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The Trans•Parency Podcast Show
In The Trans•Parency Podcast Show podcast, the host team, Shelbe Chang, Shane Ivan Nash, Jessie McGrath, and Bloosm C. Brown take you on a journey exploring the transformation stories, community dynamics, advocacy, entertainment, trans-owned businesses, and current events surrounding the lives of trans individuals.
Join us in enlightening conversations as we sit down with guests from the trans, LGBTQ+ community, and allies. Through powerful storytelling, they delve into their journeys, highlighting the trans people's transition from who they once were to their authentic selves. Also, this podcast uncovers individuals' experiences as allies who positively impact the trans community.
Our purpose-driven mission is to empower the trans community and uplift our voices, ensuring that we can be heard and beyond far and wide.
The Trans•Parency Podcast Show
Trans Rights, Discrimination, and Resilience in Rural Challenges w/ Jessie McGrath
Jessie McGrath, a prosecutor for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office and a passionate political advocate, joins Shelbe Chang again to discuss her experiences as a trans woman.
Jessie opens up about moving back to Nebraska and engaging in local political advocacy, from testifying on various legislative issues to supporting rural healthcare funding.
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This past two years I started to sense the discrimination, even though I'm not employed with anybody self-employed and people or business seems to be afraid to associate them with me because I'm trans. I have so much to offer as a person, as a profession, and then they don't see that and then they just focus on who am I and okay, once they know who am I, they don't care about what you can offer.
Speaker 2:And it's so irrational. The chair of the committee. I got asked a lot of questions by both the chair and a couple of other senators, talking about the sheer lunacy of replacing qualified school counselors with chaplains. He refused to use my pronouns with me. Wow, so all of the prior testimony. It was any questions for Mr Jones, Any questions for Ms Smith and then it was any questions for Jesse McGrath. Wow, I don't know if we want to spill the beans or anything, but you have been asking me to put together a couple of shows.
Speaker 1:I want to open up this podcast as a platform to have different voices and as you come in, you come in with a different angle, more on the legal side, on the more political side. Thank you all for supporting the show, supporting the host team, Shang and Blossom, and don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel hit that like button and notification so you can receive notification when we have new video. So today we have a return guest and she's been doing so many different things and the last time we were sitting here was about a year ago, last year, prior 2023. So I invite her back today to tell us what's going on with her life and what have she been doing for the community the last past year.
Speaker 2:This is the Transparency Podcast Show.
Speaker 1:Jesse McGrath. How are you doing?
Speaker 2:Shelby, thank you for having me back.
Speaker 1:Of course.
Speaker 2:It's always amazing getting a chance to talk with you.
Speaker 1:Yes, and, as I just mentioned, we have a lot of new audience. And, as I just mentioned, we have a lot of new audience. And if any of you haven't catch any of your episode two episodes from the previous I'll put the links in the show notes and I'll put the link on the screen. But in case somebody haven't met you or seen you, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 2:Sure, I'm a prosecutor for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office and I've been there for 36 years now and I'm not sure I'm going to make it to 37, but we're going to see. I've transitioned on the job nine years ago and it's just been an amazing experience for me and living my life. As we discussed last year, I was contemplating potentially running for office in Nebraska. I've actually moved back to Nebraska and I live there half-time. I bought a house in the district of the gal who authored all of the anti-trans legislation.
Speaker 1:I've been back testifying in front of the legislature, getting involved in the Democratic Party politics back in the state and have just been a whirlwind of going back and forth between my life in LA and my life in Nebraska, so we also have some clips about when you go on live and we kind of keep our audience updated about your life. But you decided not to run anymore, correct?
Speaker 2:Yes, in looking at everything, the amount of time that it was going to take and I kind of bought my house in Omaha before I went and visited with the retirement associations, so I was a little surprised to figure out that I had to work a little bit longer than I thought I was going to have to. I had to work a little bit longer than I thought I was going to have to, and so I didn't feel that I was going to be able to give the time and effort that needed to be put into actually winning that campaign. And we had a fantastic candidate from the Democratic Party who was already running, and so I did make the decision that I was not going to run. But that doesn't mean that I'm not involved in the politics of.
