Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer and the LGBTQ City Attorney Employees Association hosted “LGBTQ Life: One Year After Trump,” a panel discussion about LGBTQ issues in the year since President Donald J. Trump’s inauguration, on Jan. 18 at Los Angeles City Hall.

Panelists at City Hall spoke in front of rows of attendees at Council Chambers. (photo by Luke Harold)

“We are all wishing that we are in a nation where the values that were expressed by our leadership were those that would unite us, bring us together, find the common ground,” City Attorney Mike Feuer said in front of a full City Council Chamber. “And lead us to look to each other as sources of strength, where we appreciate and respect each other. That has not been the track record in the first year of the Trump administration, and all of us are hoping very much that that changes.”

In November last year, Feuer called for more reporting of hate crimes after county officials revealed that LGBT members were the most-targeted group for such crimes.

“None of us wants to look back on this period in history and ask, ‘Where were we?’” Feuer said. “Were we on the sidelines? Were we spectators? I don’t think this is a moment that any of us can afford to be a spectator.”

State Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens), one of the panelists, said the Legislature’s response has been to “double down” on its values.

“What we decided to do in the Legislature is double down on who we are, and our values as Californians,” Lara said. “Understanding that it was going to be ruthless, that it was going to be tiring, but that every day that we got up in the Legislature, we had to figure out how to outsmart not only this entire administration, this president, but this growing sentiment of what it means to be American and what it means to be a Californian.”

Californians in the state’s Democratic strongholds, including Los Angeles, have taken pride in calling themselves “the resistance” to the Trump administration.

“We’ve proven that we can be a progressive state, we can be unapologetic about who we are,” Lara said. “Not only is the sky not going to fall, but we’re going to succeed economically.”

Another panelist, Jocelyn Samuels, served as the director of the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“Having been a part of the federal government, I can say … there are really committed career employees still in the federal government who care about the original mission of their agencies, and who really do see the government as a force for promoting social good,” said Samuels, who now serves as the executive director of the Williams Institute, a UCLA think tank that conducts research on sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy.

“Depriving these communities in need is an extraordinarily cruel and potentially life-threatening thing to do.”

The third panelist was Nancy Marcus, a law and policy senior attorney at Lambda Legal, an organization dedicated to LGBTQ equality.

“Across the country, LGBT organizations and our allies, including the business community, really rallied to our cause because people are humans, they really don’t want to be a part of that kind of discrimination,” Marcus said.

Brian Pendleton, founder of the #ResistMarch that replaced the traditional L.A. Pride Parade in 2017, moderated the discussion.

“There isn’t a more progressive, advanced-thinking society in the country than right here [in California],” he said.