At some point today, Sarah McBride will speak for five minutes on the stage of the DNC and become the first transgender person to speak to a major party convention.

Preparatory to that event, Sarah spoke yesterday to Katie Couric of Yahoo news and Katy Steinmetz of Time magazine.

I am moved and inspired that there will be a chance for someone on a stage at a national convention to say that they are a transgender person. And my hope is that for anyone who is watching, who worries that their dreams and their identity are mutually exclusive, who worry about whether they can be accepted and succeed as who they are, that they can find some comfort and some hope in the fact that a person will be standing on that stage saying those words.

--McBride

I want to make sure that people understand that behind this national conversation around transgender rights there are real people. Who hurt when they’re mocked, who hurt when they’re discriminated against and who just want to be treated with dignity and respect.

--McBride

McBride is the national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign and on the steering committee of Trans United for Hillary.

As the trans community becomes more visible, we’re going to see, I think, a decrease in discrimination, but at the same time, at least in the short term, this increased visibility is going to create more vulnerability for a lot of people.

--McBride

Why is there so much transgender in the news?

We’ve been building our political voice. We’ve been building our political infrastructure. And more and more people have been coming out. More and more Americans know someone who is transgender … It was past time for the part of the community that didn’t get as much attention to finally be in the spotlight. The Obama administration looked at the challenges faced by transgender Americans and came to the conclusion that there were steps they should be taking. And in response to that advancement—and in response to the historic marriage equality decision—anti-LGBTQ activists and some conservative politicians decided they needed to move on to a new vulnerable group to target.

--McBride

Bathrooms?

Whenever you tell a group of people that they can’t use bathrooms, or they can’t access spaces that other people use, that is dehumanizing. It is discriminatory, and it reinforces the stigma and the prejudices that the transgender community already faces. The reason why access to facilities—and access to public spaces—is so important is because it’s much more difficult to go to work, to go to school, to participate in the public marketplace if you can’t access bathrooms that make sense for you, that match who you are. At the end of the day, this isn’t just about access to bathrooms. This is about transgender people fully and equally participating in public life.

--McBride

There are 28 transgender delegates to the DNC. That outreaches the 16 African-American delegates at the RNC.