Be Courageous — Vote With Pride
By Remy Drabkin, Mayor of McMinnville, Oregon
My name is Remy Drabkin — I’m the Mayor of McMinnville, Oregon — a town of 35K people, the county seat in a rural area, the heart of Oregon wine county. I’m also a small business owner (Mayor is 100% volunteer). I’m queer and genderqueer. I’ve been in public service since 2011 and was elected Mayor about two years ago — a lot of people can’t believe they have a gay mayor — and they either love it or they hate it. As Mayor, I work with Tribal, State and Federal governments — I work with the Governor’s office, with our State agencies, and Federal Senators, Congresspeople and if appropriate, even the White House. I work on smart and effective policies that move my City towards justice.
It’s not all glitz and glam, it’s certainly not all kissing babies and cutting ribbons. But it is the most fulfilling work I’ve ever done in my life, other than being a parent. By applying myself to solving our most complex problems — I am able to most change the disparities in how our world functions — little by little. Audre Lorde, a self-described, “Black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, mother, warrior, poet,” tells us “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single issue lives.” As we talk about queer life, queer struggles and queer successes today, I’d like you to keep that in mind — the complexity of our humanity — of our mere existence. I’m often asked what queer people need to overcome a certain struggle, or how queer people are encountered in a certain setting — but aren’t queer people all people? Aren’t we black and brown and white? Queer people are members of every race and ethnicity. We are jewish and muslim and hindi and atheist. We are democrat and republican. We are indigenous and immigrant alike. We are poor, rich, and many of us homeless. We are sober and drug addicted, able bodied and deaf, blind. We are neurodivergent, and folx, a lot of us are neurodivergent.
Queer people are all people, we exist in every realm and so as we think about empowering the queer community and creating queer success stories, we must keep Kimberley Crenshaw’s lessons of intersectionality at the forefront of our minds. As we continue to struggle for queer equality in our systems of government, institutions of learning, in the workplace and in our families — remember that struggle, that fight will reward not only you, but all people.
I grew up in McMinnville, was out to my friends and my high school counselor by 16. My councilor helped me start the high school’s first GSA, which in the 90s meant Gay-Straight Alliance. I was one of 3 out lesbians and about 1 of maybe 8 out gay kids in a school of 1500. There were no Pride celebrations in McMinnville or Yamhill County. Being out and queer was isolating and scary, kids yelled “Dyke” at me in the halls, or “Bull Dyke”. Some studious French kids even called me “Guine” — which I believe is French for Dyke. My friend Molly was one of the other 3 out lesbians, I remember her clearly standing outside the blue lockers in a bright pink dress with tall black boots on, pixie haircut — of course I had crush on her. I remember when she tried to pierce my belly button, straddled me on the floor of my living room, holding an ice cube on my abdomen — butterflies flitting around my stomach from the intimacy of the situation. But mostly, I remember when Molly killed herself. I remember that the Catholic church didn’t want to give her a funeral and her family didn’t want us at the funeral — us gay kids, Molly’s friends.
I remember, we all painted our thumb nails black and smoked cigarettes behind the school, huddled in grief, held our own vigil in a park and we showed up to that funeral anyway. We knew Molly killed herself not because she was queer but because she was rejected for being queer. Molly was told she was an abomination. And at that time, there was nowhere safe to go and talk about all that hate and fear and rejection.
My high school Councilor knew that, and after Molly died, we started the GSA. My councilor resourced the local college and an out student there facilitated our meetings, which were often just eating pizza and watching movies like The Incredibly True Story of Two Girls In Love. Or the facilitator would talk to us about her struggles at Linfield, playing sports and being targeted for the outcomes associated with the passage of Title IX. The rhetoric was that the girls’ teams were taking money away from the football team.
