Hispanic Heritage Month!

It’s Hispanic Heritage Month! From September 15^th to October 15^th, we will be honoring Latinx LGBTQ+ trailblazers and organizations who are doing amazing things in our community!

Sylvia Rivera was a Venezuelan/Puerto Rican American trans activist. Most known as one of the inciters of the monumental Stonewall Uprising in New York City, along with her friend, Marsha P. Johnson. Sylvia also helped found STAR, a group dedicated to helping homeless trans youth. In addition to being one of the first trans youth shelters STAR was also one of the first political organizations for trans rights in the world. Today the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP) is named in her honor. SRLP is a non-profit organization that engages in policy work and provides trainings and free legal services for trans, intersex, and gender non-conforming low-income people of color.

EI Gala

If you are interested in sponsoring the Gala, purchasing a table, or any other information, click button below

Apply for our 2021- 2022 Community Advisory Group!

Apply for our 2021- 2022 Community Advisory Group!

The Equality Illinois Community Advisory Group is a diverse cross-section of voices from across Illinois that informs the policy positions and initiatives we adopt and pursue in our work to secure and defend the equal and inclusive rights of LGBTQ Illinoisans.

If you’re interested in serving on the group, go to the application page to review the objectives and responsibilities of the Community Advisory Group, then download, complete, and return the form. Applications are due no later than August 20, 2021. Together, we will advance justice and equality in Illinois.

Radicalism Is Part Of Our History

Radicalism is part of our history.  The LGBTQ community has achieved the levels of equality we enjoy today in part because members of our community refused to play nice.  The Stonewall uprising afterall was a riot.  And anger – anger at powerful institutions, governments, and people – is an appropriate and understandable response to the injustices we continue to face.  When one out of every five young people caught up in the criminal justice system identify as LGBTQ and when 22% of LGBTQ people live in poverty (including 30% of trans folx); rage at the systems which over criminalize us and marginalize us economically is absolutely legitimate.

And just as radicalism is a central part of queer liberation, so is inclusion.  We are also a community that has opened our arms wide to bring in as many LGBTQ people and our allies as possible.  Over the past decades, our rage and our love have worked together to build a movement that has achieved unprecedented wins.

As we move toward the end of Pride month, we will see (and indeed have seen) the full range of queer expression manifest.  We encourage our community and our allies to hold space for the diversity of response to LGBTQ injustices.  We also call on our community and our allies to avoid any calls – explicit or implicit – to violence against groups or individuals as part of our march toward full queer liberation.  Anger has a role in our movement; violence does not.  As a community, we are our best when we pair our rage with our love.