Living and Working on the Intersections

Suzanne Pharr, Organizer, Strategist & Author

For many activists around the world doing the brave and nuanced work of social change, the term intersections characterizes their lives, their constituents, and their mission for a just future. The four activists on this panel work extensively across the boundaries of race, class, gender, sexual orientation and the many other obstacles that divide us from one another. Suzanne Pharr, the renowned and accomplished organizer and author, moderated the session and recalled her early introduction to intersectional work. Pharr acknowledged the women of the Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press -- Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith, Cherrie Moraga, and Gloria Anzaldua -- citing their groundbreaking books about "living on the margins, on the edge and speaking truth from a place never spoken or published before." Vigorously rejecting the isolation of single issue politics, Pharr pointed to working across the intersections as the only strategy that will sustain and strengthen not just the LGBTI movement, but all change we seek.

"I cannot emphasize how important healthcare is...If you want to grow a trans community, start a health program." Alex Lee, Transgender, Gender Variant and Intersex (TGI) Justice Project

According to Alex Lee, more than half of the transgender and gender variant community of the San Francisco area have been imprisoned at some point in their lives. Lee is an attorney and the Executive Director of the Transgender, Gender Variant and Intersex (TGI) Justice Project, the only organization in the country dedicated to challenging and ending human rights abuses committed against transgender, gender variant/genderqueer and intersex people in California prisons and beyond. Utilizing a trickle-up theory of social change, TGIJP provides direct services and organizing support to those most marginalized -- often low income trans women of color incarcerated in male prisons. They also build alliances outside of the LGBTI arena with women's coalitions and prisoners' rights groups. "People don't lead segmented lives," Lee explained. "And for an organization like ours that puts a lot of emphasis on organizing mass movements, we have to be able to engage mass numbers of people."

Jin Wu, representing Common Language

In 2001 state security police infiltrated and violently disbanded a Beijing lala (lesbian and bi women) cultural festival. Jin Wu reported that activists were detained, some fled the country, and many of those who remained communicated extensively online. Wu is a supporter of Common Language, the organization which in 2005 revitalized a lala community eager to mobilize and become visible. They issue the only lesbian print magazine in China, operate a 20 hour per week phone hotline, and have co-sponsored the 2nd Beijing Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. Working with and on behalf of the entire LGBTI population -- not just lalas -- they've flown Rainbow kites over the Great Wall and organized a same-sex marriage street action featured in the Beijing News. "We hope," said Wu, "that our efforts will inspire support and participation from all around us; thus propelling the entire society towards a direction of equality, tolerance, and openness."

Bran Ali Fenner, FIERCE! (Fabulous, Independent, Educated Radicals for Community Empoerment)

"Public space in New York City," declared Bran Ali Fenner, "is increasingly becoming an added luxury, only for those who can afford it, criminalizing those who have nowhere else to go." Fenner is co-founder and co-director of FIERCE! (Fabulous, Independent, Educated Radicals for Community Empowerment), the organization that gives voice and visibility to the lives, struggles and accomplishments of trans and queer youth of color in New York City. In recent years, many have been denied access to public spaces, former safe havens where they once accessed critical resources and created community. Forced to gather in unsafe areas and in smaller numbers, they have since endured an increase in harassment and physical violence. FIERCE! conducts outreach and organizing on the streets, in the shelters and in transitional programs to build community power. Their education programs, media advocacy work and meetings with city officials provide members with firsthand experience of activism and change in the making. In turn, youth become empowered, experiencing their struggle as inseparable from a larger historical and social movement.