10-15-2023 Women to Watch - Flipbook - Page 40
Keisha Allen, president of the Westport Neighborhood Association, outside the restored Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Baltimore. Allen is working through programs,
including a community land trust, to keep housing affordable and to improve areas of historic neglect in predominantly Black communities. 2020 FILE
“Especially in the last year or so, I
think we’ve seen quite a bit of backlash against diversity and inclusion,”
Reign said.
Corey Shdaimah, a professor of
social justice at the University of
Maryland School of Social Work, said
activists have long faced pushback.
She points to the Stonewall uprising
that followed a 1969 police raid of a
gay nightclub in New York, a defining moment in the fight for LGBTQ
rights.
“There’s a backlash, particularly in
states where people are being asked
not to be who they are,” Shdaimah
said.
As other states pass anti-LGBTQ
bills affecting schools, sports, health
care and public accommodations,
activist and artist Jamie Grace Alexander (Women to Watch 2020) said
she tries to work close to home.
“One of the biggest things that I do
is focus locally instead of nationally,”
the Black trans activist said.
Even if Maryland is a more liberal
40 | 2023 | WOMEN TO WATCH
state, she said, it still has a wide range
of perspectives and wealth inequities, leaving many trans people “feeling isolated and scared” and unable
to fully access services. That is why
she lauds the Trans Health Care
Equity Act, which expanded the type
of gender-affirming care covered
by Maryland Medicaid, and which
she helped get through the General
Assembly this year.
“The overwhelming positive of
getting a win legislatively is it affects
the entire state of Maryland,” she said.
“Rural places need this just as much.”
For 2017 Women to Watch
honoree Keisha Allen, even neighborhood-level activism is set against
the backdrop of historic neglect of
predominantly Black communities.
As president of the Westport
Neighborhood Association, she is
vigilant about issues of gentrification. Located on the Middle Branch of
the Patapsco River, Westport is home
to one of the city’s last undeveloped
stretches of waterfront — making it
attractive to developers but raising
the fears that longtime residents will
get pushed, or priced, out.
Neighborhood residents have been
working through programs, including
a community land trust, to help keep
housing affordable.
“It’s saving a community,” Allen
said, “that deserves to meet its future.”
But Allen says activism itself can
have its costs, especially for women
of color whose volunteer work can be
taken for granted.
“There is an attitude in Baltimore
City that women, but especially Black
women, are considered a zero-dollar
line-item in budgets,” she said. “We’re
expected to provide all this labor for
free. I’m worried about our Latina
sisters, who are now gaining more
prominence, falling into that trap.”
While still getting an undergraduate education, Marí Perales Sánchez
(Women to Watch 2020) joined her
school, Princeton University, in a
lawsuit against efforts to cancel the
Deferred Action for Childhood Arriv-
als Program. The plaintiffs won their
case in 2020 but challenges to the law
persist. In September, a federal judge
in Texas ruled the Biden administration’s version of DACA was illegal;
however, the decision allowed the
program to continue for now.
Sánchez, who immigrated to the
U.S. from Mexico at 8 years old and
now studies law at Yale University,
said immigrants need concrete and
permanent solutions when pursuing
asylum and residency that don’t rely
explicitly on cases like hers.
Change, she said, is going to “come
from the people, not from the courts.”
The power of the people, especially of the rising Gen Z, keeps Reign
“cautiously optimistic” about the
country’s future, despite the backlash
she’s witnessed.
“Hopefully, that type of a more
inclusive society will come sooner
rather than later,” Reign said. “But I
think we all have a responsibility to do
what we can to make this place better
for our community.”