About 20 people gathered on Wednesday at Island United Church in Foster City to learn about the needs and cultural history of transgender and nonbinary communities, part of a Pride Month training series hosted by the San Mateo County Pride Center, as LGBTQ+ residents face national and local pushback.
The “Preparing for Pride” series includes presentations and Q&A sessions meant to help residents, organizations, businesses, government agencies, and schools learn terminology and hear directly from LGBTQ+ people.
For Ishani Dugar, lead trainer and peer group coordinator, hosting the trainings in person this year was especially important because LGBTQ+ people are often talked about rather than heard directly.
“The core of it comes to LGBTQ+ people … not telling their own stories; they’re not the ones that are being heard,” Dugar said, adding that the trainings give people “an explicitly learning space” where they can “come in not knowing anything” instead of hearing about these topics from others.
The training comes amid a wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation nationwide. As of May 2026, the American Civil Liberties Union was tracking more than 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills across the country. In January of last year, a federal order under the guise of protecting women called for better imposing the gender binary in public spaces and requiring government documents to reflect a person’s sex assigned at birth. The Trump Administration has made an effort to ban transgender people from the military, though it faced legal pushback this month.
Locally, Dugar also pointed to a June 7 event at the Redwood City Library hosted by the Women’s Liberation Front, a group that opposes transgender-inclusive policies. The event drew counterprotesters, including members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a performance activism group of “drag nuns,” and Food Not Bombs, a volunteer movement that shares free food.
“I heard that there were far more counterprotesters than people who attended the event,” Dugar said. “Those events are going to happen. It is something that we are not going to be able to avoid. I’m very heartened to know that the community turned out so strongly in opposition.”
Despite expected pushback against the library, Dugar maintained that those on the Redwood City Council and at the library are supportive of everything the Pride Center does.
“We need publicly accessible spaces, like the community room, and sometimes the policies might need to be tightened, but having a space like that, where anybody can sign up to use it for free, essentially is fantastic,” Dugar said. “It becomes more difficult to get those spaces if we are always trying to keep certain people out of them.”
In a statement to the Redwood City Pulse, the City noted that public agencies are limited in how “hate speech” may be applied to restrict events and that the Library meeting rooms cannot be denied for use because of differences in opinion regarding “lawful speech.”
“We understand that the June 7 event at the Downtown Library caused concern for members of the LGBTQIA+ community and their allies. The event was not sponsored, organized, or endorsed by the City or the Redwood City Public Library,” the statement said. “The City recognizes that this legal distinction may not resolve the concerns raised by community members.
“Redwood City remains committed to ensuring LGBTQIA+ community members are seen, valued, and welcomed,” the statement continued.
For Reverend Michael Cronin, Island United Church’s pastor, faith communities are vital in the face of such attacks and in helping to rewrite false narratives about transgender and LGBTQ+ communities at large.
“In this time and in this place, especially when white Christian nationalism is so loud, … it’s the obligation of the church at this time, because of all the harm that has been done in the past, to step up and speak up,” Cronin said.
Wednesday’s training, led by Dugar, ran over time due to many questions from audience members clearly engaged with the material. The presentation defined key terms like “gender identity” and “transitioning,” discussed the varied nature of transphobia and how to be an ally to the community. For Dugar, seeing this willingness to engage in difficult conversations and to ask questions is a key aspect of their work.
“Our first training in the series, becoming aware of your assumptions, is a training that asks a lot of people, because it is focused on what we assume about others that we might not even be aware that we assume,” Dugar said. “ Within our hour and a half time together, (participants) were willing to share very personal things about how they were raised and their viewpoints, and how they had done work to overcome certain things.”
The final training session as part of the “Preparing for Pride” series will take place at Island United Church on June 24, and will discuss how to turn allyship into action.
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