This is my love letter to all the queer musicians out there, making art and kicking ass. If there's an artist you think I should know about, please let me know, I love new music! (I also reblog/post on general queer and trans stuff, radical news, and instances when the world is fucked, and when it isn't!)
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
![thematerialworld:
[Photo by Adam Feldman]
Last night, Adam Feldman (theater critic for Time Out New York) organized a midnight vigil for Mark Carson, the Black gay man who was killed in the West Village Friday night. We gathered on 6th Avenue and West 8th Street, on the corner where he was shot in the face. It was an intense, emotional event. I’m bad at estimating these things, but I think there were around 100 [edit: 300] people there. While a few speakers betrayed an upsetting short-sightedness about how violence operates in our society, most were eloquent and inspiring. In no particular order:
Performer and playwright Justin Sayre started things off with a volcanic, passionate sermon about the perceived danger of queer love — how the straight world fears us for the very thing that makes us most powerful, and so the only response is to love harder, love louder, and love more than ever. His tone set the stage for the event, and allowed people to fully feel the emotions we’d all been locking up tight.
Photographer and ACT UP vet Jon Nalley revealed, shockingly and emotionally, that Mark Carson is also the name of a fallen ACT UP comrade. Jon schooled the crowd about the true cause of AIDS death (not the HIV virus, but government neglect and institutional heterosexism), highlighting the connections between one Mark’s death and the other’s.
Long-time activist and Stonewall vet Jim Fouratt pointed out something that SHOULD be obvious, but which hadn’t occurred to me — that there used to be a hospital TWO BLOCKS from that corner, but in the wake of St. Vincent’s closing, Mark had to be rushed to Beth Israel all the way across town. Perhaps, in the distance between these hospitals, Mark’s life could have been saved. In that sense, the politicians that allowed St. Vincents to be converted to a luxury condo high rise — politicians like lesbian mayoral candidate Christine Quinn — may have gay blood on their hands. Jim helped us understand how depriving a gay neighborhood of a hospital is inherently homophobic and violent.
A trans woman who was once homeless in that same neighborhood spoke intensely about how vigils shouldn’t be the only time we come together, and how we must take our struggle to the U.N. to fight for queer safety internationally, and hold the U.S. to the highest possible global standard.
A member of Queer Fist read a first-person account of the Stonewall Riots, in which a gay rioter’s head was injured on that very corner, his blood pouring into the street. Another rioter screamed into the city, “THIS IS THE BLOOD OF YOUR BROTHERS!” It was chilling, to consider the bloody history of that location.
Another Queer First member pointed out that this murder was allowed to happen because the killer had access to a gun, and that the supporters of gun rights, deep down inside, are primarily afraid of the specter of the Black gunman, who will infiltrate their towns and homes. These gun rights advocates feel they need weapons to protect themselves from their racist fantasy. It underscored how racism fuels violence against ALL peoples.
Khaela Maricich from The Blow was like: we’re all going to die anyway, and it’s better to die being yourself and expressing your love and your identity than hiding it and living longer. Her comment was somewhat insensitive to queers in greater danger than her, like trans people and people of color, but I understood what she was trying to say.
An older trans man shared that he was attacked in Manhattan only a few days ago, and reminded the crowd, with tremendous grief in his voice, that trans people are killed CONSTANTLY in this country.
A straight mother spoke because her adult son in another city asked her to, so she could share her love and support with us.
Interestingly, a straight young woman who lives on that block confessed that her initial impulse was to text her gay friends, warning them to “dial it down” so that no one on the street would know they’re gay, but that, after hearing the speakers, she realized that this was the wrong lesson - that we should “dial it up,” to demand our right to exist. ”DIAL IT UP” became a chant, briefly.
A Black gay man spoke with great anguish, commenting on how not many other men of color were in attendance, and laying out so clearly how different queer people have unique challenges and specific circumstances — that Mark Carson’s life as a Black gay man was significantly different from the lives of the white gay men who made up the majority of the crowd.