Together we created a space that was safe, easy and didn’t demand anything of us kids — it simply created a sense of belonging. The GSA didn’t heal my grief, but it gave me space to grieve. Now in McMinnville, we have GSAs at the high school and in both middle schools and at our local college and University. In fact, the interim President of Linfield University is an out lesbian! Back in the day there were no gay administrators or teachers or counselors, yet today the McMinnville High School Councilor that runs the current GSA is here and out and proud. Today, as Mayor, I get to go back to high school and visit with GSAs, and come to GSA days to share time with queer students, share stories, encourage them to show up for class, listen to their questions, stories and hopefully contribute to their sense of belonging and hopefulness.
After high school, I lived in Israel, France and Pittsburgh but life eventually landed me back in my hometown. As a young adult, then having lived in queer communities and existed in many queer spaces, I again felt isolated and lacking in community. People referred to me as “The Lesbian” — and other than my partner, who was often introduced as “my friend”, I felt like that was true, like I was the only queer person. There were still no Pride celebrations happening in McMinnville, there had never been a drag show, there were no rainbow flags flying anywhere and even at my own business, I often felt a demand to closet myself. I feared for the safety of my business and more so, I feared that I would lose income if people associated my business with queerness — in short I feared for my own well-being.
Those fears were not unfounded. As I started to fundraise for queer causes, Cascade Aids Project and Basic Rights Oregon, I lost business. But I also gained it. Even today my business is routinely vandalized, my Pride flags and BLM flags regularly destroyed or stolen, and people have gone so far as to publicly admonish my employees for working for “someone like me”. And, my business has grown not in spite of its queerness, but because of its queerness.
Being out in business has made it so that my winery and my leadership in queer spaces have been widely acknowledged — written about in numerous national magazines and online publications. From Wine Spectator to the NY Times, Robb Report and TimeOut Magazine — being openly queer led has attracted business! We hear about it all the time — people seek us out because they know they will be entering an accepting space when they show up at Remy Wines. My business support network has grown as well, my queer network is larger than I could imagine and the general well-being of my company is on an upward trajectory — because of my ‘outness’ as well as my queerness.
My business has become a force for change and for acceptance and most importantly — I no longer live in fear. I am not defined by my hardships, but I am defined by how I have overcome them. You are not defined by your hardships and you are not defined by bullies, the haters, the trolls. You are defined by your words, your actions and how you treat others. You are defined by how you demonstrate empathy.
To me, empathy is believing that other people’s life experiences are as real as mine. Empathy is the root of allyship. In June of 2020 I was at a student led Black Lives Matter rally in McMinnville when I saw a friend from high school. She owns dance studios and her students had been in every local parade I had seen. I yelled out from across the street, “Hey, will you help me put on a Pride celebration at Remy Wines?”
A steadfast ally, my friend pulled together a group of both queers and allies and we hosted a pride celebration — covid safe, live streamed, with an outdoor drag show (the first ever in Yamhill County) and rainbow themed car parade featuring area non-profits all engaged in equity work — and we raised a bunch of money!
We gave the money to the Newberg area PFLAG and jointly started a scholarship program for all 7 of the high schools in our region — we still fund those scholarships. Not only was it a great celebration, it was the incubator for a new non-profit. We started Wine Country Pride whose mission is to create visible celebrations of the queer community while connecting all people through education and economic activity. Wine Country Pride does a lot, we covered Yamhill County in free Pride flags and some BLM flags, we have an annual scholarship program, we funded books featuring queer characters or queer authored into 26 different local school and public libraries and we host year round Pride events. Our efforts are ever evolving, and yes, you can sign up to volunteer on our website, winecountrypride.com.
In our first year as a non-profit, we started hosting Queer Meet Ups in addition to drag shows and a street fair. Explaining to the straight community that queer meet ups weren’t hook up events took a lot of exhausted breath. At the first queer meet up, also held at Remy Wines, someone came in the door timidly. I’d known this person my whole life. “Is it okay that I’m here?” They asked, immediately following up with, “I’m just coming out, so I don’t know if I belong here — I know you’ve been out a long time.”
