An LGBTQ+ State of Emergency

At the end of May, the Seattle LGBTQ+ Commission sent a letter to their mayor asking the city to declare a civil state of emergency in response to the growing number of transgender people and their families fleeing states with escalating anti-trans laws. Families are leaving homes, schools, jobs, churches, and entire support systems behind because remaining where they are no longer feels safe. A study from the Movement Advancement Project and the University of Chicago found that at least 400,000 transgender and gender nonconforming people have moved to another state since November 2024 because of anti-LGBTQ laws or political conditions. For years, many parents of trans kids have been sounding the alarm — telling stories of banned healthcare, hostile school policies, criminalization, fear, isolation, and the exhausting reality of fighting for your child’s right to exist openly and safely. What once felt unthinkable is now shaping where families can live, where children can go to school, and whether parents feel they can protect their kids at all. Today In the Den we talk about what it means when LGBTQ+ people become refugees within their own country. What happens to families forced to relocate in search of safety? What responsibilities do affirming cities and states have to those arriving in crisis? And what does it mean for the rest of us witnessing this moment unfold in real time?

Special Guest: Chris Curia

Chris Curia is Co-Chair of the Seattle LGBTQ Commission, an advisory board that provides guidance and recommendations to City leaders on issues affecting LGBTQ+ communities. Additionally, Chris supervises Crisis Care Responder teams as part of Seattle’s Community Assisted Response & Engagement (CARE) Department, the City’s third branch of public safety that delivers alternative first response to 911 calls with a mental health nexus. Chris brings years of clinical training and experience as a licensed mental health counselor to these roles, along with a passion for exploring innovative opportunities to prioritize mental healthcare equity and community-centered care for all Seattleites.

Special Guest: Jessa Davis

Jessa Davis (she/her) is Co-Chair of the Seattle LGBTQ Commission and Chair of its Community Outreach & Social Media Committee. She also serves as Board Secretary for Queer Power Alliance (QPA), where she chairs the Advocacy Committee, and as Board Secretary for Whole Washington. In these roles, she helps align community-driven advocacy with broader structural change efforts including in her work as Executive Director of the Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Non-Monogamy (OPEN), which is a role she recently took on after founding and leading the Seattle Coalition for Family & Relationship Equity (SCFRE).

Links from the Show:

• Seattle LGBTQ+ Commission 
• Jessa’s IG
• Jessa’s Website
• Study from Movement Advancement Project
• Join Mama Dragons

In the Den is made possible by generous donors like you. Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today at www.mamadragons.org. 

Transcript

SARA: Hi everyone. Welcome to In the Den with Mama Dragons, a podcast and community to support, educate, and empower parents on the journey of raising happy and healthy LGBTQ+ humans. I’m your host, Sara LaWall. I’m a Mama Dragon myself and an advocate for our queer community. And I’m so glad to be part of this wild and wonderful parenting journey with all of you. Thanks for joining us. We’re so glad you’re here. 

At the end of May, the Seattle LGBTQ+ Commission sent a letter to their mayor asking the city to declare a civil state of emergency in response to the growing number of transgender people and their families fleeing states with escalating anti-trans laws. Families, as we know and have heard about and experienced, are leaving our homes, schools, jobs, communities, entire support systems behind because remaining where they are no longer feels safe. A study from the Movement Advancement Project and the University of Chicago found that at least 400,000 transgender and gender nonconforming people have moved to another state since November of 2024 because anti-LGBT laws and political conditions make it untenable for them to stay where they are. And that is a reality that changes something fundamental in this country. So today, we are welcoming folks from that Seattle LGBTQ+ Commission who helped author this letter. Joining us are the co-chairs of the commission, Chris Curia and Jessa Davis, to talk about their work and this moment of emergency that they named in their letter. For years many of us, parents and trans community members and our kids have been sounding the alarm, telling the stories of what it's like to live in places where healthcare is being banned with hostile school policies, criminalization, fear, and the exhausting reality of fighting for our child's right to exist openly and safely. And what once felt unthinkable is now shaping where families can live, where kids can go to school, and whether parents feel like we can protect our kids at all. So today we're going to dive into what it means when queer folks, trans folks become refugees in their own country. What happens when families are forced to relocate in search of safety? And what responsibilities do affirming cities and states have to those arriving in crisis? This is going to be a deep and difficult conversation, I'm sure, but I'm so happy to be having it. Chris and Jessa, thank you so much for joining us today. We are so glad to have you.

JESSA: Thank you so much. Yeah, glad to be here.

CHRIS: Yeah, thank you.