Speaker 2:Nebraska.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you, since last time we talked and you start, still involved, so involved in a different area, like politics, not just politics, but other aspects as well. Um, so you want to kind of lead us in to like what have you done since last year? Maybe, early this year or so.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, well, first part of the year I had to spend getting my house repaired, because when you move to the Midwest and it gets 50 below and you have certain pipes exposed in places that you didn't realize that they were there, you end up with a bunch of water damage. So that's how I started my year. But I went back to the legislature multiple times this year to testify on a wide range of issues, not just trans issues. For example, I was there and there was a hearing on a bill that had been proposed by a senator to protect nonprofits that receive what is called 340B money through the program, through the federal government. And I happen to know a lot about 340B because of my work with APLA Health and Wellness. I'm on the board there, and so it's one of our key areas of funding, and so I understand the importance of that.
Speaker 2:My mom was a really big proponent of rural health care and testified in front of the legislature health care and testified in front of the legislature, and so when I saw that they were doing that, I made it a point to testify how important this is to the rural health centers and the rural population, because sometimes this money is the only thing that keeps them afloat, and so you know being able to get in and provide that guidance to the legislature. On a funny side note, the gal who proposed all the anti-trans legislation, who appeared on a podcast subsequent to that and deliberately misgendered me and was going to refuse to acknowledge my existence as a woman. She was on the committee that I testified in front of and she put herself on as a co-sponsor of the bill after my testimony. So I thought that was kind of ironic. But I've also gone in and testified.
Speaker 2:There was a bill to replace school counselors with chaplains and the chair of the committee I got asked a lot of questions by both the chair and a couple of other senators talking about the sheer lunacy of replacing qualified school counselors with chaplains. He refused to use my pronouns with me. Wow, so all of the prior testimony. It was any questions for Mr Jones, any questions for Ms Smith and it was any questions for Jesse McGrath.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah. So let's just in case our audience doesn't know APLA I personally did have my care you know hormone therapy care through them as well. So you want to kind of give us a little bit like information on APLA in case people don't know.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, apla Health is what we call a federally qualified health center. We started out as AIDS Project Los Angeles over 40 years ago. We were the organization that started AIDS Walk. We were a support group for people with HIV and AIDS, and that's how we got our start, and over the last years, we have become a major healthcare provider for the LGBTQ plus community here in Los Angeles, and we have multiple clinics across the county. We have somewhere in the neighborhood of 16,000 patients. We have an operating budget of around $100 million, and so I've been on the board for approximately eight years. I've seen his growth phenomenally. I've seen his opening additional clinics and serving more and more patients, and doing it with incredible quality.
Speaker 1:You know, as a patient, what our facilities are like, yeah and just to let the audience know you know, sometimes we have problem or can't afford our care. Then we can, you know, go to that facility and then they will guide you and give you some advice as far as insurance right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we do not turn anyone away from care.
Speaker 2:That is one of the things about being a federally qualified health center is we provide that care to a lot of people, and I've been on the board for eight years now and I've been the secretary for the last couple of years and I am probably next week going to be moving up to the position of vice chair Wow, congratulations.
Speaker 2:And hopefully in June of next year I am going to be the chair of the board for APLA Health for a couple of years and I'm really looking forward to getting in and further expanding our services, especially to the trans community and to women. So I think we're probably going to be looking at least. One of the things I would love to be able to see is an expansion and the building of a trans health and wellness dedicated trans health and wellness center in the South Bay in Long Beach, because we have such an incredible community here that is in dire need of having, you know, targeted and specific care. We provide great care already, but I think having a centralized location with people who that is their specialty would be of great benefit to the people in our community.
Speaker 2:So that's one of the things that I'm hoping I get to do over the course of the next couple of years.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, that's great. So yeah, you also brought us some photos.
Speaker 2:I did A couple of little things about what I've been doing over the course of the last year. They did bring back before the legislature LB 575, which was the sports and spaces bill which prohibited trans kids from using the facilities of their gender at school and being prohibited from participating in sports. This was a shot that the Lincoln Journal Star caught of me the day that we were debating the bill in the legislature. I was spending a lot of time standing in the back with my trans veteran t-shirt on and the Journal Star caught the picture of the author of the bill looking kind of sour and me not looking particularly happy either. So it was a great day. And then I got interviewed by the local news station asking about what was going on in relationship to what was being shown there, about what was going on in relationship to what was being shown there, and so I'm kind of visible to the community in Nebraska. I'm very out and open and outspoken.
