Minneapolis trans summit postponed after LGBTQ+ groups express concerns

After 10 LGBTQ+ advocacy groups expressed concerns about the lack of trans people’s involvement in planning, Minneapolis city leaders postponed its annual Trans Equity Summit scheduled for Oct. 30.

On Tuesday, the city announced the summit was being postponed “after engaging with a broad coalition of Twin Cities area LGBTQ+ leaders, particularly those in the trans and gender nonconforming community.”

The city has hosted the free, all-day event for trans and gender nonconforming people since 2014. It’s intended to help the community connect to resources and with each other.

But the leaders of 10 groups emailed city officials on Oct. 18 to express “serious concerns” about the summit and urged that it be canceled. They said the city announced the summit three days before, and that was the first time many of them had been “formally engaged” about the event.

The groups said the summit has played a valuable role centering the voices of the trans community, but they’re concerned that “trans partners and voices have been sidelined as the project has evolved.” The summit has had a number of delays and “shifts in planning,” they said, and didn’t have time to engage the community and ensure participation “reflective of the investment the city is making.”

Minneapolis City Council Member Andrea Jenkins, the first African American openly trans woman elected to office in the U.S. and one of the summit founders, said two trans employees in the city’s Racial Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (REIB) department “no longer work there” and two trans event planners did not get their contract renewed.

“There’s just been this really seemingly erasure of trans people from this process,” Jenkins said. “It’s critical as we are working in community that we include community voices in these processes.”

Jenkins has publicly expressed concern about the departures of a trans equity coordinator and LGBTQ program manager.

“The personnel changes resulted in having no trans, nonbinary, gender nonconforming employees on the planning team,” she said. “This process (was) led by the cis gender team and the REIB department, and people weren’t comfortable with that at all.”

A spokesperson for the city, Jess Olstad, said in an email that the summit will be rescheduled in the next few months as the city works with community leaders to “ensure it is a meaningful, productive and inclusive experience for attendees.”

“The decision to postpone the meeting was a product of significant outreach from LGBTQ+ organizations from across the region and productive discussions with internal and external stakeholders,” Olstad said. “The event is designed for trans and gender nonconforming community members, and we are committed to centering those voices in the event planning and production in the 10th Trans Equity Summit.”

The letter from advocacy groups urged the city to continue to invest in work to support the LGBTQ+ community, specifically trans communities, “who are under policy, rhetorical, and physical attack in our present moment.”

The letter was signed by OutFront Minnesota, Transforming Families Minnesota, QUEERSPACE collective, RECLAIM, Twin Cities Pride, PFund Foundation, Twin Cities Quorum, Gender Justice, Family Tree Clinic and MN POC Pride.

Jenkins had helped plan the summit for the past decade, but has taken a step back now that the city has a REIB department. She said it’s frustrating to have the event postponed because it was supposed to be the 10th annual event, but last year it was postponed, too.

“The process just got really out of whack,” she said. “It’s disappointing that it is being postponed but I think we can get it back on track and hopefully we will have a successful summit in coming months.”