Thread by @Openly

🏳️‍⚧️ Poet, performance artist, politician and ground-breaker: hello Andrea Jenkins!

🇺🇸 Earlier this year, she became the first Black trans woman to lead a U.S city council.

Here's how she is on a mission to shake up politics. 👇🧵
openlynews.com/i/?id=fff06b37…

🇺🇸 Jenkins was born in Chicago in 1961 and grew up in what she has described as a "low-income, working-class community".

✍️ She began writing poetry in her mid-teens.

🏳️‍🌈In her 20s, she came out as bi, got married, became a parent, got divorced at 30 and later came out as trans.

🤔 "How do I impact policy?" was a question Jenkins always has on her mind.

🏙In 2001, @RLilligren, a gay Native American who was running for the Minneapolis City Council, asked her to be a part of his campaign.

👐 His victory led to Jenkins' role as a policy aide for 13 years.

🏳️‍⚧️ In 2014, Jenkins earned a fellowship dedicated to trans issues and helped to establish the Transgender Issues Work Group.

📚 A year later, she started working at the @UMNews to curate the Transgender Oral History Project.

🗳 Jenkins was elected to the city council in 2017.

🕰️ Today, she worries that things are going backwards in the U.S., with trans-related bills in largely conservative states seeking to turn back the clock.

🧾 Last year, 34 states introduced 147 bills targeting trans people, according to LGBTQ+ rights organisation @HRC.

⭕️ On May 25, 2020, the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man by a white police officer shook Minneapolis.

🔴 In response, the City Council declared racism a public health crisis.

Jenkins recalls feeling "crushingly, emotionally wounded”, on first hearing the news.

👐 Now, as president of the city council, @annapoetic is focused on "healing my community".

🏳️‍🌈 "I really hope that my (role in) public life provides some inspiration for others to see trans and gender-non-conforming people in a more positive light," she told us.

🇺🇸 Jenkins has been working in local government for almost 30 years, and she still teaches poetry at her local arts college.

🗣 "I think we have to inject more love and poetry into our public discourse," she said.

Read @hugo_greenhalgh's full story. 👇
openlynews.com/i/?id=fff06b37…