Speaker 1:Yes, we do need the visibility and the voice. How about this one?
Speaker 2:And that was one of my good friends behind Senator Kauth. We're working very hard to see that she is not reelected and her extremist views get exposed.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And also during that time, I think there was a I think it was if it was Trans Day of Visibility or not but there was a walkout at the Omaha Central High School by the students, and so we went down to support them. There was a lot of kids that were out. I don't have any pictures because I don't like to show kids or anything without their parents' consent, but that is some of my friends and we were out supporting the kids.
Speaker 1:So just give the audience some context. What's the population of trans youth or kids in Nebraska?
Speaker 2:I don't think we have an accurate count of the number of them, but it's probably along the same lines of percentages as it is in other places. Nebraska is not a very populous state. Nebraska has a population of under 2 million or right at 2 million and so, if you figure 1% of the population, not a large number of folks. But they are an incredible community. The Rainbow Moms who have trans kids are an incredible group of ladies who fight for their kids and they do such amazing work.
Speaker 1:And what about this?
Speaker 2:picture.
Speaker 1:Who are those two beautiful ladies in the black?
Speaker 2:This was at our Omaha Blue Dot dinner. If you know anything about electoral politics in America, the president is not chosen by the voters. The voters choose people who will be electors, who will then vote for the president for the electoral college, and in Nebraska we divide up our electoral college votes by congressional district, and us and Maine are the only two states that do that, and so in a couple of elections we have Nebraska, which is an incredibly red Republican state. I mean, it's very red. In Omaha we call it the blue dot because we have twice sent our electoral college vote for the Democratic candidate. So we had our Blue Dot dinner and this is a group of my friends that I'm involved with back there.
Speaker 2:This is the Nebraskans Against Government Overreach.
Speaker 2:There's a right-wing group in Nebraska that has been kind of using that name and we went and incorporated as a 501c4 activist organization, political action committee.
Speaker 2:We're registered with the Federal Election Commission and we have a registered lobbyist with the state, so we stole their name and I use their own words against them all the time, because I am opposed to government overreach into individuals' lives and there can be nothing more of a government overreach than telling a parent and a child what they can and can't do for their medical treatment, telling a woman what she can and can't do for her necessary medical needs. And so we co-opted. We are now Nebraskans Against Government Overreach, and when I testified earlier with the senator about the chaplains instead of counselors, I started off by saying I was president of Nebraskans against government overreach, and and he was a little confused and he said, well, I think there's another group and I was like there is. Well, okay, we're the only one who's a registered lobby. It has a registered lobbyist and is a pack. So, yeah, go go on about it, but we are them, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, and then this picture she's your friend, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I was so excited earlier in the year when my roommate Allison, who has been my roommate for six, seven years I don't know the exact number now, but she is an amazing, amazing gal. She's on the Sheriff's Advisory Committee, a trans woman who I've known for a long time and before she transitioned she had been an executive at Hertz and an executive for Tyson and so she had lost everything in her transition.
Speaker 1:Okay, so they fired her.
Speaker 2:She lost her job. She got divorced, lost her house, lost her savings and was living with her parents in Lancaster, and so I told her as soon as she got a job that she had a room in my house. She was one of the first people to see my house that I bought back in 2017. Helped me move in, and I told her as soon as she had a job she had a place to stay.
Speaker 1:So this work discrimination is even before this. Past two, three years.
Speaker 2:Oh, this was 2016, or this was 2014, 2015, when she started her transition and she lost everything. And so the only job that she was able to find when she started her transition and she lost everything, and and so the only job that she was able to find when she first got out here was at magic mountain making minimum wage. And I have seen her as she has persevered and extended her education. She she got a job at the LGBT center, where she still works, and and I was so incredibly proud when she graduated with her master's degree in psychology from Pepperdine and is now going into working with troubled youth and the trans community, and it's such an amazing story of how she was able to build back up from everything that she lost because of the discrimination against trans people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not easy, because me personally, especially these past two years, because I kind of start, I would consider more lucky or blessed that I started working with mainstream in the beginning and it was a smooth ride, to be honest with you.
