TEP’s Purpose
Interviews by Tricia Dewey
In the heart of Tennessee, where legislative battles often shape the landscape for marginalized communities, the Tennessee Equality Project (TEP) stands as a formidable advocate for LGBTQ rights. Founded in 2004, TEP emerged as a response to the marriage discrimination amendment making its way through the Tennessee Legislature and ultimately onto the ballot. From its inception, the organization has fought tirelessly against anti-LGBTQ legislation and has worked to promote equality through lobbying, education, and community organizing.
Chris Sanders, Executive Director of TEP, has been involved with the organization in various capacities since its founding and has served as staff since 2013. Reflecting on the organization’s history, he noted, “Around this same time, a number of other anti-LGBTQ bills started being filed around adoption and then, of course, the era that we’re still in—the anti-trans bathroom bills, attacks on LGBTQ students, and all kinds of things we work on at the state level.” Beyond the state legislature, TEP has played a pivotal role at the local level, advocating for non-discrimination ordinances in Memphis and other cities across Tennessee.
Legislative Challenges and Advocacy Efforts
TEP’s work is far from over. Each year, the organization braces for a fresh wave of discriminatory bills introduced in the state legislature. In 2024, the battle continues with the return of anti-trans bathroom bills and an anti-Pride flag bill, among others. Sanders emphasized the dangers of these legislative efforts, particularly the bathroom bills, stating, “I think that it will hurt cisgender women, who present as masculine, and you will have people policing bathrooms. We are worried about the bathroom bills because of the magnitude of their impact on trans and non-binary people, but also because women will be policed heavily regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.”
To combat these discriminatory policies, TEP organizes advocacy events like the annual Day on the Hill, where community members from across the state travel to Nashville to speak directly with their legislators. “The real value of the day is having people talk to their legislators directly, and the value of those conversations is that legislators on all sides of the issue get a chance to hear from a member of our community maybe for the first time,” Sanders explained.
Grassroots Efforts in Memphis
While TEP operates at the state level, much of its advocacy work is rooted in local efforts. Shahin Samiei, the District Chair for Shelby County, plays a key role in mobilizing LGBTQ individuals and allies in Memphis. A Memphis native with a background in public health, Samiei first became involved with TEP through the University of Memphis’ Stonewall Tigers, a gender and sexuality alliance group. His mission within TEP is clear: to raise awareness, educate the community, and empower individuals to advocate for themselves.
“A lot of the work that is done here in Shelby County is raising awareness, knowledge, and understanding,” Samiei said. “From there, it’s empowerment, and trying to connect people, and help them to feel more confident and capable in connecting with elected officials.” Shelby County, with the largest number of legislators in the Tennessee General Assembly, plays a crucial role in shaping the state’s policies, making local advocacy efforts all the more important.
Building Community Through Celebration
Amid the legislative battles, TEP also prioritizes building a sense of community and celebration. The annual TEP Gumbo Contest, now in its 12th year, is a beloved event in Memphis that brings people together over food and camaraderie. “It has been just a favorite event of Memphis because it’s fun, it’s focused on food and community, and it has been really a coming together point for the community over the years,” Sanders shared.
Events like the Gumbo Contest highlight the importance of joy and resilience within the LGBTQ community. “We need to have celebrations in spite of all the bad things that are happening to us at the federal and state level,” Sanders added.
The Ongoing Fight for Equality
Despite the challenges, both Sanders and Samiei remain steadfast in their commitment to advocacy. Samiei acknowledges the emotional toll of constant battles against discrimination but finds strength in community support. “Externally, it’s community, it’s people doing what they do to keep sanity going and to keep services going,” he said. “Being in community with, for example, Mid-South Pride and OUTMemphis brings everybody together and is that beacon of hope showing what queer joy can look like.”
For Sanders, the fight is not optional but a necessity. “If our community stops advocating for a year, if we had stopped after Stonewall, we wouldn’t be where we are today,” he asserted. “Individuals have to drop out periodically to rest and for their sanity, but the community cannot do that.”
Through advocacy, education, and community-building, TEP continues to stand as a beacon of hope and resilience for LGBTQ Tennesseans. The battles may be ongoing, but the spirit of resistance and the pursuit of equality remain.
photos by Tricia Dewey
Original Interview with Shahin Samiei by Tricia Dewey
How did the Tennessee Equality Project start and what has been your role?
The Tennessee Equality project was founded in 2004 to fight the marriage discrimination amendment as it was working its way through the Legislature and then on the ballot. Around this same time, a number of other anti-LGBTQ bills started being filed around adoption and then of course the era that we’re still in, the anti-trans bathroom bills, attacks on LGBTQ students, and all kinds of things we work on at the state level. We also work at the local level. We were involved in the Memphis non-discrimination ordinance for city government employees years ago, as well as other such ordinances in cities around the state. So there hasn’t been any shortage of things to work on. We are advocates for equal rights of LGBTQ community in Tennessee through lobbying and helping to make our voices heard. We also have educational and organizational programming.