SARA: First, I just want to say thank you for this letter. I mean, it populated my news feed, and I thought there is something here. There is more to this story. You know, we've told stories on the podcast of families who have chosen to move, and preparations for that, and how to make those decisions. But the idea that it's a state of emergency was really intriguing, and that Washington – one of the safer states, one of the more inclusive, accepting, welcoming states – is the one kind of leading the way in this language. And so I wonder if you can share with us, you can take turns with parts of this story. What was it? What was the accumulation of moments that finally made it clear to you as part of the commission that you needed to write this letter?

JESSA: Yeah, I think, each of the co-chairs and the broader LGBTQ Commission have been speaking about related and adjacent issues, and sort of trying to step back and see the bigger picture. And it really wasn't until community members came to us with sort of very dire requests for, “If we don't figure out something now, we don't know if we're gonna be here in a couple of months to a year. And we don't know how we're gonna manage the people that we expect to keep coming.” And so I think for all of us, myself included, when it came to trying to, again, appreciate the broader perspective of things, it came as a shock to me how bad things got so quickly in terms of where we're at now versus 18, 24 months ago. People have been moving to Seattle since before this current federal administration, right? This is not a thing that is because of one election. This is a broader wave that's happening within our national politics. And it's happening in certain places, unfortunately. And these are parts of the country where there are a lot of queer people, right? This is not a coastal issue. I moved to Seattle personally for those reasons during the last presidential administration, because I was tired of being scared of my federal government. Right? And I had enough privilege and the ability to be able to do that. I do think about the people who can't leave. But so many people are just, as you said, and thank you, in your introduction, that this is just – they've got to just jump in their car and leave. They're gonna get on a train, a plane, a bus, whatever it takes to get somewhere safe. And as things continue to worsen almost exponentially, it feels like we see this increasing number of people showing up, putting a strain on systems that are not equipped, that are losing funding, and whose capacity is diminishing or being put at risk of continuing to exist altogether. So that's why we say it's an emergency. And it was really the community that brought this to us and said, “This is now.” I thought it would be eventually. I was prepared, I was like, okay, we have to figure out when we get to that point, and having conversations with people in community really made me realize we're already there, and we just haven't seen all the signs yet. And we want to be proactive and make sure that we get ahead of this. What are your thoughts, Chris? 

SARA: Chris, I'm curious also if you can touch a little bit on the language of civil emergency, a declaration of civil emergency really feels really extreme and really intentional. Can you talk about why that language? What was important about that?

CHRIS: Yeah, so I think even to the point that Jessa was raising earlier and Sara that you mentioned in your introduction, LGBTQ+ people are very aware of the social climate that is happening all around us. That is not novel to the year 2026, but has been happening and accumulating and growing for many years. And it took a community, a few community organizations coming to us to realize that what was an emergent issue became an urgent and critical issue that we needed to respond to and attend to. So that is the thematic reason why we chose that specific language of Declaration of Civil Emergency. It also is a very tactful term because civil emergencies are when matters of public safety need to be addressed in an urgent and timely way. And for all the data that we were seeing in terms of the numbers – that 400,000 number, like you were describing earlier – and then some of that boots-on-the-ground experience we were hearing from direct service providers saying, “We could have to shutter our doors by the end of summer, by the end of the year. And so we're not now able to actually provide some of those critical resources to folks most in need of care.” Those were justifications for us to say, this is a broader issue of public safety within our community. And so even being able to tap into that civil emergency lever or mechanism of sorts allows us to be more strategic with how we can allocate the proper resources to meet very critical need happening at this moment.

SARA: What are some of the most critical needs that led to this, or that you were thinking about or that community was telling you about?

JESSA: The big thing, and again, this is a longer story that's been building of needs for access to housing, and it's a hard time to be looking for a job anywhere. And Seattle is not particularly doing well right now, just in terms of all the tech layoffs from AI in particular. It keeps happening, and that particularly impacts the queer and trans community. Lots of people work in tech in this city. And I don't know many people who are really safe in their jobs if they're out as queer or visibly trans. And I talk to people every day who are dealing with that precarity of employment, right? And then that employment becomes a housing crisis, and it becomes a healthcare crisis, and it becomes a food security crisis. In a city that's very expensive to live in, in a state that's very expensive to live in as well. And it's not cheap anywhere these days. So this isn't even like, the solution isn't “Go find somewhere like Seattle, but cheaper,” because where is that? You know, I can't tell someone to go live in a suburb of Seattle because you'll save $100 on rent, maybe? You know. So in terms of affordability, this is becoming a crisis for how orgs can provide these resources for people, and how people can even show up and support themselves when they have to uproot themselves from their community and their support system, where maybe they would be fine if they could stay where they are, now they have to go somewhere new and figure it all out. And that is such a precarious position. What makes it an urgent issue, as Chris said, is the fact that in terms of the legal landscape and the funding landscape that our partner organizations are facing right now, not only is access to funding from institutional donors shifting in other directions because of rhetoric coming from the White House, with the recent counterterrorism memo that the White House released saying that organizations that support queer issues and affirm that gender identity is a thing that exists are now domestic terrorists. So large funding institutions are not going to risk putting their dollars in organizations that could get the FBI and the Department of Justice investigating them, right? We also have a direct call from the President for the IRS to investigate organizations like our partners. And they are experiencing an increased legal burden of dealing with subpoenas and showing up in court, and the heightened scrutiny that comes along with trying to comply with things that previously were just standard operating procedures for any nonprofit. So, at a time when funding's being constrained and operating expenses are increasing across the board, and people are showing up asking for more, we really – I mean, I really do lose sleep over this, in terms of, like, how do we keep people from just buying a tent and going to stay in the park, because they think, well, at least they're not back there where they're gonna go to jail for using the bathroom. But now they're living in a park, and the resources aren't forthcoming.

