Blog

I attended the 8th Annual Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project (QWOCMAP) Film Festival in San Francisco from June 8th through 10th, alongside 3,000 other attendees. The festival was entitled "I do and I don't: LGBTQ People of Color & Same-Sex Marriage" and this year was held at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the largest venue the QWOCMAP has used. It was thrilling to see a theater of nearly double capacity as last year's filled with festival goers. We were invited to participate in a community conversation that followed UNFENCED/SIN VALLA, a showcase of five documentaries featuring stories of resilience and struggles for self determination of queer, trans and gender-non-conforming people in Chile and Colombia. The films were produced through the South American Audiovisual Academy Al Borde led by Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice grantee partner Mujeres al Borde (MAB).

In honor of Mother's Day, we want to recognize Astraea's Founding Mothers and all the women leaders whose innovation and guidance brought the LGBTQI rights movement into being.

The United Nations hosted its first-ever high-level panel on violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in early March. Convened by the government of South Africa, some would argue – myself included – that this event is at least ten years overdue. Nonetheless, seeing Ban Ki Moon, the Secretary General of the UN, in an opening video statement uneqivocally offer his support in this struggle was extraordinary: