Creer, Vincent
Pride Center of Vermont
RRASC 2015 Cohort
RRASC Final Report
Interning at the Pride Center of Vermont in Burlington, VT exists as one of the most
transformative experiences of my life. This internship challenged me in exciting new
ways and gave me the skills I need in order to become the social justice superstar I aspire
to be. Allow me to recap my experience by outlining my duties at the pride center
followed by a reflection on what I learned while interning there.
My main projects while working at the pride center included organizing Trans Town
Halls, creating three of my own events, updating the center’s website, advertising
upcoming events, and managing all the center’s social media accounts. I helped organize
the center’s Trans Town Halls, which are monthly events that bring together
professionals and people with lived experience to talk about trans issues. There is a new
theme every month, ranging from body positivity to navigating medical insurance as a
trans person. My specific role in these town halls was to create welcome pamphlets that
include the speaker’s biographies, a description of the trans community program,
feedback forms, and a list of the upcoming events and ongoing trans support groups.
These pamphlets were distributed to the attendees of the town halls.
The Trans Town Halls had a lasting impact on the community, because they provided
a platform for trans people to meet other trans people from the area, connected people
with a long list of trans-friendly health care providers, exposed people to a variety of
trans-friendly retailers in Vermont, and offered an opportunity to engage in high-risk
conversations about trans issues. The pamphlets played a crucial role in the town hall’s
success, because they contained feedback forms, which helped the Trans Community
Program (the team of people who organized the event) improve the Town Halls each
month. They also reminded the attendees of all of the upcoming events and ongoing
support groups, which helped keep them connected with the community.
My second project tasked me to create three events designed to bring people of all
ages into the community center. Creating these events meant coming up with the ideas,
advertising the events via social media, facilitating the events, and managing any other
logistics surrounding the event. The first event I created was called “Dance Around the
World,” which was a dance class that showcased three global dance styles: American
ballet, Irish tap dance, and hip-hop. The second event we held was a screening of the
movie Tomboy—a film about a young boy struggling with the obstacles presented to him
as he transitioned from female to male. Lastly, we held an event called “Queer Potluck
and Storytelling,” where we ate food and took turns telling each other stories.
All three events made a lasting impact in their own unique way. Dance Around the
World was successful because it brought cultural awareness to the center, an element that
was definitely missing from it. Screening Tomboy was magnificent because it exposed
many of the cisgender attendees to the hardships transgender youth may face while
growing up. In doing so, it caused attendees like myself to check our own privileges and
think critically about our own lived experiences under oppression. The Queer Potluck and
Storytelling worked to fight ageism in the community by bringing together people
ranging from ages 16 to 70. The event encouraged people to talk to people of all different
ages and provided a platform where they could share stories from their own lives. Many
of the older attendees spoke about what it was like growing up as a queer person in the
60s, 70s, and 80s while many of the younger people spoke about what it is like growing
up in the 90s and throughout the 21st century. These stories were powerful because they
really encouraged people to challenge their assumptions about people of different age
groups.
My third project was updating the Trans Resource Guide. The Trans Resource Guide
is an online database that lists trans-friendly medical professionals, retailers, and legal
resources in the Vermont area as well as coming-out guides, name-change guides, and
trans-inclusive media (i.e. books, movies, television programs, etc.). The guide is
designed to help trans people from all walks of life find the resources they need in a
simple and accessible way. Specifically, my role entailed reentering all of the information
into a new system and redesigning the layout of the guide so it could be easier to use.
This proved to be an imperative job since so many trans people in the Vermont area
struggle with finding resources like the ones listed in the guide. The project also sparked
a movement within the office designed to teach Vermont’s medical professionals how to
be more trans-inclusive. Working on this project also exposed me to the many barriers
that trans people face when trying to access medical and legal care.
Lastly, I was in charge of managing the center’s social media accounts. This duty
means I was in charge of creating Facebook events for the center’s upcoming events,
publicizing those events via Twitter and Instagram, and adding those events to the
calendar on the center’s website. This was a particularly fundamental role because social
media is the primary way that small, rural community centers, like the pride center, are
able to connect with people from all over the state. Unlike big cities, small, rural states
have people who live rather far from each other, meaning it is not always accessible for
everyone to constantly visit the community center. Therefore, social media offers a way
for people to stay connected with the center without necessarily having to visit the center.
During my internship, I most utilized graphic design, communication, social media,
website design, editing, advertising, marketing, and writing skills. Creating Facebook
events helped me enrich most of those talents. Facebook is a social media platform with
many different facets ranging from posting pictures to writing text posts to simply
browsing through one’s news feed, meaning there are many different ways to utilize the
site. Over the summer, I was tasked to use the site in a much different way than I was
accustomed to, as I had to create intriguing and witty Facebook event titles and
descriptions that would intrigue people to attend the center’s programs. Therefore, I
enhanced my communication skills by informing the public of upcoming events. I
strengthened my editing skills by making certain that the description for each event was
clear, concise, and contained zero grammatical errors. I sharpened my advertising skills
by simply getting comfortable with posting events. I honed marketing skills by
concocting provocative titles and designing beautiful cover photos that caught the
audience’s attention and kept them interested in actually attending the center’s programs.
