This article was originally posted on Gapers Block.

Juan Calderon sips coffee at Café Colao on Division Street in the historic center for the Chicago’s Puerto Rican community. This part of Humboldt Park is marked by red and blue metal banners on each end in the shape of the Puerto Rican flag. The café, known for Puerto Rican style coffee and pastries, is a block from where he works at the Vida/SIDA center inside the Puerto Rican Cultural Center.

Calderon begins to talk about why he and fellow Humboldt Park activist Roberto Sanabria published a letter in the Windy City Times, a Chicago publication for the gay and lesbian community, voicing their concern and anger over Equality Illinois firing Rick Garcia, the political director and co-founder of the state’s largest advocacy organization for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equality

‘Firing Rick Garcia was a slap in the face to the Latino community,’ Calderon says

Calderon says he has no idea why the Equality Illinois would fire such a prominent figure in both the Chicago Latino and LGBTQ community. This is a common sentiment among Garcia’s supporters who are flabbergasted that someone who played such a key role in passing Illinois civil unions bill would be fired from the organization he co-founded.

Equality Illinois may have tried to minimize the backlash by timing Garcia’s dismissal before the holidays but Garcia supporters and allies around Illinois continue to voice concern about the decision, as has Garcia himself. Calderon and Sanabria say that removing Garcia from Equality Illinois will set back years of political progress, particularly in bridging the Latino and LGBTQ communities of Chicago.

At 24, Calderon is the director of the Vida/SIDA Center; the name translates to Life/AIDS in English. Its bright blue and red painted storefront pops out on Division street; up close, the mural includes symbols of the gay rights movement and of HIV/AIDS crisis and shows the services provided inside, testing, education on prevention. While he says he is happy about civil unions passing, he and other Humboldt Park activists have priorities in the community: health, public safety and economic advancement for LGBTQ residents.

Calderon talks about future plans for the center: they want to expand to the adjacent and now vacant store front to create Chicago’s first transitional shelter for homeless LGBTQ youth. It will be called ‘El Rescate,’ or The Rescue. He is planning a fundraiser for the expansion where they will showcase ‘I am the Queen,’ a documentary about Humboldt Park’s one and only transgender beauty pageant that Calderon began a few years back to address homophobia and transphobia

The pageant was organized not only to support the transgender community of Humboldt Park; the winner of the pageant becomes a community liaison, doing outreach and education on behalf of the Vida/SIDA Center. Rick Garcia wasn’t just supportive of the Vida/SIDA programs from the start; he is a guest judge at the beauty pageant, and sits on the organization’s advisory board

Juan Calderon is a fixture of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, when he gives a tour of the buildings he points to different stages of his life: as a child he attended their day care program, and after dropping out of high school, he attended their alternative high school. Now that he directs the Vida/SIDA center, he attends college classes at North Eastern Illinois University, planning to get a degree in public health.

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