TransLatin@ Coalition Founder Bamby Salcedo skips California’s jungle primaries
The trans activist “Letting the Dogs Fight for the Bone”
Two years ago, TransLatin@ Coalition Founder and CEO Bamby Salcedo joined sister leaders Queen Chela Demuir, executive director of the Unique Women’s Coalition and Queen Victoria Ortega, president of FLUX International in opening the nation’s first general election Vote Center within The Connie Norman Transgender Empowerment Center (CONOTEC) to make voting specifically more safe and accessible for trans and other marginalized voters in Los Angeles County.
Bamby Salcedo, founder and CEO of the TransLatin@ Coalition (Photo by Troy Masters)
“My sisters at CONOTEC have done a great service to our community by securing this Vote Center. We all look forward to casting our vote in our community and appreciate the support as we work towards equality for all,” Salcedo said at the opening on Nov. 1, 2024.
Salcedo is a longtime strong advocate for voting, even appearing on the Trans Rock the Vote cover of the LA Blade on Nov. 1, 2018 with her dear friend, Maria Roman (now Maria Roman Taylorson).
The need for action that year was trumpeted in the Oct. 21, 2018 New York Times headline: “’Transgender’ Could be Defined Out of Existence Under Trump Administration.”
“It’s important that our community understands the importance of this election. Please vote! Understand that we must put people into office who understand what needs to be done for us to get to a better place in our society,” Salcedo told the LA Blade. “We need people in office who will do the things that need to be done, who work for our people, who are unapologetic, and will not conform to corporations who marginalize all of us. Vote! Claim your power!”
LGBTQ+ voters did turn out – helping Democrats retake the House of Representatives. Election Day exit polling from CNN, NBC News, the Wall Street Journal in those congressional mid-term elections revealed 6 percent of the voting bloc identified as LGBT. “Once we know what the total voters are, that is likely to be around 7 million voters identified as LGBT,” Human Rights Campaign Chad Griffin told the Washington Blade. “What’s important to note: That means 6 percent of the electorate identified to a stranger — in most cases in a swing state that they were LGBT. That is a powerful voting bloc, and that is an increase in turnout of LGBT voters from 2016.”
“Decreased social stigma likely explains recent increases in the portion of the population identifying as LGBT,” said Dr. Gary Gates, retired gay demographer at the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. “Further, LGBT voters may feel particularly under threat from a Trump administration that has shown open hostility toward the transgender population and has made several attempts to minimize the visibility of LGBT populations in federal data sources. This could explain increases in LGBT voter engagement and willingness to support Democrats.”
But LGBTQ+ immigrants seeking asylum or just a better life can’t vote – yet.
This is personal for Salcedo. She immigrated to America after surviving a poor childhood with a working single mother and an abusive stepfather in Guadalajara, Mexico where she juggled school, crime, gangs, drugs and LGBT friends. Here, she survived as a sex worker while struggling with homelessness and a crystal meth addiction. She also fended off violent homophobia and transphobia in ICE detention as one of many LGBTQ+ immigrants and undocumented individuals who didn’t have money to post bail.
“The broader LGBT movement doesn’t really understand the issues, needs and policies of LGBT immigrants and undocumented individuals,” Salcedo told me in 2017. “We’re not powerful monetarily. We have to keep tapping our own community when many of us are struggling ourselves to meet our own basic needs.”
Salcedo got clean and sober and because of her own experiences – with mentoring from Maria Roman - she started working as an HIV prevention and education teacher at Bienestar for mostly non-English-speaking Latina transgender sex workers. She studied, put herself through college and worked for eight years running Children’s Hospital Los Angeles’ then-innovative transgender youth program.
Salcedo became a “good trouble”maker, organizing traffic-stopping protests and calling news conferences to demand attention to unacknowledged murders of trans women of color like Viccky Gutierrez, the blatantly discriminatory kidnapping of immigrants thrown into ICE detention without due process as happened with Alejandra, and the blatant disregard for health issues leading to death as happened to asylum-seeker Roxana who died of AIDS in ICE custody.
“The LGBT and immigrant communities need to understand that queer immigrants are being criminalized and arrested and put in detention for who we are,” Salcedo told me in 2017 – a time when people still sometimes cared.
Salcedo left Children’s Hospital in 2009 to create and run the TransLatin@ Coalition. She organized disruptive protests at major events such as Creating Change and AIDS Conferences that were so effective, she was invited back as a guest panelist or featured speaker. She’s been invited to the White House several times and asked to speak before Congress, including on the Equal Rights Amendment as a board member for the ERA Coalition.
With a Master’s Degree in Mexican and Latin@ Studies from California State University, Los Angeles, Salcedo has developed policies and programs that focus on violence prevention, health and wellness, housing and homelessness, and research studies such as TransVisible: Transgender Latina Immigrants in U.S. Society and the Trans Policy Agenda 2024.
TransLatin@ Coalition has grown - despite serious death threats and the COVID shut down - and Salcedo even broke ground on a new facility on April 16. The Trans Wellness and Empowerment Center at 5314 Sunset Boulevard is expected to open in late 2027.
Cheered on that day by chants of “sí se puede,” an emotional Bamby Salcedo said: “Even when we thought we couldn’t get off the streets, back in the ’80s, when there was no support, no help for any of us, we could only dream, but this place is now a reality.”
Also a reality is the rightward trend of the Democratic Party with political consultants telling candidates to stay away from “identity politics” and trans issues. Now, TransLatin@ Coalition is being attacked by members of Congress for working with immigrants.
“They’re calling us a radical organization,” Salcedo told the Washington Blade last August. “They’re spreading lies, saying we’re using government funding to abolish ICE and the police and to provide abortion access. We do believe in those things, but the funding we receive is used to serve our people.”
Salcedo succeeded in passing fiscal bills in the State Legislature. But federal funding is gone. “Our work has been defunded,” Salcedo said. “The private sector is pulling back. Philanthropy is scared. Even the same corporations that fund us during Pride are investing in our opposition the rest of the year. It’s hypocrisy.”
People need to step up. “We have the strategy. We’re doing the work. But we need resources — and we need real solidarity, not just statements.”
Last year, Salcedo made a conscious decision to focus locally because of a migration of trans people from other states who need support.
“That’s why, for us, it’s not just about passing legislation,” Salcedo said. “We want to ensure that there is legislation coupled with resources, with something tangible that our community can benefit from.”
Bamby Salcedo with Phill Wilson and Joe Hollendoner of the LA LGBT Center (Photo by Karen Ocamb)
Which leads to the June 2 jungle primaries and the tight races for governor and LA City Mayor.
“So, to be completely honest,…it’s kind of a mess right now.” Salcedo has decided to wait for the midterms. “I’m letting the dogs fight for the bone,” she said.
But there’s more to it. “The Democratic Party is moving more to the right because it’s winnable. And so, what that means is that people will go with this rhetoric…trying to convince more conservative people - because they want for those people to vote for them…But that also means that it could potentially reverse some of the gains that we have gotten as a people, as a community,” Salcedo said.
“That’s why, for this election, June 2nd, I’m just staying quiet until we see what happens after,” she continued. “They’re forgetting the people who are the ones who put them in office, right?... And in some ways, they’re also being traitors. The very people who they said, when they’re campaigning, that they are going to fight for.”
Please watch our Zoom conversation where Bamby Salcedo shares more thoughts on creating a Victory Fund-style program for trans folks, as well as comment on Pride Month and the 45th Anniversary of the first CDC report on AIDS.