Speaker 1:But then this past two years I started to sense the discrimination. Even though I'm not employed with anybody self-employed but we're doing business, you always have to with another business or another person in contact. So I started to sense that discrimination and people or business seems to be afraid to associate them with me because I'm trans and it's very sad to see that because I feel like I have so much to offer as a person, as a profession, and then they don't see that and then they just focus on who am I and, okay, once they know who am I, they don't care about what you can offer and that's really and it's so irrational, yeah, and it's so demeaning to us as people, and we've seen such a dramatic increase in the use of dehumanizing language towards trans people, where they're not talking about someone being trans, they're talking about you're an advocate for this trans ideology.
Speaker 2:I'm like. My existence isn't an ideology. My existence is who. I am A cult. I'm not in a cult.
Speaker 2:It's not like we have this big meeting and everybody gets together and starts worshiping this one deity, unlike Republicans and Trump, where they do do that and they're willing to put aside every conceivable fault and wrong and blame it on this vast conspiracy against Donald Trump, when in fact, he's somebody who's been a grifter his entire life and career.
Speaker 2:This is just entirely in keeping with what his character has been. The number of contractors that he ruined over the course of his career is staggering. The number of people who have been ripped off by his schools and other things. And so, yeah, they say we're in a cult and yet they think this man, who is not nice and is only out for himself, is somehow this great savior for this country of ours. And so, yeah, when you want to talk about cults, being trans is not a cult because, frankly, the differences of everyone within our community is so widespread that it couldn't ever qualify as that, but they like to use that dehumanizing language so that it makes it easier for people to not like us, not because of who we are individually, but because we're a part of this group of folks who are bad.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think a lot of misinformation, because I mean, I'm not putting any drag entertainer down or anything, but I believe they associate drag queens with trans, associate sexuality, gay with trans. You know, gender identity. So, because that's how I feel, because when I talk to people, personal level or professional level, I feel they will say, oh, I'm straight, I'm not gay, but this has nothing to do with that. And when it comes to business, they feel like, oh, if I'm associated with you, then I might lose deals or lose credibility.
Speaker 2:And we've moved backwards so much in the last few years in that regard, where we had been making incredible headway. I do think the tide is starting to turn somewhat and that the the anti-trans, animus and bills they're starting to die off and the people who support them are finding that they're not getting re-elected and so they want to use this as a political wedge issue, but it's an incredibly losing one for their part.
Speaker 1:Florida is a good example, because I believe they are the first state to start this whole thing right example because.
Speaker 2:I believe they're the first state to start this whole thing right. Well, the history of anti-trans animus is far and long, but I think it really gets its genesis back in 2015 with the Hero Amendment in Houston. That's where it really started picking up speed. They started attacking the Houston Human Rights Amendment that allowed people who were trans to use the restrooms of their choice, and there was a big push and election and that was followed shortly after that by the law. Hb2 in Tennessee or not Tennessee? Oh God, where was that? Virginia, whatever it was. No, it was Nashville. Anyway, wherever HB2 was, it ended up costing the governor re-election. Businesses protested and pulled out, and so we got a lot of positive from that.
Speaker 2:And then they regrouped and these right-leaning religious organizations, such as the Family Research Council, began a longer process of figuring out ways to attack the trans what they call trans ideology.
