Trans Day of Visibility Comes to Harvey Milk Park 3/31

The City of Long Beach, in collaboration with Work Evolution, will be hosting Trans Day of Visibility (TDOV) at Harvey Milk Park and Equality Plaza (Harvey Milk Park) on Friday, March 31, 2017 from 6:00 to 7:30 pm. The public is invited to come and enjoy opera, theater, and spoken word that celebrates and raises awareness on the current struggle and discrimination faced by transgender people.

"I'm extremely proud to have the Long Beach community gather and celebrate our transgender Brothers and Sisters at Harvey Milk Park," said Mayor Robert Garcia. "Our longstanding commitment to diversity, inclusiveness and respect for all people is a testament to our values."

Long Beach Opera will showcase a pop-up excerpt from their upcoming premiere of As One. The opera is based in part on the life experiences of a former high school football team captain in Montana who later became Kimberly Reed, an acclaimed filmmaker. In addition, the Long Beach Community Theater will present a personal monologue and spoken word by local writer Torrin Greathouse.

"Harvey Milk Park was created to honor our LGBTQ+ community," said Councilwoman Lena Gonzalez. "Trans Day of Visibility is an internationally recognized day that celebrates our transgender siblings and raises awareness of the continued struggles and access to care that exist for our transgender family."

The Harvey Milk Park Project, "Outdoor Collaborative" concept, is part of the City's broader economic development efforts to connect people and institutions through more open, diverse, and inclusive public spaces for people to gather. December 2016 marked the beginning of an 18-month process of transforming Harvey Milk Park into an outdoor public space that encourages collaboration, entrepreneurship, connectivity, as well as celebrates the legacy of Harvey Milk and the LGBTQ+ community.

A Bike Share station is located across the street from Harvey Milk Park, and free two-hour parking is available nearby at 50 E. 3rd Street. Learn more about the Harvey Milk Park Project and the various ways to participate at www.innovatelb.com/showcase.

John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Long Beach Community Foundation
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Long Beach Community Foundation provided a $50,000 matching grant to make the City's partnership with Citymart possible. The Long Beach Community Foundation is a nonprofit, public organization with over $25 million in assets and 96 charitable funds, whose mission is to initiate positive change for Long Beach. The Knight Foundation supports transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance media innovation, engage communities and foster the arts. The foundation believes that democracy thrives when people and communities are informed and engaged. For more, visit www.knightfoundation.org.

About the Innovation Team

Launched in 2012, the Innovation Teams Program is one of seven Government Innovation offerings at Bloomberg Philanthropies. Innovation teams (i-teams) function as in-house innovation consultants; helping agency leaders and staff go through a data-driven process to assess problems, generate responsive new interventions, develop partnerships, and deliver measurable results. The City of Long Beach is one of 20 cities around the world that are participating in the program. Launched in 2015, Long Beach's i-team works closely, and supportively, with their colleagues across city government - offering them a different set of tools and techniques to innovate more effectively. In partnership with these colleagues, the Long Beach i-team aims to deeply understand the problem they are trying to solve by building empathy for the people impacted by it and then work quickly and creatively to co-create and test solutions that deliver meaningful results for residents.