Founded in 2013, it is the first openly lesbian group in the southern Andean region of Peru, where there are high levels of institutional violence and hate for LGBT people, and where extreme religious fundamentalism halts all power to make decisions.
Movimiento Lesbia is a young lesbian organization based in the city of Arequipa, Peru. Founded in 2013, it is the first openly lesbian group in the southern Andean region of Peru, where there are high levels of institutional violence and hate for LGBT people, and where extreme religious fundamentalism halts all power to make decisions. Many of the members are under 30 years old and come from areas of the city that are very marginalized. Its mission is to end discrimination and violence against LGBT communities, in particular violence against lesbian and bisexual women. *** Movimiento Lesbia es una joven organización lésbica con base en la ciudad de Arequipa, Perú. Fundado en 2013, es el primer grupo abiertamente lésbico en la región sureña andina de Perú, donde hay altos niveles de violencia institucional y de odio hacia las personas LGBT, y donde un fundamentalismo religioso extremo acapara todo el poder para tomar decisiones. Muchas de las personas miembro tienen menos de 30 años y provienen de áreas de la ciudad súmamente marginalizadas. Su misión es acabar con la discriminación y la violencia hacia las comunidades LGBT, en particular la violencia contra las mujeres lesbianas y bisexuales.
The Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity (MASGD) is intentionally an all-volunteer, multiracial, mixed-gender organization, representative of the myriad communities that comprise LGBTQ and Muslim.
The Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity (MASGD) is intentionally an all-volunteer, multiracial, mixed-gender organization, representative of the myriad communities that comprise LGBTQ and Muslim. MASGD works to support, empower, and connect LGBTQ Muslims, while challenging root causes of oppression, misogyny, and xenophobia. MASGD aims to increase the acceptance of gender and sexual diversity within Muslim communities, and to promote a progressive understanding of Islam that is centered on inclusion, justice, and equality. LGBTQ Muslims are margins within the margins at the intersections of xenophobia, Islamophobia, gender-based oppression, racism (including colorism and anti-Black bias), and patriarchy.
This organization is supported through the Funding Queerly Giving Circle, which is housed at Astraea.
Diverse Voices and Action for Equality started in 2011 to formalize a growing grassroots LBTI peer support group in Suva, Fiji.
Diverse Voices and Action for Equality started in 2011 to formalize a growing grassroots LBTI peer support group in Suva, Fiji. DIVA has since grown to become a feminist Fiji national collective and network of high need and marginalised lesbians, bisexual women, trans masculine and gender nonconforming and intersex women and people working from local to global, on issues of human rights and social justice, including gender and sexual, social, economic and ecological justice. We prioritise work in Fiji and Pacific small island states. DIVA for Equality works from a strong south feminist intersectional and interlinkage analysis – identifying and advocating on lived realities of LBTI women and people, both as a collective and community, and through joint work with other feminists, wider women-led groups and community groups, civil society groups and social movements, and Pacific governments as able – toward recognition, protection and advancement of sexual rights, human rights, gender justice and social, economic, ecological and climate justice. DIVA for Equality provides practical urgent action and support to lesbian, bisexual women and transgender masculine and gender nonconforming women and people. We strengthen, create and facilitate safe spaces to organise, articulate constituency positions, build stronger community led hubs and networks, and increase levels of constructive collaboration in wider civil society and social movements. We struggle for realisation of universal human rights, access to justice and liberation, and resist all marginalisation, discrimination and violence.
Nia Witherspoon is a multidisciplinary artist-scholar producing work at the intersections of indigeneity, queerness, and African diaspora epistemologies. Working primarily in the mediums of vocal and sound composition, playwriting, and creative scholarship, Dr. Witherspoon’s work has been recognized and supported by the Mellon Foundation, Theatre Bay Area, and the National Queer Arts Festival. Her original play, The Messiah Complex, is a multi-temporal meditation on the loss of parents in black and queer diasporas. Messiah was performed at New York’s prestigious Downtown Urban Theatre Festival (HERE Art Center) where it received the Audience Award and placed second for Best Play. Witherspoon’s work as a vocalist, both independently and with acclaimed ceremonial-music duo SoliRose, has spanned stages, ceremonial spaces, and activist organizations from the San Francisco Bay Area to Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto, and Beirut, and her creative nonfiction is most recently featured in Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art, and Thought. Witherspoon has forthcoming publications in the Journal of Popular Culture and Women and Performance, and she is currently at work on a book project, “The Nation in the Dark: Reparations of Ceremony in Diaspora,” which asserts that nationalism, far from being dead, is essential to radical women of color re-envisioning indigenous religions. She received a B.A. from Smith College and a PhD from Stanford University.
Trans(forming) is an Atlanta membership-based organization led by people of color and focusing on the needs of trans, intersex, and gender non-conforming people assigned female at birth.
Trans(forming) is an Atlanta membership-based organization led by people of color and focusing on the needs of trans, intersex, and gender non-conforming people assigned female at birth. They are driven by our deep commitment to ensure all trans and gender non-conforming people, especially trans people of color, can live with fairness, freedom, and justice throughout the metro Atlanta area. They believe that for our people to organize effectively for justice despite the various forms of oppression we struggle against, we must build resources to support our survival; they also believe our liberation cannot be complete without pursuing justice for all people of color, and ending all forms of oppression. To support our community’s survival and self-determination, Trans(forming) builds resources by and for trans and gender non-conforming people, and brings in new members through our meetings, workshops, programs, and events. They also organize marches, rallies, call-in campaigns, and other actions to rapidly respond to specific acts of injustice and to build pressure for policy change. Trans(forming) is an Anchor Organization of Solutions Not Punishment Coalition (SNaP Co) and this is where are amazing advocacy and activism takes place to change the system internally and the hearts and minds of communities. This organization is supported through the Funding Queerly Giving Circle, which is housed at Astraea.
