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A 2024 Trump rally in Pennsylvania, a state that went red in the last presidential election.
The Human Rights Campaign’s American Dreams Tour is bringing storytelling and organizing to communities targeted by a wave of anti-LGBTQ+ laws.
As anti-LGBTQ+ legislation surges across the United States and the Trump administration and Republican state legislatures escalate their efforts to marginalize transgender Americans through executive orders, the Human Rights Campaign is turning to one of the oldest, tried and true tools of queer resistance: storytelling.
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On Monday, the LGBTQ+ civil rights organization announced the American Dreams Tour: Equality Across America, a multi-city campaign designed to amplify LGBTQ+ voices, counter political disinformation, and reinvigorate a movement under siege. The tour launches July 30 in Columbus, Ohio, and continues through November, with stops in Las Vegas, D.C., Dallas, Atlanta, and Nashville. Additional rural and suburban events are expected to follow.
Related: HRC honors Jonathan Capehart, Ina Fried, and Nico Lang for LGBTQ+ journalism that breaks through the noise
The campaign opens with a sharply produced video, narrated by HRC President Kelley Robinson, just back from maternity leave, that reclaims the arc of LGBTQ+ history as one of transformation through visibility and resistance. “From protest line to church pews, from clinics to classrooms, from drag shows to boardrooms, we have turned raids into resistance—the AIDS crisis into action, rejection into revolution. We have rebuilt this country every time it broke our hearts,” Robinson says in the video.
In a Monday appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Robinson framed the tour as both a cultural intervention and a political necessity.
“We’ve got to get back to basics in telling our stories and meeting people where they are,” she said. “We not only change hearts and minds, we shift the way that people behave, that they vote, that they advocate.”
According to the Trans Legislation Tracker, 953 anti-trans bills have been introduced across 49 states in 2025. Of those, 120 have already been enacted. The legislation spans health care bans, education censorship, restrictions on pronoun use, and efforts to redefine legal sex, while dozens of executive orders at the federal level have added to the assault on trans rights.
Related: Human Rights Campaign initiative strives to overcome HIV stigma
The tour is part of HRC’s broader One Million Voices for Equality campaign, which includes storytelling trainings and community-based events aimed at mobilizing LGBTQ+ people and allies nationwide. “That’s always been the story of our community,” Robinson said. “We’ve got to understand the struggle, but still embrace and celebrate our joy. We’re declaring that this is our country too, that pride and patriotism go hand in hand.”
In February, HRC underwent a significant restructuring, laying off about 20 percent of its staff in what leadership described as a necessary “reset” to confront both financial strain and a hostile political landscape.
In a statement announcing the tour, Robinson invoked the power of visibility across generations. “For half a century, our movement has changed hearts and minds with our stories — Harvey Milk in the Castro, Pedro Zamora in [MTV’s] The Real World, trans youth and parents coming forward in statehouses across the country. When people know who we really are, everything changes. This tour is about reclaiming that legacy. We’re traveling to the places where harm is happening, and where hope is rising. We’re showing up for communities who’ve been told they don’t belong and reminding them, and the country, that they are the American dream.”
Related: Human Rights Campaign to lay off 20% of staff as LGBTQ+ organization restructures (exclusive)
Columbus, home to Jim Obergefell, the lead plaintiff in the U.S. Supreme Court case that brought marriage equality to the nation in 2015, was chosen with intention, she said. “Equality cannot be conditional,” Robinson said.
Watch HRC’s American Dreams Tour: Equality Across America kickoff video below.
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