'Fearless' LGBTQ advocate, social justice activist stepping down from Diverse & Resilient

APPLETON – A year ahead of same-sex marriage becoming legal in the United States, Kathy Flores stood with a local reverend in the Outagamie County Clerk's office in "full protest mode."

A federal judge on June 6, 2014, briefly struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage, which sent many gay couples in Wisconsin to their clerks' offices, marriage applications in hand.

Clerks in Madison and Milwaukee, along with clerks in Winnebago and Brown counties, kept their doors open late into Friday night to issue marriage licenses, waiving five-day waiting periods to expedite the process.

The Outagamie County Clerk refused to change her process.

"At the time, I organized conversations with the county executive, conversations with the county clerk. And they didn't go anywhere," said Flores, Appleton's diversity coordinator at the time.

Flores also wanted to get married to her partner, but in that chaotic week, she didn't have time to focus on her relationship. Instead, she and Rev. Roger Bertschausen, the then-senior pastor at Fox Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, "helped a ton of people get married in the surrounding counties," Flores said.

As a social justice activist, opposition is nothing new for Flores, the anti-violence program director for Diverse & Resilient in Appleton, a Wisconsin-based LGBTQ organization devoted to justice, health and safe community building.

As with many marginalized groups, opposition often comes with a long fight for change and, at 56, Flores is exhausted. On Feb. 24, Flores announced that she would be stepping back from her role with the organization to focus on rest and healing. Her last day will be April 28.

Flores has been many things: a teenage mother (and, by 21, a mother of three), a staunch diversity, equity and inclusion advocate, a sexual assault survivor, an intimate partner violence survivor, a social justice activist, a nonprofit founder and director, a grandmother, and a survivor of many medical crises, including cancer and an aneurysm. She also lives with the daily impacts of multiple sclerosis and Sjögrens syndrome, autoimmune diseases that each cause the immune system to mistakenly attack its own cells and tissues.

A brush with influenza B in the early years of COVID-19 knocked Flores down with such force that she wondered if she could spring back from it. She did, but the severity of illness made her question the breadth of her stamina.

"It was almost a spiritual lesson to me of, 'Oh, I can't keep fighting,'" Flores said. "I have to put the sword down and figure out how to heal. That doesn't mean you can't heal with the sword in hand, though."

'She's fearless': Flores' impact across Wisconsin

Like many 17-year-olds, Flores didn't know what to do with her life. But intensifying this uncertainty was the fact that she also had recently given birth to her first child. After her divorce at 21, and three children later, she enrolled at Fox Valley Technical College to train as an administrative assistant. By 25, her professional career started at Kimberly-Clark.

An opportunity at Kimberly-Clerk would end up fundamentally changing her.

In 1993, she volunteered to take part in Kimberly-Clark's African American Employee Network as its secretary. At her first meeting, she realized right away that every participant besides her was Black. Then, she understood: trust in marginalized spaces is a precious commodity.

"I have walked into a space where, while I know what my intentions are, they don't know me. And they don't trust me," Flores said. "I had just a peek of a window of what it must have been like for Black folks to walk into every single boardroom at Kimberly-Clark, every single conference room."

So began her anti-racism journey.

Flores started volunteering with African Heritage in Appleton more than 23 years ago, recalled Bola Delano-Oriaran, dean of St. Norbert College's division of social sciences. But even before those volunteering efforts, Flores was hitting the streets, protesting the racial profiling and police brutality against Black people living in northeast Wisconsin.

"She started over 28 years ago. Kathy is an activist, mobilizer, co-conspirator, advocate and citizen who is unequivocally dedicated and committed to eradicating social injustice," Delano-Oriaran said.

At each new job, Flores brought along everyone she worked with, whether people like Delano-Oriaran from African Heritage or "all the queer kids and Black kids who felt they didn't fit in anywhere" whom she met while working at Harmony Cafe in 2000. She understood the power of intersectional care — ensuring that multiple marginalized communities are being considered in community action.

Flores, who identifies as Latinx, said that being able to "pass" as white is something she takes very seriously: She knows this gives her many privileges, among them the opportunity to advocate for equal seats at the table for queer, Black, Indigenous and other people of color in the community.

Beth Schnorr, who served as the executive director of Harbor House for 30 years before retiring, called Flores "fearless" in this way. When Flores began working with the Appleton-based domestic violence shelter in 2002, Schnorr recognized the passion and care Flores brought to the organization.