A few speakers mentioned the importance of hate crimes legislation, and thanked the police for their cooperation with the vigil, and one speaker even said, “THANK YOU TO THE NYPD OF TODAY FOR NOT BEING THE NYPD OF 1969!” and though I had been resisting the urge to speak, that was my last straw
I got up on the box and said something like this:
I hope this doesn’t sound callous, but I was not surprised by this death. Queer people are killed in this country all the time. I have always thought of myself as someone who is vulnerable to murder. Four trans women were killed in the month of April alone — four in one month! So when things like this happen in our neighborhoods, we need to ask ourselves what this violence means. And we have to be skeptical about solutions like hate crimes legislation, which just feeds the prison industrial complex — an industry that profits from the imprisonment of queers and people of color. One third of all adult Black men in the U.S. are in prisons, and trans people are disproportionately arrested and locked up. We cannot continue to support this! And while I’m sure individual NYPD officers were polite in the lead-up to this vigil, we cannot forget that the NYPD ritually harasses trans people and people of color in this city! Trans women are arrested simply for walking down the street! So when we talk about how queer people need to be “safe,” we have to ask ourselves what “safety” really means — because the NYPD does not makes us safe! It harasses and imprisons us! We must reckon with these connections — that Mark Carson’s death is an extension of the violence that oppresses so many others, from the institutional violence of governments to the random violence of a crazy guy with a gun.
I make a living speaking in front of people, but talking at this vigil was terrifying. As I spoke, I felt myself hyperventilating, and I worried I would vomit. After I stepped down, I sat on the curb a few yards away from the crowd, catching my breath.
I wish I had specifically named the Stop & Frisk policy that makes queers and people of color vulnerable to police harassment. I wish I had called out Christine Quinn for supporting this policy.
I wish I had acknowledged a previous speakers’ disappointment about the lack of people of color in attendance. I wish I had pointed out the sad truth: that our queer “community” is still so segregated, such that when a white person organizes a vigil and spreads the word through his social networks, that message will not automatically filter into Black queer circles. When I mentioned this afterwards to Ted Kerr from Visual AIDS, he added that many queers of color are not willing to make [edit: cautious about making] themselves vulnerable to the kind of police surveillance that surrounded the event. This hadn’t occurred to me, and reminded me that so many aspects of our queer condition are so complicated, and we all have so much to learn and understand about each other.
When the event was over, I was surrounded by friends and colleagues. People whom I respect, and who inspire me on a regular basis — the people I came to NYC hoping to meet, and the people who keep me here. I was proud of Adam for making this happen, and proud of my community for showing up.
But I was sad too — not just about the senseless death of this man — but that there didn’t seem to be anyone at this vigil who knew him. It seemed indicative of the intense divide amongst queer people in this city.
Tomorrow night, there will be another rally — this one sponsored by the (often idiotic) LGBT Center and featuring Christine Quinn herself — the lesbian mayoral candidate whose policies hurt queer people and may have allowed Mark Carson to die. I will not be in town for this event, but I am fixated on it. Will there be resistance to the party line? Will Quinn be heckled? How can we best honor Mark Carson’s death? What comes next?](http://25.media.tumblr.com/2d1b1b6f1b0982d748684bc8d31274a1/tumblr_mn1yrlp0bD1qh92wyo1_500.jpg)
[Photo by Adam Feldman]
Last night, Adam Feldman (theater critic for Time Out New York) organized a midnight vigil for Mark Carson, the Black gay man who was killed in the West Village Friday night. We gathered on 6th Avenue and West 8th Street, on the corner where he was shot in the face. It was an intense, emotional event. I’m bad at estimating these things, but I think there were around
100[edit: 300] people there. While a few speakers betrayed an upsetting short-sightedness about how violence operates in our society, most were eloquent and inspiring. In no particular order:
- Performer and playwright Justin Sayre started things off with a volcanic, passionate sermon about the perceived danger of queer love — how the straight world fears us for the very thing that makes us most powerful, and so the only response is to love harder, love louder, and love more than ever. His tone set the stage for the event, and allowed people to fully feel the emotions we’d all been locking up tight.
