was a historic moment in the history of the United States and we should understand it in that way.
Absolutely, and I think that people really underestimated the level of community organizing on the ground in Minnesota.
And how much of that is also led by Black and Brown folks and also trans and queer folks.
And that kind of cross-movement solidarity between trans and queer movements and Black and Brown movements, especially in Minnesota, I feel.
And so I want to talk about the kind of intersection, but also like...
what is it that kind of moved you to run from office when you decided to?
Because I think that I'm seeing a lot of trans and queer folks really rise to like, either running for office or really uh leading in a way that...
um It's just really beautiful and kind of gives us all, I think, strength as we keep navigating the stimes.
And so I'm also curious about your personal story, like how you came to step into this role.
And I know you were already an organizer, but it is a different step, I think, going into politics.
Yeah.
very different.
No, I mean, these stories, they are connected, though, right?
so like, through the teens, the 20 teens, I was doing a lot of journalism, you know, just kind of freelancing.
I got a contract with Yes Magazine out of Bainbridge and and my beat there was like pop culture and social movements.
part of the reason that they wanted someone in St.
Paul, who was covering the social movements is because we were already, you know, we had a major refugee population here, right?
And uh even, you know, run up to the first Trump election, there was just a lot of attention on refugee resettlement.
And for folks who don't know, Minnesota has one of the highest percentages of refugee resettlement in the country.
And a large part of that is Somali folks and those folks You know, right from the start, Donald Trump was obsessed with Somali immigrants.
And he came to Minnesota during, in 2015, just to have a rally where he just like shit on Ilhan Omar for 45 minutes.
Right.
And everybody was like, what is this about?
Like, this is crazy.
Um, but he's always been really obsessed with, with our communities.
And, and there was a lot of really interesting solidarity work happening with queer folks and, and Somali folks and.
in other sort of gestational kind of movement building, Black Lives Matter was building.
We had four high profile, locally high profile murders of Black men by police before we even had George Floyd's murder.
So anyways, there was just a lot happening and I was covering all that as a journalist.
uh And I was transitioning at the time as well, right?
In that first Trump administration and those, uh that period of real upheaval ah seems like quaint levels of upheaval compared to this past year.
But at the time, just massive upheaval.
And I, this is sort of a lot of preamble.
But the point is I got to this point in my career where I was doing journalism and I was working in media and I was at this publishing company and we were doing some documentary work and I was really fulfilled really for the first time in my professional career.
and I had transitioned and I was like feeling good about my life.
And then, you know, George Floyd was murdered and, you know, I lived in the Midway neighborhood and, you know, it wasn't close to what, where he was murdered, but it burned, right?
This stretch of St.
Paul on University Avenue.
And I would look out my front and I would just see the smoke for days.
I was out, I was organizing.
had met tons of people by that time because of my journalism and organizing.
And I just decided then that like, I wanted to go professionally into the movement space and leaving the journalism space.
So that sort of was, that was 2020 and it pushed me forward.
I got a job at the ACLU and I was like, okay, I'm going to do ACLU for the next 20 years.
I love the opportunity that this is bringing.
I started doing a lot more specifically trans organizing because the trans anti-trans movement was really starting to like kind of take focus.
It hadn't landed yet, but it was like coming.
Um, and one of the things I was doing was trying to find people who would run for office as tr- because we needed more, you know, trans two-spirit non-binary people.
We had none, so we needed Anne, but we only had a couple like in the country at that time.
I think three.
So I was doing that work and working at ACLU and feeling kind of like I'm finding my space in the movement work.
And then just the random chance of redistricting.
And I moved, I moved because of COVID into a bigger apartment than the one I was in, because I have kids and I was like, I think we're going to be here for a while.
Let's get an extra bedroom.
And I ended up living in a place where somebody retired and there was an open seat.
And I ended up having to run.
People were like, you've been talking about getting someone to run.
You should run for office.
And I just felt kind of compelled, you know, by that, like it was so random, you know, I didn't, I never even occurred to me that like an open seat would show up in my life.
Cause I didn't want to run in primary someone.
So, just kind of all built on top of each other is like, I knew a lot of people because I had been writing about the community for a long time.