They came out that evening as a lesbian to a small group, a year later they came out as non-binary, a year later he came out as a transman. Just recently, he hosted a trans meet up at his business — the first ever in Yamhill County! Showing up for your GSA meeting or at your Pride celebration, that isn’t just for you, it’s for everyone. At the start of my story I was scared to be out in business, I was closeted, and I feared for my wellbeing. Now, my business has acted as an incubator for a non-profit which has gone on to have positive reverberations throughout the community — including for other businesses. Wine Country Pride is hosting events in multiple communities and the other businesses are activating in the queer space.
Internally, at Remy Wines, we asked ourselves how we were going to continue to support the queer community from a business standpoint. We decided to lean back into our industry — the wine industry. We established and hosted the world’s first Queer Wine Fest. The criteria for participation was that your winery had to be queer led — either queer owned or with a lead vineyard manager or winemaker that was queer. This year, we’re hosting the 3rd annual Queer Wine Fest on June 30th. Last year we hosted 18 queer led wineries from Oregon, Washington and California. We created a professional network of queer people in the wine industry that had never existed before. On a recent trip to Oregon, queer winemaker Fah from Sunset Cellars in California stopped by my tasting room and told me his entire trip to Oregon was based on the relationships and friends he had made at Queer Wine Fest. Be courageous.
My last story is about being a public servant. I’m not sure what the outcomes of my public service will be, after all, I’m just getting going. I have a lot of small wins right now and I have a lot of hardships. I just got the “deviant sex” laws aka Sodomy laws out of the McMinnville municipal code. It wasn’t even a unanimous vote even though those laws are unconstitutional. That’s a win.
The first public comment I took as Mayor was a middle-aged white woman who asked how the City was going to allow these drag shows (the ones that Wine Country Pride were putting on) to go on. “What are they going to do? Show their genitalia to children?”, she asked. I was gutted. My City Manager suggested we raise a Pride flag above City Hall and we did. That’s a win. I’ve been attacked many times in public meetings. You can’t predict it and people can be cruel. It hurts me — I cry (not during the meeting), I get beat down.
I’d like to remind you that we want empathetic leadership. Empathy is believing that your experience is as real as mine. It is unfair that we expect our public servants to have a ‘thick skin’ and remain empathetic in their leadership. When I try to pick myself back up I say things like: remember, a vocal minority also means there is a silent majority. That never works. My friend Ben Bowman, Oregon State Legislator from District 25 told a story at my campaign launch party, “I worked on the Students United For Marriage campaign when I was in college to try to win marriage equality in Oregon. One thing they taught us was that there was one single piece of demographic information that best predicted whether someone would be supportive of marriage equality or not. It wasn’t party. It wasn’t gender. It wasn’t geography. It wasn’t age. It was whether they knew a gay person.” Then he said, “…and in a town like McMinnville, everyone feels like they know Remy”. And the whole room laughed and smiled warmly in agreement.
That lifted me up. That reminded me to live out loud and to aim high. Briefly, I want to talk to you about aiming high wherever you find yourself in life — in class, or a club, or a job, or how you relate to people in the world. I am high. I applied for scholarship to go to the Victory Institute conference in Washington DC. Their mission is to achieve and sustain equality through leadership development, trainings, research and convenings. They work around the globe to increase the number, expand the diversity, and ensure the success of out LGBTQ+ elected and appointed officials at all levels of government. Basically — they just want queer folk in office.