- Photographer and ACT UP vet Jon Nalley revealed, shockingly and emotionally, that Mark Carson is also the name of a fallen ACT UP comrade. Jon schooled the crowd about the true cause of AIDS death (not the HIV virus, but government neglect and institutional heterosexism), highlighting the connections between one Mark’s death and the other’s.
- Long-time activist and Stonewall vet Jim Fouratt pointed out something that SHOULD be obvious, but which hadn’t occurred to me — that there used to be a hospital TWO BLOCKS from that corner, but in the wake of St. Vincent’s closing, Mark had to be rushed to Beth Israel all the way across town. Perhaps, in the distance between these hospitals, Mark’s life could have been saved. In that sense, the politicians that allowed St. Vincents to be converted to a luxury condo high rise — politicians like lesbian mayoral candidate Christine Quinn — may have gay blood on their hands. Jim helped us understand how depriving a gay neighborhood of a hospital is inherently homophobic and violent.
- A trans woman who was once homeless in that same neighborhood spoke intensely about how vigils shouldn’t be the only time we come together, and how we must take our struggle to the U.N. to fight for queer safety internationally, and hold the U.S. to the highest possible global standard.
- A member of Queer Fist read a first-person account of the Stonewall Riots, in which a gay rioter’s head was injured on that very corner, his blood pouring into the street. Another rioter screamed into the city, “THIS IS THE BLOOD OF YOUR BROTHERS!” It was chilling, to consider the bloody history of that location.
- Another Queer First member pointed out that this murder was allowed to happen because the killer had access to a gun, and that the supporters of gun rights, deep down inside, are primarily afraid of the specter of the Black gunman, who will infiltrate their towns and homes. These gun rights advocates feel they need weapons to protect themselves from their racist fantasy. It underscored how racism fuels violence against ALL peoples.
- Khaela Maricich from The Blow was like: we’re all going to die anyway, and it’s better to die being yourself and expressing your love and your identity than hiding it and living longer. Her comment was somewhat insensitive to queers in greater danger than her, like trans people and people of color, but I understood what she was trying to say.
- An older trans man shared that he was attacked in Manhattan only a few days ago, and reminded the crowd, with tremendous grief in his voice, that trans people are killed CONSTANTLY in this country.
- A straight mother spoke because her adult son in another city asked her to, so she could share her love and support with us.
- Interestingly, a straight young woman who lives on that block confessed that her initial impulse was to text her gay friends, warning them to “dial it down” so that no one on the street would know they’re gay, but that, after hearing the speakers, she realized that this was the wrong lesson - that we should “dial it up,” to demand our right to exist. ”DIAL IT UP” became a chant, briefly.
- A Black gay man spoke with great anguish, commenting on how not many other men of color were in attendance, and laying out so clearly how different queer people have unique challenges and specific circumstances — that Mark Carson’s life as a Black gay man was significantly different from the lives of the white gay men who made up the majority of the crowd.
- A few speakers mentioned the importance of hate crimes legislation, and thanked the police for their cooperation with the vigil, and one speaker even said, “THANK YOU TO THE NYPD OF TODAY FOR NOT BEING THE NYPD OF 1969!” and though I had been resisting the urge to speak, that was my last straw
I got up on the box and said something like this:
I hope this doesn’t sound callous, but I was not surprised by this death. Queer people are killed in this country all the time. I have always thought of myself as someone who is vulnerable to murder. Four trans women were killed in the month of April alone — four in one month! So when things like this happen in our neighborhoods, we need to ask ourselves what this violence means. And we have to be skeptical about solutions like hate crimes legislation, which just feeds the prison industrial complex — an industry that profits from the imprisonment of queers and people of color. One third of all adult Black men in the U.S. are in prisons, and trans people are disproportionately arrested and locked up. We cannot continue to support this! And while I’m sure individual NYPD officers were polite in the lead-up to this vigil, we cannot forget that the NYPD ritually harasses trans people and people of color in this city! Trans women are arrested simply for walking down the street! So when we talk about how queer people need to be “safe,” we have to ask ourselves what “safety” really means — because the NYPD does not makes us safe! It harasses and imprisons us! We must reckon with these connections — that Mark Carson’s death is an extension of the violence that oppresses so many others, from the institutional violence of governments to the random violence of a crazy guy with a gun.
