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Shireen McSpadden
AGAINST AGEISM
lasT year, caliFornia governor
Gavin Newsom signed an executive
order that would create a “Master Plan
for Aging,” acknowledging that the
state’s over-65 population is projected
to grow from 5.5 million in 2016 to
8.6 million by 2030—and that the in-
creased elderly population will require
attention and investment. Shireen Mc-
Spadden, the executive director for San
Francisco’s Department of Disability
and Aging Services, is central to the ef-
fort. In late 2019, McSpadden, 56, was
a key part of the formation of Re-
framing Aging San Francisco, a
campaign that aims to empower
older adults in the city. She sees
ageism as an equity issue, one
that leaves behind essential com-
munity members simply because of
negative assumptions. “As we age in
community, we need to continue to be
a part of society,” she says. “That’s what
keeps us going as humans.”
—mahiTa gaJanan
Simran Jeet Singh
FAIRNESS FOR ALL FAITHS
groWing Up sikh in san anTonio,
Simran Jeet Singh felt “highly visible
yet entirely unknown,” he says. He was
a high school senior when a streak of
hate crimes against Sikhs swept the U.S.
in the months after 9/11, and he realized
that “ignorance is actually a matter of
life and death.” He’s turned that drive
into a career as a scholar and advocate
for religious freedom. On his podcast
Spirited, he interviews prominent fig-
ures about spirituality, and he has a reg-
ular column for Religion News Service.
Notably, he’s written about the idea of
“religious supremacy.” Just as white su-
premacy is a dangerous thread in Amer-
ican life, he argues, so is the idea that
one religion is superior. For Singh, 35,
religious equality requires challenging
the assumption that Christianity is the
default. “Then,” he says, “we can actu-
ally create an even playing field for peo-
ple of different traditions.”
On Aug. 25, he’ll release a children’s
to be its first U.S. House delegate.
The position isn’t Teehee’s only
policy making first. As the first senior
policy adviser for Native American af-
fairs in the White House Domestic Policy
Council, she spearheaded the provision
in the 2013 Violence Against Women Act
reauthorization that lets tribal courts
prosecute non-Indians who commit cer-
tain domestic-violence crimes on Indian
lands. Over half of American Indian/
Native Alaska women have experienced
sexual violence. “Tribes, like other juris-
dictions, should have the ability to pros-
ecute crimes committed on their lands,”
she says, “making sure American Indian
women have the same protections that
women have in this country.”
Teehee is still waiting to be seated
in Congress, where, like the delegate
from D.C., she would be non voting. But
the symbolism of her presence would
be strong, she says, as “an extra voice in
the room” for her tribe and all others.
—olivia B. Waxman
Alice Wong
AMPLIFYING THE
DISABLED COMMUNITY
as The FoUnder and direcTor oF
the Disability Visibility Project, an
online community that amplifies the
voices of disabled people in culture,
Alice Wong is familiar with the host of
challenges currently facing disabled
people, such as proposed rules by the
Social Security Administration that
would cut access to benefits, or a new
“public charge” immigration rule that
will exclude disabled people from stay-
ing in the country if they depend on
public benefits.
Although the 1990 Americans with
Disabilities Act ushered in parking
spots and elevators for disabled peo-
ple, Wong, 45, says such efforts aren’t
enough to protect the community.
“There are constant attempts to de-
crease our rights, keep us separate
and take away control of our narra-
tives,” says Wong, who is currently
putting together an anthology of first-
person stories and essays from those in
the disability community, set to come
out this summer. “We need everyone to
fight back with us.” —m.g.
book, Fauja Singh Keeps Going, the true
story of a Sikh man who was the old-
est person to run a marathon. “This has
been my dream,” he says. “Growing up,
we never saw a Sikh character in a chil-
dren’s book.” But his children will.
—madeleine carlisle
Chase Strangio
DEMANDING LGBTQ RIGHTS
Transgender commUniTies in The
U.S. are fighting for rights across all fac-
ets of life, from demanding access to re-
strooms to protesting laws that aim to
curb their medical care. And
Chase Strangio, who serves
as the deputy director for
transgender justice with
the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV
Project, is leading many
of those battles. One was
in South Dakota, against a
bill that would make it a crime
for doctors to give hormone therapies to
trans youth; the legislation was defeated
in committee in February. Strangio, 37,
says the stakes couldn’t be higher; per
Human Rights Campaign figures, at least
26 trans or gender-non conforming peo-
ple, over 90% of whom were black trans
women, were killed by violence in 2019.
For Strangio, the work is about mak-
ing clear how acts of discrimination
against trans people are connected to
a larger movement for equality. “What
we need is a broader demand for justice
and allied mobilization that connects
trans survival to other movements for
justice,” he says. —m.g.
Kimberly Teehee
A VOICE FOR NATIVE AMERICANS
in 1835, TUcked aWay in a
treaty ceding southeast-
ern Georgia Cherokee
land to the U.S., the
government agreed
that the Cherokee peo-
ple “shall be entitled to
a delegate in the House
of Representatives.” Last
August, the largest federally recognized
tribe finally took Congress up on this
DIGGINS-SMITH: TIM CLAYTON—CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES; STRANGIO, TEEHEE: AP offer by appointing Kimberly Teehee, 51,