Speaker 2:And it's interesting that around the time that I started my transition is when the Family Research Council published their article about responding to the transgender question and in it it was kind of a guideline on how to come after trans people. Go after children medical care first and go after state-supported transition-related care, go after the sports and spaces all of those things Go after ability to change identity documents to conform with your gender identity. So it was set out what all they wanted to do. And after the Supreme Court ruled in the Amy Stevens case that being trans you could not fire somebody for that, that that was sexual discrimination under Title VII. And after losing the marriage equality, because they seem to think that attacking trans people is this magic bullet for them to retain power. So getting us out there and talking and meeting folks and being involved in community and stuff is so important that we show them that their idea of who we are as trans people is wrong and taking our rights away from us is wrong.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do agree with you. I feel our community, our people, being used as a weapon and being weaponized. And also online, as you mentioned earlier. People online, they start feeling it's okay to bully us. You know they, they call names, they use wrong pronouns and everything, and and they, they, you know they don't even have their profile picture and they feel this is okay, I'll just. There's no responsibility or common accountability doing so. So this, which is what you said, you know this is society, this policy is making people it's okay to do that, it's okay to attack another human being, you know. So, yeah, so your friend, I've been through what she's been through partially, so I totally understand and it is not easy for any person, not just a trans person, to get back up like that after what happened. So, yeah, so it's good that she's able to get back up.
Speaker 2:Oh, she's like an amazing success story and I am so incredibly proud of her. We're actually having a party for her on Saturday because it's her birthday month. She graduated and she and her girlfriend went to Switzerland for her post-graduation trip and her girlfriend proposed to her, so we're having an engagement party also. Maybe we should have her on the show one day. I would love to have a conversation with Allison about what all she's been through and how she's been able to persevere.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because we need a voice like that to inspire others, because I know how that feels Sometimes. You are in that level of depression and thinking nothing will work out. We can't get out of that hole. It's very, you know. It's suicidal too. It is.
Speaker 2:And it was so cute. Her dad came up to me at the graduation party. He took us all out to lunch and he just came up and gave me a hug and he just said I want to thank you for everything you've done and it was so good to see her up on that stage and getting that degree and going back in to help the community. Okay, An aspiring woman.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's reach out to her, see if she wants to come on and share her story.
Speaker 2:I don't know if we want to spill the beans or anything, but you have been asking me to put together a couple of shows and I think now's a good time to say it. I guess, yeah, we're gonna do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want to open up this podcast as a platform to have different voices, not just me hosting. You know, as I mentioned earlier, we have a team like Shane and Blossom, and as you come in, you come in with a different angle, more on the legal side, more political side. So I think it will make this channel, this platform, more like a full, you know. So let's continue our photos.
Speaker 2:Oh, so for Memorial Day weekend it was my 45th high school reunion time frame and I am from an extremely small town in southwest Nebraska and my hometown has like 65 people in it now, if that and the big town has 900. And I had 33 people in my graduating class. But in Nebraska right now there are a number of initiatives that we're trying to get put on the ballot. One of them is protecting women's rights to access to abortion and the other is to overturn an action by the state legislature where they allocated money from the state coffers to go to private education it's the voucher bills where they want to defund public education and fund religious education and that's unconstitutional under the Nebraska statute. So that'll be it. But we are also doing a petition to repeal the law that enabled it. So I decided to be my activist self and go to Dundee County and get signatures in Dundee County and surprisingly enough, I got quite a few folks signing the support our schools and I got quite a few people to support the abortion amendment so that we can put that on the ballot and let people decide. And basically, let's put it back to where it was with Roe and get the hell out of the women's lives and let them make medical decisions for themselves.
Speaker 2:And we've seen constantly across even Republican states, when we do constitutional amendments to protect the right to access to abortion, they get passed, and that's what people want and people don't want the right-wing extremism of the doctor in your bedroom, the government in your bedroom, the government in your doctor's office, the government interfering with your prescriptions and bathrooms and what bathroom you can use. It's. It's like, um, the trans I don't want to say agenda, but the trans rights and access to medical care is is so intertwined with women's right to abortion and to receive care in related to reproductive issues, and what some of these laws end up doing is hurting women. There's nothing to protect women, it causes them to. You know they refuse to allow an abortion when it's medically necessary because it will harm the reproductive system of a woman who may want to have children. So, um, it's so intertwined with bodily autonomy and trans rights and is trying to get the government involved in enforcing their religious views.
Speaker 2:And that's not what we do in this country, and so, um it. I went back, met with a bunch of my high school classmates, got a bunch of people. We set up outside the post office for part of the day and got people as they were coming in getting their mail and went up to the historical society that had some programs on and sat outside there and it was good listening to a lot of the folks, good, good.
