This day arrived way too soon and it always carries for me a mix of sadness and disappointment.
Sadness and disappointment that comes with the realization that BTAC 2018 is over and we all have to go our separate ways. Some of us had to leave and board at the crack of dawn flights back home before the closing ceremony starts.
I've got a four hour Megabus ride back to Houston with Dee Dee Watters.
But it is also a day in which we revel in the new friends we've made, gotten to hug and hold tight old ones, and look forward to the future recharged and energized to take on the world.
Already know the dates. It'll be April 22-28 once again in Dallas, and we'll announce the hotel and reservation details once the staff recovers from putting this year's event on.
At 11 PM the closing interfaith service led by when we now call our Golden Flames, our elders from age 55 and up will be conducted. Once it's over, the countdown starts for BTAC 2019.
The Awards Gala was amazing last night. Everybody was looking fly last night including our emcees for our gala Dezjorn Gauthier and Jessica Zyrie
It was priceless to also see the surprised looks on both their faces when they also received awards .
Speaking of awards, congrats to Kayla Gore who is the 2018 recipient of the BTAC Monica Roberts Advocacy Award, our BTMI Man of the Year Trenton Johnson and BTWI Woman of the Year Jade Lenore. Congrats as well to our 2018 award recipients in our Rising Star and other categories..
Y'all have time to think about who will be next year's award recipients when the nominations ballot goes up on the website.
In the interim, today is Family Day. We're headed out to the Circle R Ranch in the Dallas suburb Flour Mound, TX where we get to chow down on barbecue, chill out, and play games.
It's also the time I get to dispense more domino beatdowns as the defending BTAC domino champion Syria is back this year to reclaim her crown from Jade as the queen of the spades players
Once we get back from our trip to the Circle R Ranch, we get ready for the Black Diamond Ball with the theme this year of Wakandan Realness.
We'll see who came close to that theme later tonight in that and other categories and who got chopped for not doing so.
I'm up here for BTAC at the same time the NFL Draft is happening in Dallas. While we're handling our Black trans community business through Sunday, the NFL will be handling theirs through Sunday at AT&T Stadium and The Star Complex.
Wonder who the Texans drafted?
Well, y'all know it's Friday, so it's time to select his week's Shut Up Fool Award winner,.
But this week's Shut Up Fool winner is Bill Cosby's publicist Ebonee Benson,.
Cosby was convicted yesterday on three felony counts of aggravated indecent assault and is facing 30 years in prison.
Benson went on Good Morning America and tried to compare the case to the savage murder of Emmett Till in addition to insinuating that all 60 women who accused Cosby of sexual assault of lying.
Naw Ebonne, how dare you try to compare this case to what Emmett Till suffered. Cosby wasn't being lynched, he was being tried and convicted in the court system for what he was accused and convicted of doing. .
This is about sexual assault and rape, not race, and the vast majority of his victims are other Black women.
The new BTIPS king and queen have been crowned in Malaysia Black as our 2018 queen and Sybastian Smith as our 2018 king as another spectacular pageant hosted by Taliyah Cassadine took place.
Major props to 2017 BTIPS king and queen Trenton Johnson and Tiffany Starr who raised the BTIPS advocacy bar once again during their reign as BTIPS royalty.
Earlier in the day we heard inspiring keynote speeches from Diamond Stylz and Jonathan Thunderword at our 2018 keynote luncheon
We awaken in a few hours at out Wyndham Dallas Suites host hotel to handle our last day of seminars, part three of our Black Trans Summit conversation, and conclude this day with our awards gala hosted by Dezjorn Gauthier and Jessica Zyrie.
Tonight I get to find out who won the BTAC Monica Roberts Advocacy Award
Still not too late for you to join us for BTAC 2018 and meet your trans and Gender non conforming fam from around the nation.
You may have seen the WTF level moment in which two people were arrested at a contentious HISD meeting.
