The final report on discrimination experienced by Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender people in Anchorage is set to be released Thursday.
It’s called the Anchorage LGBT discrimination survey. The preliminary version of the report was released late last year. The new version includes more detailed information. Mel Green is the principal investigator and author of the report.
“There are going to be lots more detailed tables that show where those charts that were in the preliminary came from. There’s also going to be a very complete methodology – complete demographic data for our survey population, some of it’s going to be compared with census data, national survey, previous Alaska research,” Green said.
The survey was conducted between January and March of 2011 and includes information from 268 LGBT people in Anchorage. It asked questions about their experience of discrimination, violence or intimidation in the municipality during their lifetime. Roughly 70 percent said they’d experienced some form of discrimination in Anchorage. Comments from respondents will be included in the final survey.
“This is a very short one from a gay male respondent. I was dancing at a local bar with a male friend of mine and one of my previous employers spotted me, the very next morning he told my manager to fire me,” Green said.
The survey is the first research on LGB people in Anchorage since the 80’s and the first which includes transgender people. Green says information released in the final report shows her findings are comparable with national numbers.
“The levels of experienced discrimination that we’re reporting are not at all unusual, it’s national and its particularly high for transgender people,” Green said.
The Anchorage LGBT discrimination survey was funded in part by the ACLU of Alaska. The survey is available at alaskacommunity.org.
Daysha Eaton is a contributor with the Alaska Public Radio Network.
Daysha Eaton holds a B.A. from Evergreen State College, and a M.A. from the University of Southern California. Daysha got her start in radio at Seattle public radio stations, KPLU and KUOW. Before coming to KBBI, she was the News Director at KYUK in Bethel. She has also worked as the Southcentral Reporter for KSKA in Anchorage.
Daysha's work has appeared on NPR's "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered", PRI's "The World" and "National Native News". She's happy to take assignments, and to get news tips, which are best sent via email.
Daysha became a journalist because she believes in the power of storytelling. Stories connect us and they help us make sense of our world. They shed light on injustice and they comfort us in troubled times. She got into public broadcasting because it seems to fulfill the intention of the 4th Estate and to most effectively apply the freedom of the press granted to us through the Constitution. She feels that public radio has a special way of moving people emotionally through sound, taking them to remote places, introducing them to people they would not otherwise meet and compelling them to think about issues they might ordinarily overlook.