I make a living speaking in front of people, but talking at this vigil was terrifying. As I spoke, I felt myself hyperventilating, and I worried I would vomit. After I stepped down, I sat on the curb a few yards away from the crowd, catching my breath.
I wish I had specifically named the Stop & Frisk policy that makes queers and people of color vulnerable to police harassment. I wish I had called out Christine Quinn for supporting this policy.
I wish I had acknowledged a previous speakers’ disappointment about the lack of people of color in attendance. I wish I had pointed out the sad truth: that our queer “community” is still so segregated, such that when a white person organizes a vigil and spreads the word through his social networks, that message will not automatically filter into Black queer circles. When I mentioned this afterwards to Ted Kerr from Visual AIDS, he added that many queers of color are
not willing to make[edit: cautious about making] themselves vulnerable to the kind of police surveillance that surrounded the event. This hadn’t occurred to me, and reminded me that so many aspects of our queer condition are so complicated, and we all have so much to learn and understand about each other.When the event was over, I was surrounded by friends and colleagues. People whom I respect, and who inspire me on a regular basis — the people I came to NYC hoping to meet, and the people who keep me here. I was proud of Adam for making this happen, and proud of my community for showing up.
But I was sad too — not just about the senseless death of this man — but that there didn’t seem to be anyone at this vigil who knew him. It seemed indicative of the intense divide amongst queer people in this city.
Tomorrow night, there will be another rally — this one sponsored by the (often idiotic) LGBT Center and featuring Christine Quinn herself — the lesbian mayoral candidate whose policies hurt queer people and may have allowed Mark Carson to die. I will not be in town for this event, but I am fixated on it. Will there be resistance to the party line? Will Quinn be heckled? How can we best honor Mark Carson’s death? What comes next?
South of The Ohio: A Queer Photo Documentary
Greetings to all out in ArtQueerlandia!
I received this submission from Christian Hendricks, who is running a Kickstarter project to fund “a new photo documentary exploring contemporary queer culture in the American South.”
Take a look, and if you’re so inclined, please pitch in. It looks like a great project:
Very queerly yours,
aQ
The First 7-inch Was Better: How I Became an Ex-Punk
by Nia KingI just read this zine by Nia King and it’s really good. It’s a personal account of her history as a mixed race queer woman in the Boston and Baltimore punk and anarchist scenes and talks about alienation and disillusionment with those cultures. It’s very well written andI enjoyed it a lot.
You can download it from the queer zine archive at the link above or buy it from her. She also makes really neat comics and does other cool stuff.
Gaycism: Naming and shaming the usual suspects: New blog, Hell No Gaycism, is here to call out all the Tyler Oakleys of the world
Ever been browsing Grindr and seen “No Blacks, no Asians”? Ever heard a white gay man talk about being a “sassy Black woman”? Ever seen a Shirley Q. Liquor video? There is an undeniable problem with racism in the gay community, but far too many white queer folks don’t want to talk about it.
The purpose of this blog is to hold white queer folks accountable for their appropriation of Black culture, their insistence that being oppressed on other axes keeps a person from being capable of oppression, and the white supremacy that permeates mainstream white queer culture.
This blog is intended to be a safe space for folks who want to rant about gaycism however they want. We’re not here to tone police, because anger is always a valid response to racism and white supremacy. Anyone who disagrees with that can fuck right off.
We welcome your submissions, whether they’re all-caps rants or doctoral dissertations. Links, personal stories, anything. Together we can say “Hell No Gaycism!”
The Shondes
photo by Natty Koper Photography http://bit.ly/LvMlaZ
Never forget.
That The Shondes are a great fucking band.
