One goal in creating our innaugural Pride Power 50 list was to celebrate diversity, but it’s also worth noting that the people on it are predominantly white and male, with only one transgender person making the cut – an imbalance that simply reflects reality. We sought to balance that by presenting an additional – and more diverse – list of younger LGBT figures on the rise.
The Watch List.
These 10 people in the LGBT community have begun to make a name for themselves in New York’s political world – and each of them has plenty of potential to make their mark in the years ahead.
The onetime undocumented immigrant who fled transphobia in her native Mexico at the age of 15 is now a proud green card holder and was the first transgender Latina grand marshal of the Queens Pride Parade. As the LGBTQIA justice organizer at the pro-immigrant nonprofit Make the Road New York, Bianey Garcia uses her own experiences with discrimination, sex trafficking and imprisonment to push for protections and improvements for transgender and gender-nonconforming people.