Alix Ritchie: 10 Years with LPAC

Dear Friends,

I'm Alix Ritchie, and I have been on the Board of LPAC since its founding in 2012. Throughout the year, you will hear from LPAC Board Members directly as we reflect on LPAC’s 10th Anniversary and our vision for LPAC’s future.

Ten years! It’s just hard to believe. Seems not quite like yesterday, but still not so far in the past that Urvahsi Vaid asked me to look at an idea about lesbian political power. It wasn’t long after that when a group of us met in New York and enthusiastically embraced the idea.

We were tired of going to political fundraisers that were supposed to be LGBTQ, but really were pretty much just G: where we were often only one of two or three women in the room. We needed our voices to be heard, our issues to be taken seriously and our presence to be meaningful. So, we started our own PAC – LPAC – and got to work. 

I have been an activist most of my adult life, always on issues of fairness and especially on issues of fairness and equality for women. 

Early on, most of us didn’t expect to see the issue of fairness to LGBTQ people to be much more than a dream. But Stonewall and brave leaders like Urvashi led us to think and hope and fight to make fairness and equality more than a dream. Except women and women’s issues were once again sidelined. And that has changed only very recently—and I’d like to think LPAC was part of that. 

Consider even today, the issue of choice, of who controls the decisions about your body, should concern every LGBTQ+ person — because the alternative is terrifying— yet it is only recently that traditional LGBTQ organizations have begun to recognize what we have been fighting for, for so long. 

We have been graced with wonderful leadership. Laura Ricketts has been our board chair almost since the beginning. We have dedicated and thoughtful board members. And Lisa Turner has helped us grow into an organization that now sponsors influential research, identifies great LBTQ candidates at all levels and works to support their races.

It’s not that it has been a breeze – it hasn’t. But what we are doing has been worth the work. And, in an increasingly hostile climate, that work gets ever more critical.

So, now, here we are -- collectively raising our voice, working to make a difference for all of us so we can be at the table and be heard when decisions are being made about our lives.

Quite simply, we deserve to be able to make that difference! 

Please help us make it happen. Support our endorsed candidates and please also support the work of LPAC itself. It’s your LPAC; it’s your voice: make it heard.

Onward!

Alix Ritchie 

LPAC Board Member