#hsval

The Huntsville, AL trans community partnered with TFSS this year to plan Trans Pride events. They hired one local person to be the liaison and coordinator for "Alabama", and assigned him tasks and jobs that he should have had a team to help him with. TFSS stalled on pride planning multiple times with him, always told him to ask for help when he needed it but never gave it when he asked, and ultimately fired him when he asked for disability accommodations.

Right before he was fired, he had put together the planning committee for Trans Pride. I was the Entertainment head. TFSS went silent for a month, not telling the planning committee anything whatsoever.

From there, it was just red flag after red flag after red flag with TFSS. They promised security, a fence around the event, bag checks, etc and reneged on all of those promises multiple times, waffling instead of committing to anything specific. They refused to listen to the local community on safety.

They repeatedly acted as if we had the same resources they do in California, which, if you know Alabama and the South, we don't. They kept acting as if the police would be enough security when repeatedly police have shown to be untrustworthy.

The head of TFSS, Kathie Moehlig, refused to let the planning committee do its jobs and actually plan and make decisions. Every single decision had to be made through her. She repeatedly tried to backhandedly embarrass and blame the ex-employee in front of the committee for things that were her fault and her responsibility. She never told me what budget I was working with for hiring entertainment, and refused to accept any plan and schedule that didn't include multiple drag entertainers. Which, on that last point, is fine and makes sense, but I don't know the drag performers in my city very well, and despite asking multiple times, no one gave me anyone's info or directed them to sign up.

Not to mention Huntsville has a massive line up of events in June, 9 of which include drag entertainment. So most drag performers were booked solid.

Which was stressful for me, and happened literally last week as of this post.

The past week has been the planning committee head, the person TFSS fired, and myself arguing with Kathie about safety measures. She refused to give us a committed answer, hemming and hawwing about it. The planning head finally had enough, emailed all the vendors that there was no confirmed security, and quit.

I had, as of Friday last week, threatened to quit if Kathie couldn't promise there would be some form of barrier around the event. I had not quit yet.

Yesterday, after the planning head quit, Kathie chose for me, and texted me saying she understood my fears and want to no longer work on the event, and removed me as entertainment head and as a volunteer. I had not quit yet. Which to me, read as Kathie confirming there would be no barrier.

I emailed the entertainment about the lack of security and that if they had questions or concerns to talk to Kathie.

The ex planning head and I are both local queer/trans organizers. And this cis woman from California fired us because we wouldn't refused to budge on matters of safety for our community.

The person TFSS fired is still volunteering, and has told the ex planning head and myself what's happening. Kathie is doing damage control. She sent an email to all the vendors stating that she had hired "a security company" (no name, just a security company) and was working on getting the city permit amended to include barriers. Which was news to literally everyone involved.

Now she has added bag checks and specified entrances and exits.

Pride is this Saturday.

The local community as I know it is furious with TFSS for this shit show. Time is a flat circle and even amongst the queer community, people from the west coast think they can come into the South and fix everything because we don't know anything. And it's infuriating. That was the vibe the entire time, every meeting we had.