The first two weeks of February are always a pink-and-red onslaught of cupids and roses in the service of romantic love. We’ve got nothing against eros at Orlando Weekly, but we like to focus on agape as well — selfless love, love of community — so each year, for Valentine’s Day, we select a group of 10 or so Orlandoans who make the city a better place to be for our annual People We Love issue.
But this year feels different. By the time Valentine’s Day hits on Friday, we will have spent just under a month witnessing the installation of a kakistocracy unlike any this nation has experienced, even during the first Trump administration. So this year, we are celebrating people we don’t just love, but desperately need.
Between Trump’s cabinet appointees, his DOGE clownshow, and his Project 2025-affiliated White House employees, it’s been 28 days of terror for anyone who’s not a white male natural-born American citizen. Mass deportations, the eradication of workers’ rights, the disappearance of vital government informational websites, witch hunts aimed at erasing any semblance of diversity, nonsensical declarations of “biological truth” — it’s a head-spinning horror show that, quite frankly, kills our appetite for chocolates in a heart-shaped box. We need people who are keeping their feet firmly planted and standing against the tide of hate that’s rushing at all trans, immigrant, unhoused, employer-exploited, BIPOC, imprisoned or otherwise “othered” Americans.
So here’s a (not comprehensive) list of locals we cherish and adore for the creative work they do, for the compassion they show their fellow humans, for their courage in the face of evil, for their refusal to be erased. We love you. We need you.
By her very existence, Orlando intersex activist Juleigh Mayfield disproves the lie at the heart of President Trump’s hate-soaked Executive Order 14166, “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” Mayfield was born with XXY, a chromosomal condition that results in individuals who are “neither male nor female, but a configuration of both sexes.” These people are usually raised subject to whatever judgment call an obstetrician makes in the delivery room, and can spend lives in bewildering pain. Mayfield advocates for more scientific research into XXY conditions — a helping hand unlikely to be extended by an administration that denies her lived reality.
Trans activist Andrea Montanez is a fierce player in Orlando’s — and Florida’s — fight for LGBTQ+ rights and freedoms, from advocating for policy change in the state house to leading community programs to spread trans joy. Between her tireless activism on both the legislative and grassroots levels, she’s not one to be messed with.
What began as a voter registration project geared toward empowering the Latino community is now a bustling community-centered organization called Latino Leadership — and it’s alive today thanks to founder Marytza Sanz. Since the org’s start more than 25 years ago, Sanz has remained a steadfast force in fighting for and uplifting the underserved through social programs, education and essential emergency services.
There are few in the Orlando music scene who exist harmoniously in as many divergent sonic realms as Eva Strangelace. The outspoken Strangelace is the singer in queer- and trans-forward hardcore rampagers M.A.C.E., a busy DJ on the area gothic circuit and now making (gentle) waves with her 4AD-esque solo project Strangelace.
Zebra Youth, a local nonprofit spearheaded by Heather Wilkie, offers a unique good to Orlando. Specifically servicing at-risk LGBTQ+ youth and young adults, Zebra offers hope to people who have seen their existence not only chastised, but shunned and dismissed in recent years. Wilkie (who is an LGBTQ+ mom) and her team work to create a more welcoming community for young queer folks, in addition to offering counseling and housing assistance to low-income LGBTQ+ young adults.
Kieran Castaño is a one-off in the Orlando arts world: a lyrical painter and portraitist whose work can be seen on gallery walls and in your local funny papers every weekend. It’s true, Castaño — a transgender man — paints intricate studies of friends and loved ones, and renders the nationally syndicated “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” comic strip.
An august and majestic force in Orlando’s drag scene, Darcel Stevens is unafraid to lend her timeless glamour and force-of-mature presence to left-leaning politics locally and statewide — best exemplified by helping organize a drag queen march on the state capitol a couple of years ago.
Desmond Meade heads up the Florida Rights Restoration Council, a group pushing to restore voting rights to Florida’s felons — like President Trump, a felon whose rights restoration was pushed to the front of the line by his frenemy Ron DeSantis. Others who leave prison can face decades of waiting and an utter lack of the required documentation. Meade has this crazy idea that all citizens guaranteed the right to vote under the Constitution should actually be able to use that right. We have a feeling that many more of us may find ourselves facing barriers to voting soon, so we’re grateful for his example.
Whether through her performances as Kissa Death or her sell-out Gala of Ghouls events at the Veranda, Violet Maldonado is pushing drag forward and turning out larger crowds with each happening. Maldonado, a trans woman, is a fearless performer and brings that same bravery to fostering and repping the queer and trans communities.
