Hosting community LGBTQIA+ data dabbling opportunities and navigating the unexpected
Washington LGBTQ+ Survey Update
Elevating the Community
Evoke Cascadia is an LGBTQIA+ and Two Spirit serving, volunteer-run organization with a mission to elevate underrepresented communities through engagement, awareness, and intersectionality in Southwest Washington.
In this region, especially in rural areas — more safe, inclusive spaces needed. So Evoke Cascadia is creating them! One of those spaces is the Battle Ground Pride event every summer — chock full of fun and information for and by community members. The group also has another event in the works — the WA LGBTQ+ Survey Data Walk & Roll. Slated for April 23, this is an opportunity for LGBTQ+ community members from Southwest Washington to connect and contemplate action. Community members can review the WA LGBTQ+ data about LGBTQ+ folx in the region while enjoying food, drink, music, dancing, and a playful vibe. The survey data provides answers to questions like:
How connected do folx feel to others in the LGBTQ+ community?
How available are LGBTQ+ resources?
How is your physical and mental health?
How safe do you feel?
Watch this space for more info! This is going to be a data party for good!
Yakima Pride World AIDS Day Celebration
In observance of World AIDS Day, Yakima Pride, in partnership with the New York-based non-profit Visual AIDS, hosted a community gathering on December 1, 2025. This celebratory and reflective event brought together LGBTQ+ community members and allies for an evening of art, reflection, and solidarity.
The compelling screening of Day With(out) Art: Meet Us Where We're At, a program of six videos that feature the experiences of drug users and harm reduction practices as they intersect with the ongoing HIV crisis.
A powerful display of 31 panels from Yakima’s own local AIDS Memorial Quilt collection, honoring the unique lives from our community who were lost to HIV/AIDS.
A poignant tribute of songs from "RENT" by volunteer cast members from the Yakima Valley College Playmasters.
Guest speaker Charlie Lopez Salgado from Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho, discussed HIV/AIDS prevention and vital community services like PrEP .
Data Justice Consultant Veronica Smith reflected on the results of the WA LGBTQ+ Survey and their meaning for the South Central region.
The Washington LGBTQ+ Survey: Sharing the stories of 7,000 Washingtonians to give more power to LGBTQIA+ and Two Spirit communities to determine their own future.
In June 2025, Washington State University released groundbreaking findings from the Washington LGBTQ+ Survey—the first comprehensive statewide initiative to gather meaningful data from 2SLGBTQIA+ communities. Funded by the Washington State LGBTQ Commission, this landmark study amplifies marginalized voices and grounds policy decisions based on people’s lived experiences.
While national trends threaten decades of progress for 2SLGBTQIA+ rights, Washington State stands as a beacon of protection and inclusion. Our state offers comprehensive anti-discrimination laws, hate crime protections, and policies that affirm the dignity of all residents. This survey bridges critical data gaps and ensures our communities' voices help to shape the policies that affect their lives.
Here is Veronica’s calendar link if you would like to chat 1:1 or discuss hosting a data party or community conversation to make sense of the data and use it for good.
No matter that some are trying to erase us, we will continue to share our stories until we liberate all of us!
Book Spotlight
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse By Charlie Mackesy
Enter the world of Charlie and his three unlikely friends, discover their story and their most important life lessons.
In this book, you will find them together adventuring into the wild and exploring the thoughts and feelings that unite us all. The book’s 100 color and black-and-white drawings complement its heartfelt narrative. The series of dialogues is often comforting to read during times of uncertainty and has an appeal to readers of all ages.
About the author
Charlie Macksey was born during a snowy winter in Northumberland. He has been a cartoonist for The Spectator and a book illustrator for Oxford University Press. He has collaborated with Richard Curtis for Comic Relief, and Nelson Mandela on a lithograph project, 'The Unity Series.' Collectors of Mackesy's works include Elizabeth Gilbert, Whoopi Goldberg, Roger Waters, Richard Curtis, The Murdoch Freuds, Tim Bevan, M. Night Shyamalan, Bear Grylls, Howard Goodall, Harry Enfield, and Sting. He has lived and painted in South Africa, Southern Africa, and New Orleans. He co-runs a social enterprise, Mama Buci, in the Zambian copperbelt, which helps families of low and no income to become beekeepers.
#SelfCareCorner
A note from Veronica:
Each year on Jan 1, a friend of mine hosts a small collage gathering for friends. I look forward to this quiet, warm, and creative 3-hour gathering in her lovely home. This year a new friend hosted a vision boarding workshop at the Seattle Central Library on Jan 2, which I attended with my wife. It was also a warm, creative space. Selecting, cutting, and placing images that resonated with me was a release from the analytical nature of my data justice work. And it brought a simple joy I also experienced as a child and youth while coloring, painting, playing with legos or dolls, and reading.
This is now Jan 11, and I am sitting on my couch typing this reflection as I gaze at the collages I created over my splinted leg that I broke hours after the second collage workshop. Nowhere on my board was there foretelling of an injury which will take 3 months to recover from. A reminder that no amount of visioning can determine one’s future. And yet visioning for visioning’s sake remains a joy.
If I were to make a collage today, it would include these two reminders:
Healing is my number one job
My hope for all of us this year is that we embrace opportunities to both navigate visioning a better future and the unexpected each day with self compassion.
What’s new @data2insight?
More South King County LGBTQIA+ Community Conversations
Data2insight and Ebony with a Vision are continuing their community data justice work with the Queer Power Alliance, POCAAN, and Entre Hermanos — the organizations leading the South King County LGBTQIA+ Collaborative (The Collaborative) research study. This work is intentionally guided by and for community members to learn together and share with others what is important for improving economic stability.
The survey results provide valuable insights to economic, health, housing, transportation, and civic engagement experiences of the South King County LGBTQ+ community. Prior to this study, there was very little data available to tell the story of the community’s greatest strengths and challenges. Check out the findings here.
In September 2025, our team completed Phase I of this project, which focused on analyzing, visualizing, and co-facilitating a data party highlighting housing and economic experiences of those who completed the South King County LGBTQ+ survey. This month, January 2026, we begin working on Phase 2: data analysis, visualization, and story telling about survey data on health, civic engagement and transportation. This engagement will culminate with a community data party in May 2026
