NY Latina Trans Activist Starts LBCF Community Fund

As I've stated more than a few times on this blog over the last now six years and Amnesty International has cosigned on that point, Officer Friendly ain't exactly friendly at times to the trans community, and especially trans people of color. 

There have been more than a few times these negative interactions have turned into highly publicized court cases.

My trans sisters in New York are dealing with the disproportionate fallout of the odious NYPD 'stop and frisk' policies   Because the po-po's assume they are sex workers, if during one of those stops the transperson in question has more than three condoms on them, according to local activist that transperson can find themselves arrested for prostitution

Interesting story about long time New York trans activist Lorena Borjas, who started the Lorena Borjas Community Fund.  

The LBCF provides legal assistance and funding to pay bail for low income and immigrant members of the Queens community in which she has resided for over 25 years.

Project Runway Season 8 Finalist Is A Girl Like Us!

2012 has been an interesting and groundbreaking year so far when it comes to the trans community and we're only halfway through it.   In addition to progress on the trans human rights front in several nations, we've had a celebrity trans coming out in rocker Laura Jane Grace. 

We can add another celebrity transition in the person of Hawaii native and fashion designer Nong Ariyaphon Southiphong. 

Back is Season 8 of Project Runway she looked a little different as fashion designer Andy South and made it to the finals of that season's competition.

The now 25 year old Nong acknowledged her transition in a February interview in the Hawaii's Expression magazine.   Pictures of her started appearing on her Facebook page back in March.

She recently made the gender code changes on her Facebook page in addition to leaving this June 3 message on it.

"Thank you to my fans and friends who have supported me all the way," she wrote. "Much has changed in a year. I am blessed to be accepted and welcomed just the way I am. May that love flow through me and onto many others. Live in love for the world needs it."

Welcome to the community and the #GirlsLikeUs ranks, Nong.   We're glad to have you.with us!

Upcoming Trans POC Picnic In Maryland

For all you trans POC peeps in the Washington DC, Maryland, and Virginia area or you just want an excuse to go there, it's time for what has become an annual event in that area in the Trans POC picnic.

It's scheduled to be held on July 21 from 1 PM- 5 PM EDT at Wheaton Regional Park in Wheaton, MD. 

So this serves as your save the date post and please consider attending that event.  It's a wonderful way for you to get some fresh air, get to know your fellow transpeeps, make some new friends and get reacquainted with some old ones while y'all get your grub on, play cards and dominoes and have fun..

If I get any additional details I will definitely pass them on to you.

'Transgression' Film Focuses On Trans Immigrants

We touched on the issue during the Netroots panel, but there needs to be more serious community discussion about trans immigrants and the challenges they face in the immigration detention system.

Kylar Broadus Makes History In DC Today

When Sen Tom Harkin (D-IA)  convenes the Senate committee hearing on ENDA later this morning, one of the five people sitting at that table will be making some trans history when that happens.

Founding Trans People of Color Coalition (TPOCC) Executive Director Kylar Broadus will become the first transperson ever to give federal testimony at a US senate hearing when the ENDA hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee convenes at 10 AM EDT in Room 106 of the Everett Dirksen Senate Office Building..

In 2009 there were no trans witnesses in the Senate ENDA hearing, but Vandy Beth Glenn gave testimony in the US House ENDA one.

Kylar is also a living embodiment of what I'm talking about when I say we have trans people of color who are more than capable of providing visionary leadership in the rainbow community and it's past time that fact was recognized.


Can't think of a better person to represent our community at the table and hopefully I'll get to see the hearing on C-SPAN.

I'll post the hearing video here once it archives from the committee website.  

Shaping The New Black Trans Paradigm

"We find ourselves in the Black trans community slowly but surely building sisterhood and community that will serve us well in the future.  However, we must still keep reaching out to those transwomen who haven't gotten with the program and who haven't clued in to the fact that this is a new decade requiring a new attitude and a new paradigm in terms of being an African descended transwoman."   TransGriot  Aiming Higher October 19, 2011

So what is the new Black Trans Paradigm that we need to shape for the second decade of the 21st century and beyond?  Glad you asked me that question, inquisitive TransGriot reader.