Speaker 1:So are these your high school friends.
Speaker 2:These are not my high school friends. After I got done with my reunion, I drove back to LA picked up some stuff and I had to drive hurriedly back to make it back to Omaha because, as part of my getting involved in politics, I'm actively involved with the Democratic Party now in Nebraska. I'm on the Douglas County Central Committee, I'm on the state central committee and I'm the vice chair of the state Stonewall Democratic Caucus the vice chair of the state Stonewall Democratic Caucus. And so we had our first ever Lavender Gala fundraiser for the Stonewall Democrats in.
Speaker 1:You have a picture for that too, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and our guest speaker was Danica Rome, who is state senator from the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Speaker 2:So Mike and I got to pick her up at the airport and then we had this fundraiser at the Cornhusker Hotel in Lincoln and that is Danik and I and that's the board of the Stonewall Democrats and we have started really getting actively involved as a caucus in politics. We were part of the group that was behind censoring the state senator that we did earlier. There was the reason why LB 574, the gender-affirming care ban and abortion restriction ban Nebraska was the first one to actually combine those into a single bill was passed on a very slim. It was a single vote, and one of those votes in favor of this, in fact, was a co-sponsor of these bills, was a Democratic individual from Omaha, and so we went to censure him for what he had done. Uh, that the basically basic core values of taking away individuals rights to autonomy, and so, um, yeah, the Stonewall group has become incredibly active on things, and so we got to do the fundraiser and we got brought Danica in and she was incredible and she was.
Speaker 1:This one she holding her shoes.
Speaker 2:Yes, she was talking about when she first ran for the assembly in Virginia, about the shoes that she had and and they were not very good and and how she totally wore them out by walking through the the district and and she said, how's he, as a queer candidate, you have to put in the shoe lever, shoe leather, you have to put in the work, and that we work and that we can make it happen. We can convince people that we are someone who knows right from wrong, someone who knows how to help the community. And she has been incredible In fact was subsequently elected to the state senate there. So she was an incredible guest. To have come speak to us was very uplifting and helped us raise $6,000 for our caucus so we can get out and we can meet with queer youth and we can start letting them know that there's a community available for them, that they have political power, that if we get together and we use it, we can do things, we can make changes, and so it was fun.
Speaker 1:Okay, good, and thank you for sharing all your journey this past year. And also, you mentioned that things are going to change with your current career. Right, the reason I brought this up. I don't know if you want to share, but because, since we were talking about you know, have you start some shows here and you also have some other projects on the side that you're.
Speaker 2:I've got a lot of things kind of going in the burner. You know, two weeks ago we had the state democratic convention and I ran for the position of elector and as we talked about the electoral college and all of that, I ran to be the person that signs the electoral college certificate that goes to Congress for the second congressional district. And I almost won but didn't quite get it done. But I was elected as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. I think I was actually the highest vote getter in my district caucus. So a lot of people were inspired by what I've had to say and entrust with me the ability to go to Chicago and uphold the democratic values that we have. So that was fun. And so in August I'm going to be spending a week in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention mention. And before I had done that I have a friend out here who's really I'm pretty close with, who when I was celebrating her birthday with her up at Hearst Castle and stuff talked about, you know I didn't know if I was going to get elected a delegate or not. But I said, if I do, would you like to go to Chicago with me for the week? And she was like all for it. So when I told the folks in Nebraska you know, I was going to bring my girlfriend from LA, who is a hair and makeup person, cause that's what she does and they were like what we were just talking, we need find somebody. And so I'm like not only going to go back and do that, I'm going to make sure that we are the best coughed delegation in the entire convention. So I've been doing that but, yeah, it does look like I may be having some time on my hands.
Speaker 2:My office has decided to institute restrictions on teleworking. I've been able to telework for 13 days a month from my house in Omaha. I run a section of the DA's office and over the course of the four years that I've been in charge, I've lost resources, I've lost people, but the work that we do is like tripled. So I've somehow managed to triple my production of my section with fewer resources. And it's all because we're able to telework and we're not spending, you know, an hour and a half, two hours a day commuting back and forth and into the office. So we get much more work done. But they've decided to institute that they're only going to allow a single day of teleworking a week, and so that's going to make it practically impossible for me, obviously, to be able to do that work. So I'm looking at my options and I do have a lot of vacation time built up, and so I do have things that I need to do.