HISF School Board President Rhonda Skillern Jones and Kandice Webber along with Ashton Woods discuss what happened from their perspectives
Skillern Jones has offered an apology to Webber and the other woman arrested in the debacle. Charges were dropped after consultation with Harris County DA Kim Ogg, but Weeber has some definite opinions concerning what should happen next.
Both appeared on FOX26's The Isiah Factor Uncensored to discuss what happened Monday and what needs to happen next.
The big event today is the 2018 Mr and Miss Black Trans International Pageant later tonight
Mr.Black Trans International 2017 Trenton Johnson and Miss Black Trans International Tiffany Starr will crown their successors from the group of contestants vying for their crowns.
While those contestants are undergoing another step to hopefully snatching the BTIPS crowds with their interviews, the seminar tracks continue.
As those of you who got to see the live feeds witnessed, the Trans Manifest Live was off the chain. It gets better and better every year, and next year I'm coming with some original poetry
At noon we also have another highly anticipated event with the BTAC 2018 Empowerment Keynote Luncheon
The Black Transmen, Inc Keynote speaker this year will be Jonathan Thunderword, and the Black Transwomen, Inc .Keynote speaker is Diamond Stylz.
At 2:00 PM we pick up with Part 2 of the Black Trans Community Summit in which we will have a chance to talk with the Dallas PD's LGBTQ Liasion Amber Roman as past of the discussion on Dating, Love and anti-Trans Violence.
If will be followed by the pageant at 8 PM to crown the new Mr. and Miss Black Trans 2018.
The first full day of seminars is on tap for BTAC 2018 starting at 10 AM. Registration for the Mr. and Miss Black Trans International pageant is also happening today as well.
The seminars this year are organized into three tracks. One track for trans masculine attendees, the second for trans feminine attendees, and one for significant others and spouses of trans people.
Each will have their own dedicated meeting room and breakout group. The Akanni for the trans men, the Ayombi for the trans women, and the Anchors group for spouses and significant others.
From 2-4 PM the first of the Black Trans Community Summit conversations will happen in which we discuss the data and results from the 2015 US Trans Survey that Black Trans Advocacy was in partnership with NBJC and NCTE to conduct
The data for Black trans people has now been released, and there were also enough participants to break down the US Trans Survey date by state, with Texas being one of those states.
The conversation will focus on the national data, and talk about employment, housing and healthcare.
The big event to close out Wednesday is the always popular Trans Manifest Live hosted this year by the reigning BTIPS king and queen Trenton Johnson and Tiffany Starr that starts at 8 PM.
Not surprised about hearing that the almost two decade long pissivity that Houston's Black community has with the HISD school board finally boiled over last night.
Since 2000, many of the school campuses that HISD has been closing or selling off to charter school outfits have been in Black and Latinx neighborhoods.
There has also been over the last two decades in HISD the stripping of or killing of successful magnet programs housed in Black and Latinx schools, like my high school alma mater Jesse H. Jones which used to host until 2002 the district's Vanguard gifted and talented magnet high school.
Black and Latinx HISD have also chafted as they see HISD schools in predominantly white neighborhoods not only stay open, but get funded, new magnet programs and new school buildings built as Houston Black and brown neighborhoods increasingly get charter schools or see longtime neighborhood schools close..
That pissivity with an HISD school board that ironically is primarily nonwhite and female led boiled over as a proposal to let a charter school outfit, Energized for STEM came up for a vote.
Energized for STEM has some controversial leadership in NAACP Houston President James Douglas and former HISD board member Paula Harris, in whose former HISD trustee district many Black schools were closed
That plus a Black community fed up with our school being the ones repeatedly put on the chopping block led to HISD school board president Rhonda Skillern Jones ordering HISD and HPD officers to clear the packed auditorium at the Hattie Mae White Education Center. One woman was dragged out of the room while Houston Rising';s Kandice Webber was arrested for as observers claimed merely clapping her approval at what another person said.
Haven't heard as of this writing if she has been released, and after the board went into a closed door session, the decided not to vote on the controversial proposal to hand over 10 low performing predominately Black schools to the charter outfit.
Stay tumed because this saga isn't quite over yet.