I was down at George Floyd Square, like all the time with my trans flag after the murder, you know, and the organizers there got to know me, right?
And there was this real clear sense of, you know, I got close to March.
and know, Marja Howard and other people who were down there, you know, and um it just sort of felt like the right move at the right time.
uh So I ran.
Yeah, I didn't expect to win when I started, but obviously I did.
Sorry, that was long.
That was a long story.
I hope it was interesting.
Yeah.
think it is interesting because I think sometimes life puts us in places that we didn't expect.
At least that's definitely something I've experienced, right?
Sometimes people are like, oh, how did you make this choice?
And it's like, well, actually it's a series of circumstances.
And I think that's true for a lot of people.
And so thank you for sharing that.
And I am curious about what it has been like to be such a, become such a visible public figure, especially as a trans woman, because I think there is, uh you know, there's a lot that comes at trans people when we're in the public eye and especially that intersection of transphobia.
and misogyny, right?
And like, so that trans women experience, especially when they dare to lead publicly, right?
And we've seen it.
em And so I wonder what the experience has been like for you, because obviously I've seen some of what you have to put up with online, you know, and I, and I bet that that's like the tiniest fraction of what you actually have to face in the current environment, you know.
um Yeah, I'm just if you want to talk about it because I also know that that's not a fun topic, you know, but yeah.
I think it's important, you know, and I do share a little bit of it from time to time because it is important, you know, but I'll just say I got elected in 22, came in in 23, and so I'm in my fourth year running for my third election.
And every year that I've been elected has been significantly worse than the year before.
uh So in 23, when we passed Trans Refuge, the Queer Caucus came out and we just passed tons of legislation.
had the trifecta, band conversion therapy, all the things that we needed to do to protect our community.
It was a great and triumphant year.
But when we, I mean, it was wild.
And you know, that was major league national leading work at the time.
And Tim Walz, our governor was.
a booster of it and really made sure people knew we were here and what we were doing.
And that work drew a lot of attention and a lot of it negative, but a lot of it positive.
um But each year since then, it's been a little harder, you know?
And like when I got elected, there were, think, three or four states that had restricted gender-affirming care, you know?
And then by the time we passed trans refuge, five months later, it was 12, right?
And then in 2015, it was 20, you know?
mean, 23 to 24 was the year the dam broke.
And not just for protecting gender-affirming care, but for a cultural openness to just embracing hatred of transgender people.
And I think, you know, I started my transition in 16 and...
We felt, I felt, people around me seemed to think like we were going somewhere better.
And the difference between 2024 and 2026 being a trans woman in politics is just almost unspeakable to me.
Like I don't even know how to explain how much worse it is now than it was even two years ago or a year ago.
It's the beginning of the Trump administration.
The willingness to openly hate transgender people is extremely alarming.
uh As a person who is now, you know, publicly like known as a leader in the trans movement, I mean, that feels weird to say still, like, uh it's true.
The amount of hatred and the amount of vitriol and harassment and threats that I receive, it's just...
I don't even know what to do or say about it.
Like part of it is like, woe is me.
But another part of it is like, our speaker got murdered in her home last year by a man pretending to be a police officer.
Like we are so far off the map of threats to lawmakers, especially in Minnesota, uh you know, for folks who don't know about Melissa Hortman and Mark Hortman and then the Hoffman family, were...
yeah.
assassinated or attempted assassinated.
was, I don't know, the tragedy of, you know, as a house member, she's my leader, she's who I came in under.
So I have this world that I operate in, which I'm extremely grateful.
I feel like I've been successful and I'm not, I did not know what my election would mean to the community until I saw how big the vacuum was that we filled.
uh And it went far beyond anything I could possibly have expected.
So I'm not leaving.
Right?
I'm not leaving because I'm not going to leave that vacuum empty.
But that's their goal.
Their goal is to get rid of us entirely.
So it's to make life as hard as possible so that we leave.
And I just don't know where that ends.
You know, like they're going to make it worse to try to get rid of us.
We're going to be resolved.
So they have to make it worse.
And I'm really scared about where that goes, not just for me, but for our whole community.
but That's just like what we are, that's where we are.
Like this is a civil rights movement.
I don't know that people always understand what's happening, but trans people are in the civil rights movement to protect basic humanity that we have lost under the Trump administration.