SARA: Yeah, that is really interesting. I'm curious, what was the hoped-for response to the letter? What was the hoped-for response, and then what was the actual response?

CHRIS: I think the hoped-for response, and I would love to hear Jessa speak to this as well, is for our city lawmakers to take some of our recommendations seriously, especially in meeting that really urgent need in a very quick timeline. And our role as the LGBTQ Commission is really to be the bridge between community organizations and the city lawmakers that are creating and enforcing and amending policies that directly impact constituents. So, our goal of course, was to amplify some of the issues that were brought up to us by community organizations and do so by way of a letter and then to provide some recommendation of a mechanism, a lever to be able to actually meet those needs in a prompt and urgent way.

JESSA: Yeah, I agree, and I was just in a meeting yesterday with representatives from the mayor's office, city council, and other city departments, because we are part of an interdepartmental team that the mayor set up in response to our letter. I've been very clear, and we as a commission have been very clear, that we're really grateful for the mayor's support and the response. The engagement we've gotten has been overwhelming. Too many meetings, so many meetings, and it's been great because we get to show up in spaces and highlight these things that even government officials and elected officials who care about our community and our allies, who are members of our community, we all live in filter bubbles. And I've been able to break down some of those bubbles and say, “Look, this is the situation we're in.” People didn't know about the White House's counterterrorism memo calling out transgender people as domestic terrorists, for instance. And I don't fault them for that. It's our job to bring that to light and advocate the way we are. In that meeting yesterday, I said I understand this is a difficult budgetary cycle. The city's dealing with decreased revenue. And that's just a national issue across the board, where you know, seeing increased inflation and decreased tax receipts because the economy is shrinking. In all of these areas that cuts into unallocated funds and ways that we could maybe, in a perfect scenario, provide funding to respond to this. And I know they want to. We all agree on the issue. What I will say, though, in terms of, like, what I wish came out of the response to our letter versus what we've gotten is, we have this interdepartmental team and a focus on mid- to long-term policy solutions – which we absolutely agree with and advocate for, and is a part of our own commission work plan – but we want deliverables beyond “issue a report by X date.” Right? We do need data to intelligently respond to this crisis in order to build infrastructure and to respond to this over the long term. But we have enough data already to know that we need to respond in some way today before this gets worse. And if we don't, not only is this going to cost the city more money in the long run and create bigger problems to solve, but people are gonna die, quite literally. And so when we say that this is an emergency, and that the mayor should use her emergency authority to allocate funds outside of the regular budget cycle while we work to build longer-term solutions, if we don't do that, then we're missing an opportunity to act in a way that aligns with our values as a city. And to be frank, when people say things like, “Emergency funds are only for, like, a natural disaster, or an act of terrorism or warfare, or what would an emergency do for you? We can't possibly do that. That would create too much attention. We currently have an 11-year ongoing civil emergency over homelessness in this city.” So that response of, “We don't know what you're asking for this for, or we don't know what it will do,” is not a serious response to our request, to be frank. And what we really need to be talking about is how we can try to fit this into the budget, rather than pretending like the thing we're asking for isn't a possibility.

CHRIS: And Jessa, I'm so glad that you brought up the civil emergency declaration that was made about a decade ago over the state of homelessness. A great example of how a social issue needing some kind of more urgent critical response can be a justification for that usage of that mechanism. And I think even in more recent history for us, last year under the previous mayor's administration, when the Trump administration cut SNAP benefits, and that was all in a state of disarray, this exact mechanism was the way that our city and our state said, “We are going to take matters into our own hands to make sure that people are getting the proper food assistance that they need to be able to get through this time.” And SNAP benefits were restored and all that, but that, to me, even says, we do know how to do this kind of emergency allocation of resources in a way that is effective, in a way that is time-bound, and in a way that meets those urgent, critical needs for all of those who are most in need of those services. It is possible

