USA (Commonwealth Union)_ A 30-year-old Indian-American attorney, Janani Ramachandran, scripted history by becoming the youngest and the first LGBQT woman of color to take oath as a member of the Oakland City Council in the state of California. Ramachandran identifies herself as the daughter of immigrants from a small South Indian village. The graduate of Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, has served for a number of legal nonprofits.
Following her victory, the public interest attorney tweeted the following. She wrote, “WE WON! Honored to be the next City Councilmember for Oakland District 4!! I will officially be the youngest Council member in Oakland’s history, the 1st #LGBTQ woman of color & 1st South Asian to serve on Oakland City Council”. She also expressed her heartfelt thanks on Twitter, writing, “Immensely grateful for all those who believed in me and helped build our movement. Honored to have my loved ones by my side as I took the ceremonial oath!”
During the inauguration ceremony that was held recently, Ramachandran looked traditional in a saree as she took the formal oath as a member of the Oakland City Council for District 4. According to her website, Ramachandran presently serves on the California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs and formerly served on the City of Oakland Public Ethics Commission as a Commissioner. Further, being a first-time candidate for the State Assembly in 2021, she stunned political analysts by progressing to the special election runoff against a field of previously elected individuals.
LGBT refers to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. Since the 1990s, the initialism and many of its common forms have served as an umbrella word for encompassing sexual orientation and gender identity. LGBT is an adaptation of the initialism LGB, which began to supplant the term homosexual (or gay and lesbian) in references to the LGBT population as a whole in the mid- to late-1980s. When transgender persons are not included, the acronym LGB is still used instead of LGBT.
