Act Queer! Teleconference: Cultural Organizing in Queer Movements
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.
Our November 19, 2009 teleconference focused on organizations that are using cultural organizing to push queer social justice issues.
To hear each presenter, press play on the audio player. Read materials from each presenter just below the audio player.
Graciela Sanchez and Amanda Haas, Esperanza Peace and Justice Center (San Antonio, TX) discuss the necessity of providing bilingual organizing in queer movements; grounding our communities in the knowledge of the intersection between our heritage and our queerness
Selly Thiam, None on Record (U.S., Canada and South Africa) discusses the documentation of the struggles and joys of QLGBT Africans through audio stories and their use for political change
Aurin Squire, Freedom Train Productions (New York City) discusses their theatre performances as a vehicle for imagination and creativity; using stories/performances to create empathy not just tolerance; using art as activism
Freedom Train’s manifesto
Kebo Drew, Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project (California) discusses using their films to bring visibility to the many facets of queer women of color; women of color and immigration; QWOCMAP Annual Film Festivals
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!
I was unfortunately unable to be on this conference, so I listened with great interest to what these very creative colleagues had to say about the value of cultural organizing in the struggle for political justice. I was especially touched by Graciela speaking about her organization’s efforts to touch people’s hearts and minds and to find a new language for connecting to and building with the communities with which they work. I work with the East Side Institute, a NYC-based international non-profit training and education center for new, more humanistic, approaches to human development and community-building.
The Institute is recognized internationally for our cutting-edge approach to human development. Over the last 30 years, the Institute has made an important discovery: in order for human beings to grow, they must not be related to solely as who they are at the moment, but they must be supported to become. And it is performance, both on stage and in life, that allows us to become. Performing – being other than “who we are” - (our social (over) determined identities – is how human beings grow emotionally, socially, politically and intellectually.
Like Graciela and her colleagues, we work with people from all walks of life – including those living in the most devastated of communities – to create new conversations, new lives, new practices, new communities. Like all the presenters, we don’t make a separation between creating culture and creating politics – in our view, the political life of our world is no less culturally determined than every other aspect of life and shaped, not only by all the “isms” but by social/psychological/cultural assumptions deeply imbedded (though not always obvious) in our language and ruling institutions.
In line with this, I’d like to invite queer colleagues to participate in a unique conference/festival, “Performing the World 2010,” that is taking place in New York City September 30-October 3, 2010.
PTW brings people together, not on the basis of professional or political identity or academic discipline (though helping professionals, educators, activists, social entrepreneurs, scholars and researchers attend) or artistic endeavor (though theatre companies and performance artists will abound), but rather around their common involvement in performance as an activity of growth and development. In the five conferences since 2001, PTW has attracted more than 1,500 participants – gay, straight, bisexual, transgender and queer - from 38 US states and 35 countries throughout the world.
We hope you’ll join us – and let others in your networks know about the conference.
The “Call for Proposals” and more information about the conference is available at http://www.performingtheworld.org. I’m also happy to answer questions. Proposals are due by
March 1, 2010
Thanks again to Queers for Economic Justice for hosting this important conversations and to all the presenters for giving us so much to play with! I look forward to future tele-conferences.
Mary Fridley