JESSA: Yeah, and one thing I'll add to that is important within the context of this, and in the context of an ongoing civil emergency on homelessness in Seattle, is the current mayor – who has brought a lot of great ideas to City Hall and is doing incredible work on so many fronts – has been an activist for the working class and trying to find ways to create supports for people to get out of poverty, including housing programs right now that we're rolling out across the city. These tiny houses and emergency shelters to get people off the streets to save lives and let people live with dignity, are an important part of what we're trying to avoid here. Right now, we have an opportunity with our partner organizations to enable them to do what they do best, to keep people off the streets in the first place, so we don't have to spend millions of dollars five years from now to help whoever survives that long. And to be frank, we do have this incredible civil society here in Seattle of queer organizations and a queer culture that's so vibrant and rich. So I think a lot of people look at this situation and say, “Really, with dozens of orgs and millions of dollars, Seattle's in an emergency?” It's like, well, a lot of these services are things that the city relies on these organizations to do that other cities would have to be doing themselves to begin with if they were in this situation. And what we're saying is, “Don't let them shut off the lights for lack of the ability to do what we rely on them to do. Let's keep partnering with them.” Because we don't think the city has all of the responsibility to act here. But we have this incredible infrastructure that would be the envy of so many other cities. Let's not let it die because the federal government wants to starve them of funding.

SARA: That is such a great point, and I want to hear about some of these examples, but I'm curious if, before we do, if you can share, do you have some numbers around what the influx of trans folks and families into Seattle since 2024, just your city?

JESSA: Chris, I could take that, and if you want to add, like, your perspective on the ground. I could speak generally. I wish we had better data in terms of census data, aside from things like statistical analysis from MAP and NORC that say, of those 400,000 people that have moved, and the 40-plus percent queer people who haven't moved yet, who are thinking about moving, You know, of course a lot of them are coming to places like Seattle. What we can say is Seattle has the highest per capita rate of queer households in the country, followed by Portland and San Francisco. And we are surrounded here in the Pacific Northwest by a number of cities that have extremely high per capita populations of transgender individuals. Olympia, last I heard, has the highest per capita trans population in the US. It's a small city, though, with a really cool liberal arts college that makes it easy for those numbers to skew a certain way when half the town works for the state government and goes home outside of session. But here in Seattle, it's the same. I've traveled around the country, and this is anecdata, of course. I've lived in a lot of places, And when I'm in LA, when I'm even in San Francisco, it's like, you have to know where to go to find community. And in San Francisco, it's not that hard. It's pretty easy.

SARA: Right.

JESSA: But what I often say is, yeah, we have Capitol Hill in Seattle, which is the historic gay neighborhood. And we have a lot of historic public places in Seattle that have significance for our community. But everywhere in Seattle is the gay neighborhood. And you can see how significantly large our queer and especially our trans population is just by riding the train, or riding the bus, or walking down the street. any street in Seattle. So what we do know is that we are most certainly in the top five, if not probably one of the highest per capita population cities in the U.S. for trans people. And that doesn't take into account the people who are moving here and might not be visible by day, because maybe they're somewhere out of sight because they've gotten pushed out of a park. Maybe they're sleeping in a car somewhere, or trying to find some way to find housing or work in some facility, or going to social services, etc. So we have an extremely large queer population that I think people don't appreciate just what a significant minority we are. And we want more data on that. But again, we have enough right now to know that King County in particular, which is where Seattle is situated, and Seattle broadly, are just one of the number one destinations. And it's also important to point out that that's also because of our proximity to Canada, which a lot of people note. So that's a factor.

CHRIS: And if we were to take that 400,000 number that we know concretely and do some estimates, divide it by a couple years, because it's been almost two years since November 2024, and if we then were to divide it by the 12 to 18 states that have pretty robust gender affirming care protections, protections for transgender and gender nonconforming folks and corroborate that with some of the migration patterns that we do see in our state year after year after year as those get produced – all of a sudden, that number of people coming to our state, to probably this city in particular, by the thousands, just in those estimates, assuming all of that is distributed evenly, which it's not, doesn't feel like it's an unrealistic number. In fact, it seems like it might even be a low estimate compared to some of that boots-on-the-ground anecdotal data that we get from community organizations that tell us that we are seeing a rapid influx as it unfolds.

JESSA: Yeah, and I'll add, we had a presentation from one of our community partners at an event we held at City Hall on May 20th, to create a community forum on this topic. And they shared that last year, they had provided assistance to about 300 people. Right? And I think those are the kind of numbers that most of our community organizers have the capacity to reach, and often less. You know, one of our community partners is literally, like, two or three people that just said, “We're gonna start a 501c3 and figure this out and stitch together a couch surfing network.” So, when a few hundred to a few thousand, even if it's only 5,000 trans people move to Seattle in 2025 – which would be impossible for me to believe that it would be so little – even if it was just 5,000, our community partners can't meet that need. So, it doesn't need to be tens of thousands of people for us to become overwhelmed before people start slipping through the cracks more than they already do.