The change in language in the DSM-V may set back decades of legal challenges brought by incarcerated transgender individuals, mostly transgender women of color without counsel, that created avenues for treatment and and gender self-determination for people in prisons, jails, detention centers and various other sites of civil commitment. Prisons and courts may argue that the case law and policies that do exist are premised on the diagnostic regime under the DSM-IV TR and that the change in language from a disorder to a condition no longer meets the requirements under the law for a “serious medical need.” What may appear to be an aesthetic change may become a substantive change under legal rules that are designed to make it impossible for incarcerated transgender individuals to survive. The better (although still terrible) policies of jails and prisons regarding the treatment of transgender individuals require a diagnosis of GID to initiate all forms of affirming care. We may see the loss of important tools of resistance, hard-won by our incarcerated trans community members.
I knew “Kiki” was by the Scissor Sisters, a band I really like, and I was excited they turned to black gay culture for creative inspiration. Watch the music video, though, and you don’t see a single person of color. Anywhere. I mean, how can you do a music video about serving, working and letting them have it and not show some fierce bitch from the blatino gay scene! Even the opening monologue of the song, where lead Scissor Sister Ana Matronic sasses off about how her party was ruined and now her weave is messed up, is said in an inflected black voice. Why didn’t they just get a cameo from somebody from the vogue scene?
This is not like when Lena Dunham didn’t cast any brown folks on Girls. That was about not thinking about brown people period. This is about stealing from brown people and not thinking about them, period. In the case of “Kiki,” queer brown folks are the ones who invented the terms that make up the entirety of the Scissor Sisters chart-topping song, and those faces have been completely wiped out. I’m willing to bet that the gays watching this video will have no idea where these words come from. But the reality is that these are terms that were created so that gays of color could communicate with one another in a clandestine way, and scholars like E. Patrick Johnson, Henry Louis Gates, and Geneva Smitherman have done research on the uniqueness and specificity of black (gay) speech patterns. For the Scissor Sisters to use and capitalize on black gay slang without paying due credit to the people who invented it isn’t appropriation—it’s straight up cultural larceny.
Appropriation Without Credit via SPLICETODAY.com
h/t @kavitabee
(via glitterlion)
Deduct 100 points from Non-Black Queers. (Because I find others, including myself, have been guilty of this sometimes.)
Because this speech is one of the most important things I know, and it should always be kept relevant.
Vito Russo’s “Why We Fight” Speech, delivered at an ACT UP rally in May 1988.
A friend of mine in New York City has a half-fare transit card, which means that you get on buses and subways for half price. And the other day, when he showed his card to the token attendant, the attendant asked what his disability was, and he said, “I have AIDS.” And the attendant said, “No, you don’t. If you had AIDS, you’d be home dying.” And so, I wanted to speak out today as a person with AIDS who is not dying.
You know, for the last three years, since I was diagnosed, my family thinks two things about my situation: 1) they think I’m going to die, and 2) they think that my government is doing absolutely everything in their power to stop that. And they’re wrong, on both counts.
So, if I’m dying from anything, I’m dying from homophobia. If I’m dying from anything, I’m dying from racism. If I’m dying from anything, it’s from indifference and red tape, because these are the things that are preventing an end to this crisis. If I’m dying from anything, I’m dying from Jesse Helms. If I’m dying from anything, I’m dying from the president of the United States. And, especially, if I’m dying from anything, I’m dying from the sensationalism of newspapers and magazines and television shows, which are interested in me, as a human-interest story, only as long as I’m willing to be a helpless victim, but not if I’m fighting for my life. If I’m dying from anything, I’m dying from the fact that not enough rich, white, heterosexual men have gotten AIDS for anybody to give a shit.
You know, living with AIDS in this country is like living in the twilight zone. Living with AIDS is like living through a war, which is happening only for those people who happen to be in the trenches. Every time a shell explodes, you look around and you discover that you’ve lost more of your friends, but nobody else notices. It isn’t happening to them. They’re walking the streets as though we weren’t living through some sort of nightmare. And only you can hear the screams of the people who are dying and their cries for help. No one else seems to be noticing.