And I think it's gonna take a couple decades to win back what we have lost already.
So people need to be prepared for it.
And then we just need to commit.
And it's very hard.
Oh, absolutely.
Just the level of dehumanizing, even just over the last five or six years, like you said, I remember the first time that Trump got elected, like the day after the election, I remember walking around South Minneapolis where I lived at the time and any of us who were visibly minoritized, so anybody was visibly trans or queer, black or brown, we were just like...
looking at each other with like a level of I've got you and we're in this together that it's hard to even put into words, right?
It's been a really emotional time I think for our community.
But one of the things I love about Minnesota is how we come together is kind of how We have so many folks who are fighting really hard on every front, including, on the, you know, on the state level.
And I'm curious, though, about the impact this has on you and your family, because you're a parent, just like I am, and I know about to have really hard conversations with my family, whether it's a conversation with my mom, it's like, shouldn't you get out of the United States?
Because I can actually get out as somebody who has, like, I'm an immigrant, but I still have a European passport.
But I'm choosing to stay because I'm like, for me, I don't have little kids anymore.
My kids are old enough and we're brought up here and this is the land I love with my whole heart.
I love Gichigumi, Lake Superior.
I love the Mississippi River.
I love, like I'm looking out at the birches outside my house.
This is the place I love and I'm just not.
going down without a fight.
And I also understand people who are leaving.
But I've had to have our conversation also with like my kids, here is how you can access the bank account and keep paying the mortgage if anything happens to me or like, right?
And for you, it's all at our level because you're much more public and much more visible as a legislator.
And so I'm wondering how that, and especially like you said with the murder, you know, of...
Melissa Hortman and her family, which was really still that I still like waking up that morning, like I can still feel it in my body what that was like to see what was happening.
It just felt unthinkable for that to happen in Minnesota.
Some, and again, you don't have to talk about if it's too painful, but I'm curious about that's impacting you and your family, especially because you are a parent, like I said, and that's a whole different level, I think, vulnerability.
Yeah, it's, you know, the parent piece is tough, right?
I don't usually, I mean, I kind of keep my kids out of um any conversation.
don't really come to, but I can talk about being a parent and caring.
Like I got doxed last month, right?
Every quarter, I think I kind of take a tumble in the right wing hate machine and then I get all these threats and things, you know, they say some lie about me and it goes viral and oh daily news and all these like whatever info wars talk about me and then a bunch of people come after me.
doing that as a parent does make you have to sit with like, you know.
What does it mean?
Like what does it mean?
uh You know, um I feel well-resourced.
One thing that I'll say is that being a legislator has made me, I'm not well-resourced financially.
This is a terrible paying job, but we have, uh Yeah, but uh well-resourced in that the...
The House Caucus has resources, right?
Especially after Melissa's murder, we got resources in terms of security and how to take care of certain issues around our personal security.
And that has really helped.
My wife and I, like you said, we also have a plan and there is a document and that document has the necessaries if I'm detained or God forbid worse.
parent and I talk about these things occasionally as needed.
But I also have like an insulated community of people, right?
And so one of the things that I really lean into is the people who love me and support me anyways, like separately, because there's two.
One of the things about having gotten to be a relatively well-known Minnesotan is that you have tiers of people in your life.
And I try to be intentional with the people who are closest, who are my, like I know who loves me.
I know who loves me and I know who knows who I am.
And the people who love me are part of my security system.
And we try to be thoughtful about what it would mean and if there's a threat.
shortly after Melissa was assassinated and we were in the middle of things and then.
You know, I just got a call.
I got a call from someone, law enforcement agency that was like, hey, we're seeing an activity around your name on Truth Social and we just want you to know, and maybe you want to go somewhere else for the weekend.
And that's not supposed to be just something you deal with because you are a house member in a local, like this is not a high profile political job.
Yeah.
at least historically, state representative is like a low paying political job in the world.
So I feel like I'm rambling because I don't want to be too specific, but I'll just say that it is very real.
And a lot of people out there are helping me make sure that I stay safe.
And that's true of other people I think as well who, you know, I mean, I have other members of the caucus and other trans people around the country who are in similar positions and we all are thinking about it, right?