SARA: That is a really, really, really good point that it sounds like even when there is a robust network of support, each entity can only handle so much volume. And the growth is just outpacing that. Chris, you talked about protections, states and cities with particular protections for the trans community. And Jessa, you talked about your sort of organizational ecosystem of support. And I want to hear a little bit more about what that is and what that looks like. What makes Seattle so unique specifically and Washington State specifically? What are you doing as a state? What protections are offered for folks? Why are people choosing to go there? What is different about that? I just happen to be your neighbor in Idaho. And so even though I read things, and I know things, just to hear you talk, I just also am aware of how that just does not exist here. You know, even the organizational structures, because it would just be taken down by our legislature if it did. So talk to us a little bit, give us the pitch for how great Seattle and Washington are because we've really admired, we've really appreciated and admired what State Governments are doing to try to address this moment of deep anxiety and fear and attack from states like mine and the federal government.

CHRIS: I can share just anecdotally an example of what it looks like for Seattle as what we call a welcoming city that's most functional. It's operationalized for protecting transgender and gender nonconforming and other queer folk. So last year, we were a part of some legislation that City Council passed that basically was to mirror some of Washington State's shield laws, which are covering over gender affirming care protections, protections to contraceptives, protections to all sorts of kinds of healthcare things for city employees and others. And we were tapped by the previous mayor's office at the time to be part of influencing some of that policy. And, that we were even able to bring that before city council for them to be able to talk about those things, for us to even bring that back to community and engage with whether this is meeting those direct needs as they are, and then for that particular legislation to pass unanimously within city council at a time where things were a bit more contentious than they are now, speaks again to some of the ability for folks, city lawmakers, community organizations, city commissions such as us to be around the same table talking about issues that we all care about, populations that we all think deserve all the safety and dignity and protections that the state and city offer. And then to actually be able to resolve some of those things, I think for us to be able to even be a part of that process last year was such a helpful template in how we have navigated through this whole process with our civil emergency declaration. I would say we even felt galvanized enough that we would be considered an effective partner throughout this dialogue process to meeting those urgent needs.

JESSA: Yeah. And I can add to that by saying – So I transitioned in Odessa, Texas. And Odessa invented the bathroom ban that Texas now has at the state level, which includes a $10,000 civil penalty. And they're allowing people to transvestigate and report people in bathrooms by sending pictures to help people. . .

SARA: That is a good word.

JESSA: Exactly, right? They're letting people send these pictures to sort of figure out, like, is this person trans, and should we subpoena them to a civil court to face a $10,000 penalty, which could include a threat of prison if you don't pay it despite this, the financial stress or the just the stress of having to deal with it, I was fortunate to leave Odessa before that bill passed. But at the time that I lived there, there was a bill that would have extended personal liability to all medical care providers and any managers and board members of hospitals and clinics that provided gender-affirming care, period, for up to 30 years. So if someone gets surgery and 20 years later decides they regret it for some reason – which is such a small percentage of people who receive this kind of care, and we're not even talking surgery, we're talking just being prescribed hormones – that would effectively make it banned for everyone in Texas, because what insurance provider is going to underwrite that? What care provider is going to, under any sort of sane analysis of what their risk and exposure might be, say, “Yeah, I'm going to continue doing this.” These kind of things coming out of the state legislature – which the year that I lived there, you know, the ban on drag performances that applied to private businesses also came out. I helped organize one of the last legal drag performances in Odessa at a church, the week before I left – And so to be coming from an environment like that, I tell people all the time who I do talk to and help move here, that no matter where you go in Washington, it's going to feel like a different world. And I felt that way coming here for a little bit, too. I saw people who've been here their whole lives, who've been here for a long time, sort of get accustomed to not needing to have a certain level of hypervigilance, and to just have an awareness of what sort of protections that they do have. Because whether you're in Idaho, or Texas or Kentucky, you have to think about, and always carry your idea of yourself in your mind as if you are an imposition or the problem. Right? And the solution is to minimize and avoid, right? And I tell people all the time, you can't be discriminated in employment and housing here. Your gender identity is protected by state law. It doesn't matter if you're in Spokane, or Yakima, or Aberdeen. You can go to any city in Washington, and sure, you're gonna deal with that social stigma, which the laws can't change. But the laws do contribute to cultural change in a way where it's not acceptable here, anywhere in Washington, the way I experienced that kind of discrimination when I lived in Texas. And queer people learn to live in those environments. I learned how to survive in Odessa in a way that kept me safe, in a way that if someone visiting there they just wouldn't have those same resources and connections and understanding of what that social map looks like. So you can be anywhere in Washington, and your gender identity's protected, your access to healthcare, including gender-affirming care, is protected. Healthcare plans that you purchase on the state exchange are required to include gender-affirming care. It's a matter of gender discrimination and sex discrimination to deny that care. And if you're on Apple Healthcare, which is our state health insurance plan for low-income people, that includes access to gender-affirming surgery, which is something that even myself, having grown up in a blue state, but lived in red states for most of my adult life, it still was just so weird to go, that can't really be real, right? You know, if I had lost my job in Texas, I'm on my own. There's no social safety net. And here in Washington, there is that safety net. And it includes the protections that most people wouldn't dare dream are real. Right? And that's before you get to Seattle, where we have even more robust protections for gender identity in particular, when we're talking about trans issues. Seattle included gender identity in its protected categories of persons, in its non-discrimination laws in 1986. So, I was 2 years old,