And it’s worse than a war, because during a war people are united in a shared experience. This war has not united us; it’s divided us. It’s separated those of us with AIDS and those of us who fight for people with AIDS from the rest of the population. Two and a half years ago I picked up Life magazine, and I read an editorial which said, “It’s time to pay attention, because this disease is now beginning to strike the rest of us.” It was as if I wasn’t the one holding the magazine in my hand. And since then, nothing has changed to alter the perception that AIDS is not happening to the real people in this country. It’s not happening to “us” in the United States; it’s happening to “them,” to the disposable populations of fags and junkies who deserve what they get. The media tells them that they don’t have to care, because the people who really matter are not in danger. Twice, three times, four times, The New York Times has published editorials saying, Don’t panic yet over AIDS. It still hasn’t entered the general population, and until it does, we don’t have to give a shit.
And the days, and the months, and the years pass by, and they don’t spend those days and nights and months and years trying to figure out how to get hold of the latest experimental drug, and which dose to take it at, and in what combination with other drugs, and from what source, and how are you going to pay for it, and where are you going to get it, because it isn’t happening to them, so they don’t give a shit. And they don’t sit in television studios, surrounded by technicians who are wearing rubber gloves, who won’t put a microphone on you, because it isn’t happening to them, so they don’t give a shit. And they don’t have their houses burned down by bigots and morons. They watch it on the news and they have dinner and they go to bed, because it isn’t happening to them, and they don’t give a shit. And they don’t spend their waking hours going from hospital room to hospital room, and watching the people that they love die slowly of neglect and bigotry, because it isn’t happening to them, and they don’t have to give a shit. They haven’t been to two funerals a week for the last three or four or five years, so they don’t give a shit, because it’s not happening to them.
And we read on the front page of The New York Times last Saturday that Anthony Fauci now says that all sorts of promising drugs for treatment haven’t even been tested in the last two years because he can’t afford to hire the people to test them. We’re supposed to be grateful that this story has appeared in the newspaper after two years. Nobody wonders why some reporter didn’t dig up that story and print it 18 months ago, before Fauci got dragged before a congressional hearing. How many people are dead in the last two years who might be alive today if those drugs had been tested more quickly? Reporters all over the country are busy printing government press releases. They don’t give a shit; it isn’t happening to them, meaning that it isn’t happening to people like them: the real people, the world-famous general public we all keep hearing about. Legionnaires’ disease was happening to them because it hit people who looked like them, who sounded like them, who were the same color as them. And that fucking story about a couple of dozen people hit the front page of every newspaper and magazine in this country, and it stayed there until that mystery got solved.
All I read in the newspapers tells me that the mainstream, white, heterosexual population is not at risk for this disease. All the newspapers I read tell me that IV-drug users and homosexuals still account for the overwhelming majority of cases and a majority of those people at risk. And can somebody please tell me why every single penny allocated for education and prevention gets spent on ad campaigns that are directed almost exclusively to white, heterosexual teenagers, who they keep telling us are not at risk? Can somebody tell me why the only television movie ever produced by a major network in this country about the impact of this disease is not about the impact of this disease on the man who has AIDS but of the impact of AIDS on his white, straight, nuclear family? Why, for eight years, every newspaper and magazine in this country has done cover stories on AIDS only when the threat of heterosexual transmission is raised? Why, for eight years, every single educational film designed for use in high schools has eliminated any gay-positive material before being approved by the Board of Education? Why, for eight years, every single public-information pamphlet and videotape distributed by establishment sources has ignored specific homosexual content?
Why is every bus and subway ad I read and every advertisement and every billboard I see in this country specifically not directed at gay men? Don’t believe the lie that the gay community has done its job and done it well and educated its people. The gay community and IV-drug users are not all politicized people living in New York and San Francisco. Members of minority populations, including so-called sophisticated gay men, are abysmally ignorant about AIDS. If it is true that gay men and IV-drug users are the populations at risk for this disease, then we have a right to demand that education and prevention be targeted specifically to these people. And it is not happening. We are being allowed to die, while low-risk populations are being panicked — not educated, panicked — into believing that we deserve to die.