Like the whole.
idea of having this job like nationally I think changed when the Hortmans were murdered.
I talked to legislators around the country and go to these different events and conferences and people are just like, I can't believe that happened.
I can't believe it happened to her, right?
If someone was gonna be assassinated, it wasn't Melissa Hortman.
It just shook everyone.
It's like there's no reason anyone would have picked her name out of the hat to be the person who was assassinated in the middle of the night.
So we all are dealing with it and it's grinding us down, you know?
It's real.
Absolutely, and I really honor not talking about your kids and it was more about like the impact because I don't think that not everybody maybe realizes like the weight that this has on I'm sure your mental health, your emotional health, because how can it not, right?
And, you know, and that it's not an easy decision because like you said, historically, this is not.
You shouldn't be in the position you're in, if that makes sense, right?
In terms of how much of a target you are sometimes.
But unfortunately, the times are what they are, and I love how fiercely and unapologetically you show up and skillfully.
And also, it cannot be easy.
And so it's really, think it is important to talk about the toll that this takes.
And I mean, I just want to add if I can, like it's not accidental that the toll is higher, harder, harder for me.
Right.
It's not like everyone has their burden and every community has their own challenges and reasons to be in the, but, but the transgender people, non-binary people, two-spirit people, but really transgender women, like they are coming back.
We are the ones they are thinking about when they are.
enacting a transgender policy of eradication.
ah There is no doubt that like they want attention on us personally and individually and that to be punishing as possible.
So everyone is feeling it but certain communities and certain folks are really in a different position and I say this not because it's about me but it's about my people you know like we are the ones that they're literally like like genocidally focused on.
I mean, I don't use that word lightly, but I don't think, I don't know, maybe your audience probably is ready to hear that.
A lot of audiences are not, but like eradication is the policy and we shouldn't pretend otherwise.
Like that's why it's as particularly bad as it is.
100%.
And I think it is important to talk about it hard as it is that this is, it is very clear.
I remember when Trump said they was going to run the first time before he got elected in 2020 and 2016, sorry.
And or whenever it was, what is time?
I don't even know anymore.
But whichever lecture it was.
But I remember when he announced it and people were laughing and I was like, this is bad.
I was like, maybe it was because I was brought up with stories of World War II and fascism being brought up in Italy.
And I was like, this is bad already fascism was here it's only going to get worse and people are like no you're exaggerating you know i remember putting a lot of pressure on my employer at the time to support my green card and they were like this is not going to be an issue and i'm like this is absolutely going to be an issue and i took all my savings and gave them to an immigration lawyer and like help i need a green card so that i can you know be my family and I can be a little safer, you know, because I could see what was coming.
And I think a lot of us could see what was coming.
And like you said, trans women are particularly at risk.
you know, like that is the focus for a lot of those policies and a lot of the rhetoric.
um And it is horrifying.
And I wonder how your own kind of gender journey also brought you to this place of wanting to serve in the way that you do.
um You know, you talked about in a way.
you were transitioning as you were also coming more into the movement in a more full-time way, let's say, you know, as a community organizer.
And so, yeah, I don't know if that question makes sense, but I'm curious about how your own gender identity and experience informs that journey for you.
Yeah, yeah, mean, I...
So, the very short version of my whole life is that when I was 15, I almost came out as gay, right?
I grew up in the Midwest suburbs.
I didn't know anything about anything.
But I knew I was not like the other kids.
Anyways, that didn't work out for me.
I was too afraid.
There were too many, you know, unknowns, mid-90s.
in the white suburbs, wasteland, and I just, didn't.
So I became, instead I became a religious person, right?
When I was about 16, I became a Christian born again 90s person.
So basically from that time until my mid 30s, I've worked on getting figuring.
know, it was a long time to closet myself, but I got there eventually.
And one of the things that eventually pushed me over the ledge was the pulse shooting.
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
And I remember having this moment, like literally shortly thereafter, like, you know.
You don't know what the deal is, but you know there's a deal here and like people are getting murdered.
You know, like these are your people.
I felt more like these are your people and you need to honor that in a way that I hadn't for my whole adult life.
So in a way it's kind of like being rooted in that, like act of violence is sort of a trigger for what I consider to be my like personal liberation.
Mm.
