QEJ Schedule at Creating Change!

If you are attending the 2010 Creating Change conference in Dallas, here’s the schedule of workshops where QEJ staff, members and board will be presenting.

Creating Change Workshops February 3 -7, 2010

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 3
Institute Sessions • 9:00AM–6:00PM

Anti-Racism, Racial Justice and People of Color Organizing Institutes
A series of simultaneous Day Long Institutes, details below, offers opportunities to improve skills to address institutional racism, fully integrate racial justice into LGBT organizational action plans, and learn with and from colleagues of color about deepening LGBT organizing in communities of color. The Task Force is proud to partner with the First Nations Collective, the Disability Justice Collective, Audre Lorde Project, Southerners on New Ground, and Queers for Economic Justice to develop content and to co facilitate these Institutes. The day begins with a special opening gathering of all participants in the Wednesday Day-Long Institute sessions.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4
Institute Sessions • 11:00AM–5:00PM

The Familiar Made Strange: Integrating Disability Politics into Racial and Economic Justice Work
The politics of disability, economic, and racial justice are inseparable in the lived experiences of poverty, the struggles of First Nations peoples for sovereignty, work-related injuries, homelessness, gentrification, sterilization, immigration, the closure of mental health support systems, and on and on. Come join activists from the Disability Justice Collective and from Queers for Economic Justice as we explore the ways albinism and disability impact our various communities and our activism. The first half of this Day Long Institute will focus on the fundamentals of building a Disability Justice framework. During the second half, we will explore the many connections between disability, class, race, queerness, and social justice work.

Faculty: Disability Justice Collective and Queers for Economic Justice

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 5 • 3:00PM–4:30PM

Beyond the Meth Monster:

Queer Strategies for Ending the War on Drugs

Health • All Audiences

From Prohibition to the present day, the war on drugs has adversely impacted the LGBT community through the policing and raiding of queer spaces, resulting in disproportionate arrests for drug offenses. And yet, current organizing being done on the impact criminalization of drugs has on poor and working class queer communities, especially queers of color, is largely invisible (often the only reference to queers and the war on drugs is to meth use among white gay men). This roundtable will feature an intergenerational dialogue from experienced queer organizers from the Stonewall Era to the present, about their work organizing against repressive drug policies in poor and low-income queer communities, past and present.

Presenters: Miss Major, Executive Director, TGI Justice Project, San Francisco, CA; gabriel sayegh, Director, State Organizing and Policy Project, Drug Policy Alliance, New York, NY; Laura Thomas, San Francisco Drug Policy Alliance, San Francisco, CA; Jay Toole, Queers for Economic Justice, NY

Sexual Liberation as a Framework for Change

Sexual Freedom • All Audiences

LGBT people have had to cross treacherous terrain in order to find and claim our desires, and this valuable force remains a razor-sharp reminder, deep within our hearts, of who we really are-and of everything we truly can be. We have been shaped, deformed and liberated by the sexuality we have dared to claim. Because of that journey, we know that sex and desire are political. Liberation movements in our country often suppress or fail to understand the power this political fact exerts on shaping our worldviews, our definitions of oppression and freedom, our sense of what is possible. Leftist, feminist, labor, civil rights and transnational freedom movements all suffer from lacking an integrated view of sexuality as essential to a vision for liberation. Sadly, fighting right wing backlash at the ballot-box has had the same effect on the LGBT movement. Which brings us to the question of the day: are we still a movement for sexual liberation?

Presenters: Amber Hollibaugh, Chief Officer of Elder and LBTI Women’s Services, Howard Brown Health Center, Chicago, IL; John D’Emilio, Historian and Professor of Gender Studies,

University of Illinois in Chicago, Chicago, IL; Kenyon Farrow, Executive Director, Queers for Economic Justice, New York; Debanuj DasGupta; Jaime Grant, Director, Policy Institute,

National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Washington, DC

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6 • 9:00AM–10:30AM

Equity, Fidelity and Sustainability

Sexual Freedom • All Audiences

How do we create equitable agreements in our sexual encounters and relationships? Does equity require symmetry in sexual practices and rules? How do divergent needs get met equitably? What is fidelity? Is it sexual exclusivity? Is it honesty? Is it both or neither? How are we creating sustainable practices and frame working our relationships? How do we measure success? Is longevity the measure of a successful relationship? vibrancy? Something else? This lively discussion will feature panelists who are embodying and exploring these values and concepts in greatly varying ways.

Presenters: Amelie Zurn, Jack Harrison, Kenyon Farrow

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6 • 10:45AM–12:15PM

Welfare Warriors: Surviving Violence,

Fighting Injustice and Building Community

Racial Justice • All Audiences

This interactive workshop led by low income LGBTGNC members of Queers for Economic Justice will focus on sharing the resistance and resilience strategies that low income queer, trans and gender non conforming people use to navigate poverty related violence and build strong self determining communities. The Welfare Warriors project utilizes participatory action research (PAR), in which all members of the collective participate at each step of the research.

The session will be an opportunity to learn about PAR as a mechanism for raising critical consciousness around structural violence against queers of color and how QEJ has incorporated research into our on going campaigns. This workshop will screen the documentary of the Welfare Warriors Research Collaborative, a project of Queers for Economic Justice. The half hour documentary captures on screen how low income LGBTGNC fought back against injustice, created liberating communities and survived poverty related violence in New York City. We will share how this media project has become a strategy of the Welfare Warriors to challenge discrimination, Homophobia and trans-phobia in New York City.

Presenters: Reina Gossett & Dwayne Bibb, Queers for Economic Justice, New York, NY

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6 • 3:00PM–4:30PM

HIV, Race and Generational differences

Gay and bi men are a small minority in the U.S., but nearly three in five new HIV infections. Black gay/bi men are hardest hit. Infections among gay/bi men are increasing. Has HIV prevention policy failed? How do protectionists address the striking race and age differences among HIV+ gay/bi men? How will we handle the graying of AIDS, with a third of HIV+ people 50+?

Presenters: Kenyon Farrow, Executive Director, Queers for Economic Justice, New York, NY ; Ronald Johnson, AIDS Action Council , Washington, DC; Francisco Roque, Institute for Gay Men’s Health, Gay Men’s Health Crisis , New York, NY; Lyndel Urbano, Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), New York, NY

DAY-LONG INSTITUTDONGINSTITUTES