In the East Bay of California, for example, the Oakland LGBTQ Community Center is working to overcome anti-LGBTQ+ challenges on many levels, while continuing to provide critical programs and services to over 5,000 community members each year.

The center was founded in 2017 by two Black gay men, CEO Joe Hawkins and board chair Jeff Myers. Hawkins was a co-founder of Oakland Pride and a small business owner. Myers had been a union activist, queer activist and member of the Human Rights Campaign’s San Francisco Bay Area Steering Committee. Together, they founded the center to enhance and sustain the wellbeing of LGBTQ+ individuals, families and allies in Alameda County.

In 2023, Kelley Robinson, HRC president, visited the center with key staff and local HRC volunteers around the time of the San Francisco Dinner. 

“We have to practice freedom and joy today,” Robinson said presciently, “especially in the face of political maelstroms.”

Oakland has a proud history of being a center of progressive activism, especially in times of social and political change. It’s the birthplace of the Black Panthers, one of the birthplaces of the Black Lives Matter movement and district of former U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee.

Now, however, in the era of Trump 2.0, providing critical resources and services at the community level is more challenging — and more important — than ever. The administration is trying to defund LGBTQ+ organizations; it implemented a severe, across-the-board federal funding freeze that has, among countless other consequences, jeopardized the center’s programs, such as its trans healthcare services and its Glenn Burke Wellness Center.

Worried that it’s only going to get worse, Myers said, “We must come together — we don’t have a choice.”

According to Johanna Holden, the center’s director of development, the emotional and spiritual impact — as well as the practical and financial impact — of the current political climate has been intense and alarming. “If we don’t have community spaces and organizations that are helping people build themselves up in terms of all aspects of wellness,” said Holden, “then we won’t be able to sustain the activist landscape here in Oakland, and people will suffer.”

Over the next four years, the center aims to remain a safe space where community members can feel welcomed and supported — and access critical resources, clinical and mental health services, housing assistance and community-building activities that foster freedom and joy as essential components of wellness.

Like so many of its counterparts across the country, the Oakland LGBTQ Community Center has been struggling this year — but Hawkins, Myers and Holden are fighters for their people. “We believe in fighting with every ounce of strength we have,” said Myers, “to make sure our community is seen and heard and has a safe space to access essential services.”

“It’s a life-or-death struggle,” added Hawkins, “and we’re not going away... The stakes are just too high.”