My background is actually theological education. I hold the M.Div. from Vanderbilt University, but the Divinity School is a source of many advocates in Tennessee. I’ve been associated with TEP in some form since 2004. I’ve worked for TEP as staff since 2013.
How is this year going so far? Do you feel like there’s anything different about it?
Well, there are a lot of the same bills as in past years. We are seeing essentially many of the same bills that are harmful to members of our community and potentially a few newer ones. We are seeing the anti-bathroom bills return, the anti-pride flag bill return. It was defeated last year but it’s back. We are seeing various efforts around the country on marriage. In Tennessee there is a bill that really hits two targets. It’s called the covenant marriage bill. It only applies to men and women couples. Basically it is an effort to make divorce more difficult, so it’s not necessarily something that we want our community included in, but it is technically discriminatory because that particular kind of marriage option is only going to be available for men and women couples. It may make divorce more difficult. But we are most worried about the anti-trans bathroom bill. I think that it will hurt cisgender women, who present as masculine, and you will have people policing bathrooms. We are worried about the bathroom bills because of the magnitude of their impact on trans and non-binary people, but also because women will be policed heavily regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. The policing of it is worrisome. Last session our success rate was about 50/50.
Tell us how the legislative process works in Nashville.
So a bill is filed in both the House and the Senate. Tennessee legislators sometimes get their ideas from other states. Sometimes bills have multiple or bipartisan sponsors, but it is rare for a Democrat in Tennessee to sign on to a discriminatory bill. Both the House and Senate here have supermajorities of Republicans. So Republicans decide if bills are taken up by committees or if they move to the next step in any way. So the next step is a committee hearing. Sometimes the bill gets assigned to multiple committees if a bill hits different subject areas. If there’s a cost associated with it, it will go through the finance committees as well, and often discriminatory bills do have a cost associated with them. In Tennessee that actually helps us because it’s just another step to have to go through. And then obviously if it passes both chambers in identical form it goes to the governor to sign.
This year Day on the Hill Day is set for Feb. 11. Can you talk a little bit about that.
Sure. We have been holding Days on the Hill since 2005. The great thing is that people come from East Tennessee and West Tennessee. The real value of the day is having people talk to their legislators directly, and the value of those conversations is that legislators on all sides of the issue get a chance to hear from a member of our community maybe for the first time because they’re a new legislator. And maybe it’s the first time they’ve had a policy conversation about our issues with someone who’s affected by them. In some cases it changes minds and votes. It doesn’t always, but sometimes it does, and that’s why you do it because you don’t know until you try it. And it’s also valuable to speak with allied legislators because they don’t have a chance to read every single bill. So we can help inform them and help equip them to fight for our community. So sometimes you change hearts and minds, and sometimes you just better equip legislators to fight on our behalf. We’re not looking so much for gobs of people as we are intentional appointments with legislators. We’ve had 100 people there, but our main goal is coverage.
That is the crux of the issue–getting the constituents in front of the people from their district. We’re getting in front of people that we set up every year, but there are different bills, so they hear different perspectives on each bill. Maybe they have thought of different ideas but it’s good to be in front of them, thinking of unintended consequences, or numbers of people that this will affect rather than just bludgeoning forward with their agenda. It’s valuable to the legislators regardless of their political stance because they’re not experts on these matters. They’re lay people on all of these issues just like we are.They’re elected and they have a special role, but their knowledge base isn’t necessarily any different than what people who are residents of the district is, so that’s why it’s important to go in and in a focused way provide some information and education. You know, the idea that these are real people that this is affecting and you should think about them because they live near you is important.
Can you tell us about the TEP Gumbo Contest?
The 12th annual gumbo contest was held on February 16 at the Memphis Sports and Events Center. It is our oldest event. It was started by our Shelby County committee and it has been just a favorite event of Memphis because it’s fun, it’s focused on food and community, and it has been really a coming together point for the community over the years. It’s something that as a Nashvillean I enjoy traveling to Memphis for. In particular, it’s like a reunion for me. I get to see all kinds of friends. But it’s a very fun festival. We need to have celebrations in spite of all the bad things that are happening to us at the federal and state level.
And so just to wrap up, how are you feeling in general about LGBTQ advocacy?
Well we will continue to show up. For those who can, show up to the legislature, that’s mostly Middle Tennessee folks. For others it’s important to continue to email and to call. We’re providing scripts and numbers for all that. And the reason we do that is two-fold, sometimes you beat a bad bill. Secondly even when you don’t, it’s important to show the community that we’re still fighting back because that is what sustains us over the years.
If our community stops advocating for a year, if we had stopped after Stonewall, we wouldn’t be where we are today. You can’t recover if you take a year off. Individuals have to drop out periodically to rest and for their sanity, but the community cannot do that. If we lose a whole year, we will forget our advocacy and resistance practices, and it’s hard to get geared back up. So that’s why it’s important to constantly renew those practices so that people learn how to fight back and that they see that somebody’s fighting for them. There were dark days during the HIV/AIDS epidemic but people persisted despite the fact that their friends were dying. Some people didn’t make it through that because of the government’s lack of care and lack of resources devoted to that cause, but the people did not give up. And we can’t right now either.
