Welfare Organizing

WELFARE WARRIORS

WE BUILD COMMUNITY AND TRAIN LEADERS

In the wake of the recent federal reauthorization of welfare reform, QEJ organizes low-income LGBT people on public assistance, and offers them the opportunity to become involved in fighting for a more humane, just and inclusive welfare system. Low-income LGBT people work with QEJ on:

  • Leadership Development Course: This 10-week course provides low-income LGBT people with political analysis, and concrete advocacy and community organizing tools, to help them increase their ability to be effective advocates for social change.
  • “Welfare Warriors”: Through events like our annual “Economic Justice Day of Action”, this grassroots community organizing effort brings LGBT people on public assistance together to work on issue-specific campaigns that will make the welfare system more inclusive of LGBT and gender-non-conforming people and their families, and more humane for all.
  • Research Collaborative: We are engaged in a groundbreaking, community-led research project documenting the issues facing low-income queers.

michelle-billies Welfare OrganizingMichelle Billies, LCSW-R, is Co-Founder and Consultant with the Welfare Warriors Research Collaborative and has volunteered and consulted with QEJ since 2006.  WWRC has made it possible for me work at the nexus of the issues most important to her:  racial justice, economic justice, and ìdigging where I standî - figuring out what her personal stake is in systems of oppression and privilege and working for change from that place.  Today that looks means helping foster multiracial community strength and skill in the queer communities she is a part of, toward creating the world we want to live in.

She is currently a doctoral student in the Social-Personality Psychology program at the Graduate Center of CUNY where she is training in participatory research methods.  She is also a Gestalt psychotherapist; working with trans and gender nonconforming folks and their partners and she also specializes in what are officially called ìmood disordersî - anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder.   She has worked or volunteered in grassroots and more established organizations including the LGBT Center, Make the Road by Walking, and the Community Food Resource Center as a clinical supervisor, group worker, therapist, and researcher.   Her activism for many years has included movement work and community education around white supremacy and white privilege.

To learn more or get involved in the Welfare Organizing Project, contact Reina Gossett at rgossett@q4ej.org.