Kenyon Farrow: Why I Support QEJ
In 2005, I walked into one of QEJ’s Know Your Rights Trainings for 25 LGBT homeless people in our shelter project to lead a resume writing workshop. My life as an activist was changed. I found my political home. And since then, I’ve been with QEJ in many capacities, and most recently as Executive Director.
Next Wednesday will be my last day in the office as Executive Director. Though I will not be paid staff, I am staying with QEJ, and I hope you will too. Please consider making an end of year donation to support economic justice for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people?
I’m asking for your support because I know, not because it’s my “cause.” I am from Cleveland, OH, and knew many many of the gay, lesbian, bi and trans people in the poor black neighborhood I grew up in. Some of them are family members, some were close family friends. This community of poor and working class queers is where I started when there was no movement reaching out to us, when there weren’t any organizations.
When I came out as a gay man about 17 years ago, in the so-called “Gay 90′s,” I was shocked to find I could not find people like my mother’s best friend “Uncle” Roger, my sister’s friend James, the transgender woman I saw pass by window nearly every day, as part of the movement for LGBT rights.
But everyday at QEJ in our office, at our events, at our shelter groups, I work with people who are much like the kinds of queers people I grew up with, and continue to make up my chosen family. QEJ is more than just an idea, or a set of politics. It is my home. It’s our home, and we need your support to continue our work of building community in order to build a movement, to make real change.
That’s why I support QEJ. And I hope you’ll make a donation, and become a monthly sustainer. Make us your home too.
In struggle,
Kenyon Farrow
2/19: Farrow Speaking on ‘Myth of a Post-Racial Society’
Post-Obama, has America become colorblind—and is that even a worthy or achievable goal in this country? How does the supposed “post-racial” society measure up to the reality of poor and working people’s lives, 60 years after the Black civil rights movement? Join a freewheeling discussion and celebrate the ongoing struggle for “Freedom Now!”
Speakers will include Norma Abdulah, a retired school teacher and longtime Harlem civil rights leader; Kenyon Farrow, from Queers for Economic Justice and co-editor of Letters from Young Activists; and Emily Woo Yamasaki, representing the Comrades of Color Caucus of Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women.
Feb 15: NYC James Baldwin Film and Discussion with Farrow and Others
Brecht Forum – Film and Discussion
Monday, February 15 – 7:30pm
Take This Hammer follows author and activist James Baldwin in the spring of 1963, as he’s driven around San Francisco to meet with members of the local African-American community. He is escorted by Youth For Service’s Executive Director Orville Luster and intent on discovering: “The real situation of Negroes in the city, as opposed to the image San Francisco would like to present.” He declares: “There is no moral distance … between the facts of life in San Francisco and the facts of life in Birmingham.
“Someone’s got to tell it like it is. And that’s where it’s at.” Includes frank exchanges with local people on the street, meetings with community leaders and extended point-of-view sequences shot from a moving vehicle, featuring the Bayview and Western Addition neighborhoods. Baldwin reflects on the racial inequality that African-Americans are forced to confront and at one point tries to lift the morale of a young man by expressing his conviction that: “There will be a Negro president of this country but it will not be the country that we are sitting in now.”
Kenyon Farrow Named Executive Director of Queers for Economic Justice
Contact: Miriam Yeung, 917.306.4404, miriamwyeung@gmail.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Kenyon Farrow Named Executive Director
of Queers for Economic Justice
“Visionary Leadership for the Queer Left”
New York, NY – The Board of Directors of Queers for Economic Justice is pleased to announce the unanimous selection of Kenyon Farrow as the next Executive Director of Queers for Economic Justice (QEJ). QEJ is a progressive non-profit organization committed to promoting economic justice in a context of sexual and gender liberation.
“The QEJ family is thrilled to continue to have the dynamic leadership of Kenyon,” said Emily Davison, chair of the Board of QEJ. “His longstanding commitment to economic justice for poor lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people is a keystone to our growing organization.”
“Kenyon’s work on building a national progressive queer left movement that includes the lived experiences and expressed needs of queer people living in poverty is the exact tool we need to lift true queer liberation out of the usual back and forth of the mainstream gay culture war,” said Amber Hollibaugh, board member and a founder of QEJ.
Kenyon has served as the interim Executive Director of QEJ since the departure of Joseph DeFilippis in July of 2009, after joining the staff in 2008 as the National Public Education Director. Originally from Cleveland, OH, Kenyon has spent the last ten years working as an organizer, public education specialist, and communications expert around HIV/AIDS, prisons, policing, anti-queer violence, and racial and economic justice.
“I am thrilled to be working with QEJ as we move in new and exciting directions, says Farrow. “The current economic crisis has shifted the attention of the nation, and QEJ will continue organize low-income and working class queers who have been left out of the mainstream movement for a long time.” Farrow is no stranger to racial and economic justice work. Prior to joining the staff of QEJ, Kenyon worked at Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP), the New York State Black Gay Network and as the Southern Region Coordinator with Critical Resistance. He was one of the drafters of QEJ’s Beyond Marriage statement in 2006.
“It has been my great privilege to work with Kenyon for the past several years. He is a smart, progressive, articulate and strategic leader in our community already, and he is exactly the leadership that QEJ needs now to continue to grow. I am delighted that he is my successor” said Joseph N. DeFilippis, QEJ’s founding Executive Director.