We've done and continue to do the hard solid thinking necessary to assess the situation and compile an action plan to deal with it   Much of that communal thinking is happening courtesy of the Black Trans Revolution That Will Not Be Televised off the Net.   

The transpeople who are part of the Transgender Talented Tenth  are aware that it's time to own our power.   In addition to having those discussions inside our chocolate rainbow community, we Black trans leaders are having those one on one brainstorming conversations with each other along with our cis Black community allies and thought leaders to coordinate our actions.

Much of it will happen when we step out of the shadows and become more visible and active leaders, opinion shapers, and integral parts of the various communities we intersect with.  

Some of the heavy lifting for this new Black Trans Paradigm we will have to do internally and will initially involve small cadres of like minded people.  They will be Black transpeople who are tired of the negative baggage attached to being Black and trans and want to do something proactive about it.   We see the level of community the white trans community has built, have observed their mistakes and their ongoing challenges and have painfully recognized the need to have our own rooted in our culture and our history 

We have recognized that we African descended trans people needed to start yesterday forging links with cis African-Americans to do the Trans 101, 102, 201 and 202 education.   We need to be talking to our people about who we are as trans people of African descent and getting them to realize that Black transgender problems are Black community problems.   We need to get that message to our HBCU campuses. We recognize it's past time to determine our political destiny and insist that rainbow community orgs claiming to speak for us not only have more than one African descended trans person as active participants, but African-American  transpeople have a major say in formulating policy that impacts the entire transgender community as well.

We want and need the cis and SGL Black community to recognize that Black trans people are actively working to get on the same page with them in terms of where we go and what we do to help uplift our community in concert with them.  

Black trans people will no longer allow cis people inside and outside the African American community to misuse Biblical scripture as a tool to denigrate, disrespect and shame us. We are people of faith who know that God or whatever you call the higher power loves and created transpeople as part of the diverse mosaic of human life. 

As former ESSENCE editor Susan L. Taylor wrote, "We are not powerless spectators of life. We are co-creators with God and all around us are the gifts, the clay, that we can use to shape our world."

And in the 2K10's we Black transpeople will put our hands in that clay, mold it and start shaping our world.

You will get called on it if from this day forward you attempt to use the Bible and specious interpretations of scripture to demonize transpeople, build your fundamentalist street cred, right wing political power or mask your bigotry and transphobia.   You will not be allowed to use the Bible as a political weapon in last ditch attempts to block transgender human rights initiatives, programs and laws we desperately need to fix what ails our chocolate trans community.   . 

We want and need to continue to forge those bonds of sisterhood with each other and with cis African American women.  They must understand and realize that we are seeking to become complementary players in uplifting Black womanhood, not detriments to it.  We will need their help and respectful input in accomplishing that goal.  If elements of you love Madea and can use the correct pronouns in describing Tyler Perry dressed up as this character, then when you leave the multiplex cinema or playhouse you can and must show the same love and respect for transwomen who live 24/7/365 in our community as their authentic selves   

We live our lives every day dealing with many of the same issues and isms that cis Black women do with the added burden of being trans and having to fight to have our human rights respected and protected at the same time. 

We must rediscover, honor and revere our Black trans history and Black trans makers past, present and future.  It will play a major role in shaping the new Black Trans Paradigm and breaking down the unholy trinity of shame, guilt and .fear 

We can't forget the people we've disproportionately lost due to anti-trans violence as we move forward.  We can't bring them back, but we will use their untimely deaths as motivation and the fuel to make the new Black Trans Paradigm a reality and so their deaths weren't in vain.  

We also can't forget as we forge this new Black Trans Paradigm that we are connected to our trans brothers and sisters across the Diaspora.  As we climb, we also have to respectfully lend an ear and a hand to our brothers and sisters across the Diaspora and help lift them up as well. 

We need to be actively working in partnership with our transpeople and transleaders around the globe and learning lessons from them in terms of what they are encountering in their own nations as they build community in their locales and use their best practices in our own ranks.  It also sends the message to the world community that American trans community leadership is not monoracial and non-white transpeople are stepping up to take our rightful place on the world trans leadership stage.  . 

So yes my trans brothers and sisters and our allies reading this, we have a lot of work to do to make it happen in this decade and beyond.   As Eldridge Cleaver said in Soul on Ice, 'If you ain't part of the solution you are part of the problem."  

