LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters with Karen Ocamb

Mercury Stardust Teaches DIY to Empower Vulnerable Renters and Homeowners

On Nov. 3, American voters will decide if Congress remains in the hands of MAGA Republicans to act in concert with wanna-be dictator Donald Trump or if Democrats and independent voters reclaim democracy and restore power to the people. Most media outlets are focused on races with the most money and conflict and how candidates are talking about the affordability crisis.

Meanwhile, folks on the ground are helping each other – including The Trans Handy Ma’am Mercury Stardust, who has become a best-selling New York Times author and social media star by educating trans people and women, in particular, on how to fix things themselves, thus becoming empowered to create community and change.

In this episode, Mercury and I discuss trans folks growing up in rural America, Mercury’s self-discovery through burlesque, and using her skills in maintenance repair to help vulnerable people stay safe, as well as Trans 101 for those of us with questions.

For more editorial context please see: The Trans Handy Ma’am Helps Where It Matters Most – At Home on my LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters Substack.

Donald Trump’s unwinnable war of choice in Iran has caused international economic disruption, national insecurity, and an affordability crisis in the homeland. This Nov. 3, Democrats and many independent voters want to wrest control of the fleckless Congress away from MAGA Republicans to rebuild and restore faith in our democracy. One key House seat flippable from Red to Blue is in New York’s 17th District. Out lesbian Cait Conley – a West Point grad, Special Ops combat leader, and cybersecurity expert – is challenging Trump-loving MAGA Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, who spent his life in politics and PR. This episode features freelance contributor Trudy Ring’s interview with the down-to-earth vet who has the talent to win and the skills to help rebuild America.   

For more editorial context, please see: Out Combat Vet Cait Conley Fights Trump Flunkie for New York’s Flippable 17th Congressional District on my LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters Substack.

Before he was a hero for his work in the national movement fighting AIDS, Phill Wilson was a small business owner with his partner Chris Brownlie, a co-founder of the AIDS Hospice Foundation in Los Angeles with Brownlie and Michael Weinstein, a policy expert at AIDS Project Los Angeles, the second LA City AIDS Coordinator, co-founder of the National Black Gay & Lesbian Leadership Forum and founder of the renowned Black AIDS Institute. In this episode, I talk with Phill about his life, being HIV+, his work, and his strategies for involving Black communities in the fight against AIDS horrifically impacting Black people. Part of that strategy is to be “in the room” where decisions are made. “If we are not explicitly included, we are implicitly excluded. And so that was the problem,” Phill Wilson says.

For more editorial context: please see Fighting Black AIDS by Breaking Down ‘Otherness’ on my LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters Substack.

Michael Weinstein co-founded AHF in 1987 in Los Angeles as AIDS Hospice Foundation to provide a caring, dignified death for those treated like lepers during the AIDS Crisis. He built the healthcare agency into an award-winning $3 billion nonprofit with 10,000 employees serving 3 million patients in 50 countries, including war-torn Ukraine and earthquake-ravaged Venezuela. Here we talk about politics, his long association with Sen. Bernie Sanders, his disputes with California Gov. Gavin Newsom on housing, and his fight to restore AIDS funding in Florida. A senior, married gay man who still gets goosebumps driving by the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial, Weinstein says, “It’s up to us individually and collectively to bring out the best in us.”   
(See the download of the interview here) For editorial context: “AHF vs DIVIDED AMERICA” (Part 1 of Weinstein interview); “Is America on the Brink of a Makeover?” (Part 2 of Weinstein interview) 

AIDS Healthcare Foundation: https://www.aidshealth.org/

On May 3, civil rights and defense attorney John Duran and Mark Morris, his partner of 27 years, were married in West Hollywood before family and forever friends. The wedding was officiated by Duran’s first legal and political mentor, attorney Diane Abbitt, an image that softly represented an arc of defiant LGBTQ+ love through California history from MECLA to LIFE AIDS Lobby to ANGLE to EQCA. “I think one of the most painful lessons that we learned around HIV and AIDS and around Karen Thompson and Sharon Kowalski’s story was that our relationships without legal protections would be really painful if a partner is sick, hospitalized, or dies. And we learned those very painful lessons and realized that equality of marriage was gonna be the remedy that we would seek long term,” Duran says during our conversation. After the Supreme Court scuttled women’s reproductive rights and eviscerated the Voting Rights Act, ending marriage equality may be next on the Trump/Project 2025 agenda.

For editorial and historical context: When Is a Kiss More Than Just a Kiss? When It’s Been ‘Forged in Fire’ https://karenocamb.substack.com/p/when-is-a-kiss-more-than-just-a-kiss

The Supreme Court ruling allowing states to ban trans girls and women athletes from playing school sports didn’t garner many headlines. But, New York Times columnist M. Gessen wrote, members of the court are “arguing about something more fundamental than the law. They are arguing about who should be seen, whose story ought to be heard and who deserves to be protected.” That’s what filmmakers Rocky Romano and Miranda Winters expose in their new documentary “Moms Club.” The film follows regular moms who find each other and speak up against the tyranny of MAGA schoolboard members’ ugly attacks on trans kids in Southern California. Since this interview with co-director Winters and her wife, co-executive producer Rayna Zemel, MAGA Chino Valley school board member Sonja Shaw became the top vote-getter in California’s June 2 Primary for Superintendent of Public Instruction.

For editorial context: Trans & Queer Youth are Being Harmed by Anti-Trans Protesters “Saving” their Kids

“Moms Club” documentary: https://www.momsclubfilm.com/

SCOTUS Blog explains trans ruling: https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/court-rules-that-states-can-exclude-transgender-athletes-from-girls-and-womens-sports-teams/

One year ago, renowned gay and AIDS activist Cleve Jones was close to tears talking about Andry Hernandez Romero, the out 32-year-old Venezuelan hair and make-up stylist who became the face of Donald Trump’s lie that ICE was only deporting vetted “rapists,” “savages,” “monsters,” and “the worst of the worst.” After Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act on March 14, 2025, the asylum-seeker was secretly deported with 137 other Venezuelans to El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, where he was brutalized. Andry was a lead plaintiff in a successful lawsuit with the federal judge ruling that the Trump Administration had a legal duty to give deportees due process. “Absent this relief,” Judge James E. Boasberg wrote, “the government could snatch anyone off the street, turn him over to a foreign country and then effectively foreclose any corrective course of action.” “I look at [Andry] and he's like my little gay brother…probably being subjected to horrendous brutality on a daily basis,” Cleve said. “This young man stands at the intersection of our fight for LGBT equality, for immigrant rights, and for due process under law.” Romero is now seeking asylum in Spain.

For editorial context: This Young Gay Man’s Disappearance Should Shake the LGBTQ+ Community https://karenocamb.substack.com/p/can-andry-hernandez-romero-get-asylum

Also: in this interview, Cleve talks about coming out, meeting Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, advice from Harvey Milk, the labor movement, founding the AIDS Quilt, and politics.