Why are we here together today? We’re here because it is happening to us, and we do give a shit. And if there were more of us and less of them, AIDS wouldn’t be what it is at this moment in history. It’s more than just a disease, which ignorant people have turned into an excuse to exercise the bigotry they have always felt. It is more than a horror story, exploited by the tabloids. AIDS is really a test of us as a people. When future generations ask what we did in this crisis, we’re going to have to tell them that we were out here today. And we have to leave the legacy to those generations of people who will come after us.
Someday, the AIDS crisis will be over. Remember that. And when that day comes, when that day has come and gone, there’ll be people alive on this Earth, gay people and straight people, men and women, black and white, who will hear the story that once there was a terrible disease in this country and all over the world, and that a brave group of people stood up and fought and, in some cases, gave their lives, so that other people might live and be free. So I’m proud to be with my friends today and the people I love, because I think you’re all heroes, and I’m glad to be part of this fight. But, to borrow a phrase from Michael Callen’s song, “all we have is love right now. What we don’t have is time.”
In a lot of ways, AIDS activists are like those doctors out there: They’re so busy putting out fires and taking care of people on respirators that they don’t have the time to take care of all the sick people. We’re so busy putting out fires right now that we don’t have the time to talk to each other and strategize and plan for the next wave, and the next day, and next month, and the next week, and the next year. And we’re going to have to find the time to do that in the next few months. And we have to commit ourselves to doing that. And then, after we kick the shit out of this disease, we’re all going to be alive to kick the shit out of this system, so that this never happens again.
So, since I was so bad at keeping this blog updated with my goings-on, I’ve made a couple videos about my NCCC experience. This one is about being an out trans guy, pretty much just offering my perspective and what the program was like for me. I’ve gotten questions from a few people about NCCC and trans stuff, so this kinda condenses a lot of it.
But, as always, if there are more questions, I’m happy to answer them here or on youtube.
The Ali Forney Center, the largest and most comprehensive LGBT homeless youth organization in the country, suffered a major lose due to Hurricane Sandy. Their drop-in center, which is a lifeline to kids who live on the streets, was destroyed. Below is a letter from their executive director, Carl Siciliano, detailing the situation and how you can help. (Hint: they really need your money.)
This organization is near and dear to my heart, I’m on the Board of Directors and have produced The Broadway Beauty Pageant for them for many years. Please give what you can to this very important cause.
Dear Friends,
Yesterday we were finally able to inspect our drop-in center in Chelsea, half a block from the Hudson River. Our worst fears were realized; everything was destroyed and the space is uninhabitable. The water level went four feet high, destroying our phones, computers, refrigerator, food and supplies.
This is a terrible tragedy for the homeless LGBT youth we serve there. This space was dedicated to our most vulnerable kids, the thousands stranded on the streets without shelter, and was a place where they received food, showers, clothing, medical care, HIV testing and treatment, and mental health and substance abuse services. Basically a lifeline for LGBT kids whose lives are in danger.
We are currently scrambling for a plan to provide care to these desperate kids while we prepare to ultimately move into a larger space that will better meet our needs. The NYC LGBT Center has very kindly and generously offered to let us temporarily use some of their space, and we hope to determine the viability of that on Monday.
We have been deluged with kind offers from people who wish to volunteer and donate goods. Unfortunately, we will have to provide our services in the time being in much smaller spaces that won’t accommodate volunteers or allow for much storage space. The best way people can reach out to help in this very challenging time is by making monetary donations. Please go to our website at www.aliforneycenter.org/hurricanesandy
It is heartbreaking to see this space come to such a sad end. For the past seven years it has been a place of refuge to thousands of kids reeling from being thrown away by their parents for being LGBT. For many of these kids coming to our drop-in center provided their first encounter with a loving and affirming LGBT community. I thank all of you for your care and support in a most difficult time.
- Carl Siciliano