I and other African descended transpeople are attempting to be part of the solution to what ails Black trans America and help our community and the others we intersect with at the same time.   How about you?  

So if you feel the same way, let's get busy shaping that new Black Trans Paradigm.  

We Black Trans People Need To Know Our Black Trans History

And I'm not just talking about our Black history, world history, or American history (although we need to be cognizant of that as well) but our Black trans history.

One of the reasons this blog is named TransGriot is because I was tired of Black trans people being unaware of the Black people who walked in our trans shoes before we arrived on this planet to pick up where they left off.  I was tired of us not knowing who our pioneering transpeople were and not being told our stories.  I was tired of our accomplishments and things we have done being erased.

As Chancellor Williams said in The Destruction of Black Civilization in 1975, "As long as we rely on white historians to write Black history for us, we should keep silent about what they produce."

And no, keeping silent about Black trans people being erased from trans history is not gonna happen on my watch.  To ensure that doesn't happen I started this Black History Month doing a Black Trans History quiz and as long as this blog is in operation will be doing it EVERY Black History month from now on.

Diamond Stylz in my recent Ten Questions interview with her pointed out how important knowing our trans history is, ensuring our stories are told, and why we need to proactive in passing them down to the next generation.

"One of my favorite parts about TransGriot is when you showcase some of our trans history.  It opens my eyes to a world in the past that I can't imagine living in. From Lady Java to Lucy Hicks Anderson, I appreciate knowing that we didn't just pop up in the millennium. We have been here fighting. It shows me that I have been handed a torch and I need to continue running with the torch."

That we have.   We have people like Avon Wilson, who was the first patient of the Johns Hopkins gender program.  The African descended people involved in the 1965 Dewey's Lunch Counter Sit-In in Philadelphia.  The people in the ballroom community which drew inspiration from the drag balls of the Harlem Renaissance and Finnie's Ball in Chicago.  Trans people who were clustered in Chicago, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Houston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Detroit and Atlanta just to name a few of the cities.

And oh yeah, I am one of four African-American IFGE Trinity Award winners along with Dawn Wilson, Dr. Marisa Richmond and Earline Budd

Much of the reasons we need to know our history is not only for our own knowledge and edification, but to point out we're intertwined with and share a common history and culture with cis African-Americans.

It's also to counter the haters.   If somebody comes at me with 'Black transpeople haven't don't anything' or the other foul stereotypes they aim at us, I can quickly counter with the fact that we helped organize GenderPac and NTAC.  We have a transwoman who was a member of the Mattachine Society.  We jumped off the first trans specific protest in 1965 and the Stonewall Rebellion in 1969.   A Black transwoman was the first patient in the Johns Hopkins Gender Program.  We have a transwoman in Pamela Hayes who has written and published novels.  We had people who modeled like Tracy Africa Norman and we had present as a delegate to the 2008 Democratic National Convention Dr. Marisa Richmond..       

And yes, some of the legal cases that are helping to define trans legal issues or fight discrimination against us have African American trans plaintiffs in them such as Patricia Underwood, Patti Shaw, KK Logan, Diana Taylor      

We also can't forget our African Diaspora cousins like Victor Mukasa, Audrey Mbugua, Mia Nikasimo  Jowelle De Souza and Skipper Mogapi just for starters or the people we've lost along the way.


We have people such as Janet Mock, Laverne Cox, Isis King, Tona Brown, Jordana and Diamond who are taking Black trans visibility to new levels.   They are paving the way for the acceptance and support we'll need to aim higher and fully integrate ourselves in the African American community so we can continue to make more history.   And yes, knowing our history is a vital building block to ensure we have the healthy self esteem and positive self images we'll need to deal with the slings and arrows of life that will get hurled at us.


I know we just didn't pop up in the late 90's and early 21st century.    Miss Major's existence tells us that along with Cheryl's, Sharyn's, and Marsha P. Johnson's.  And nope, not going to forget the transmen like Alexander John Goodrum, Marcelle Cook-Daniels,  Rev. Louis Mitchell, Kylar Broadus and countless others who are doing the work to not only advance our chocolate section of the trans community, but uplift our people at the same time.

It's past time for us to get to know ourselves by getting in touch with our Black trans history.