Annalise Ophelian is an award-winning filmmaker and the producer/director of the documentary about Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, MAJOR!.
Annalise Ophelian is an award-winning filmmaker and the producer/director of the documentary about Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, MAJOR!. She is a white, queer-identified cis woman, psychologist, and consultant whose work includes Diagnosing Difference (2009). StormMiguel Florez is the co-producer/editor of MAJOR! and is a Xicano transgender musician and filmmaker. He is a graduate of the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project and on the leadership team of the Transgender GenderVariant Intersex Justice Project.
Watch an interview with Annalise Ophelian and Miss Major, the subject of Ophelian’s documentary:
The #Not1More Deportation campaign was launched in 2013 to pursue just and humane immigration policies, starting with a stop to deportations.
The #Not1More Deportation campaign was launched in 2013 to pursue just and humane immigration policies, starting with a stop to deportations. In a context that saw a continued rise in state and national anti-immigrant policies along with diminishing possibilities for immigration reform, the campaign viewed criminalization as a central threat and fundamental to true legalization for undocumented people. Originally launched as part of NDLON, the campaign became independent to deepen the links between efforts against mass deportation, mass incarceration and state-sanctioned violence, and serve as a national vehicle for continued intersectional collaboration between community, labor, undocumented and LGBTQ organizations. By 2015 the campaign and its members became a crucial foundation for the forming of Mijente, a national grassroots and online organizing hub for Latinx and Chicanx in the United States. Significant successes include generating national momentum and changing the immigration debate to focus on the human cost of deportation. They catalyzed unlikely alliances across the country, supported the passage of dozens of local and state laws to undermine police-ICE collaboration, supported of campaigns to stop the deportations of hundreds of community members, and generated substantial pressure toward the legal, political and moral arguments that moved the President to announce executive action in November 2014. Over the past year, they significantly increased their collaboration and support of LGBTQ groups and issues, with SONG, Familia and the Transgender Law Center joining their campaign leadership. Last year, they co-hosted the “Queering Immigration Regional Kinship and Strategy Meeting” with SONG in Atlanta to bring people together to strategize organizing against immigration enforcement and detention policies in the South. They also organized a retreat for trans latina women organizers with TLC and Familia and a strategy session for the Not1More LGBTQ Deportation campaign.
Naomi Jackson is the author of The Star Side of Bird Hill, published by Penguin Press in June 2015. She studied fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Jackson traveled to South Africa on a Fulbright scholarship, where she received an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. A graduate of Williams College, her work has appeared in literary journals and magazines in the United States and abroad. She is the recipient of residencies from the University of Pennsylvania’s Kelly Writers House, Hedgebrook, Vermont Studio Center, and the Camargo Foundation. (Photo credit: Lola Flash)
Lisa Harewood is a Barbadian filmmaker and writer/director of Auntie, a short developed by the Commonwealth Foundation in 2013 and acquired by National Black Programming Consortium for its AfroPop series. The film has inspired an oral history project, Barrel Stories, which will document and share the experiences of Caribbean parents and children separated by migration. She previously produced a feature film which was nominated for Best First Feature at Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles. She holds an M.A. from Warwick University and trained in Independent Producing at MetFilm School, both in the UK.
Intersex Ukraine was founded in 2013 by Julia, an intersex woman, to address social isolation and in Ukraine.
Intersex Ukraine was founded in 2013. They have since developed tools for awareness–raising such as a brochure in Ukrainian (the second expanded edition was recently published): “Who Are Intersexes And How To Be Full Members Of Society Without Losing Themselves” with a lot of social and legal information. Their awareness raising manifests itself as well in a first photo exhibitions about intersex people, and a first documentary on the same topic in the national Ukrainian TV. They also created a short public video about intersex rights, that was presented by two national TV stations and then performed as a social video in a cinema in Kiev, for a week, before each screening. They are also involved in international advocacy, participating or being represented in the CEDAW press conference as well as in the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights “Meeting with partners”. They have strong European connexions, participating in the European Intersex Community Event as well as the ILGA Europe Conference.
They are dedicated to maintaining photographic, graphic, and video documentation of lesbian and feminist social movements and women in Mexico and Latin America.
Producciones y Milagros Agrupación Feminista A.C. is a collective of lesbian feminists who fight against a patriarchal, capitalist, racist and sexist systems. The heart of their work is based on the documentation and creation of images that build and deconstruct feminist memory. They are dedicated to maintaining photographic, graphic, and video documentation of lesbian and feminist social movements and women in Mexico and Latin America (forums, actions, workshops, academic seminars, initiatives, marches, etc.). With the use of video, photography, graphic design, facilities and performance representation, they create their own materials and offer professional support to other groups.
*** En Español***
Producciones y Milagros Agrupación Feminista A.C. es un colectivo de feministas lesbianas que luchan contra un sistema patriarcal, capitalista, racista y sexista. El corazón de su trabajo tiene base en la documentación y creación de imágenes que construyen y deconstruyen la memoria feminista. Se dedica a mantener una documentación fotográfica, gráfica y de video de los movimientos sociales lésbicos feministas y de las mujeres en México y América Latina (foros, acciones, talleres, seminarios académicos, iniciativas, marchas, etc.). Con el uso del video, la fotografía, el diseño gráfico, las instalaciones y la representación del performance, crea sus propios materiales y ofrece apoyo profesional a otros grupos.
