Past Events

How is the Palestinian queer movement similar and different than other LGBTQ movements around the world? What are the questions, challenges, and beliefs that shape the discourse of the Palestinian queer movement? How can the other queer people understand and work with issues of visibility and the notion of “coming out” within the Palestinian context? What are the goals, joys, challenges, strategies and dreams of these groups?

Let’s Celebrate the Welfare Justice Campaign Victory!

 Tuesday, February 16, 2010

6pm-10pm

Audre Lorde Project

85 South Oxford Street, Brooklyn, NY

Stop the Eviction of Starlite Lounge! -- 50 year old Black-Owned Safe Haven
When: Tues 2/2/10 1pm
Where: 1080 Bergen between Rogers & Nostrand; Brooklyn, New York

LGBTSTGNC People from the Bay to Brooklyn Create Community Solutions to Violence

We are mourning the tragic deaths of 15-year-old African American Jaysen Mattison in Baltimore and 19-year-old Puerto Rican Jorge Steven López Mercado in Puerto Rico, and the countless others we have lost to hate violence.  Our sorrow and outrage go out to their families and communities: we know Jaysen and Jorge were taken from you too soon.  We recognize that there is a war against low-income, immigrant, and LGBTSTGNC (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two- Spirit, Trans, and Gender Non-Conforming) People of Color, and that our people are meeting early deaths at the hands of hatred, abuse, neglect, and oppression.

Unfortunately, the recent passing of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the nation’s first ever federal LGBTSTGNC-inclusive hate crimes bill, will not stop the violence we face. The bill:

• Provides no funding or resources to actually prevent violence, but instead gives $5 million to expand the powers of local police and the FBI to investigate and prosecute incidences of hate violence.
• Strengthens a criminal “justice” system that funnels more and more poor people and people of color into prisons and away from our families.
• Supports the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as part of the larger Defense Authorization Act, which allocated $130 billion to military efforts instead of to education, jobs, housing, and healthcare.
• Reaffirms the idea that safety comes through more police and more people in prison, instead of by addressing the real needs of survivors of violence, people who have been violent, and the communities affected.  

We believe that we can create our own safety.   We desire and demand solutions that challenge the real causes of violence: homophobia, transphobia, and economic injustice.  As we demand the basic necessities that we need to survive—jobs, housing, healthcare, and education—we know that we must create real ways for communities to respond to and prevent violence without relying on violent institutions.  We refuse to have our pain used to support violence of any kind.

JOIN US ON TUESDAY, DECEMBER 8^TH FOR A DAY OF RECLAIMING SAFETY. LGBTSTGNC communities from the Bay to Brooklyn will be strategizing and discussing community based solutions to violence.  If you are in the Bay Area or the NYC area, attend the events listed below. If you are not, we encourage you to plan a conversation or some other type of event and let us know how it went.

Together, we can turn the tides of violence