My Authentic Life - Cecilia

Hi, my name is Cecilia Chung and this is my authentic life. I'm currently a San Francisco Health Commissioner with the Department of Public Health. I guess, you know, the best way to describe my authentic life is, the moment I wake up, I start living my life like everyone else. First time I started the journey into my authentic self, the beginning of 1992, when I decided to take that courageous first step, and since then, I haven't really looked back. I became a strong advocate for my community, and I started to work for uh... many different nonprofit organizations, including being the deputy director of the Transgender Law Center, where i helped passing laws on the state and local levels. I've learned that I really have to be a vocal advocate for my community, who might not have the means to advocate for themselves and I guess that's the way that I am living my authentic life now. I've learned a lot about the stigma and the discriminations that we experience and as a survivor of the violence and discrimination, I would like to see uh... on both local, state and on the national level, more laws to pass to really protect our youth, our community members from experiencing the violence that they face everyday We still have youth in schools that are experiencing bullying and violence, as well as doubts, that still experience discriminations and harassment on the streets, and workplaces and housing and have difficulties finding jobs and also in health care. Until we can educate um... the general public about our community, that we are no different from everybody else, that we're just human beings trying to live our life um... that we still have a lot of work to do, especially for our seniors and our youth, because our seniors have really courageously lived their authentic life for a long time when it's not easy to be themselves, and i think that they have paid their dues, and we're going to be create services to help and support them and for our youth, we want to be able to create a better future, so they don't have to go through what we have gone through. The way I support Transgender Law Center is by staying connected with Transgender Law Center, to learn about their updates, subscribe to their e-mail lists, and to really learn about the important advocacy work that the Transgender Law Center is doing. The best way is by becoming a monthly donor to the Transgender Law Center - it doesn't take much, it could be as little as ten dollars a month, and it would help Transgender Law Center go a long, long way. Authentic!