SARA: Wow. Oh my goodness.

JESSA: We all know that being trans was invented in 2015, but Seattle just saw into the future and knew this was going to be an issue. So, 40 years ago, Seattle said, “It's okay to be trans in public. You can have a job if you're trans in Seattle.” And since that time, we've built this robust structure of laws, like Chris mentioned, The Welcoming City Ordinance that we worked on, and we also worked with the mayor's office on a shield law that was passed at the same time that incorporated the state's shield law on gender-affirming care and reproductive health care into city law so that the City of Seattle, police officers, any city department cannot comply with a subpoena from out of state to investigate a trans child who got healthcare at Seattle Children's. They can't comply with a subpoena, if Texas wants to investigate if someone flew to Seattle to get reproductive healthcare. Because in Texas, it's illegal to use a public roadway to drive yourself out of Texas to obtain an abortion. Right? And so, that is why these subpoenas keep coming our way, and why we needed to do this, is because other states are trying to prosecute people for committing crimes, crimes, quote-unquote, I'm using air quotes here, because it's illegal where they come from, which is not how laws work. Right? So people see Washington and Seattle not only as a refuge to move to, but a refuge to come to when you need to access care. And we need to protect people so that way, block cameras can't capture the license plate of your rental car and create a paper trail for the Texas Attorney General to create a case against you for what you did when you went on a family vacation to Seattle. So, these protections exist in law and in institutions, and in the culture in a way that is literally culture shock for someone, especially if you've never been to a place like Seattle. And that does contribute to that idea, I think, in popular culture of who we are and what we stand for.

SARA: Absolutely, that's extraordinary to hear about it all in one place like that, and to think about, just to think about the endemic impact of that non-discrimination ordinance from 1986, '84?

JESSA: Mm-hmm 86, yep.

SARA: That's significant. That is not new. I mean, that just sort of, like, that's an established cultural norm that is probably really felt in a way that it isn't felt in states that don't have them or that just are struggling to get them. It's really fabulous to hear. And I'm excited for people to hear, for our listeners to be able to hear about the protections also for people seeking care from other states. So maybe not moving, but recognizing that Washington and Seattle can provide is supportive health care and some legal support around accessing and protecting that healthcare. That's pretty significant, too.

CHRIS: Well, and also for what it's worth, what we are not saying with issuing a declaration of civil emergency is we are not saying, “People from red states don't come to Washington.” Right? We actually are saying, “We still have all of these protections enshrined into our municipal code that say this is still a welcoming place for you, and what we are asking for of our lawmakers is to really put policy behind what we say our values are.”

JESSA: Yeah, and thank you, Chris, for that point. That's something else that ties closely with another point I wanted to make. When I have conversations with people, and I've seen the media conversation take a number of different directions as outlets have picked up our letter and the news about it, is, yeah, there's this idea that we're saying, “Don't come here, we're overwhelmed.” That's not the case. And also, Like you said, Sara, at the beginning, this isn't about people just moving here because they feel like it. Texas was not my home. I lived there for four years. I just happened to transition while I lived there. I was there for work. I was not gonna live there for the rest of my life. But I did leave under duress. I had no grand plan to escape to Washington in 2023. And that matters in terms of why people are moving. I'm a city girl, I was always gonna wind up on some coast, or maybe back in Denver, where I lived for three years. But I left because I needed to get out. And people are not moving here for the vibes, as I keep saying. Which, I love it if you do. If you can, great. I don't think there's a limit to how many people we can have here in Seattle. I love how vibrant our city is. And it's not even in the top 10 largest cities in the U.S. so we've got room to grow. We want to go up with our urban density, create more housing, and we want to create policies for our community that support that, and turn those values into concrete actions. But a big part of that is realizing that people aren't coming here because they just decided on a whim someday. A lot of them probably want to go back home if they ever can. Right? Like, there's people who are from Texas, who miss Texas, who want to go back, who never would have left in the first place. And we want to make it safe for them here, and other cities like Seattle, so that they can live to see that day someday, where they can go back home.

