The Rainbow Cafe was bustling with people slipping between the building and the Rainbow Community Health and Wellness Center next door. Booths displaying services from around southern Illinois lined the hallways and walls. A speaker from Equality Illinois and a march capped off the warm Tuesday, March 31.
Kelsey Maffett, the chair of the board for Rainbow Cafe LGBTQ Center, said that the goal of the event was to connect trans people in the area to as many resources as possible at one time. Some of the resources that Maffett mentioned included gender-affirming haircuts, gender-affirming makeup, health care resources, harm-reduction resources, gender-affirming health care providers, legal services, food security and affirming churches.
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“The goal is to provide one safe place for trans folks to access as many different types of resources as possible and hopefully walk away with some tangible benefit,” Maffett said. “Whether that’s somebody they can call, whether that’s a knowledge of a provider they didn’t have before, or specifically walking out of here with Narcan or sexual health products or something that can truly make a difference and help somebody access something that may otherwise be cost prohibitive.”
Narcan is a rapid treatment medication for the effects of opioid overdoses, according to narcan.com.
According to Freddy Siglar, the Rainbow Cafe LGBTQ Center is a community center dedicated to providing a safe space for individuals who identify as LGBTQ. Siglar is the youth program coordinator for Rainbow Cafe and a qualified mental health professional at Rainbow Community Health and Wellness.
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According to Siglar the community center originally was an after-school program to provide a safe space for LBGTQ youth but they have since expanded. Now, the community center offers resources not just for youth.
“We have free HIV testing and other STI testing as well,” Siglar said. “We offer behavioral health, which I do a good chunk of the behavioral health here. That includes counseling, therapy of any kind. And also, like I said, I do like some of the mental health workshops at the youth center as well.”
According to Maffett, Carbondale is in a unique place to offer care to a variety of individuals not just in southern Illinois but also to people from neighboring states.
“It is truly the furthest south place that you can access certain types of healthcare at this point,” Maffett said. “We have a large group of community members who have come from Texas, Florida, Georgia, other states, either seeking a community of support, seeking health care that they weren’t able to access in those other states.”
José “Che-Che” Wilson, the director of civic engagement at Equality Illinois, spoke at the fair and echoed Maffett’s statement about Carbondale’s part in providing resources to LGTBQ people in Illinois and the surrounding states.
“This is a community here in Carbondale. You might not know it, but you folks are literally on the front lines,” he said.
“We have people coming in from Texas, Oklahoma, and Florida, and the first place they stopped is here in Carbondale,” Wilson said.
Wilson attested to Carbondale’s contribution to Illinois’ reputation, referencing a letter by Governor Pritzker saying that trans people moved to Illinois from another state. Pritzker said on Illinois.gov, “If you’re looking for a place to be authentically yourself, come to Illinois—a state where, regardless of who you are, we celebrate all Illinoisians, recognize their accomplishments, and fight to protect rights to live with dignity and respect.”
“This community is so vital to the ecosystem of defending and protecting LGBTQ rights in the state of Illinois,” Wilson said about Carbondale in his speech. “And I want you to know that because even your presence here is so important.”
Being present was one of the reasons that the Trans Resource Fair was put together. “Now more than ever, you know, federally really it’s a scary time (to) be trans. It’s a scary time to be queer, and it’s a scary time to be even an ally,” Maffett said.
“To be able to bring folks together and say, ‘Here are people you can count on. Here are groups and resources and providers that you can count on, and we’re here. We’re in this area.’ Part of it is visibility and representation and showing there are people in this community who care about you and you can find them here anytime, but you can especially find them here twice a year at the trans resource fair where we can all bring everybody together.”
Photo editor Enan Chediak can be reached at echediak@dailyegyptian.com or @enanchediak on instagram.
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