QEJ Latest Achievements/ Race Update!

QEJ LATEST ACHIEVEMENTS & PROGRAMMATIC UPDATES:

1) Amber Hollibaugh–QEJ Board Member–delivers QEJ’s Tidal Wave Report to the Whitehouse! QEJ is proud to announce that the Obama administration now has several copies of QEJ’s Tidal Wave Report–a collection of much of the existing data on LGBTQ people, poverty, health-care, housing, disability, and other economic justice issues with particular attention to dynamics of race, gender, geographic location, and immigration status. It is especially important as the 2010 Census gets into full swing, that the federal government has some empirical picture of our lives and needs.

2) The Shelter Organizing Project prepares a report on their experiences of City shelters.  QEJ has stepped up its organizing efforts in with LGBTQ people in NYC shelters, and is gathering stories from shelter residents to prepare a report as one step towards a campaign for safety for queer, trans and gender nonconforming shelter residents.

3) The Welfare Justice Campaign (which QEJ is a coalition partner) continues to push the Human Resources Administration to begin implementing best-practice guidelines around gender-non-conforming and LGBTQ welfare applicants after a 5-year push by the Welfare Justice Campaign, which QEJ is a coalition partner.

4) The National Public Education Project’s very popular Act Queer! Teleconference Calls has had over 500 participants in its first year! It serves as a platform for engaged discussion around LGBTQ people and jobs, welfare, incarceration, immigration, the economic recession and other issues & QEJ Plans to reignite the local and national queer economic justice network with a renewed focus on forming alliances with economic justice advocates. Next Call: May 27th at 2pm EST will focus on The REAL ID Act, Local Jobs for America Act, and upcoming TANF Re-authorization. Details coming soon!

5) QEJ will be presenting at the Allied Media Conference and the US Social Forum in Detroit this June! Our Welfare Warriors Research Collaborative will be screening its new documentary at the AMC, while QEJ is also working with the other organizations of the Astraea Movement Building Program to convene dozens of other queer and trans organizations from around the to build a national strategy for future coalition work.

6) The Welfare Warriors Research Collaborative’s new report “A Fabulous Attitude: Low-Income LGBTGNC People Surviving & Thriving on Love, Shelter, & Knowledge,” to be released later this month.
The Amazingly Queer Race for Economic Justice is a fundraiser benefiting Queers for Economic Justice (QEJ). Questions? Please contact us at race@q4ej.org.

Act Queer! Teleconference: Research in Queer Organizing

Research is something many grassroots movements shun, given its history of pathologizing low-income, queer and trans people, people of color, the disabled, etc.

And yet, there is a wealth of research happening by grassroots organizations, and researchers interested in the strength & resilience of communities.

What are the research strategies being utilized by different queer and progressive groups? What has been successful and what has failed in the past? When complete, where and how is this research distributed? How can the movements engage research towards creating a vision of social justice?

The April 29th call focused on the grassroots research of several organizations:

To hear each presenter press play on the audio. Read materials from each presenter just below the audio player.

Michelle Billies, Dwayne Bibb and Kagendo Murungi, Welfare Warriors Research Collaborative (New York, NY)

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• Their report should be released this summer, stay tuned!

Shira Hassan, Young Women’s Empowerment Project (Chicago, IL)

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• Download their report entitled Girls Do What They Have to Do to Survive: Methods Used by Girls in the Sex Trade and Street Economy to Fight Back and Heal here!

Juan Battle, Social Justice Sexuality Initiative (New York, NY)

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• Take his survey here!

Download QEJ’s most recent report entitled Tidal Wave: LGBT Poverty & Hardship in a Time of Economic Crisis.

If you have questions, comments, or know of other resources or events related to this topic, please feel free to post in the comments section!

The purpose of Act Queer! is to connect grassroots LGBTQ racial and economic justice organizations with national queer and/or allied coalitions and organizations to share information and strategies on racial and economic justice research, organizing and advocacy.

Building a Queer Left

QEJ is working on a new research report through the Building a Queer Left project (BQL). The BQL project seeks to build a progressive and radical coalition of organizations who approach their work in queer communities through a racial and economic justice framework. This coalition is determined to identify what issues are present within the “other” gay agenda.

The creation of an organizational directory is one of the tasks of the BQL coalition. This directory will feature organizations/groups/projects that are organizing around issues affecting our queer communities. This directory will be available to the public and can be used as a tool for grant proposals, referrals and coalition-building. We hope to complete this report by the end of the summer. Stay tuned!