Y'all Better Stop With Your Violent Queer Parties

I want queer dance parties who take queer dollars to cut this shit out. now. even better retroactively with bountiful reparations given to all of us who've experienced this kind of violence.

I want them to be accountable to the people they are supposedly welcoming, to change their practices and principles and understand the kind of power over people who are navigating multiple forms of oppression and violence every day.  I want them to come up with principles around holding relationships that they don't understand because of their privilege and holding lives and experiences that they have benefited from but do not actually know.  My most recent experience was this weekend. On Friday night my partner and I went to "SECRET POP UP" Brooklyn Queer dance party at Cubana Social and unsurprisingly experienced multiple levels of oppression and violence throughout our time there. 

Captive Genders: Teach-In on Abolitionist Imaginings and Transgender Activism

Next week my brilliant sibling Che & I will be hosting a teach in at UPenn on our Captive Genders chapter "Abolitionist Imaginings" We'll be highlighting the work of STAR, Kiyoshi Kuromyia & the ongoing legacy of trans activism.

Click here for more info! Hope to see you there!

Ten Posts for Sylvia Rivera's Ten Year Memorial

its incredible to see how many people reblog the Sylvia Rivera video and how many feel so strongly about her words! 

someone recently reblogged the video with commentary and it made me realize that folks who haven’t been following my blog might not have seen the many Sylvia Rivera/STAR related work that i’ve posted over the past year.  so i decided to repost the Sylvia Rivera Ten Year Memorial.  please share if the spirit moves you!

reina

The spirit was gone from her body Forever had always been inside That shell had always been intertwined And now were disintwined It's hard to understand

--

I am pursued by questions of historical process, of historical responsibility, questions of historical consciousness & ignorance & what these have to do with power.

links:

SYLVIA RIVERA 10 YEAR MEMORIAL

 SYLVIA GOES TO COLLEGE & STAR TAKES OVER NYU

  SYLVIA RIVERA & NYPD REFLECT ON STONEWALL REBELLION

  STAR PEOPLE ARE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE

  RAPPING WITH MARSHA P JOHNSON

  STAR TREK: SYLVIA & STAR HOUSE LEAVE THE LOWER EAST SIDE

  YOU GOTTA KEEP FIGHTING GIRLIE CAUSE ITS NOT TIME TO CROSS THE RIVER JORDAN!

  MARKET THIS

  SYLVIA RIVERA, JULIA MURRAY & RANDY WICKER LOOKING FABULOUS AT UPLIFT LIGHTING

TEN POSTS FOR SYLVIA RIVERA'S TEN YEAR MEMORIAL

Historical amnesia is starvation of the imagination; nostalgia is the imagination’s sugar rush, leaving depression and emptiness in its wake.  Breaking silences, telling our tales, is not enough.  We can value that process –and the courage it may require –without believing that it is an end in itself.  Historical responsibility has, after all, to do with action –where we place the weight of our existences on the line, cast our lot with others, move from an individual consciousness to a collective one.  

(photo by Randy Wicker. text from Antony Hegarty's the Spirit Was, Adrienne Rich's Resisting Amnesia. )

Last Friday's Trans Day of Action! Marching with my girlfriend Liz, photo by the illustrious Sabelo Narasimhan!

What a way to end solstice & enter summer! Schemed & plotted for gender liberation and then finally got to meet the amazing trans activist Janet Mock on the eve of Trans Day of Action!

Marsha P Johnson Documentary Playing at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project Thursday 6/21

Thursday, June 21st, 6.30-8.30PM Maybe you were there, or maybe you already know that *Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera consistently fought back and gave for their communities while breathing both, fire and life into movement work! Come honor those who came before us & those of us making history daily-simply by surviving. We'll eat snacks, view the powerful, "Pay It No Mind" documentary about Marsha P. Johnson and share our own histories. Come on over!  At SRLP 147 W 24th Street, 5th Floor New York, NY Trains: C/M/R/N/F/1 This event is FREE. Metrocards provided. Allies welcome. *"Marsha P. Johnson was a revolutionary trans activist, Stonewall instigator, Andy Warhol model, drag queen, prostitute, starving actress, and Saint, as well as a downtown NYC fixture from the 1960’s through her too-soon demise in 1992. Johnson persevered through a life embodied by her middle initial P, which stood for “Pay It No Mind.”

this is a beautiful article by Toshio Meronek, editor of Critical Resistance newspaper The Abolitionist, about the relationship between queer & trans people, the prison industrial complex and the histories of prison abolitionist organizing.

I co-authored this piece for the New Queer Agenda with my sibling Che and the illustrious AJ Lewis.  we actually wrote it a while back but because of publishing changes it was only published this May through Barnard College Center for Research on Women and I think they did a great job.  the whole online e-book looks so good!