SARA: Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate that clarification. I think that's really important for people to understand. What do you want cities watching Seattle's response in this Commission's letter unfold and their response to it, what do you wish other cities would take away from this moment?

CHRIS: That now is the time to be bold. Now is the time to be courageous. Now is a time to contrast the rhetoric coming from our country's capital that's saying, “People don't matter. People don't belong. Their rights don't matter.” This is a time for people to look hopefully in collaboration with us to say, “We care particularly about those most vulnerable, particularly about those most susceptible to harm. We care particularly about protecting those who add vibrancy and beauty and complexity and culture to our way of being.” That's what I hope cities and states who look to Seattle, who look to Washington to see what is happening, what will happen next, will feel galvanized to do on their own. And we look for conversation partners. These movements don't happen in silos in cities. The way that they don't continue is if they stay siloed in cities and counties, in states. We look for collaborators to join us in finding out whatever mechanisms are possible within your city or state to provide some of the same protections that we are asking for within ours. And if they don't exist yet, to work with us in creating a plan to make them exist because it is worth every penny. It is worth every council meeting. It is worth every time, expense, all of the labor put into it to save even just one life in crisis.

JESSA: Absolutely true. Yeah, and I would add to that by just saying that we know that King County and Washington State are watching what we're doing right now. We've had people reach out to us. We've had offices established in other cities, elected officials and commissions in other cities reaching out to us to say, “Hey, what are you doing? And can you tell us what you're doing?” Right? And it's, again, because we caught the media spotlight in a certain moment, partly because I think people understand what Seattle's values are and what we say we stand for and what we actually do apply on the ground. But we're just asking for more of the same to ensure that we can keep doing this in the future. The one thing I would say to cities and counties and states watching us right now is, Seattle's probably one of the only large cities with a significantly large queer population that doesn't have some sort of office or administrative structure dedicated to trans and queer affairs. New York City just recently created one under Mayor Mamdani. And we've been in conversation with some of those offices. You already have the infrastructure that we wish we had. You have some of the funding that we wish we already had. And in most cases, the flow of internally displaced persons, migrants, is probably a little less than here. So meet the moment with courage, and do the right thing, and know that this is a moment that our community is going to survive and get through. And we all can do our part regardless of where you are. If you're a small city with the right values in a state with the right kinds of protections, you can meet this moment in meaningful ways. We are making a lot of noise here in Seattle because we need to do better and we need to build things for the future here that some places already have. And we are here to provide that voice for our community and guidance, and we are also looking to partner – as Chris said – to join with us in conversation, so we can learn from places. If you're a county that already has an Office for Queer Affairs or LGBTQIA+ Affairs, we want to know what you're doing, and how we can make those same policy proposals here locally for our community. So this is a two-way street in terms of information and inspiration and keeping up the fight on a daily basis.

SARA: I'm curious the examples. When you look at sort of where are some of the cool things that are happening in other cities that you would like to bring to Seattle, what are one or two examples?

CHRIS: Yeah, I mean, we love what is happening out of Baltimore, out of DC, out of San Francisco, even out of conventionally red states, whatever that means. I think particularly in places where there are really robust community organizing. There are really robust civil protections being formed. There are really robust administrative presence that cares for on behalf of queer folk in their area. There's something really cool about the contrast of departments, of organizations existing in places that are conventionally not affirming, conventionally unsafe. I think it really does. We admire your courage. That's, I think, a piece that I would want to say to all of those we look to who help inspire us to do the work that we do every day.

SARA: This has just been such a beautiful conversation, and I'm wondering if you have some impact stories. If you've heard from families who've relocated and tapped into some of the organizational structure that exists that you're seeking to support and shore up, if you've heard some feedback or some impact from them about what that's been like for them.

