In an interview with The Young Turks, Ashlee Marie Preston, media personality, producer and activist, describes her experience with the Human Rights Campaign & CNN hosted presidential town hall where her opportunity to ask questions to candidates was removed.   

She explains, “Initially, HRC and CNN had reached out to me to have me attend the event. I really didn’t want to be too much involved because there’s a lot of controversies right now with HRC’s new president who said some pretty controversial things in response to an op-ed of sorts from Out Magazine. And his response to the transgender community was a little bit shaky. 

But after careful consideration, and them continuing to reach out to me and offering me to ask questions of the candidates, I figured that it was an opportunity to really engage these candidates around the issues that are specifically impacting trans women of color. That is an opportunity that doesn’t come around all the time, as Blossom C Brown alluded to, and I was there for it.

Hours before the event took place, I received a call from the producer that I had been corresponding with. And even in the opening of the call, I could hear this forced optimism in her voice like she was about to deliver a blow. And she said, ‘hey, we’re so excited to meet you tonight and it’s gonna be a great event. By the way, don’t worry about those questions or anything like that but we’re still excited to see you when you come you can find a seat.’

And I was like, wait, it was that blow when you know you’ve just been gaslighted but you’re trying to figure out if it’s, maybe I need more sleep, maybe it’s those flights back and forth. Did I just hear her basically cut me and then try to make it look as though it’s a beautiful thing? She was like, yeah, I understand. We’re gonna do some amazing things with you in the future.

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And I was like, but you just gave us a voice and then you took it away. And at a time where black trans women are disproportionately impacted by the actions of the current administration, we need to have visibility front and center.

And so a lot of Blossom’s rage and anger, as she’s been talking to other outlets about, stem from people like me who, I mean, not only am I a trans activist, I’m a political analyst and cultural commentator. This is my trade, this is what I do.

So the fact that I wasn’t even doing something more involved, to begin with, even Chris Cuomo sitting there telling transphobic jokes, that could have been a seat that had a trans woman there.

And it was just one of those moments where I was reminded that no matter how high you think you are out in the world, or in your industry, in your field, there are always those people who are there to remind you that we still have work to do.”

In the interview, Ashlee said the Human Rights Campaign, “typically represents wealthy gay white men.” 

She added, “This goes way back to the days of ENDA, with Barney Frank and the idea that we would just leave trans people behind. We’ll come back for you all, we’ll send you a postcard, happy holidays, that vibe. And so there was never any healing around that. And so what’s happening, I don’t know how much of it is HRC and how much of it is just those who are involved and it ends up informing the culture.

It’s like we’re a relative that they’ll let sit at Thanksgiving dinner but they are always keeping an eye on you because they don’t want you to embarrass them in front of company.”