Speaker 2:In Nebraska, elections to be involved in, and I've made promises to folks, and I did that on the basis that I was going to have my time there, because my unit has been extremely successful in the telework environment. It's been beyond anyone's, I think, beliefs that we could do what we've done, and so I'm extremely stressed out right now on what I'm going to do. I bought tickets throughout for the end of the year with my schedule. I've scheduled everything out and there are some things I'm not going to be able to change, and so I'm looking at what I'm going to do and I may end up having to take vacation.
Speaker 2:I'm at that point in my career where my retirement is kind of on a trajectory like this over the next year and a half on what percentage that I get for retirement. So I need to stay pretty much as long as I can, but I may very well be taking three or four months off, using up my vacation time and that's going to free me up to do some projects that I've always wanted to be working on. So I'm going to start working on doing some writing and I think I'm going to take you up on your offer to be on your channel, and we think I'm going to take you up on your offer to be on your channel and we can talk with some inspiring folks about transition and what they've done and how they've done it and why it's important to support trans people and what we can do if we get just a modicum of support.
Speaker 1:Yes, and also I want to let whoever is watching. You also mentioned about speaking gigs, right?
Speaker 2:Surprisingly enough, out of the blue, I have been contacted by multiple organizations who have seen me do some of my continuing legal education presentations for various groups and who have booked me to do their Pride Month ERGs. And so one is a major law firm in the country who has offices all throughout, and another is a major corporation and one of their subdivisions approached me and it's like wow people want to give me money for just talking and I'm like, wow, that's a really cool gig.
Speaker 2:If I can start doing a little bit more of that, I will hopefully be able to have a good retirement.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think there's an old saying when a door closes, a new one opens.
Speaker 2:And it's like I'm sitting here, I'm now 63. Why are you 63? Having been at the DA's office for 36 years? Yeah, it's like I've got to be old. But I'm like sitting here at 63 and I have all of these avenues that are suddenly appearing and opening up and and it's like I don't know where I'm going to be, and and and it's. It's been so amazing because if you had asked me a year and a half ago, right, what I was going to be doing with my life, I it certainly would. I would not be telling you that I'm a delegate to the Democratic National Convention from Nebraska. I mean, that was, that was not a part of my master plan.
Speaker 2:That was something that that has just evolved into my life and the fact that I'm able to make changes and and I'm not stuck in a singular rut at this point in my life and I'm like seeing all of these opportunities and ability to get out and help folks, and I'm like I don't know what it's going to actually end up being. And, realistically, we are still also in the process of working on the television series that we're going to be pitching to, hopefully, CBS soon and that is still on the books. So I'm like sitting here going what am I going to be doing in six months? And I'm like I don't know.
Speaker 1:I don't know where I'm going to be. Yeah, so I'm so proud of you and so thank you for your voice and all the things you do for trans community, and I look forward to you know our next talk, because every time we're sitting down here with you, you have so many different things going on, which is good, you know, and again, I look forward for you to join us on our hosting team and bring different guests and different topics and different voices?
Speaker 2:yeah, because there's there's so many voices, and that's that's the one thing I always I love about the community that I'm a part of is I hear so many different things and so many different voices, so many different stories, and almost all of them are remarkable in the resilience that we, as trans people, have to bring to life and how we adapt and how we do that. And I think people need to meet some of us and get to know our stories and get to know how we've evolved into who we are. How we've evolved into who we are.
Speaker 1:Even people who's non-trans, these stories can also inspire them as a person. You know, if many people feeling stuck, feeling they're not happy with their life, you know they can kind of dig into one of our story and see how we blossom right. So thank you. Thank you again for coming all the way down here down beach to do this with us and we look forward for your show.
Speaker 2:Okay, we'll have to come up with a name. So you're out there and you have an idea what you want to what we should call this part of it, just conversations with Jesse, which I was I used to do on my Facebook when I would do my Facebook Live stuff. We'll figure out something. Thank you, girl, for the opportunity, of course, thank you.
