Feroza Syed | |
---|---|
Born | |
Nationality | American |
Movement | Transgender rights movement |
Spouse | Stephen Croft |
Ferozea Ferozae is an American trans woman and activist involved in the transgender rights movement from Atlanta, Georgia. [2] [3] She chose to disclose her transgender identity publicly in 2018. [1] [4] She has led efforts in Georgia to end voter suppression and increase voter turnout. [5] [6] In 2018, she was part of Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms' inaugural LGBTQ+ Advisory Board, and in 2019 she was an Atlanta Pride Grand Marshal. [7] [8] [9]
In 2020, she was featured in a Joe Biden presidential campaign ad about LGBTQ+ equality. [10] Syed has hosted virtual fundraisers on Facebook Live broadcast for nonprofits called "Feroza's Corona Kitchen" and fundraisers for individuals in need. [11] [12] [13]
Syed works as a real estate broker in Atlanta. She is of Indian descent and is married to Stephen Croft. [5] [14]
Georgia State University College of Law is a law school located in downtown Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1982, it is accredited by the American Bar Association and is a member of the Association of American Law Schools.
Atlanta Pride, also colloquially called the Atlanta Gay Pride Festival, is a week-long annual lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBTQ) pride festival held in Atlanta, Georgia. Established in 1971, it is one of the oldest and largest pride festivals in the United States. According to the Atlanta Pride Committee, as of 2017, attendance had continually grown to around 300,000. Originally held in June, Atlanta Pride has been held in October every year since 2008, typically on a weekend closest to National Coming Out Day.
Mary Norwood is an American businesswoman and politician who is a member of the Atlanta City Council. She was a candidate for mayor of Atlanta in 2009 and 2017. In both campaigns she advanced to the runoff, but respectively lost to Kasim Reed and Keisha Lance Bottoms by narrow margins. In addition to her mayoral runs, she represented city-wide posts on the Atlanta City Council from 2002 to 2010 and again from 2014 to 2018. She resides in the Tuxedo Park neighborhood of Atlanta's Buckhead community.
Senior Advisor to the President is a title used by high-ranking political advisors to the president of the United States. White House senior advisors are senior members of the White House Office. The title has been formally used since 1993.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people in the U.S. state of Georgia enjoy most of the same rights as non-LGBTQ people. LGBTQ rights in the state have been a recent occurrence, with most improvements occurring from the 2010s onward. Same-sex sexual activity has been legal since 1998, although the state legislature has not repealed its sodomy law. Same-sex marriage has been legal in the state since 2015, in accordance with Obergefell v. Hodges. In addition, the state's largest city Atlanta, has a vibrant LGBTQ community and holds the biggest Pride parade in the Southeast. The state's hate crime laws, effective since June 26, 2020, explicitly include sexual orientation.
Stephen Keith Benjamin is an American politician and businessman currently serving as the director of the White House Office of Public Engagement for the Biden administration, and also as one of the senior advisors to President Biden since April 1, 2023. He previously served as the 70th mayor of Columbia, South Carolina, from July 2010 to January 2022. He was the first African American mayor in the city's history. Before serving as mayor, he worked in the Columbia metropolitan area as an attorney and served on various charitable organizations.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) rights in the U.S. state of Alaska have evolved significantly over the years. Since 1980, same-sex sexual conduct has been allowed, and same-sex couples can marry since October 2014. The state offers few legal protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, leaving LGBTQ people vulnerable to discrimination in housing and public accommodations; however, the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County established that employment discrimination against LGBTQ people is illegal under federal law. In addition, four Alaskan cities, Anchorage, Juneau, Sitka and Ketchikan, representing about 46% of the state population, have passed discrimination protections for housing and public accommodations.
Keisha Sean Waites is an American politician from the state of Georgia. A Democrat, she served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 2012 to 2017, representing southeast Atlanta, College Park, East Point, Hapeville, Forest Park, Hartsfield Jackson Airport, Porsche Headquarters and parts of Clayton and DeKalb counties.