Original Interview with Shahin Samiei by Tricia Dewey
What is your background and how did you get involved with TEP?
I’m a native Memphian. I have always had an interest in public policy and government and political science. I went to school for biology and then graduate school for public health. I work in research but I volunteer with Tennessee Equality Project, Shelby County and first became familiar with the organization through the Stonewall Tigers, the gender & sexuality alliance, which is still at the University of Memphis. I help to organize and uplift some of the work that we’re doing here in Memphis. Being three hours away from Nashville, sometimes people look at legislative advocacy as a cliche “black box.” People sometimes don’t really understand how that works or even what’s going on at the state level. A lot of people just don’t even quite know or are aware that there’s a whole state-level legislature.
A lot of the work that is done here in Shelby County is raising awareness, knowledge, and understanding, and from there it’s empowerment, and trying to connect people, and help them to feel more confident and capable in connecting with those said elected officials. Shelby County has the largest number of legislators in the General Assembly, and so it’s important that people understand who their elected officials are, and ways in which they can contact them and build relationships about issues affecting our community and more broadly. To more specifically answer your question, it’s awareness, it’s education, and it’s empowerment.
What is the work in Memphis?
Our work here fits an underserved niche here in the South. We have a number of national LGBTQ advocacy nonprofits that do a terrific job advocating at the congressional level, and at the federal level, but TEP fits the need to focus on Tennessee and focuses also at the local levels. Here in Memphis we have not had to yet deal with the more hateful public policy situations that other counties and cities have had to deal with. There have been some book ban issues and concerns from some of the Municipal School Districts, but it’s been nothing like what we’ve seen in Murfreesboro for example or in Jackson. But sometimes those things still do come up, and we do have elected officials who said hateful things about our community right here in Shelby County, and we do have to remain vigilant.
TEP works at the state and the local levels and helps to fill that gap so the people can be aware when people are trying to silence our community. Back in 2012 we promoted a non-discrimination ordinance and it was a very hard-fought situation. We were able to get it passed and it was a real moment that really brought awareness both to city governments and to our community. It would have applied to the city employees and basically said you can’t be hired, fired, or promoted based on sexual orientation or gender identity. We were grateful to have elected officials in office who prized diversity and who prized our community and the merits that we bring. It’s just so important that we keep people who value those things – and us – in office.
By continuing to build our relationships and actions locally, we can work to prevent some of the more hateful things from arising. Here in the South and in this state we are mostly reactive because we have a Republican supermajority in the general assembly, which means that if literally not one single Democrat showed up in a vote, they would still have enough people to hold a quorum and to pass legislation. So there’s not a lot of power that is in the hands of Democrats. And sadly equality issues have become very partisan. But I think we have to be more vigilant. We need more people to be aware and to activate because we know what times we’re living in right now. Being silent means we’re going to get run over, and to be active gives us a chance.
How are you keeping yourself together and going forward?
Like many others I’m worried when I see really hateful and negative news. I didn’t think this was where we were going to be at this point. I was born in 1987. I feel like I was sold a different bill of goods as I was coming of age than what we have now. To be fighting against some of these discriminatory injustices a quarter of the way through the 21st century is not where I expected to be. I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t struggling at times too because I’m human, but at the same time I think the two segments that get me through are internal and external. Externally it’s community, it’s people doing what they do to keep sanity going and to keep services going and that is to say what our community partners and what the other non-profits in the city are doing. Being in community with, for example, Mid-South Pride and OUT Memphis brings everybody together and is that beacon of hope showing what queer joy can look like.
Internally, we can’t just be fighting all the time. If you’re going to do this work, sometimes you have to recognize what your limits are. You have to be able to say no. You have to set healthy boundaries and not overextend yourself, and personally I’ve had to reevaluate my relationship with social media. I’ve had to really take a step back from that because of how toxic and how draining that was. I’ve realized that it’s not all on me. Chris does a terrific job managing the TEP group on Facebook and on Blue Sky and on Instagram, and people can go there and get that information. I like to live in the interpersonal and in public speaking so that’s how I like to work. So I’ve had to reevaluate and realize I can’t wear all the hats.
Speaking about being in community, talk a little bit about your 12th annual Gumbo Contest on February 16 (which hasn’t happened at the time of this interview).
I’m so grateful that we have this event. I would really resonate with what Chris said. This event helps to spark joy and celebrate our community. This event helps to celebrate that diversity, and coming together over meals is something that goes back to the beginnings of humankind! To really sum it up, it is a real example of community and being able to come together with joy. Organizing this in the midst of the legislative session often makes things more difficult because you’re trying to organize two things at once and that’s a challenge. But at the same time it being amidst so much fight and negativity and having to defend ourselves, it really reminds us the importance of community and reminds us why it’s important to keep fighting because we deserve that joy just like anybody else. As the previous chair of the gumbo planning committee, Adrian Mehr, once said (paraphrased), our community is as diverse as the ingredients in a good gumbo!