Kenyon is also the co-editor of “Letters From Young Activists: Today’s Rebels Speak Out” (Nation Books 2005) and the forthcoming “A New Queer Agenda (NYU Press).” His work has appeared in publications such as Bilerico.com, theGrio.com, AfterElton.com, Black Commentator, Left Turn, POZ, The Indypendent, City Limits, and in the anthology, “Spirited: Affirming the Soul of Black Lesbian and Gay Identity (Red Bone Press 2006).” He has been honored as one of the “Movers and Shakers” in HIV/AIDS Activism in the African-American Community by The Body.com, and was named as one of Out Magazine’s Out 100 for 2008.
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Nov 20: Queen with Benefits! Kenyon’s 35th B-day and QEJ Fundraiser!
Queen with Benefits! Kenyon’s 35th B-day and QEJ Fundraiser!
QUEEN WITH BENEFITS!!!!
Cheap drinks
$1 Shots all night long
SUGARLAND
221 N. 9th St
(between Driggs & Roebling)
Brooklyn, NY
L Train to Bedford
Act Queer! Teleconference: The Drug War and Queer Communities
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 October 29, 2009 teleconference focused on how the drug war has affected queer communities across the country.
To hear the each presenter, press play on the audio player. Read materials from each presenter just below the audio player.
gabriel sayegh, Drug Policy Alliance (New York City) discusses the Obama administration’s drug policy agenda and updates on drug policy reform; medical marijuana laws; Rockefeller Drug Laws.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Lynn Paltrow, National Advocates for Pregnant Women (Washington, DC) discusses the connection between reproductive justice and drug policy reform; the history of prohibition of alcohol, abortion and drugs; denying the essentialness of choice in reproductive rights and in the queer community
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Miss Major, Transgender, Gender Variant, and Intersex Justice Project (San Francisco) discusses drug addiction within the transgender, gender variant and intersex community inside and outside the prison system.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Kenyon Farrow, Queers for Economic Justice (New York City) discusses how the war on crime and drugs aimed to “correct” black and brown families through social welfare reform; the effects of the drug war on HIV epidemic in black gay men and transgender women.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
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!
10/29: Act Queer! Teleconference on Drug War and Queers
Act Queer! Teleconference: The Drug War & Queer Communities
Queers for Economic Justice would like for you to join us on a national conference call on the drug war, and LGBTQ organizing strategies around these issues, as part of our ongoing monthly series on racial & economic justice issues that impact poor/low-income, people of color, disabled, LGBTQ communities.
Many studies show that LGBT people are disproportionately likely to use or abuse drugs, including alcohol. And many poor and low-income queer people, especially Black and Latino, come from communities that are specifically targeted by the War on Drugs within the US, and then find themselves policed and stopped & frisked for drugs and sex work in and around “gay” establishments.
Internationally the proliferation of opium and heroin is being used as a partial justification for the War in Afghanistan, and other drugs for ramping up the Drug War at the US/Mexico border here in the US. Despite the ways the Drug War shapes the lives of many queer communities, the issue of queers and drugs usually gets reduced to meth use among white gay men–which many reactionary activists and health officials have used to call for closing of bathouses and increased policing of bars and clubs.
QEJ is a partner of the International Drug Policy Reform Conference of the Drug Policy Alliance this November 12-14 in Albuquerque, NM, and want to invite you to this pre-conference call on the Drug War and the LGBT Community.
Please RSVP to this call. Supporting materials will be sent out in advance to those who RSVP.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
2pm-3:30pm EST/11am-12:30pm PST
Conference Call # (712) 432-0600
Password: 751219#
Presenters include:
gabriel sayegh, Drug Policy Alliance (Obama Administration & Drug Policy Reform)
Miss Major, Transgender, Gender-Variant, & Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP) (Transgender Prisoners, Sex Workers and the Drug War)
Kenyon Farrow, Queers for Economic Justice (The Drug War’s Impact on HIV/AIDS Epidemic in Black Gay Men)
Lynn Paltrow, National Advocates for Pregnant Women (Reproductive Justice and The Drug War)
This call is the 5th of a new monthly series called in our national coalition-building work called Act Queer! The purpose of the Act Queer! teleconference series 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 issues. The first call on Healthcare and the LGBT Community, can be heard here. The second call on Police, Prisons, and Queer Organizing can be heard here.
Kenyon Farrow on Obama & Human Rights Campaign
On the eve of the National March for Equality, President Obama spoke to the Human Rights Campaign in Washington DC, and laid out his gay policy agenda for his adminstration. But does that agenda speak for the rest of us? Kenyon wrote an opinion piece for The Grio.com, proclaiming “HRC doesn’t speak for me.” He writes,
When Obama delivered his “gay agenda” speech to the well-fed, well-scrubbed mostly white crowd of gays and lesbians at the Human Rights Campaign’s Annual Dinner on Saturday night, anyone outside of the LGBT community would have assumed by the applause that the entire “gay community” is in agreement that access to serve in the military, gay marriage, and hate crimes legislation are our primary issues. But in reality, HRC’s political agenda is not what I want. It does not speak for me, nor for the lives of many other black, poor and working class LGBT people.
Given the fact that we’re in a long recession where hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost in almost every month of 2009, and national unemployment numbers are at nearly 10 percent, why are we not talking about the issues that most people are concerned about – health care and the economy – and their impact on the LGBT community? The truth is, for many people at that dinner who could afford the cheapest ticket at $250 a plate, jobs and wages are of little concern.
To read the rest of the article, go to THEGRIO.COM.
8/13: Raw: Stigma, Gay Men & Unprotected Sex
Thurs Aug 13, 6:30-8:30pm
RAW! The Stigma Associated with Gay Men and Unprotected Sex.
GMHC, 119 West 24th Street, 12th FL. NYC. DOWNLOAD THE FLYER HERE.
6/10/09 Newark NJ: A tale of Two Movements
This event should be a really interesting conversation. If you’re in NYC/NJ you should come through!
