Juli Stratton: Seeing past labels and into people's hearts

When Juli Stratton looks at the world around her, she knows it's not just black or white or gray.

It's a colorful place, a magnificent place, and it's a place that will benefit from people working together to create communities strengthened by acceptance, love and compassion.

"I have learned that to be in community is to experience a sense of belonging," Stratton said. "To belong is to be related to and to be a part of something greater than ourselves. We are in community each time we find a place where we belong; it is the opposite of thinking that, 'Wherever I am, I would be better off somewhere else."

Stratton considers herself an "accidental activist." She sprang to action last June to organize the Peace and Justice Vigil to mourn the victims of the Orlando shooting. She ensures the memories of those slain due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice are honored on the Transgender Day of Remembrance. She dedicates time to awareness events throughout the year while working to give a voice to those who may not otherwise be heard.

"I did not intend to be an activist at all," she said. "But out of that desperate sense of looking for community and sense of belonging here in North Idaho, I learned how to become an activist and an organizer, and I’ve always been an educator."

Stratton owns and operates Stratton Consulting. Before that, she coached basketball for many years and worked as a paralegal trainer, "so that was a natural in to doing (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) education as it was requested and needed, and telling our stories but then also giving research-based information — that’s where the consulting pieces come in."

She conducts training sessions for various local entities — the juvenile justice department, Region 1 Behavioral Health, Kootenai Behavioral Health, Panhandle Health, Kootenai Family Medicine, social workers and students.

"It’s really just laying some foundational knowledge around the LGBT experience and gender identity, in particular," she said.

Even when she's educating, training and consulting, she's always working to build a community where everyone feels safe and accepted. She is presently working with a diverse group on a campaign called "We Choose All of Us," which calls attention to the fact that societal issues aren't just about the groups at the center of those issues.

"This is about all of us. We don't have to change everyone's minds, that's not what this is about," she said. "This is about living an authentic real life to the best of our ability.

"When I am doing this work, I know it’s where I am supposed to be. It may be easier to do something else, but I would not be better off somewhere else."

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You’re the founding organizer of North Idaho Pride Alliance. What is happening for that organization right now?

We’re really working on developing intentional relationships in the community to create unity and unity through our diversity of the LGBT experience. We put on events, like the ‘Gen Silent’ (film) screening, we’ll be the organizers for Pride in the Park and Q-Prom. We do that kind of thing to bring community together and continue to develop relationships within different organizations.

LGBT people are a part of every single group out there — youth, seniors, disabled, Natives, people of color — we’re everywhere. What our organization does is build intentional relationships so nobody falls through the cracks, so people have a place where they can feel that they can really thrive in, then we can start to see our shared values instead of our differences.

What North Idaho Pride Alliance events are in the works for this year?

I wrote to National Geographic and applied to get the film ‘The Gender Revolution,’ so we’re going to do a public screening of ‘The Gender Revolution’ and have a discussion on gender, hopefully during Pride Month (June). We’ll do Pride in the Park, we’ll do our Unity Dinner in September. In a couple weeks we’ll have our rummage sale.

One thing that is important about our organization is we rarely want to do anything by ourselves. We always want to partner with somebody because that shows we’re working together. This is not a silo. The most effective way we can be an organization in our culture is to break down our silos and start to work horizontally together instead of having blinders on that ‘this is just an LGBT issue,’ ‘this is just a disability issue,’ ‘this is just a women’s reproductive health issue.’ We cross all of those borders, so that’s our philosophy of operation — working horizontally and not in silos.

What other organizations, clubs or entities are you involved in?

I’m on the leadership action team for the Pride Foundation, which serves the Western five states, and I am on the Idaho state leadership team. I’m also the Idaho state coordinator for PFLAG (formerly Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). It’s interesting because I come from a social work background and then I went into the legal field as a paralegal and a manager. Then when I moved to Idaho I didn’t have a career or a job, and that’s when I started discovering this activist within, as I call it, or ‘accidental activist’ really ...

I’m getting into doing some new work around what it means to be a compassionate community and radical hospitality. We have a small group working on that as a new initiative to look at how we can become a compassionate community and learn about each other. It’s easy to get bogged down in negatives, but we’re trying to focus on an emerging worldview that is where we thrive in and not stay stuck.

You recently went to Boise — what were your objectives there?

