The New Underground Railroad.

The Underground Railroad help Blacks flee slavery to Canada and non-slavery states, the new underground railroad helps trans children flee oppressive state.

Colorado group helps other transgender people escape hostile states, unsafe conditions

KXAN

by: Cora Neas

August 23, 2024

Transgender Texans, frequently the targets of antagonistic state legislation and policies, continually weigh the threats to their civil rights against the costs of relocating to safer, more survivable states.

A recent directive at the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Driver’s License Office instructs employees to disregard court orders for sex marker changes, which are currently legal under Texas law. It also told employees to report any Texans who present such an order, which stirred fears that state law enforcement may create a list of transgender people.

Only 0.43% of adult Texans and 1.42% of Texans aged 13-17 identify as transgender, according to the UCLA Williams Institute. That’s around 122,700 people — less than the population of College Station.

That is why they pick on us, we don’t have the political power to fight back, so like most bullies they pick on the little guy.

Conversations in Texas transgender communities this week included talk of “escape plans” to flee eroding civil rights. Similar conversations came during the 2023 regular legislative session, when state lawmakers filed more anti-LGBTQ+ legislation than any prior session.

I despise what the are doing to us just so that they can get political power! The only thing that saved us were the courts but Trump changed all that by appointing far-right judges who put the Bible before the Constitution.

Moving to another state can cost thousands of dollars, disconnects a person from their community and medical care. Remote work may remain an option for some, but most Americans would also need to find a new job after such a move.

Those prohibitive factors are ones that Denver-based nonprofit Trans Continental Pipeline (TCP) hopes to ameliorate.

“We help queer people get out of the states that don’t really like us and come to Colorado,” TCP executive director Keira Richards said. “We’ve been told by national analysts that Colorado is the safest state for queer people. So we’re trying to help people get here.”

I know that so trans people came to Connecticut to find safety, but remember Connecticut only stays Blue if you vote! Connecticut is Blue only because the cities, all the rest of Connecticut is deep red, the only thing that the Connecticut Republicans care about is their pocketbooks.

Richards describes TCP as a support and networking organization, able to provide contacts for housing, employment and transition-related medical care providers.

“We can get people free flights. We can offer grants to help with the relocation. We can manage a lot of the logistical side of things,” Richards said. “There is a certain amount of autonomy that they would need. We can only do so much, so they certainly need to take control of their move.”

That should become the model for other states to follow. However, Trump has vowed to make the ant-trans laws nationwide!

 

And other organizations are also stepping up.

These Trans People And Their Families Can't Afford To Flee To A Friendlier State
These families are desperate to leave their anti-LGBTQ+ states — but it’s not that simple.
HuffPost

By Nico Lang
August 16, 2024

Bradie Anderson has been fighting to be herself for as long as she can remember. She knew she was a girl ever since she was very young, but others haven’t always seen it that way. When Bradie was 7 years old, her Catholic elementary school in Ohio gave her the choice to either pretend to be a boy or leave, so she left. And being the only out trans girl at her new public school drew the wrong kind of attention: At one point, a group of boys added her to a group chat in which they threatened to violently attack and castrate her.

[...]

Many families of trans youth across the country have come to that same realization now that 25 states have passed laws restricting some or all forms of transition care to minors, whether in the form of hormone replacement therapy, puberty blockers, or surgical interventions, the latter of which are rarely performed on patients under 18. A 2024 survey from the National Center for Transgender Equality found that 47% of trans respondents had considered leaving their state following the introduction of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. But the reality is that the vast majority will not have the resources to do so.

But for many trans people the option pf moving is not an option... 

Thousands of trans people and their families have been displaced from their homes as a result of the ongoing trans refugee crisis in the United States. When the progressive think tank Data for Progress polled trans Americans in June 2023 about whether they intended to leave their states due to the introduction of anti-trans legislation, 43% said they had been weighing whether to do so, and 5% of respondents said they had already moved. That figure represents about 80,000 people being forced to flee their homes, according to separate data from the Williams Institute, a pro-LGBTQ+ think tank at the University of California, Los Angeles, that puts the U.S. adult trans population at around 1.6 million.

These numbers indicate there are more than 1.5 million trans people left behind in the mass migration from anti-LGBTQ+ states ― and even that picture is incomplete, as the Williams Institute did not include trans youth in its data. About 300,000 young people between the ages of 13 and 17 in the U.S. identify as trans or nonbinary, as the institute’s own reporting estimated in June 2022. (Many advocates believe that this figure is itself an undercount because of the difficulty of reaching trans kids to survey them, particularly if their parents aren’t supportive of their identities.)

This is something you expect from Russia or China or Iran not here in the United States... Vote Blue as if your life depends upon it because it does for other trans people.!

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Update 6:00PM

A friend pointed out that there is also an underground railroad for abortions!

The abortion underground: Groups quietly help women who have to travel to access care
“We're squirting a bottle of water at a building that is on fire. But it is something that people can do ... ," one volunteer said.

NBC News

By Adam Edelman

September 1, 2019

It was a warm June afternoon when Judith Plaskow got the email reminding her of a guest arriving soon.

The woman staying at Plaskow's Washington Heights apartment was a stranger who needed to be picked up at the Port Authority bus terminal on Manhattan's West Side. She was young — just 19 — and had never been to New York City before. Plaskow guessed she'd be scared.

The woman wasn't coming to the big city for thrills or fun. There'd be no Broadway show, no visit to the Empire State building. She was making a 10-hour trip to receive safe, legal abortion care — because where she is from, it is not possible to get it.

[...]

Thus, an increasing number of groups like Haven have emerged in recent years whose sole aim is to aid women who have no other option but to travel. Together with regional "abortion funds," another category of volunteer groups that communicates with clinics to cover the actual cost of care, they comprise a robust but quietly functioning network working to preserve abortion as a fundamental right, even for people who live where that right is increasingly being challenged.

What is this country coming to?