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Arlington town and school employees participated for a second year in sessions by YW Boston’s 2022 Stand Against Racism campaign aimed toward expanding knowledge about race and equity. Throughout April, the town’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Division was the host for four separate virtual sessions.

The purpose of the Stand Against Racism campaign is to spread awareness and inspire action to eliminate racism. Sessions held empowered employees to broaden their knowledge of racism and to be a part of positive social change.

The sessions included staff and community facilitators including Joan Roman, Arlington’s public-information officer, and Julie Wayman, town management analyst, as well as Hina Jolin, Drake Pusey and journalist Crystal Haynes, all members of Arlington’s Human Right’s Commission. Town and School Diversity, Equity and Inclusion directors Jillian Harvey (town) and Margaret Credle Thomas (school district) both facilitated and moderated sessions.

Submitting the following news summary including opinion about a community conversation were Susan Ryan-Vollmar, cochair of the LGBTQIA+ Rainbow Commission, and Christine Carney, cochair of the Human Rights Commission.
Dr. Roderick MacNeal at community conversation.

We’re only a quarter of the way through 2022, but the year has already been a tough one for LGBTQIA+ people, especially transgender children and adolescents and their parents.

Lawmakers across the country have filed a record-breaking 238 anti-LGBTQIA+ bills, with discriminatory policies put in place in Texas and anti-LGBTQIA+ measures signed into law in Tennessee, Florida and Alabama. Most of these measures aim to silence LGBTQIA+ children and families, prevent transgender kids from playing sports and block gender-diverse children from receiving medically necessary health care.

But the town of Arlington recently sent a different message altogether to its LGBTQIA+ children, adolescents and families.