Orange County is expected to receive more than $50 million over the next decade from national opioid lawsuits to help prevent opioid overdose and debilitating addiction, and locally, Dr. Thomas Hall has been one of the lead voices advocating for smart (and actually helpful) ways to spend it. From investing in a mobile treatment clinic to opening up a no-cost opioid treatment program and broadening access to life-saving naloxone/Narcan and fentanyl test strips, the county is pursuing a diverse range of initiatives to help people where they’re at.
Young trans drag performer Coco Cavalli is helping usher in the future of Orlando drag, both in her own performances and as one of the original members of the popular Off the Record showcases at the Renaissance Theater (where Cavalli has also acted in several productions). OTR presents glittering new faces and is a haven of queer resistance and resilience.
Boundary-pushing trans playwright and actor Billie Jane is a consistent audience and critical favorite at Orlando Fringe and beyond, telling engaging stories while also centering transgender representation in her works.
Giselle Martinez serves as legal director and co-founder of the Orlando Center for Justice, a small nonprofit dedicated to defending immigrants’ rights. As an attorney, Martinez offers a crucial perspective on the challenges immigrants face in securing legal status through legal pathways, from immense backlog in the courts to new directives from the Trump administration that have temporarily (???) paused legal ways to enter and legally reside in the U.S. Martinez, a graduate of the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law, came to the U.S. herself as an undocumented teenager, with a passion for immigrant advocacy borne out of personal experience.
It’s OK to not be OK, and that’s what safe spaces are for. Peer Support Space, a peer-led nonprofit, brings mental health services and spaces to Central Floridians that fall between the cracks of our sputtering healthcare system. As executive director of Peer Support Space, Yasmin Flasterstein oversees PSS’ programs as well as Eva’s Casita, a brand-new respite center that’s the first of its kind in Orlando.
Deeply rooted in the LGBTQ+ community of Orlando, Melody Maia Monet is uplifting trans individuals. As the Center’s Transgender Resource Manager, Monet connects trans and non-binary individuals to the resources they need and boosts policy to protect trans peers across the state.
Martha Are is CEO of the Housing Services Network of Central Florida, one of the most prominent nonprofits in the region. The group helps advocate for compassionate housing and social service policies locally and at the state level. Are herself traveled to Tallahassee to speak out against HB 1365, a state law approved by the Florida Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2024 that prohibits people from sleeping on public property.
Felipe Sousa-Lazaballet, a proud immigrant from Brazil, serves as executive director of the Hope CommUnity Center. The nonprofit has, in recent weeks, stepped up its “Know Your Rights” training opportunities for immigrants, in light of mass deportation efforts threatened by the Trump administration. Sousa-Lazaballet has spoken up on behalf of Dreamers and others in immigrant communities who simply wish to provide for themselves and their families in search of a better, safe, and productive life.
Orlando’s own Kimberly Holdridge earned the honor in January of being elected interim president of the Florida AFL-CIO, the state’s largest federation of labor unions, representing more than 1 million working people. A former union official for the International Association of Theatrical and Stage Employees (IATSE) local 631, Holdridge now takes the helm of an organization that has suffered a pummeling by Florida’s 2023 anti-union law, SB 256. An LGBTQ+ worker herself, Holdridge is active in the AFL-CIO’s Pride at Work initiative, which advocates for inclusive language in union contacts to establish stronger rights for LGBTQ+ workers.
More vitally necessary organizations working on behalf of the people being directly targeted by the current presidential administration:
In the absence of a state department tasked with tackling wage theft and minimum wage violations, the Apopka-based Farmworker Association of Florida admirably stepped up to fill in the gaps. The community organization is made of locals fighting for other working locals, often immigrants, to retrieve the money they’re owed and respect they deserve.
Stand With Abortion Now is a grassroots, all-volunteer clinic escort group that seeks to protect patients at one of Orlando’s only abortion clinics from anti-abortion protesters, who gather outside of the clinic daily to harass patients. SWAN formed after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022, which overturned the federal constitutional right to abortion under Roe v. Wade. In addition to clinic escort services, the group also raises funds to help people access abortion care
A pineapple a day won’t keep the doctors away, but then it’s probably best for them to have your back. Pineapple Healthcare provides HIV/AIDS testing and treatment resources, primary care specialists and STD testing to Orlando’s LGBTQ+ community.
Keeping up with national news, Florida immigrants are holding their loved ones closer. The Florida Immigrant Coalition, a statewide grassroots organization, works to protect Florida immigrants and support them on their path to citizenship in preparedness events and application drives.
The first queer Latinx foundation in the nation, Contigo Fund aims to support the work and movements of Black and LGBTQ-led organizations in Central Florida. The foundation emerged in response to the 2016 Pulse Nightclub mass shooting and works to support projects that uplift marginalized groups in the community.
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This article appears in Feb 12-18, 2025.