I was invited to join a group that is focusing on developing a community of purpose. What we do is talk about this world-view that is, ‘Oh my gosh, how are we going to get through this? What about people in the margins,’ to, ‘What do we want our world to look like?’ The best way to explain it is it’s a collective visioning exercise to say, ‘What do we want our community to look like, feel like, sound like, act like, that is welcoming of the most diverse groups?’ and that is what I spent the day doing, going through exercises around collective visioning, which is something that a small group of us are starting to go through here. The group I met with in Boise, I was very privileged to be asked to join them to represent the north and bring back some information. Hopefully in May, we’ll be given a took kit, you know, ‘Here are some things to help you in your community if you choose to go in a direction that is more open, welcoming, affirming and compassionate and kind.’ That’s what that’s about.”

How do you feel our community is doing when it comes to celebrating and embracing diversity?

I’m very encouraged. I feel very hopeful that people are seeing past some of the labels and they’re seeing through and into people’s hearts. I really do believe and feel that, and I’ve felt that for a while. Again, when we stop looking at our differences and we start looking at our similarities, we have tremendous potential and power for kindness and compassion and love and change. And this isn’t just all ‘Kumbaya’ touchy-feely, this is just a different way for sustaining change. And we don’t just want it on paper, we want a cultural shift, and that’s going to make some people feel very uncomfortable.

But I’m not apologetic for who I am. I should be able to exist here with my wife and in my queerness, just like you or just like anybody else. It doesn’t take away from unique experiences, and as a gay-queer person I definitely have a unique experience from somebody who is a straight person. Does that make me special? Do I deserve special rights? Absolutely not. It just makes my experience different.

One of the things we have to do as a community is look at our privilege around that and acknowledge that there are struggles in different identities. A person of color’s struggle is different from my struggle in whiteness. My struggle as a gay person is different from a straight person’s struggle. Just because I see things for me personally and for our community getting better, it doesn’t mean we all of a sudden are color blind or gender blind.

Nothing bothers me worse than to hear people say, ‘We’re all just human beings, that doesn’t matter.’ It doesn’t matter because you have privilege and you don’t feel the oppression. It matters that you recognize that there is a difference in color, there is a difference in gender identity. That’s real … To say, ‘We’re all the same, so we shouldn’t see black or white,’ that totally wipes out a black person’s experience. ‘We’re all people, we shouldn’t be gay or straight,’ that totally wipes out a person’s experience.”

Why do you do what you do and what keeps you going every day?

I do it because I have tremendous privilege, I have tremendous support and I try to live with intention and purpose. When I do things I try to do them intentionally and purposely. But mostly it’s because I can. I recognize the privilege I have in my life. I could just as easily stay home and walk my dogs and work out and do pottery, which I haven’t done in forever, and learn to play music, which I want to do — all those kinds of things. But I think this is part of the reason I’m on this planet. I tried to stop saying, ‘What’s my purpose in life?’ and instead, ‘How am I going to live with purpose today?’ So when I do things, it’s purposeful.

At this point in my life, that’s why I do it, because I have a voice that can help. I have tremendous support from my family and I know I’m loved no matter what, and there are a lot of people who don’t have that privilege and that luxury.

What do you hope to accomplish in the near future, say, the next year to five years?

In five years, I would love to see us have a collective space. Not an LGBT community center, but a community center where everyone’s welcome, and where there is space created for all of our different groups to function and thrive and exist. My vision is a community space where we can have theater, where we can have AA meetings, Pride Alliance events, a queer artists show, that kind of thing.

My hopes for the North Idaho Pride Alliance is that we truly expand to North Idaho, and we’re already starting to work with the Bonner County Human Rights Task Force. I would really like to see our organization be a model for other communities to develop intentional relationships and work horizontally. That’s what I would love to see.

BIO BOX:

Age: 51

Born and raised: Central Illinois

Family: Wife of 10 years, Amy; dogs Fuzzie and Zoey

Education: Bachelor’s in physical education from Illinois State University, master’s in counseling and community services from the University of Illinois at Springfield

Favorite color: The rainbow

Historical person you admire: Harvey Milk

Best advice you’ve ever received: “Live by the Golden Rule,” from my mom

Personal mantra or philosophy: If you don’t have dreams, they can’t come true

Hobbies: Working out, playing basketball, spending time with family, vacationing, exploring