08/26/2026
“I got my degree in journalism, and I started working in small-town newspapers out of college. Then the recession hit, and my entire department was laid off. I didn’t know what to do, so I started to volunteer. My first volunteer job was as an HIV testing counselor.
I was noticing there was an increase in HIV rates within the Black q***r community. There were a lot of people getting sick and dying, but I was seeing on the news that HIV was over. We have medications, like, everything's fine, but my community was not fine.
Then I started doing activism and helped start a group called Columbus Urban Pride to create space for Black q***r people in the movement. Eventually, I started working in policy and in legal spaces for our rights, because I started to realize that the system is the problem, and we have to change the system if we're ever going to make real lasting change.
I've been working in nonprofits for 15 years now, and I’ve studied how resources are distributed. I actually did a TEDx Talk called ‘How to Disrupt the Nonprofit Industrial Complex.’
We have these billionaires that could literally end world hunger if they all came together and started putting their resources towards what mattered. But that's not what's happening. You start to understand that our systems are intentional, that philanthropy still works toward the bottom line, and that the power to fund is also the power to defund.
It's important that we govern from the margins. If you create a policy, a law, or a program that is easily accessible by the most marginalized, you create a program that's accessible for everybody.
But we have completely lost the value in truth or facts in this Administration, and they’re coming after nonprofits. They're trying to defund the work in a very visible way. They're very clearly saying, ‘We want these people to succeed and these people not to succeed.’
We've been here before. The fight for civil rights has been long, and there's been progress and regression along that fight. We've won before, and we will win again.
That's what gives me hope. Seeing that history, relying on that history, but I also get hope from my son and my husband. Growing up in rural Delaware, Ohio, I never saw the life that I have now as possible. I never thought that I would be able to be a leader, that people would actually hear my voice and listen to me. I never thought I would be able to ever get married or that I would be able to have a son.
I think if you believe in something, if you fight for it, it can happen. So no matter what's happening within those walls [points at the Statehouse], there's a movement out here that is fighting against it.
One thing I think we need more of is not allies, but accomplices. And the difference between those two is action. You can help by doing something small every day to move things forward.
There isn't one way to fight. If you have extra funds you can donate each month, or show up to an event, or write to your legislator. If we're ever going to reach liberation, we can’t sit in this mindset that there’s only one way to fight. We need everyone to support the movement in whatever way they can.”
- Dwayne Steward is the CEO and Executive Director of Equality Ohio and Equality Ohio Education Fund, a statewide LGBTQ+ advocacy and legal aid organization.
