The Sistahs Steppin’ founder on marriage equality and grooming the next generation of activists.
Growing up in a low-income housing project in Oklahoma and graduating from her high school’s first integrated class helped make Peggy Moore who she is today. That, and her attendance as a youth minister in a Pentecostal church.
“Looking back now, I think my childhood experience helped to ground me in a way that I just get people and the human spirit,” says 49-year-old Moore, who most recently served a four-year stint as the California Political Director for Organizing for America. “I see people past things and money and meet them at the core.”
This vision has inspired Moore into action, most notably as a founder of the Sistahs Steppin’ In Pride, the lesbian march through Oakland that started more than a decade ago with three hundred women, and turned into an all day event attended by thousands with local food, arts and craft vendors, musical and dance performances, as well as a space for community and local political activists to engage with others.
Moore notes she had no formal training in event planning. “As I became more politically active, I became more aware of our community within the city,” she says. “Once you become aware then you have to respond to impact that change, or at least I do.”
Having worked closely with the Obama campaign, Moore has had an unobstructed view of the politics surrounding LGBT issues, and says there are still several issues that must be addressed including access to health care, better education opportunities, and streamlining immigration.
But at the end of the day, Moore says that as a woman in a committed relationship, her main concern is having the ability to get married.” This is a very important issue for me in terms of the LGBT community,” Moore says. “I want to be able to get married in California.”
With the Obama campaign over, Moors says she is not certain which area of community involvement she’ll move on to next, but adds that her passion, as always, will lead her on. She’s given thought to working with young people, grooming the next generation of political leaders within communities of color and the LGBT community.
“The most important thing for me is loving and being a vessel of love in all that I do, ” she says. “I know that love heals all things and there is a lot to be healed.”