We've been eagerly waiting since the last BTAC Conference closed out for the 2018 edition of the Black Trans Advocacy Conference.
This year its at a new hotel with a new theme in 2018 as we gather from across Texas, the US and increasingly the world with attendees last year from Brazil and Jamaica .
The conference officially opens with an interfaith service with an Afrocentric flavor that will take place starting at 7 PM, For those of you who couldn't make it this year, we will be tweeting at the hashtag #BTAC2018
We will still have the Trans Manifest, the keynotes from Diamond Stylz and Jonathan Thunderword, the Mr and Miss Black Trans Pageant, the Awards Gala and the Family Day still ahead of us.
And yes, Moni is still lurking in the shadows of the hospitality suite waiting to to dish out dominoes beatdowns to all who dare step to her when I'm not handling media issues.
You know that I have much love for the all around awesomeness of Janet Mock as a New York Times best selling author, motivational speaker, thought leader and trailblazing advocate.
Her current book is Surpassing Certainty, and I'm planning on getting a copy of it soon and taking some of my next scheduled down time to read it.
And because she is so awesome, I'm not surprised when I hear that Janet has broken new ground or been included on some list.
ESSENCE magazine has released their second annual #Woke100 list of Black women who are doing wonderful things for our community as proven change agents here and around the world
There was one trans feminine person included on the list this year, and it wasn't moi., it was Ms. Mock.
Congratulations Janet for blazing another trail and repping #BlackTGirlMagic and #BlackTrans Excellence in everything you do.
One of the humorous skits on Saturday Night Live is the Black Jeopardy on in which contestants have yo give correct answers to categories that come straight from the hood.
I missed this one when it originally aired and has Chadwick Boseman reprising his T'Challa role from Black Panther as a contestant on Black Jeopardy with hilarious results.
After a Megabus ride, that was delayed almost an hour in the Houston exurbs due to a chemical spill cleanup in Montgomery County, I'm on the other end of I-45 for my annual trip to hang out with my Black trans fam and attend the 7th annual Black Trans Advocacy Conference.
And yeah, it also serves as the kickoff to my upcoming Cuatro de Mayo birthday
This year's BTAC Conference theme is Journeying Together: Living In Greater Truth and Healing. In a time when trans people are under attack from a hostile federal government and depending on where we live, Republican state governments adding to the macroaggressive hostility, now more than ever Black trans people need to be pulling together, living our truth, and saying in a loud collective voice that our humanity and human rights are not up for debate or discussion.
It's also one of the few trans conferences that is centered on our heritage
We also have a new host hotel for this event in the Wyndham Dallas Suites Park Central, so once again we'll have to learn a new Dallas neighborhood and what off hotel property eating establishments and attractions are in the surrounding area.
One the Cali crew is already salivating about is the nearby In and Out Burger just across the parking lot . Nah, I'll stick to Whataburger
We're also going to be there as the NFL conducts its 2018 Draft at Jerry World (AKA AT&T Stadium) and The Star Complex in the nearby exurb of Frisco, TX.
And yeah, Moni will be looking to defend her domino championship at the upcoming picnic on Saturday. But for those of you headed to BTAC, if y'all want a domino beatdown before that day, I will happily oblige you.
And naw, I did not stutter when I said that. #BTACDominoChamp
Looking forward to a week of seeing the lovely Demetria Obilor doing the traffic reports on WFAA-TV along with Dale Hansen's on point commentary and my friends in the DFW area like Rachel Adams Gonzales, Rafael McDonnell, Councilman Omar Narvaez and countless others.
I'm also looking forward to the Dallas BTAC week of learning, fun and bonding at this Black trans family reunion that in seven years has become one of my favorite conferences to attend.
The latest racist incident involving white younglings on a college campus is more evidence pointing to the fallacy of thought that racism will end when the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers die off.
Umm no. To me, the chatter to 'wait until the old racists die' is an excuse for people to do nothing to aggressively attack and eradicate the problem of racism in our society.
