Gay City News: Young Professionals Honor Queers for Economic justice
QEJ was the recent recipient of a $7500 grant from Quarter Share, a program for young LGBT professionals in NYC at Stonewall Community Foundation, which chooses an organization to give 25% of the money they raised the previous year. Gay City News reported on it.
The group now has 115 members, each of whom pays dues of $300 a year to participate in social gatherings every other month, learn about New York’s gay philanthropic world, and decide on the recipient of an annual Quarter Share grant. Three-quarters of the money raised goes to the Stonewall Institute, the parent foundation’s training program that offers educational and capacity-building assistance to small LGBTQ organizations in the city. The other quarter goes to a grantee chosen by Quarter Share members.
This year, in choosing its grantee, Quarter Share focused on groups committed to community organizing, and selected Queers for Economic Justice. QEJ is a non-profit that tackles issues of poverty and economic injustice as part of the battle for “sexual and gender liberation,” as the group’s website frames it. It is explicitly and unapologetically progressive, tracing its origins to concerns during the late 1990s about the impact of welfare reform legislation enacted under President Bill Clinton. QEJ puts a focus on racial and class issues absent from the work of many LGBT organizations.
Kenyon Farrow, a longtime African-American writer, journalist, and activist who is now QEJ’s national public education director, was on hand to accept the grant, and addressed some of the group’s key current initiatives. Its Welfare Warriors project presses for inclusive policies in city, state, and federal public assistance programs, and is about to launch a survey of LGBT New Yorkers living in poverty. READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE HERE!