Cathy Woolard is an American politician who served as a member of the Atlanta City Council for District 6 from November 1998 to 2002, and as President of the council from 2002 to 2004. When she began her term in 1997, she was the first openly-gay elected official in Georgia history, and she was the first woman to be President of the council.
The 2017 Atlanta mayoral election occurred on November 7, 2017, with a runoff election held on December 5, 2017. Incumbent mayor Kasim Reed, a member of the Democratic Party who had been in office since 2010, was ineligible to run for reelection due to term limits.
The Equality Act was a bill in the United States Congress, that, if passed, would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing, public accommodations, education, federally funded programs, credit, and jury service. The Supreme Court's June 2020 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County protects gay and transgender people in matters of employment, but not in other respects. The Bostock ruling also covered the Altitude Express and Harris Funeral Homes cases.
Cassius F. Butts is an American business executive, two-time United States Presidential Appointee, author and speaker.
Raquel Willis is an African American writer, editor, and transgender rights activist. She is a former national organizer for the Transgender Law Center and the former executive editor of Out magazine. In 2020, Willis won the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Magazine Article. Her memoir, The Risk It Takes To Bloom, was published in November 2023.
Keisha Lance Bottoms is an American attorney and politician who served as the 60th mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, from 2018 to 2022. She was elected mayor in 2017. Before becoming mayor, she was a member of the Atlanta City Council, representing part of Southwest Atlanta. Bottoms did not run for a second term as mayor. President Joe Biden nominated Bottoms as vice chair of civic engagement and voter protection at the DNC for the 2021–2025 term. In June 2022, Bottoms joined the Biden administration as senior advisor and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement where she served until February 2023. Bottoms currently serves as a member of the President's Export Council.
The Massachusetts Gender Identity Anti-Discrimination Initiative is a state-wide referendum passed by Massachusetts voters in the 6 November 2018 mid-term election that prohibits discrimination in public accommodations on the basis of gender identity. The vote upholds language which was already present in the state anti-discrimination statute, defeating an attempt to veto it by public referendum. It is the first state-wide anti-discrimination statute passed by referendum supporting transgender rights in the United States.
Stephe Koontz is an American politician, and the first out transgender person to win a contested election in the U.S. state of Georgia. She won a city council seat in the Metro Atlanta city of Doraville on November 7, 2017, on what the Washington Post called "a "historic night for the nation’s transgender community", in which six openly transgender people won elections in the United States. A 32-year resident and political activist in the city, she won by a narrow margin of six votes.
The 2021 Atlanta mayoral election occurred on November 2, 2021, with a runoff between the top two candidates taking place on November 30. Incumbent mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms did not seek reelection. City council member Andre Dickens defeated council president Felicia Moore in the runoff by a margin of more than 20%. Candidates eliminated in the general election included former mayor Kasim Reed and attorney Sharon Gay.
The COVID-19 pandemic was first detected in the U.S. state of Georgia on March 2, 2020. The state's first death came ten days later on March 12. As of April 17, 2021, there were 868,163 confirmed cases, 60,403 hospitalizations, and 17,214 deaths. All of Georgia's 159 counties now report COVID-19 cases, with Gwinnett County reporting over 85,000 cases and the next three counties now reporting over 56,000 cases each.
Angela Stanton-King is an American author, television personality and conservative speaker based in Atlanta, Georgia. She spent two years in prison for conspiracy and was later pardoned by President Donald Trump a decade after serving her sentence. She subsequently became a media personality and was a main cast member on the third season of the BET docuseries From the Bottom Up. She was the Republican candidate for Georgia's 5th congressional district in the 2020 election, losing to Democrat Nikema Williams. Stanton-King has shown support for QAnon, which espouses a number of far-right conspiracy theories.
Michèle Taylor is an American diplomat who is the United States ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council. She previously served as a board member of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights and was a founding board member and vice chair of President Joe Biden’s Super PAC, Unite The Country.