As soon as summer hit, the Central Kentucky chapter has been out and about talking to folks about our work. On June 25th members of the chapter's fairness committee canvassed at the Lexington Pride festival collecting signatures for their safer restrooms petition. This was the fourth year for Lexington pride and there were easily over 10,000 folks in attendance. Chapter members had the opportunity to have some really great conversation about KFTC's work and in just two hours were able to collect 216 signatures.

 

Just a week later chapter members were at it again at Lexington's huge fourth of July celebration. From 9am - 6pm folks stopped by the KFTC table to talk about our work and to sign our restoration of voting rights petition and our petition to end mountain top removal coal mining.

The next big festival that you can catch KFTC at will be Lexington's annual roots and heritage festival on Saturday September 10th. Tabling/canvassing can be a really great way to get your feet wet and learn about KFTC. If you're interested in volunteering with us at Roots and Heritage, then please contact the local organizer at ondine@kftc.org

 The Central Kentucky chapter's fairness work team has been very busy over the last couple of weeks surveying restrooms and getting petitions signed. Last Saturday three teams of four walked around downtown Lexington w/ a checklist and surveyed restrooms in the Carnegie Center, the Living Arts and Science Center, the Main Library, Third Street Stuff, Doodles, Giacommos Deli, The Marathon station on MLK and 3rd St, Alfalfa restaurant, Jonathon's at Gratz Park and the Lexington History museum.

Members used a checklist developed by a student group at UC Santa Barbara called P.I.S.S.A.R (People In Search of Safe and Accessible Restrooms) to conduct the survey. The checklists are broken down into three sections. The first addresses access for people with disabilities. This requires the person doing the surveying to measure things like the width of the bathroom door, the distance from the grab bar to the floor and height of the sink. The second section of the checklist is regarding transgender and gender variant folks and asks questions like "Is the restroom in a safe and well lit area?" and "Are the doors marked with gender specific signs or gender neutral ones?" The last section of the checklists pertains to childcare and aims to find out if there are changing tables in the restroom (regardless of whether they're male or female restrooms).

The teams also carried with them petitions they'd designed and asked folks they met to support their efforts, which resulted in several really great conversations. You can view the petition by clicking here: Safe restroom petition

The rain this Saturday made is so we couldn't go out and do more surveys but we were able to have a really good meeting where we talked about how this campaign fits into KFTC's overall goals to challenge and change unjust institutions, overcome discrimination, help people to participate and to communicate a message of what is possible.

For more information about this campaign you can download our brochure: Safe restroom trifold brochure or go to www.kftc.org/safe