Bipartisan Report recently had the opportunity to conduct an interview with Brandon Wolf, the press secretary for Equality Florida.
Wolf’s organization advocates for LGBTQ+ rights in the nation’s infamous southeastern state, and this year, Equality Florida has been among the interests clamoring against a cascade of proposals in the state’s GOP-dominated legislature targeting LGBTQ+ communities across the state, whether in schools, healthcare environments, government buildings and the like while seeking to do something as simple as use the bathroom, and more.
Wolf’s interview was broken into two parts for publication, the second of which is below. (The first part is here.) Here, he discussed plans to provide supportive resources for Floridians in need, preparations for litigation over some of these sweeping proposals, and intentions for electoral challenges against politically vulnerable Republicans jumping onboard the anti-LGBTQ+ agenda. “They have to be afraid that they’re going to lose their jobs for waging war on a marginalized community,” Wolf said.
Questions are listed in bold, and Wolf’s answers follow.
One of the highlights of Equality Florida’s work in this just concluding legislative session has been involvement in protests. Can you share some of what your organization’s aims and ambitions have been amid these demonstrations?
I think community organizing is about power-building, and we’re not naive. The political climate is what it is in this moment. It’s clear that the legislature has decided it is little more than a rubber stamp for DeSantis’s right-wing agenda. But it matters when we show up. It matters when 300+ drag queens and their allies show up to the state Capitol, for instance, to protest.
It matters because we’re elevating voices. It matters because we’re putting our stories, our lived experiences into the public conversation. And ultimately it matters because we’re building power inside a community that’s going to have to flex that power in the weeks, months, and years to come.
I think it’s worth saying that we’ve already seen some fluctuation in policy. We’ve seen some disagreement between the Senate and the House — that’s not possible if it’s done in darkness. So the fact that we’ve been able to shine sunlight on the legislature might mean that some of these bills are narrowed in scope, and that’s a win.
I also think it’s important to say that that power-building leads us toward accountability for these lawmakers. We saw that in Miami Beach when all of the movement-building we’ve been doing in Tallahassee translated into protests outside the office of [state] Representative Fabián Basabe, a Republican who ran claiming to be a moderate and has been nothing more than part of the right-wing machinery. And that turned into a mass protest at Miami Beach Pride, where he decided to ride in a car thinking he might be showered with praise, and instead was booed off the parade route. So that is the kind of community organizing and power-building necessary if we’re then going to turn around and ask those communities to show up for candidates, to show up at the ballot box, and ultimately to hold these lawmakers accountable.
Are there more details you can share about how the demonstrations have connected to policy changes?
Well, lawmakers will not tell you that the presence of protesters in the Capitol has made a difference. But ultimately some of the things we’ve seen are on the healthcare ban that’s been proposed in both chambers.
The House and the Senate are in disagreement. And so that bill continues to sit in messages, waiting to see what will happen next. Very specifically, the House wants to ban private health insurance companies from covering transgender adults, and the Senate does not want to do that. So, I think that’s one area where, again, sharing our lived experiences, telling our stories, being visible has allowed us to peek into that process and hopefully has had an impact on that policy. [Editor’s note: The restrictions on private health insurance companies were eventually kept out of the approved bill from legislators.]
Another one I would mention is the bathroom ban, which it’s striking to me that it was what, 2006 that we were talking about a bathroom ban in North Carolina that ultimately threatened to derail their state’s economy. But here we are again talking about banning trans people from using the bathroom. And again, there’s some friction between the House and the Senate. The House version wants to compel private businesses across the state to essentially monitor people’s genitals to ensure they’re in the right restroom. And the Senate is not down with that. The Senate filed an amendment to their bill yesterday that would narrow the scope of where those bathroom regulations apply and not include private businesses. [Editor’s note: That limitation to the restrictions also carried over to the final bill.]
So again, I don’t think Republicans in the legislature would tell you that our presence is the reason for that. But I do think that our presence matters, and our lived experiences have mattered, and certainly shining a national spotlight on the outrageous policies being considered by this state has helped to have a different kind of conversation about how those policies end up.
Once this session is well into the rhetorical rear-view mirror, can you describe some of the work in which you, your organization, and community allies will be involved to blunt the impacts from some of this?
I think number one is, we’ve got to find ways to get resources to people who need them. So I know there have been conversations already about, how do we get people access to healthcare? How do we ensure people have the resources they need in order to survive in this moment? So I think step number one will be just caring for the community, making sure they have the best information possible, connecting them with the right resources that are available.
Number two is about setting up legal challenges. We know that a lot of these things will result in legal challenge. DeSantis loves to pad the bank accounts of lawyers on the taxpayer’s dime, and we’re going to see a lot more of that, I’m certain.
And finally, as I said, our job is accountability. I think in this moment it’s important to understand that right-wing politicians are being driven by their own self-interest, and they’re constantly doing a cost-benefit analysis: ‘If I take this vote, will the costs outweigh the benefits?’
And up until this point, the costs have not outweighed the benefits. They’ve continued to keep their jobs; they’ve continued to keep their access to high-profile donors. They’ve continued to ascend the political ladder toward their ultimate goal. And so we have to be the accountability mechanism that changes that equation. They have to be afraid that they’re going to lose their jobs for waging war on a marginalized community. And so our task over the next year is going to be engaging people on the ground, helping to support pro-equality candidates that are going to go out and fight for us, and making sure that people know in their communities how their lawmakers have been voting, the things they’ve been prioritizing so they can make informed decisions about who gets to sit in that seat next go round.