About Intro 475 city hall photo with Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P.Johnson, Kady Vandeurs, Barbara Deming, etc...

      thank you for the memory of Sylvia R. & Marsha J. I can tell you for sure, though, that Kady was a friend oh Marsha, and didnot vote against support for queer and trans street folk. Kady was a student & cab driver at the stonewall time, and often gave free lifts to Marsha and other queer and trans folk. Kady was queer and poor and radical herself, and did all she could do to help other [particularly] poor folk. Thanks and cheers to you from Diana Jo Davies. [ps. I took the photo at City Hall.]

----

Hi Diana Davies,

  What an honor it is to have you on this blog! Thank you for writing me and sharing your deep insight.  Also thank you for the incredibly rich archive you have created and so generously shared with the world, I am sure you hear this all the time but your work has been incredibly meaningful to me as both an activist and artist. I believe your archive has been fundamental in this moment of renewed & on going interest in the lives of many queer and trans people, especially Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson.

  I'll definitely amend the photo description, and its great to know more about Kady Vandeurs!  Just to clarify, when I wrote "Sadly some of these fab folks then got the bill passed by bumping off coverage of gender identity" I wasn't saying Barbara Deming, Kady Vandeurs were responsible, I was referring to the way that it actually ended up getting passed through negotiation of eliminating gender expression/identity coverage from the bill.  Sylvia talked a lot about it and the collusion of some prominent lesbian & gay people with it, for instance Jean O'Leary & the Lesbian Feminist Liberation.  Here is one speech Sylvia gave about how the bill was passed: http://redalyc.uaemex.mx/pdf/377/37719106.pdf

  with deep appreciation,

  reina

A New Queer Agenda finally hit the online new stands!

Hello the internet!

Specifically the POC centered, gender self determining, queer liberation, disability & economic justice internet!

I co-authored a chapter in Queers for Economic Justice's ebook, A New Queer Agenda with my sibling Che & AJ Lewis about queer & trans people resisting police violence. after many years in limbo, The Scholar & Feminist Online journal published by the Barnard Center for Research on Women published it! it finally hits online newstands today! We wrote it in 2009, but clearly police violence hasn't stopped, nor has our resistance, so IMHO its still relevant!  its also filled with beautiful photos by Syd London!

You can read it here: 

http://sfonline.barnard.edu/a-new-queer-agenda/

Rev. Moshay Moses talks about her spiritual connection with trans sisters Sylvia Rivera & Chloe Dzubilo at Thursday's Chloe Dzubilo Awards celebrating the revolutionary lives of trans activists Marsha P Johnson, Sylvia Rivera and Chloe Dzublio and honoring the current work trans and queer activist revolutionaries!  This video was recorded by Randy Wicker, friend of Marsha P Johnson and also an awardee!

Also, OMG the night was amazing and ended with the dazzle dancers dancing completely naked on the alter of Judson Memorial.  What could have felt like played out irony felt like sincere celebration of life, and I loved it!

From Southerners On New Ground (SONG) about Amendment One and the real win for Queer Liberation.

In meditation on Darnell “Dynasty” Young -a queer black high school student who brought a stun gun to school to use in self defense against the many queer bashers Dynasty had to deal with at the Arsenal Tech High School in Indianapolis.  

This story also disrupts the narrative of black families being more homophobic. Dynasty's mother, Chelisa Grimes, gave Dynasty the stun gun after school officials told both of them that it was Dynasty's fault for being queer bashed.  

“I had to do something. They throw bottles and rocks at him...If they weren’t going to protect him,” Grimes said, “I’ll protect him.”

here is:

Robert F. Williams on Self-Defense

Tomorrow on May Day i'm going to remember that mass incarceration is forced migration. That i cannot talk about low wage workers without talking about incarcerated people's labor or the haunting & on going effects of slavery, ableism & colonialism. But mostly i'm just excited to experience a bunch of queer, trans, gender non conforming people take up space in deviant, troublemaking ways.

---

When: Tuesday, May 1, 2012 - 3:00pm - 8:00pm Where:

Where: Meet at Regal Movie Theater, 850 Broadway (at 13th St.) at 3pm.  Look for these banners: The Audre Lorde Project, FIERCE, Queers for Economic Justice, Streetwise and Safe and the Sylvia Rivera Law Project.  Together as a contingent we will join the Rally at Union Square, New York, New York!

MAY DAY 2012: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two-Spirit, Trans and Gender Non-Conforming Contingent!

May Day March and Rally: Tuesday, May 1st meet at 3pm, Rally at 4pm at Union Square, March starts at 5:30-6:00pm

Union Square  Subways: L, N, Q, R, 4, 5, 6 to 14th St. Union Square