The Victory Institute Annual Conference is basically what like GSA Days for electeds and others in leadership — it’s AWESOME! Let’s change the world together! When I got the scholarship to attend the conference, I didn’t tell anyone I was going — I kind of closeted the experience — much to my own surprise and dissapointment. I showed up to the conference, beaten down by recent anger targeted at me. I was aware this upcoming election cycle was going to be laced with the reality of identity politics. Quite frankly, it was feeling very oppressive. I showed up to the theme of “You Belong Here”, and the focus was on the general Health, Wealth, and Education of our community. The conference itself was global and accessible, held in both Spanish and English. I heard people like Representative Malcom Kenyatta of PA who told us that when someone started to attack his queerness in public meetings, he would stop them and say: “We can debate anything but my right to exist and to exist fully”. I put that in my toolbox. At that conference, I cried every day because I saw that I wasn’t alone. I learned “luche” in Spanish — struggle because we all struggle. Dr. Martin Luther King tells us, “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability but comes through continuous struggle.”
That conference changed my life — 800 queer leaders from around the globe trying to solve our world’s problems. I kept aiming high, I applied for a Fellowship at Harvard Graduate School of Design, I am one of eight US Mayors accepted into a program that teaches us how to remove racial injustice from our built environment. I recently visited the White House — at the invitation of the United States President where I got to meet Secretary Mayor Pete and thank him for his leadership in queer spaces. I ended up 10 feet away from Queen Latifah on another trip, I mention that only because it’s Queen Latifah. The Swiss Amabassador to the US has asked me to join a small delegation of US Mayors to study Urban Design and Government in Switzerland. I could cowtow to the hate — but I am not defined only by my struggles and I am not defined by the hateful comments or other people’s small mindedness. I am defined by my decisions, my drive, my actions and my willingness to think BIG. Be courageous.
Today I shared my experiences with you. As a white woman, I can’t speak to the experience of all queer people and I can use my position and my privilege to call attention to specific inequities in our systems. A recent report from the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law said that 79 percent of Black LGBT adults have experienced verbal insults, 60 percent have been threatened with physical violence, and 44 percent have been physically or sexually assaulted. Bryan Stevenson from the Equal Justice Initiative tells us, “We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation.”
Currently there are 142 Black LGBTQ+ elected officials in the U.S. — 0.03% of all elected officials. Representation matters. Queer rights and queer equality initiatives have often been led by members of our black community and especially our black trans community — yet white people, and especially white men have most benefited. And now, our non-profit partners tell us many gay white men are leaving the movement, reducing their charitable giving. Complacency is unacceptable. A professor at Florida State recently told me, he received a letter from the State instructing him to remove any DEI course work from his syllabus.
How does it get better?
Good news is: People closest to the problems are also closest to the solutions. Here’s a list of things you can do as students, faculty, researchers, allies and queers to move the needle on queer equality.
· Research queer issues — without data we can’t measure our problems and therefore we can’t provide meaningful solutions.
· Ask allies for help. Queers — Don’t always be the speaker on queer rights.
· Cultivate unlikely allies.
· Hold all administrations accountable.
· Don’t let biased statements go unaddressed — and I recognize that can be really hard
· Gather in person — not just online. Be known.
· People in dominant cultures (men, white people) — your allyship should be bound in action.
· Sharpen your tools — think about my friend Malcom Kenyatta and the tool he gave me — we can debate anything except my right to exist.
· Support your GSAs
· Develop inclusive curriculum.
· Have comprehensive anti-discrimination policies.
· Fight book bans.
· Require school boards to adhere to American Library Association Standards.
· Volunteer for queer organizations and queer candidates.
· Become an educator or counselor or school administrator!
· Become Legislators and City Councilors.
· Be leaders that are seen and are making decisions for your community! Government should be representative of the people!
· VOTE!
· And lastly, Don’t dwell in the past, apply it’s lessons to the future. And BE COURAGEOUS!
About the Series
- To check if you are able to vote, visit nass.org/can-I-vote
- To register to vote or to check your voter registration, visit vote.gov
- To find the location and time of polling sites near you, visit usa.gov/how-to-vote
In 2024, across the globe, more people are going to vote than ever before. It is vital that you stay informed, and that, when the time comes you vote. The Vote With Pride series aims to motivate people, especially young queer people, to take their life into their own hands this year by casting a ballot.
