One Fantastic Equality Florida Pinellas Mixer!
Last Saturday evening November 3rd, Florida Council members of Equality Florida and their invited guests enjoyed a great mixer at the beautiful home of Katee Tully and Helen Levine in the Old Northeast Neighborhood of St. Petersburg. More than 70 guests attended the event, and donated more than $4,000. Pinellas Steering Committee Co-Chair and donor, Katee Tully, fired up the audience with her speech about the "worker bees," (referencing the Pinellas Steering Committee members who are currently "busy as bees" working on the 2013 Equality Florida Pinellas Gala, and the actual 50,000 bees she has in hives in her own backyard) who work together to achieve success. Our guest speaker, Darden Rice, Community Enviromental Organizer and Political Activist, gave a very beautiful speech about coming out to her family, and what it meant to her to be able to tell her personal story for the first time to a LGBT and straight allied audience- it was moving and powerful. It was also exciting to meet a friend of Trevor Burgess (openly gay CEO of C1 Bank) and his partner, Gary Hess's friend, Jeffery Jew, who is a current contestant on the Bravo TV show, Top Chef/Seattle. The Florida Council includes people who give at least $1200 a year to Equality Florida.