By Elizabeth Cannan-Knight (she/her/hers, ze/zer/zers, fae/faer/faers)
Editor’s Note: This story was written before Olivia Hill’s historic Metro Council-At-Large win. Congratulations Olivia!
If you have been anywhere in the Nashville area lately you’ve likely seen the signs – “Olivia Hill for Council-At-Large” – but who is Olivia Hill?
Why is she running for office?
And what impact does this have on the queer community?
Olivia is a current member of the Tennessee Pride Chamber, a former Vanderbilt engineer and supervisor, and a veteran. More than anything in her political campaign, she wishes for voters to see her under a commonality as a core member of Nashville’s community, not under the labels that society grants her due to her differences. “The fact that I’m trans or a woman are just different parts of me. I run solely based on my expertise, as an American citizen and as a veteran,” said Hill.
However, this does not mean she is unaware of the monumental significance of her running for office. She has already made history twice this race by being the first transgender person with their name on the ballot in Tennessee and by being the first transgender person to make it past the runoffs in Tennessee. If elected, she will be the first transgender person to hold public office in the state and one of the precious few across the entire Southeast.
Despite this, she still makes it very clear that those milestones are not the reason why she is running saying, “The fact that I’m the first trans woman is a great bonus, and it’s a great opportunity to stand up when the state is passing so many laws against us but that’s not why I’m running.” She generally resents the notion that her status as a trans woman is the sole reason for her political candidacy, as she feels it takes away from her devotion to the people that truly drove her to become politically active.
Olivia Hill is a very driven individual, and she has one major issue on her mind when approaching the political arena — infrastructure. “When I decided I wanted to run for office, I said, I want to run to fix Nashville’s broken underground. I have the knowledge needed to fix those,” she explained. “By trade, I’m a plumber and I held every single position in my department.”
Ranging from diesel mechanic to welder to overseer of an operation worth over $100 million, Olivia has done it all. Being so intimately familiar with the inner workings of Vanderbilt’s infrastructure and by extension knowing how to tackle Nashville as a whole, Olivia felt compelled to address this issue that she felt underlies many of contemporary Nashvillian’s complaints with the city. “People understand Nashville traffic, and people understand how many people have moved here, and how much traffic has slowed down in the past ten years. But the same traffic has happened to all of our utilities – power, water, storm drains, sewers, Internet, phone service, everything has slowed down due to how many people have moved here,” notes Olivia.
Olivia Hill is an incredibly talented and experienced individual hoping to effect great change by applying her diverse array of skills to the issues that Nashvillians need fixed, while also being a historic candidate and passionate supporter and defender of human rights, and a much-needed addition to the Metro Council-at-Large.
For more information on Olivia Hill or to learn about her historic campaign, go to https://voteoliviahill.com/.
