Do One Thing: Join Koleinu LGBT Action Team this year as we build a Shelter of Peace.
As we approach the High Holidays, I am anticipating the lovely custom of eating sweet things to ensure a sweet year, wishing my loved ones, near and far, a year of health and happiness, and thinking about the physical and emotional challenge of Yom Kippur.
I am also reminded of Rabbi Kleinbaum’s words at my first visit to CBST a few years ago. It was the Neilah service during the closing hours of Yom Kippur. As the day was drawing
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As the CBST community assembled for Tikkun Leyl Shavuot and prepared to receive Torah, we examined the epidemic of queer youth homelessness through a Jewish lens. For me, the tikkun was inspiring as it created a space in which our religious practice and social justice work could come together, each informing the other.
Members of our Koleinu Marriage Equality & LGBT Rights Action Team led the first session. Our text study, based on excerpts from the Book of Ruth, focused on the complex experience of journeying to or from a home -- what does it mean to have or not have ...
Tonight I had a wonderful, exhilarating and inspiring experience, I was phone banking! Surprised? Well, let me explain.
It starts with the joining of the young and energetic forces of several important organizations, including Empire State Pride Agenda, Freedom to Marry, Human Rights Campaign. Log Cabin Republicans and Marriage Equality New York, as well as the support and generosity of 1199 SEIU, United Healthcare Workers East. They have been running these evenings, Monday -Thursday, 5-8:30, for many weeks now. I walked into the huge space, full of computer stations, almost all of them already occupied with people from every walk of ...
On Monday, May 9th, eleven hundred LGBTQ rights activists from all over New York State, including a contingent from CBST/Koleinu, converged on Albany for Equality & Justice Day. The day included speeches, a rally, and meetings with legislators, all in support of three pieces of legislation: Marriage Equality, the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA), and The LGBT Health & Human Services Network (The Network).
Marriage Equality and GENDA were the main focuses of the day. Nonetheless, I was surprised that one issue was not mentioned even once: the epidemic of homelessness among our LGBTQ youth. I was
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LGBTQ homeless youth are under attack. CBST is fighting back. In November, Mayor Bloomberg cut $1.7M from city funding for LGBTQ homeless youth. CBST fought back by speaking at a public hearing, attending rallies, creating an online petition with hundreds of signatures, and holding a meeting with the mayor’s office to tell them that CBST would not stand for these cuts.
More recently, Gov. Cuomo, despite his support of marriage equality, cut funding to services for LGBTQ homeless youth by 50%, a violently disproportionate cut. As Carl Siciliano , Executive Director the Ali Forney Center writes:
“In 2007, $6.8 million ...
Act now to support LGBTQ youth in New York City!
While CBST helped stop the city's budget cuts to LGBTQ youth homeless services at the end of 2010, Now the state has proposed to eliminate all financial support for beds for LGBTQ homeless youth. Stand up with CBST and tell Albany this is unacceptable!
Call Gov. Andrew Cuomo: (518) 474-8390, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver: (518) 455-3791, and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos: (518) 455-3171
"Hi, my name is _____ and I'm a member of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah. As a member of the adult LGBTQ community and as a Jew, it is unacceptable to me that their ...
I have been activist since I was 2! I tore the arms and legs off of my dolls to use them as a football. No one would give me a football because I was a girl. I didn’t become an LGBTQ activist until I was 60 – when the organizers of the Israel Day parade wouldn’t let CBST march because of our sexual orientation!
I am always happy to be called on to speak about things I know about. It is particularly nice when I am asked to advocate for something I feel deeply about.
Such was the case this past January ...
Last Friday, after services, the Koleinu Healthcare/Eldercare Action Team and the Trans Empowerment Coalition hosted a shmooze with the Lesbian Cancer Initiative of the LGBT Community Center.
The shmooze focused on cancer screening, cancer risk, and discrimination in LBT communities. This is part of an ongoing conversation, both within our community and with medical and service providers, to get equitable care for LGBT people. It is so vital that we as a community discuss our fears and frustrations as LGBT people and make our voices heard. This is how we will make a change.
The Koleinu Healthcare/Eldercare Action Team is organizing to ...
On the snowy afternoon of December 29th , Koleinu members, Jeremy Schwartz, RoseAnn Hermann, George Hermann, and I with Social Justice Coordinator Alex Weissman, gathered in a bustling Starbucks to prepare for our meeting with Bill Heinzen, Deputy Counselor to Mayor Bloomberg.
The purpose of the meeting was to deliver CBST’s petition with 352 signatures that we collected in a week, protesting the Bloomberg administration’s proposed $1.7 million cuts in funding for LGBTQ homeless youth services and demanding an alternative way to balance the budget that does not rest on the backs of LGBTQ youth.
Heinzen was well informed on the issues, ...
This Tuesday, I joined Koleinu members on the steps of City Hall in solidarity with the Ali Forney Center and LGBTQ homeless youth to protest Mayor Bloomberg’s announced budget cuts to runaway and homeless youth services by $1.6 million -- an action that flies in the face of everything we as Jews believe in .
New York City has an estimated 3800 homeless youth, with approximately 40% of them identifying as identify as transgender, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and/or queer. There are currently just 75 shelter beds for LGBTQ youth in this city, and that number is about to drop.
Under these cuts, ...