Throughout my internship, I had difficulty with staying motivated, socializing with
the executive director, and with fighting white supremacy. A lot of work at the Pride
Center can be tedious; I arrived at work at 11am, checked my email, updated the
calendar, designed cover art, made a Facebook post or two, and then updated the trans
resource guide. Afterwards, I repeated the cycle. This monotonous routine sometimes
tempted me to procrastinate on my duties, but I had to keep telling myself that the work I
was doing was meaningful (because it is) and, therefore, push past my procrastination by
continuing to work hard.
Due to the fact that I found myself actively procrastinating because of the monotony
of my work routine, I often felt like I was not doing a good enough job. Therefore, I felt
embarrassed in front of the center’s executive director, Kim Fountain, since I felt like she
also thought I was doing a poor job. It turns out that Kim actually believed I was doing an
excellent job and that I was an invaluable resource to the center, which was uplifting
news. This news taught me to not be afraid to socialize with my colleagues based on my
unchallenged idea of how they perceive me, but by how they actually treat me.
White supremacy and, subsequently, racism are excruciatingly pervasive in
Burlington. To give you some context, the town is 96% white, and much of the state is
exceptionally conservative. Therefore, you find a lot of people (especially white people)
looking at people of color (i.e. me) with worry, suspicion, or disdain. This agonizing
racial climate left me feeling afraid, causing me to fear entering convenience stores, as I
worried someone would think I was stealing. It pushed me away from wearing hoodies at
night because I worried a cop would mistake me for a criminal. Essentially, racism in
Burlington, VT is much stronger than that of Long Beach, CA (my hometown), causing
me to think about my black identity in ways I never had before.
Although I had awful experiences with racism while interning in Burlington, I think
that the experience itself (racism included) definitely helped prepare me for my future
career as a human rights activist with an emphasis on the intersection of race, class,
gender, and sexuality. Most notably, my internship taught me how small, rural, non-profit
organizations function and how to actually be a good ally.
Small rural non-profits are tiny, meaning they operate on minimal staff with minimal
resources. From cleaning toilets to managing finances, each employee assumes
practically every role imaginable needed to run a non-profit, due to their lack of staff and
resources. Additionally, I learned that social media is your best friend when running a
non-profit in a rural area. As I mentioned earlier, since Vermont is so rural, many people
living in the state do not always find it accessible to travel to the center, so it is important
to maintain a strong social media presence in order to stay connected with those who
cannot always visit. Additionally, the conservative atmosphere of the state does not
always make visiting the pride center accessible since doing so may ‘out’ the person or
make them susceptible to violence in their town. These are facts that I now know going
forward, and they taught me to understand that location has a monumental impact on the
culture of the place you are working and, subsequently, how you go about that work.
Furthermore, working at the pride center taught me how to actually be a good ally.
Most of my duties at the pride center involved me helping the trans community, meaning
I, a cisgender male, had to actively fight for trans rights and liberation. While I found no
problem in doing that, I did misgender people at times and get slightly uncomfortable
when in the presence of trans people. These microagressions caused me to realize how
underdeveloped my allyship to the trans community was. Luckily, by the end of the
summer I was no longer committing those same microagressions, which helped me learn
that allyship is a process, not a destination.
Speaking of trans issues, I learned so much about the barriers trans people face when
trying to access health care. Trans people must navigate a medical system where many
doctors almost always misgender them, trivialize their experiences, or flat-out deny them
treatment. Additionally, they have to deal with transphobic questions like “choose your
gender: male or female” when filling out paperwork in medical offices. These oppressive
questions do not speak to their lived experiences and make it even harder for them to
articulate their needs to medical professionals. If they actually find a doctor’s office that
does not do those things, their battle with accessing appropriate healthcare is still far from
over. They still have to deal with insurance providers who deny them coverage for crucial
surgeries like breast augmentations or charge excruciatingly expensive co-pays for access
to hormone therapy or psychiatric care. The intersection of health care and trans rights is
just one of the many examples of how I learned more about the intersections of
reproductive justice and social justice issues while interning at the pride center.
The Pride Center of Vermont is an amazing organization, and my internship was so
wonderful because of that fact. As I mentioned earlier, there were monotonous moments
and tough challenges while working there, but those things all made interning at the pride
center so enlightening. The entire RRASC experience taught me how to live alone, how
to love myself, how to practice self-care, how to actually be a good ally, as well as
bringing me closer to my black identity. For that, I am forever thankful.
As for future interns, I suggest you all brace yourselves because interning at the Pride
Center of Vermont (or any RRASC location) is not easy. You will have to pull yourself
out of sticky situations, cry on your own shoulder, work tirelessly, interrogate your own
identities in challenging new ways, reevaluate your devotion to social justice, and rethink
your professional future. However, you will grow tremendously from it and cherish all of
the experiences afforded to you—both good and bad.