It's a very complicated thing to have your life.
My life is so improved.
I have never been happier.
never, mean, I transitioned is the greatest gift that's ever been given to me.
um And I'm so proud of it.
I'm so proud of myself.
I could have not, you know, I didn't for so long.
I didn't for decades.
And then I did.
And it was hard.
I got divorced.
I went through terrible depression.
you know, alcohol, I got sober, I got medicated, I came out the other side feeling like, you know, like I said earlier, like I was professionally gratified for the first time in my life and it was because I got sober and I got to be myself and I got healthcare.
So all of that was kind of, you know, the soup in which I was getting ready to become a successful person.
in a way that I didn't have any idea.
um And there is no doubt in my mind that none of this would have happened if I hadn't been my authentic self, right?
Honestly.
um And every sort of...
ah all of the things that like almost cost me my life or almost cost me my mind, all of the relationships.
That was all just like gender uh essential, not gender essentialism, but essential to my gender.
uh So, you know, it was always exciting even as it was the most difficult stuff I had ever done.
And I was doing work like, Asking for a divorce from my wife was one of the most difficult things I ever did.
And then telling my parents was like even worse, you know?
Even as like a person in their 30s who is like, you have your life figured out, telling your parents that you are trans is fucking real.
You know, that it doesn't, I don't care how old you are.
Yeah.
ah so hard.
It's so hard.
Yeah.
So I think getting through, when I think now about the promise that was made to young people in the teens who came out, we had the transgender tipping point, you remember all that, 2015.
Our time is here, you know, that was when I was coming out, like everything's gonna be okay, all these young people came out, suddenly we are facing a complete, you know, stop for our community, like just a stop sign.
That is not acceptable, right?
And that is to me, like how my gender story that I was able to do what I did, and it took a long time, you know?
I I fought like hell for years to get my healthcare taken care of, know, I mean, years and years, we all do that, right?
And then we told these children, like, you can do this too.
And I just knew like, I will spend my life fighting for those kids, not to have that.
rug pulled out from under them, right?
Like we told them it would be okay and now we have to make it okay because it is not okay right now.
Oh, absolutely.
It's really not okay right now.
And I do remember the transgender tipping point.
I remember, you know, and I was already living in Minneapolis also when uh Cici McDonald uh incident happened when she protected herself and she acted in self-defense and then was put on trial, right?
And the community coming together, you know, and then so.
things were happening locally and it really felt like, you know, this is a cultural shift.
People are having conversation that I didn't think I would see in my lifetime, right?
We were really challenging, pushing back on even gender, being trans, being seen as an identity disorder.
That's what I was diagnosed as to access my medical care.
That's what I had to diagnose people with to access their medical care.
We pushed so hard for that to be not an identity disorder, but dysphoria.
then in congruence in the ICD-11, really push it out of the mental health realm and to see now that we're back to this point where we're being uh depicted as uh people who are uh mentally unwell or dangerous or predatory, which is also somebody who was brought up in the 70s and 80s to see the discourse of being predators uh is so heartbreaking because that was what was happening in queer community already.
And they're recycling the same.
honestly to attack our community and especially trans women like you said is is beyond enraging heartbreaking all the things and yet we're still here we're still pushing back like you said we still want the kids to have the care they need and I love how much Minnesota has been pushing back uh and has been protected gender affirming care and so I'm curious about What is it for you at this point in time that you feel the most strongly about or the most?
passionate about when it comes to kind of, you know, there are a lot of fights on every front and they're all connected, like we said at the beginning, right?
But if there was something that you really wanted listener to hear when it comes to the loss of civil rights and the dehumanization that we're going through as a community, what is it that you really want folks to understand or hear?
Yeah.
Now there are two things that come to mind.
First is, ah they're trying to get rid of transgender people completely.
And that is an impossible goal, right?
Like you cannot succeed because transgender people belong to every community.
We didn't spring out of the ground randomly, right?
Like we will have always and will always and are resilient and brilliant and will always thrive and will always succeed.
And we say that kind of like, I don't mean that in a sort of cute way.
I mean that in a like, we are radical fucking beings and we will not, we will absolutely not be gotten rid of.
um Like it is something to be ourselves is something that like is an achievement.
