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The Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s recent Youth Report shows that more than 46 percent of LGBTQ+ youth, including almost 55 percent of transgender and gender-expansive youth, feel unsafe in at least one school setting. And despite the pervasiveness of school bullying, many teachers and staff remain unaware — or are explicitly unhelpful when informed. This is why HRC’s Welcoming Schools resources and professional development training, including National Day of Reading events, are so vital to meeting the needs of LGBTQ+ students today. This year’s National Day of Reading is happening on February 27th, and today In the Den we are joined by the HRC Foundation's Welcoming Schools Sr Director Cheryl Greene to tell us more about this event and how we can get involved.

Special Guest: Cheryl Greene

Cheryl is the Vice President of School and Youth Programming at the Human Rights Campaign. She has spent her career in education and is passionate about providing educators and school leaders with the tools to create LGBTQ+ and gender inclusive classrooms where all children can thrive. She spent 20 years as a middle school teacher, district bullying prevention coordinator, and as an adjunct professor before turning her talents to lead the broader work of preventing bias-based bullying nationwide. Cheryl leads the most comprehensive, bias-based bullying prevention program in the nation specifically designed for youth serving professionals impacting over 10.5 million students. She also oversees a robust school advocacy program designed to empower local advocates to organize and impact school boards and district policy to positively impact LGBTQ+ youth and families. In her spare time, Cheryl enjoys spending time with her spoiled Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, her wife, and three amazing grandchildren.

Links from the Show:

• HRC LGBTQ Youth Report
• Learn More About HRC’s Day of Reading
• Welcoming School Resource List
• Request a Welcoming School Training
• Pledge to Participate in the Day of Reading
• Join Mama Dragons today

In the Den is made possible by generous donors like you. Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today at www.mamadragons.org.

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Every day seems to bring another headline, or another policy, another attempt to make trans lives disappear altogether. As Mama Dragons, we know this fear intimately. We carry it in our bodies, even as we keep showing up for our kids and our communities. Today In the Den, Sara sits down with Dru Levasseur, an openly trans attorney, nationally recognized advocate, and a leader in the fight for trans rights for more than 25 years, to discuss what it really means to survive transphobia—not just legally or politically, but emotionally, spiritually, and collectively. It’s a conversation about what the power of authenticity looks like and feels like in these times and includes some practical strategies for staying grounded and strong amid unrelenting attacks.

Special Guest: Dru Levasseur

M. Dru Levasseur, Esq. is a high-energy presenter, leading advisor, and seasoned strategist with extensive experience in law, diversity & inclusion, advocacy, policy, and

philanthropy. A recognized leader in the LGBTQ+ equality movement for more than 25

years, he now leads his own coaching and consulting practice, Dru Levasseur Consulting , LLC. He previously served as the Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the National LGBTQ+ Bar, creating and leading its DEI Consulting Practice, the first LGBTQ+ inclusion coaching and consulting program designed specifically to enable the implementation of best practice standards for LGBTQ+ equity in the legal profession. Dru directed Lambda Legal's Transgender Rights Project from 2009 to 2019, attending the first transgender policy meeting at the White House in 2011, and serving as counsel in landmark impact litigation cases and amicus briefs in federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. He co-founded a national trans-led nonprofit, the Jim Collins Foundation, and currently serves alongside Gloria Steinem and other notable feminists as a board member for the ERA Coalition and Fund for Women's Equality. A national and international media spokesperson, Dru contributed the chapter, “Your Authenticity is Your Power: Tales of a Trans Lawyer” in the 2023 book, Surviving Transphobia. Harvard Law School selected him as a Wasserstein Fellow. He is admitted in New York, Georgia, D.C., and Massachusetts.

Links from the Show:

• Surviving Transphobia is available here.
• Dru’s website
• Join Mama Dragons today

In the Den is made possible by generous donors like you. Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today at www.mamadragons.org.

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What happens when an object that once felt magical becomes a symbol of harm—and then is transformed into an act of remembrance? Today’s conversation In the Den invites us to look closely, to move past what we think we see, and to sit with art that refuses to let us look away. Our guest is Tai Ericson, an artist known for transforming the familiar into the unexpected. Tai’s current project is as bold as it is devastating: portraits of murdered trans people created from the pages of Harry Potter books. The author of that series has, for years, contributed purposefully and relentlessly to a culture that vilifies and endangers trans people around the world. In Tai’s hands, those pages are no longer a vessel for that harm. They are cut, reassembled, and transformed—destroying the work itself and replacing it with a memorial to someone whose life was taken by the very culture it helped foster. This is a conversation about art as resistance, grief as truth-telling, and what it means to honor trans lives—not abstractly, but by name, by face, and by story.

Special Guest: Tai Ericson

Tai Ericson is a Vermont-based artist transforming the familiar into the unexpected. By amassing everyday objects, often in monumental quantities, he crafts objects that tell one story from afar, then reveal their true identity up close. Tai's current project is creating portraits of murdered trans people using the pages of Harry Potter books. The author has contributed purposefully and relentlessly to a culture that vilifies and endangers trans people around the world. The portrait destroys her work, replacing it with a memorial to someone that lost their life to the culture she fosters.

Links from the Show:

• Tai’s website
• Find Tai on IG
• Glaad accountability account of JK Rowling
• Join Mama Dragons today

In the Den is made possible by generous donors like you. Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today at www.mamadragons.org.

What happens when an object that once felt magical becomes a symbol of harm—and then is transformed into an act of remembrance? Today’s conversation In the Den invites us to look closely, to move past what we think we see, and to sit with art that refuses to let us look away. Our guest is Tai Ericson, an artist known for transforming the familiar into the unexpected. Tai’s current project is as bold as it is devastating: portraits of murdered trans people created from the pages of Harry Potter books. The author of that series has, for years, contributed purposefully and relentlessly to a culture that vilifies and endangers trans people around the world. In Tai’s hands, those pages are no longer a vessel for that harm. They are cut, reassembled, and transformed—destroying the work itself and replacing it with a mem

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