Prior to the primetime broadcast, the party held several web-streamed meetings of caucuses, including the Women’s Caucus. Urquiza and Keeves started an organization Marked by COVID-19 to promote prevention activities related to the pandemic. “The only preexisting condition” her father had, said Urquiza, “was trusting Donald Trump.”Īs Urquiza spoke, the convention saw photos of her and her parents and her partner Christine Keeves, chief of communications for the San Francisco LGBT Center. But soon after going to a karaoke bar, her father came down with the virus and, after “five agonizing days,” he died. When Trump and Arizona’s Republican governor told people it was OK to go back to pre-COVID-19 activities, Urquiza said her father believed them. “He had faith in Donald Trump, he voted for him and listened to him,” Urquiza said of her father. One of the convention’s Day One speakers was Kristin Urquiza, who drew national media attention in June when she wrote an obituary for her 65-year-old father who died of COVID-19. And then State Delegate Danica Roem, the first transgender person to be elected to office in Virginia, appeared in an opening video. Later in the broadcast, Rapinoe served as a moderator for a conversation with four front-line health care workers, including a male nurse.
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Lightfoot said, “It’s really all about economic empowerment.” Biden asked Lightfoot how she prioritizes all the things she has to do as mayor to tackle systemic racism. Just 30 minutes into the convention broadcast, the Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden appeared in a staged “conversation” with five people, including Lightfoot. Some of the convention’s LGBTQ speakers Monday night were well-known: Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and international soccer champion Megan Rapinoe.
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Monday night, the first day of the DNC’s four-day 2020 convention, openly LGBTQ people were everywhere: in the opening video, in conversation with the nominee, leading conversations with health care workers and sharing stories of loss from the novel coronavirus epidemic. Long gone are the days when the Democratic National Convention slated only a token openly gay person on its pre-primetime schedule.