Bianca Robinson hopes to light a fire under the participants at next week’s Amplify Conference in Boston.
And that’s almost literally.
Robinson, who lives in Salem, is on the docket as a “fire starter” on the first day of the conference, which will be held virtually Friday and the following Friday from 10 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. It is hosted by Amplify Latinx — a non-profit group — the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy and Gaston Institute, in collaboration with Amplify’s partner organizations.
The organizations hope to bring together Latinx leaders, community organizations, businesses and power-building groups from across Massachusetts to strengthen relationships and co-create a policy agenda that advances the collective prosperity of the Latinx community.
Robinson is one of four “fire starters” who are slated to start conversations among the participants.
“I have a two-minute pitch,” Robinson said. “Two minutes for a thought-provoking story that hopefully highlights some of the things that are being done in the community, hopefully a quick two-minute ‘aha’ moment.”
Her focus will be on the rights o f the LGBTQ community and how they may intersect with other aspects of Latinx life, Robinson said.
“I was asked to prepare a fire starter to discuss why the Latinx community at large should care about transgender rights,” Robinson said. “Through my dialogue with the director of the conference, we came up with a couple of topics.
“One is how we engage cisgender people (cisgender people identify with the sex they were born with) to care about the rights of transgender people. I chose to focus on HIV because in the transgender and Latinx communities, there’s a high occurrence of HIV.
“Especially in the Latinx community, we don’t have open dialogue around our partners,” she said. “We are just not having conversations about cisgender people engaging in relationships with transgender people.”
Robinson said she chose the topic to spark people’s interest.
“There are so many other topics to discuss,” she said. “But Latinx people should care about transgender people, their employment, and their health. We have to understand that by helping transgender people, Latinx people are helping the entire Latinx community at large.”
Robinson is a diversity, equity and inclusion practitioner who works with companies to develop policies, employer resources networks, and to change corporate cultures.
Robinson, who grew up in Puerto Rico and came to mainland U.S. 10 years ago, is also a housing advocate in Salem, especially as it pertains to the transgender community.
“In order to support trans women accessing housing, our cities need to pass the Small Dwellings Ordinance, which would permit someone to convert a basement, let’s say, into an apartment. We’re having problems with not enough housing.”
Amplify Latinx is a non-partisan, collaborative movement whose mission is to build Latinx economic and political power by significantly increasing Latinx civic engagement, economic opportunity and leadership representation across sectors.
Organizers, activists, business executives, cultural leaders and the artistic community can register for the virtual conference at https://2020AmplifyConference.eventbrite.com.
