This past weekend, on September 18th, I had the privilege of attending the Long Beach Trans Pride Festival. I wanted to take a moment to share a little about the event and why it’s so important to me. As you know, I’m an LGBTQIA+ affirmative therapist in the Los Angeles area. I’ve been working in this field for over 16 years. I help the people of the community navigate the layers of gender, sexuality, culture, and race in a world that is still learning to accept and embrace the full spectrum of unique and beautiful expressions that exist.
Over the same period, I’ve also been an advocate for the community. I’ve experienced, witnessed, and fought against the discrimination and oppression that a gender non-conforming community faces. For these reasons, when possible, I feel privileged and honored to be able to attend events like the Long Beach Trans Pride Festival. It’s both encouraging and a sign of progress to see many wonderful people and organizations dedicated to helping the lives of trans individuals and advocating for the transgender community.
No matter how you may feel, change is possible!
We'll work side by side to uncover the challenges and patterns that keep you from living the life you desire.
What is the Long Beach Trans Pride Festival?
The Long Beach Trans Pride Festival began as an idea conceived by Alexa Castanon because she wanted to highlight trans people living, working, and thriving in Long Beach. She then took her vision to her friend Angel Macias. They began by creating Angels on Earth, an awards banquet to recognize transgender community members who were committing time and resources to help trans people but didn’t receive any compensation for their services.
The stories of dedication, caring, and commitment inspired Angel to do more. Her goal was to utilize the platform to spread the message that members of the Trans Community deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, just like any other human being. That their lives are just as valuable and important as those of our cisgender brothers and sisters.
After witnessing the tragic killings of trans women of color, and attending vigils and rallies denouncing them, Angel decided to go even further. In collaboration with Alexa and other Trans members at California Families in Focus, they created the Long Beach Trans Pride Festival. The one-day event, calls upon the amazing, talented, and courageous members of the Long Beach Community to help educate, elevate and encourage Trans and gender non-conforming people.
In It Together
The festival was incredible, the atmosphere reverberated with positive energy. You could feel the openness, love, and support that every person was experiencing at the event. In addition to the attendees, there were also several organizations that invested time, money, and resources to make the event such a success. These organizations work hard to help people in various communities, and it is clear that their work and support are part of what makes big successes like the festival possible. Though I can’t list every organization, I do want to call out a few that supported the event but also do fantastic work for the community.
APLA Health
AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA) Health is the largest founded in 1983. Almost 4 decades later they are one of the largest non-profit HIV service organizations in the United States. Their mission is to “achieve health care equity and promote well-being for the LGBT and other underserved communities and people living with and affected by HIV.” This is a fantastic organization that I personally have a lot of experience with, and it was great to see them at the festival standing by their commitment to helping the community.
The LGBTQ Center Long Beach
The LGBTQ Center Long Beach has been around since 1980 and provides a variety of health, social, advocacy, legal, and service programs to the LGBTQ community in the Greater Long Beach area. This tremendous organization has been working hard to help the LGBTQ community for just over 40 years. I worked at the LA LGBTQ Center for a portion of my career and can attest to the amazing work that happens at these centers. They help many, many people and it was wonderful to see them showing support at the festival.
APAIT
APAIT was established in 1987 as a grassroots AIDS service organization for Asian and Pacific Islanders suffering from AIDS. Over the past 30+ years, they’ve grown their vision to advocate, educate, and achieve optimal health and well-being for vulnerable communities. They are a large organization that works hard to provide helpful programs and resources for the communities they serve. Their presence at the Trans Pride festival is just another sign of their unparalleled commitment.
TransLatin@ Coalition
The TransLatin@ Coalition hasn’t been around as long as some of the others but they do excellent work. It was established in 2009 by a group of transgender and gender non-conforming and Intersex (TGI) immigrant women. Their focus is helping the TGI Latin@ immigrants living in the United States. It was great to see them at the Pride festival representing who they are and what they do.
Trans* Lounge
Trans* Lounge is a bit different than the other organizations on this list. They are a program within the Cultural Arts & Education Department within the Los Angeles LGBT Center. I worked at the Los Angeles LGBT Center for a portion of my career and Trans* Lounge is an integral part of the organization. Trans* Lounge offers a variety of education and empowerment programs that offer free classes and events for the TGI/ENBY+ community. It is relatively new, having been created in mid-2015. They were a welcomed presence at the Pride festival.
A Fantastic Success
Overall, the Long Beach Trans Pride Festival was a fantastic success. It was amazing to see so many people show up to demonstrate their support. I spoke with numerous friends at the event, some of them are members of the community, therapists, or employees at some of these organizations. Everyone was thrilled with the turnout, the organization of the event and grateful to support such an important cause. Please note that this is not a complete list of the organizations that attended, this would be a very long post if I went through all of them. I just listed a few that stood out to me but there were many more people and organizations that helped make the event the resounding success that it was. I know I won’t miss the next one, I had an incredible time and even my puppy had fun.