JESSA: Yeah, I could say I know our partners have a lot of this, and they gather that data. We, unfortunately, can't gather much data as a city entity, because we can't protect the privacy of information that we receive like that. But I do know from my own personal experience, you know, I can just share anonymized anecdata here of, even for myself, you know, as someone who relocated here and did receive some support, and has helped people along the way, because you know, a friend of a friend knows someone who wants to move to Bellevue, or Olympia, or wherever. It can be something as simple as just being given resources. So that's why the Commission's working on partnering with organizations to point people to robust community resource lists of just like, “Hey, this is a list of shelters, this is a list of gender-affirming care clinics, here's how you relocate to Washington.” And something that we are advocating for in the process of working with this interdepartmental team at City Hall is the creation of a community navigator program, again, so we can help people with some of that culture shock that even I experienced myself of getting to Washington and not knowing what services are even available because where I came from, they didn't exist. Right? So, I know people who show up here, and they don't know that Apple Healthcare exists. And so they go without health insurance because they just think, “Well, I don't have a job yet, so I don't have health insurance.” And it's like, you don't have a job, so you actually can get health insurance in Washington. I know this is weird for you to think about, and it'll cover your HRT. And you can get on a waitlist for surgery while you're at it. And so those kinds of stories that I know of people showing up and either missing opportunities because they don't know they exist, or even more frequently, just not being given good information or outdated information. All of us on the Commission are tied into this but our data gets very stale quickly, because things change, because these aren't robust, large institutions where I can say, “You can go to Entity X, and they will always have a bed available, or they will always have a job or something,” you know? It's, I know a person who knows a person, and that's continually shifting, And policies are changing, again, in this current organizational landscape we're in, where funding's being cut, and programs are being reallocated or retooled to meet the current financial constraints that they're under. So in those situations you might tell someone, “Oh, you just arrived here? Go to this place,” and they go there and go, you need to go there. no, no, no, you need to go there first. Well, you need this before you go there, and then you gotta go to this place after that, and people just go, “This is too much, I don't know, I can't do this.” And that's frequently what we run into, despite this incredible set of protections in the environment that we live in here is that people just don't know where to start or how to access it. And frequently, people manage to succeed, purely because of personal connections they make. That's how I did it. And that's how I help people. And we can and should be doing better, so that way there are some resources, and the Commission's working on that to the best of our ability to provide some of that.

SARA: That's great to hear. You're really pointing out to the way in which community networks and mutual aid networks have really grown and expanded and are trying to fill those gaps and crevices that we're seeing and that you've described, and that's really beautiful. I'm curious for my last question before I let you go, when you look out at the larger landscape in this moment that seems so fraught and so terrifying for some folks despite your efforts in a beautiful, welcoming, protected state, what gives you hope? Where do you see hope?

CHRIS: We just earlier this week had the opportunity to host our city's pride flag raising for us and the Commission. We joke that it's like planning the Super Bowl every year. And so we're all coming down from that planning process because we literally start planning for this in July of the previous year. That's how early we start to think about some of these things. And I can think of moments that even in just the brief points of contact with people who have been doing this work long before us or who represent community members that are no longer with us, whose lives and legacies they are carrying on, moments of brief contact with folks where they have said thank you for the important work that you're doing. And moments where we turn to the next person who says keep doing more work. Both of those things, I feel like have given me so much hope for the direction that will be good and hard as we move together to build the future that we want to see.

JESSA: Yeah. For me, I joke frequently and say that I'm optimistic about the future and I have no good reason for why. And it can feel like that sometimes because even though I live in this wonderful place, people are still people, and Seattle's not a monolith. I've had unpleasant experiences. I've had scary moments. Things happen here. Tragic things happen anywhere that you are visibly trans in this country and in this world right now. But Seattle is one of the best places you can be. And I know people who've left the country. I lived outside of the U.S. for many years, and so I have a personal insight and experience into what it might be like living outside of the U.S.. And Seattle is quite literally the destination, and I can think of maybe 3 or 4 other places I might want to consider being, right? But Seattle's my home, and I'm here to stay, And the things that give me hope and make me want to stay here are the people I've found in the community I work for and work with to continue building this culture, and to continue making this city a safe and welcoming place to be. And I wrote about this on my personal blog on New Year's Day, in 2025, and I said, “What we need to do is engage and join now.” Just like the pride flag raising on Monday, that was such an incredible moment where our community came together, and I almost could forget for a moment what's going on all around us, and what I had to deal with later that evening as I went back to work. In my blog I just said, “I didn't wait for the perfect time to transition. And I definitely was not in the right place. But I still did it. I still created Queer Joy where I was, even though the conditions weren't perfect, and I live my life.” Because if we wait, or if we just engage in the fight and don't live in the now and learn to create joy, it's gonna pass us by. And I have hope for that in those moments here that I can create in my community in Seattle that give me the strength and fill me up to keep moving forward every day with people who say, “Thank you for what you're doing,” “How can I help?” “This is what I'm doing, how can we collaborate?” But it's those moments of joy that really spark me and move me forward, and we can't wait for the perfect moment. Now is that moment.

SARA: Wonderful. Thank you for that piece of wisdom. Thank you both for the work that you are doing and for this conversation. Thank you for being such good neighbors to those of us who are your neighbors. We're just really, really grateful, and I think it gives me hope to know that there are folks like you in cities like yours that are working really, really hard to try to build infrastructure and support and community for queer folks who need it.

JESSA: Thank you for having us. I'm so glad we got to share this, yeah.

CHRIS: Thank you. Yeah, thank you.

SARA: Thanks so much for joining us here In the Den. We want to tell you about free, public QPR classes. QPR is question, persuade, refer and it is a powerful suicide prevention training designed to equip you with the skills and confidence to recognize warning signs and respond when someone you love may be in crisis. The training is online, secure, and just two hours long. It’s a small time commitment that can make a life-saving difference. You can register for this training on our website at mamadragons.org.

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