No one will take back.
And then this, but the second part in a more sort of.
Like the policy piece, the thing that matters to me that I spend, I have do national work, you know, outside of the legislature, that the thing that I think is the most important is continuity of care for minors.
There are a group of people in this country, they are under 18, they have started their hormone treatment or their puberty blockers, you know, it's one thing, it's one thing and it's a horrible thing.
It's but it's one thing not to give children health care that they need.
But the idea that we would take it away from people we have given it to is I just like it makes me want to explode.
It makes me want to burn down the entire world.
You know, this notion that we would give you what we promised and then take it away from you is beyond.
um It's just beyond my ability to express.
I feel like I've said that a couple of times, but.
But like, if you look at what we're doing, right, we're kind of going back to fighting about conversion therapy even, like we won that one.
We did that already.
And now it's like, well, maybe we'll do that again.
And now we have children, children who've come to Minnesota, right?
We've thousand probably of families have relocated to Minnesota to protect their child's healthcare.
when like I take very personally as the author of that bill and as the person who sort of said you can come here and we'll protect you.
um We have to do that.
We have to live up to that promise.
uh And to me, that's the number one, like adults, we can figure it out.
They're coming for our care too.
Don't get me wrong.
What they're doing in prisons right now to transgender people is inhuman at a level that like, you know, we haven't seen for generations, I think, but.
But those kids who came here and said, we came here because we need our care, those kids are my number one priority.
We can't take it back from them.
No, that makes complete sense.
And I couldn't agree more.
It's like, it's so important that we protect gender-framing care for minors, especially because some of the systems are complying in advance.
don't delude this, like, noise that Ascensia is no longer providing gender-framing care for minors.
And, you know, the community is definitely organizing, and we're figuring it out.
But I do think that that's the number one priority, because I don't think people truly understand how protective it is to have familial support and access to care.
Right?
Those two things are really, you know, we know from research that when we have those two things, there is really no disparities between, you know, trans kids and trans youth and cis kids and cis youth when it comes to depression, anxiety and substance use.
And why would we want our kids and our youth to like suffer unnecessarily?
So I'm, I'm so glad.
I feel like I could talk with you for a long time and I want to be respectful for your time because it's beautiful.
on precious, especially right now with all the things that are going on.
I'm curious about if there were other trans, trans, non-binary, gender-expensive, two-spirit folks out there listening to this, and they have been thinking maybe of running for office at any level, School boards.
uh city councils, state, federal, those are all important levels, I believe.
What advice would you have for any trans folks who want to run um for any kind of visible kind of leadership position in terms of politics?
I would say one, if you're thinking about running, if you're seriously thinking about running, you should.
ah I just think we don't have enough people who want to run, who want to...
um jump into all of those things we talked about in the first half of this podcast.
But it's important.
The reality is we need more of us, even as they make it harder and harder to do this work.
And then the second thing would be like, make sure you have a clear-eyed understanding, which I don't think you really can until you get into it.
But know what you're getting into, talk to your family, talk to your people.
Talk to your local party units, right?
Like whatever your Senate district or like here we have Senate district DFL units and having the support of those people is absolutely essential and that wasn't something I understood ahead of time.
I didn't really get it.
But there are all these different levels of organizing happening in the system.
Because once you run...
Like as an outside organizer, know, I always as like, what's the inside outside strategy?
And I wanted to be kind of inside and outside, but it doesn't work like that.
Like we're just inside now.
Uh, and we got to raise a good trouble from the inside.
So having the resources of being on the inside is absolutely essential.
That's what they're there for.
They are there to protect you and you should use every single one of them, extract all of the benefits that come with it, which aren't vast, but there are many of them.
Um, and just be prepared, be, be prepared for the fight, but please join us.
I, it's sadly, I love what you said.
need more of us because I truly believe that that when there's, you know, I remember Andrea Jenkins once at the, one of the Minnesota transgender health conferences a few years ago saying when she's in the room, you know, as a black trans woman, she changes the room.
And I really believe that you being in the room at the state level has changed the room, has changed the game, honestly, for trans rights in the state of Minnesota and not to diminish the beautiful work of the wonderful allies like Attorney General Keith Allison is a ally to the trans community always has been before even he was Attorney General, our governor, believe.
