Summer of Advocacy 2025: Days 1 & 2 Wrap Up

Tuesday, April 8th was my first day of my Summer of Advocacy 2025 and I visited the NC Legislature (pictured above) to meet with my district representatives and try to catch up to Senator Brad Overcash before my op-ed is published. Major thanks to Equality NC, Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, and ACLU NC for getting my foot in the door and helping distribute the op-ed.

First, I met with Representative Sarah Crawford, a Democrat representing my NC House District 66 in Wake County at 9am. She is one of the few members of the LGBTQ Caucus in the NC House. She listened to my story with intent and we talked about exactly how damaging H791 (the House version of S516) – the “bathroom bill” would be to North Carolina K-12 and higher education students. She read a draft of my op-ed and I’ll be sending her the final version when I wrap up this post. She reminded me that the entire NC legislature is up for reelection in 2016. There are two House districts that we may be able to flip. House District 35, currently held by Republican Mike Schietzelt and House District 37 held by Republican Erin Paré. Both districts are in Wake County.

Next we went over to the Legislative Office Building (LOB) to sit in on the Senate Judiciary committee meeting to try and catch Sen. Overcash. I game planned with the Planned Parenthood lobbyist to watch the doors (there are four sets on the sides of the room for members to enter and exit, but only one public entrance, at the back next to the gallery seating). About fifteen minutes into the meeting, Sen. Overcash stood up and walked out without saying a door. I immediately sprung up and started to follow him, thinking he was going to his office, right around the corner from the meeting room. I headed that way, but the PP lobbyist went out the public entrance, saw him walk to the elevators, press the button, must have seen her – so he took the stairs down and disappeared.

We left the LOB as we had an meeting with Senator Jay Chaudhuri in his office in the main legislative building. The conversation was very similar to the one I had with Rep. Crawford. Very much on the side of LGBTQIA+ rights. He feels that S516 won’t move for a while, but instead Republicans will wait until the end of the session to introduce to the floor. (As of today, it has been introduced the Senate Rules committee, but not yet been scheduled.) So, we do have some time, fortunately.

After that, I tried to catch Sen. Overcash in his office. While unsuccessful, as he was in a closed-door meeting, his legislative assistant was incredibly nice and told me he would pass along a message for Brad to call or email me. Whether or not the LA did or Overcash will act on it is anyone’s guess.

The overwhelming message from both Rep. Crawford and Sen. Chaudhuri is that citizens need to reach out to their local representation! You can find your reps at https://www.ncleg.gov/FindYourLegislators. Call, write an email, or connect with me and I’ll work with my contacts to get you a meeting at the legislature (I’ll even help prepare you and go with you!)

Today, April 9th, I went back to the LOB to sit in on the Senate Education/Higher Education committee meeting. Nothing particularly interesting there, except S754 which is an attempt to realign the K-12 school calendar. The resulting discussion was about the needs of families vs. the tourism industry. Interesting to see which side wins or there can’t be some sort of compromise.

Anyway, even though I was there before 11am, the gallery was already full. I had to wait until they opened up the very back row of speaker seats to sit (which was nice, I had a desk with power outlets and USB ports. I also had a microphone but was warned not to turn it on! 🤣) Moments after I sat down, Overcash walked in to take his seat at the front table, as he’s a co-chair of that committee. Because I was sitting on the end of the row, I had a clear view of him the entire time. But what’s funny is that when he initially walked in, he had a big ole smile on his face. Once we made eye contact, he looked constipated the rest of the meeting. My plan was to chase him down after the meeting, but after about 45 minutes, I decided to take off.

Today at 4pm the Senate will reconvene and have the second reading of S558 “Eliminating DEI in Public Education”, which was also co-sponsored by Sen. Overcash. Tune in at https://www.ncleg.gov/Audio/senate