Flores got to work coordinating and developing a LGBTQ task force at Harbor House, Schnorr said, because Flores saw dangerous gaps in that world when it came to intimate partner violence.

"She realized that there were a lot of LGBT folks who really weren't being served in a way that they needed to be, and so she developed a community task force at a time when that was not talked about as much as it is now," Schnorr said. "In our community, we talk about it much more now, and that's all because of Kathy's work."

Schnorr would ultimately be the person Flores felt most comfortable coming out to after she started dating her nonbinary partner, whom she would eventually marry. Flores distinctly remembered Schnorr telling her, "Congratulations. Enjoy the journey."

"When anybody makes a deeper discovery about who they are, they become a better advocate. And, of course, Kathy became a better advocate," Schnorr said.

Schnorr has described Flores as alert, selfless and hyper-aware of her environments. There was the time Flores was driving a client from the Outagamie County Courthouse in the Harbor House van when she witnessed an argument between a couple taking place. It looked like it was about to get ugly.

Flores stopped the van, pointed to the person being yelled at and said, "Come over here." The person stepped into the van and broke down. It turned out, the person was in trouble.

"That's Kathy," Schnorr said. "She's fearless."

Building a new space for LGBTQ people in northeast Wisconsin

Flores always toggled between activism and her various jobs over the years, but that line never felt thinner than when she worked as the city of Appleton's diversity coordinator. Too often, she would take time off to protest with her community, whether in response to same-sex marriage or the first wave of Black Lives Matter events at Lawrence University.

She would eventually understand that working for the city as a diversity coordinator didn't equate to anti-racism work.

"A lot of the work we were doing, it felt like it was to check a box and to make white people feel good. That's not what I'm about," Flores said.

During her tenure in the role from 2009 to 2016, the city tried unsuccessfully to dissolve the position three times.

Diverse & Resilient hired Flores in 2016 as a coordinator to start a statewide LGBTQ call center for survivors. She would travel the state, finding pockets of LGBTQ folks organizing in unexpected parts of Wisconsin, or "unicorns in the woods" as she referred to them.

At the time, Diverse & Resilient's only office was in Milwaukee. Flores saw additional need in the state, and decided to change that.

By the end of 2019, Flores was able to use grant money to open a Diverse & Resilient office in Appleton — the second one in the state — focused on anti-violence. Today, the anti-violence program budget is closer to $700,000, and is used to serve hundreds of survivors a year.

Helen Boyd, a writer, gender studies professor and diversity worker at Lawrence University, said Diverse & Resilient's Appleton office is so "uniquely Kathy" for the ways it brings services directly to the LGBTQ community. The presence of Diverse & Resilient has helped make the general population "more aware and more sympathetic" of the needs of the LGBTQ community, Boyd said.

Three of their former students at Lawrence University have gone on to work for Diverse & Resilient, which is a powerful testament to the organization being a safe and enduring place for LGBTQ folks to thrive and grow in.

"It's very nice to have queer students who want to do nonprofit work. They have jobs because Kathy created this. That's not something I could help students get when I first got here just because it didn't exist," Boyd said.

Having faith in fiery times

Flores is leaving at a dangerous time for LGBTQ people across the country.

Three months into 2023, 471 anti-trans bills have been introduced across 44 states, including Wisconsin. So far, 15 bills have passed; 39 have failed. In 2022, 23 states, including Wisconsin, introduced anti-LGBTQ bills, with 13 states signing bills into law. At the same time, anti-LGBTQ violence is on the rise, as are rates of suicide, depression and anxiety for LGBTQ youth.

And three Black transgender women were murdered over a recent nine-month span in Milwaukee.

Boyd said the political stage has pushed her and Flores to have interesting conversations about what it means to be an elder in community activism. That could mean many things, but for Flores, it's about prioritizing her needs to rest, and pass the baton to the younger generations.

Flores doesn't think she'll ever quiet her activism, not when there are laws out there working to oppress and eradicate LGBTQ people, she said. The stakes, she knows, are high.

Still, Flores is optimistic in her community.

"I have so much more hope, because I know where I was in my 20s. The activism today blows me away, the level of awareness," Flores said. "I have a lot of faith in young, queer, trans and BIPOC folks right now. I really do."

Natalie Eilbert covers mental health issues for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin. She welcomes story tips and feedback. You can reach her at neilbert@gannett.com or view her Twitter profile at @natalie_eilbert. If you or someone you know is dealing with suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or text "Hopeline" to the National Crisis Text Line at 741-741.

This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Appleton LGBTQ activist Kathy Flores stepping down