Minneapolis Trans Equity Summit is 'cornerstone' event for community

NINA MOINI: Today, the city of Minneapolis is holding its annual Trans Equity Summit. It's a day-long event that was created in 2014 to share ideas on how to lift up the city's transgender community. Hundreds are gathered right now at the University of Minnesota for discussions, a resource fair, and music.

Shor Salkas is the LGBTQIA+ equity manager for the city of Minneapolis and helped to organize the summit. They're on the line from the summit to share more. Thank you so much for taking the time, Shor.

SHOR SALKAS: Oh, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. It's a joy.

NINA MOINI: So how far are you into the day? And how's it going?

SHOR SALKAS: Oh, we are about halfway through. Folks are just picking up lunch and heading back into Memorial Hall to just revel in some community joy. We're about to have some performances and actually a really lovely big surprise honoring council member Andrea Jenkins as she is retiring. And we are lovingly honoring her at the summit today.

NINA MOINI: Yes. Andrea Jenkins, of course, the first transgender council member on the Minneapolis City Council, if I'm not mistaken.

SHOR SALKAS: Yes. Council member Jenkins is the first out Black trans woman to be elected to office in the entire nation. So it is a big deal.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. And you also have another special keynote speaker, I understand-- Miss Major?

SHOR SALKAS: Yes. We were so honored to welcome Miss Major this morning at our opening plenary. Miss Major joined us and really spoke to the theme that we are honoring this year, which is trans equity and intergenerational power and really using our past and all that we've learned and all of the legacies that have led us to this moment to honor how we move towards the future. And she left us with some really beautiful lessons to walk away with, including that we have the power to love and support each other now and always.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. And of course--

SHOR SALKAS: So, so grateful to have her here.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. Of course, for anyone who doesn't know, Miss Major is an iconic transgender activist, veteran of the 1969 Stonewall riots. I love that you have this intergenerational theme. What made you pick that?

SHOR SALKAS: That's a great question. So the Trans Equity Summit, in its 10th year, has always been an event that is hosted by the city of Minneapolis, but is planned in collaboration with community and with community partners and community organizations.

And so this theme came out of our planning committee, which is, really, a lot of community members thinking about, what do we want? What do we want to bring people together around this year? And this is a theme that emerged as we are really heading into really deeply difficult times. How do we lean on each other and support each other? And I think it's really beautiful.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. And obviously, everyone has different experiences, but times have even changed since even 2014, when the summit got started. Why did it start in 2014? I'm curious. And then how have you seen it evolve?

SHOR SALKAS: The summit really started out of a dream of Councilmember Jenkins to bring the community together with government in a strategic and systemic way, so that we can all work better together on really moving towards trans equity in different ways. And so over the last 10 years, this summit has evolved and changed, both in terms of where it's held, who's been on the organizing committee, what community orgs have been involved.

And I would say the real heart of it has stayed intact, and that is, creating a space for our communities to come together to learn, to resource each other, and to just be together for one day a year, so that we can hold each other up better the rest of the year.

NINA MOINI: Yeah. Of course, as you know, there have been a number of cases nationally and locally this year that impact transgender rights. Can you talk a little bit about, if you would, just balancing the heaviness with the joy on a day like this?

SHOR SALKAS: Yes. I think that what you just said is-- that's the ticket. It's a lot out there. Our communities are experiencing both systemic violence and interpersonal violence. So the systems that are supposed to support us in our lives are not and are really threatening our existence and our ability to thrive.

And then what that does is that trickles down into people's minds. And it becomes normalized and OK for people to say harmful things to each other, to actually-- there's a lot of physical violence that our communities are experiencing. And so it's deeply important to both honor that that is the reality of our lives. That is a real for most of us in this moment, and that we are deeply caring human people. And we deserve to live our lives in our communities, in our families, and to be present for ourselves.

So balancing that joy with the harm is-- we have to keep doing it. We have to keep creating spaces where that can happen. And we're so lucky that the city of Minneapolis has been supporting us and doing that for 10 years.

NINA MOINI: And I'm curious to know-- because I know this is a Minneapolis event. But Minnesota was the first state to include transgender people in its Human Rights Act. It's become known as a trans refuge state for people who need to come from other places to receive health care. Are there people that come from outside of Minneapolis? Like, who all is there? Are there people there from out of state?

SHOR SALKAS: Oh. Absolutely. Yeah, so we get a lot of folks from in and around Minneapolis, but there's folks from St. Paul and from many of the metro suburbs as well. But then we have folks who are here from Bemidji.

We have folks who are here from Duluth, who have come because this event is a cornerstone event for our community in terms of coming together and talking to each other. Like, what's your org doing? Or what do you see happening? How can we show up for each other? And so folks are coming from across the state and from neighboring states sometimes as well.

NINA MOINI: Do you feel like the folks that are coming from across the state do-- are they giving feedback on the resources that they have and experience where they're living?

SHOR SALKAS: Yeah. So we have a whole-- we have a resource fair and a career fair, and people have been walking through them. I've walked through them both a couple of times and have just been seeing folks talking about, hey, what's happening? What's going on for you and your organization or in your community?

And so there's absolutely a lot of discussion happening across different orgs, different geographical communities, different faith-based communities, racial and ethnic communities, because trans folks exist in all communities. So that's something that we are constantly grappling with, is, where-- our communities are everywhere. And so we need to continue to support and resource each other as much as possible.

NINA MOINI: What a great opportunity.

SHOR SALKAS: And folks are also just--

NINA MOINI: Oh, go ahead.

SHOR SALKAS: Oh, I was going to say, folks are also just building relationships. If you walked through Memorial Hall right now, you would see folks eating their lunches and talking, building community, building relationships, as well as outside, folks are really trying to connect and stay connected, which is really important for right now.

NINA MOINI: Yeah, I love that. The structured time and then the unstructured time can sometimes be where people are building some of those closest new relationships and bonds. Shor, thank you just so much for taking the time today to stop by Minnesota Now. We appreciate it. Have a great rest of the day.

SHOR SALKAS: Thank you so much. You, too. Bye-bye.

NINA MOINI: That was Shor Salkas, the LGBTQIA+ equity manager for the city of Minneapolis.