Last night (January 30), Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’ office and the City of Atlanta launched the city’s first-ever biennial report on LGBTQ affairs, which details the city’s accomplishments, LGBTQ-related priorities over the past two years, and funds allocated towards the LGBTQ community over the past two years.
The month-by-month review lists a number of huge accomplishments, including Mayor Bottoms establishing the first-ever Mayor’s Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in January 2018; naming Malik Brown as Atlanta’s first LGBTQ Affairs Coordinator in March 2018; hosting the first citywide recognition of the Stonewall Inn riots in June 2018; and sitting down for an interview with the Georgia Voice in April 2019 to discuss her plans to combat HIV/AIDS in Atlanta.
These achievements stem from the Mayor’s LGBTQ Advisory Board focus on five priority pillars related to the LGBTQ community. These pillars, as detailed in the report, are LGBTQ youth; LGBTQ arts, entertainment, and culture; trans affairs; LGBTQ health; and LGBTQ economic and community development.
The report also details the city’s monetary commitment to its LGBTQ citizens; over the past two years, the City of Atlanta has given more than $150,000 in total to ten different LGBTQ organizations: $100,000 to the Fulton County Board of Health to expand PrEP services, $20,000 to Partners for Home, $10,000 to the Trans Housing Atlanta Program, $10,000 to Above the Status Quo, $3,200 to AID Atlanta, $2,000 to the Southern Unity Movement, $2,000 to the Vision Community Foundation, $1,000 to Voices of Note, $1,000 to In The Life Atlanta, and $1,000 to LaGender, Inc.
The city also provided 120 hours of volunteer service to ZAMI NOBLA, the National Organization of Black Lesbians on Aging.
You can read the entire report here.