I mean, he used to do like round tables around the needs of trans community when he was our representative at the federal level before he was an Attorney General.
I truly believe Keith has a...
are back, you know, and same with that Governor Tim Walsh, you know, I feel like that we have some wonderful cis allies, but when we are in the room as trans people, it changes something.
And I don't know if you would agree, that I really, you know, so I love that appeal that we need more of us because then we also can have each other's back and keep changing those rooms.
oh Yeah.
One of the questions, like I said, I could keep talking with you forever, but I won't.
But one of the questions I've been asking all of my guests and I've definitely been prioritizing my trans and binary gender perspective to spirit guests lately because of the climate we're in is what is bringing you comfort and joy and nourishment during this moment?
Because there's a lot that's draining us.
We've talked about a lot of things that drain us and you much more than I could ever imagine at this point in time because of your position.
But so what is nourishing?
What is bringing you some comfort and joy in this moment?
Yeah, it's a great question.
It's an important question.
You know, I always like to tell people after an interview that like separate from the apocalypse, like my life is going really well.
I'm happy, you know, I have a family.
There's nothing that clarifies what's important to you like living through the end times, you know, like I mean, it really is like what matters to you and then do that.
I spend time, you know, I could spend forever with my wife.
I could spend time with my kids.
I paint.
do, you know, take long walks, try to be outside, try to, you know, just, I like to watch movies.
I like to watch shows.
I just try to spend, you know, and it's hard in the session.
Session is sort of a unique monster in terms of having peace.
It's a challenge, but, It really is just, to me anyways, it's like, I wanna spend time with the people who care about me, ah who care about me anyways.
That's the kind of a thing I think about.
Like, if you didn't know me for my work, would I matter to you?
Those are the people that love me.
And I have, I just have a few communities of multi-generational spaces that I'd like to inhabit.
uh I just read, you know, I try to do the things that have always been meaningful to me.
I like to study movement history.
That's something I do.
I read a lot about like queer movement history and historical LGBT people.
All of that brings me joy.
But lately it's really been painting and being outside.
ah I love that.
Nature and creativity, I think, are just such amazing resources for our well-being.
I'm so happy that you're kind of drawing some strength and joy from painting and being in nature.
And there's a lot of beautiful nature in Minnesota to explore, for sure.
Oh, well, and the last very question that I ask all my guests is anything that we haven't talked about that you really wanted to talk about or that you would like to live the listeners or people are watching on YouTube at the end of the episode.
I guess I'll just do this politics thing, which is like, we have an election coming up this year, you know?
a lot of people have disengaged, but please don't disengage.
Just stay in the spaces that are going to make it better for our community.
You know, if we are trying to build a better future for transgender people, we need everybody to be involved.
You know, and that means elections, but not only elections, right?
Organizers understand that elections are opportunities for every other kind of organizing.
So just, you know, a plea from me to you, it's like we're on the inside, we're doing what we can, but we need everyone on the outside to really keep digging in and uh fighting, fighting for everyone.
Cause transgender people are a part of every single community.
So if we fight for our rights, we're fighting for everyone.
Exactly.
And I think that's such an important message because so many people are feeling discouraged or like, well, it doesn't matter anymore.
You know, and I'm like, it's a both end.
Yes, we need to keep doing that or all the other things.
Sure.
Empire is crumbling and we still need to show up and use.
all the systems and all the tactics at our disposal, including the legislative ones.
So absolutely.
Then the midterms are coming up, believe.
And so, yes, I hope that I know our caucuses here were very well attended.
So I hope that is true everywhere.
Well, thank you so much for your time for your strength, for your service, because it truly is a labor of love, the service that you're doing for our community at the state level.
um Yeah, I hope you can be gentle with yourself as you do this hard work.
to all the listeners, I hope you're also taking care of yourself.
And please don't be discouraged.
know especially if you're listening and you're trans, non-binary, to spirit, gender expansive, this is not an easy moment.
We've gone through hardship before, as you said, Leigh, as a community, and we'll get through this again together.
And if you're a cis ally who is listening, please join us, there is plenty of work to do in the movement and we need all of you too.
So thank you Leigh and thank you all of you listeners.
Until next time.
Thank you.