And once again for the people in the back, everybody can't be racist. Everybody can be bigoted and prejudiced
What that statement fails to take into account is that racist parents will attempt to pass on their racist commentary and belief systems to their kids. Racist relatives will do the same thing.
Some of those kids targeted will reject it, while others will embrace it and pass it on to their kids, nieces and nephews. If they are successful in doing so, that keeps it going for another generation or two.
And please spare me the kissing cousin to this flawed thinking that if 'you people didn't talk about racism, it would go away' comment. Me and other non-white people talking about the negative ways in which racism affects our lives is not 'perpetuating racism', it's diagnosing the problem.
You can't eradicate a problem until you discuss the scope of it and what you need to do to successfully fix it. That's why we non-white peeps talk about it on a regular basis to remind you peeps who o through your lives without being affected by it that it exists, the problems, micro and macroaggressions we deal with are real, and that racism is simply not going to magically end by ignoring it or doing nothing about it.
If you want to erase racism in this society, it is going to take some heavy lifting to do, with the vast majority of the work needing to happen to make racism a thing of the past occurring with our white siblings.
Racism is not going to die off. The only way it will be eliminated in our society by sustained ongoing anti-racist action.
As you TransGriot readers know, I'm not a fan of RuPaul's Drag Race, but during its run it has had some of its winners and folks who didn't snatch the crown make a name elsewhere besides the drag and pageant world.
One of those peeps is Kennedy Davenport. Davenport is based up I-45 from me and in addition to competing on Drag Race, also competed on America's Got Talent in 2013 and won several pageant crowns.
Davenport also attended the BFA Dance program at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and it shows in her ance moves.
A TransGriot reader pointed me to this video of hers, and I was definitely feeling it. It's definitely something that you need to play peeps when you're feeling down.
Enough jibber jabber. Let me allow you readers to check out her video for her song I'm Moving Up. If you like it, download it.
It's that time again, and I'm getting on the Megabus once again for the second time this year to do an instate trip.
This time I'm headed up I-45 to hang out with my transpeeps for the 7th annual edition of the Black Trans Advocacy Conference
Much of the reason I enjoy it is not only because I get to hang out with my Black trans family from here and around the world, it also acts as a kickoff to my Cuatro De Mayo birthday celebration.
So ready to see everyone, the new hotel, and my DFW peeps.
Time to settle into my seat and roll over for some sleep, and I'll catch up with you peeps in a few hours.
Once again we have another instance of the racism that has exploded out of hiding in our American culture ever since the White Supremacist in Chief entered the White House.
As I have said since 45's disgusting inauguration, the bigots now feel empowered to let their swastika flags fly and openly wear those Klan robes in public. They also feel empowered to say racist and bigoted crap until they get called on it.
This time the students behaving badly video comes from Syracuse University, and it was a videotaped fraternity initiation that was acquired by the independent student newspaper the Syracuse Orange.
The frat caught behaving badly was the Theta Tau professional engineering one
The first videotape shows a student on his knees sweating to hate Black, Jewish, gay and Latinx people and using the slur words for each group. . A second person is taped in it using a derogatory word for Jews and makes a veiled references to Nazi gas chambers
A second videotape has also surfaced in which mimics a sexual assault on a disabled person while reciting derogatory language.
When the videos surfaced, the Theta Tau members tried to weakly claim the comments were 'satire' (yeah, right) and that they were lampooning a conservative Republican member of Theta Tau.
Naw fools, don't even try and insult my intelligence with that bull feces laden lie. Y'all were gleefully uttering those racial slurs and forgot that cameras are everywhere these days.
Syracuse University was not amused, and after Chancellor Kent Syverud apologized for the reprehensible comments and videos, SU dropped the disciplinary hammer on Theta Tau.
The fraternity has been permanently banned from campus. The tapers were turned over to local law enforcement because the frat is being investigated for possible criminal charges.
19 students are also facing being expelled from the university
If you peeps haven't learned anything from this pot, take this point away from it. Racism can cost you 'bigly', and your boy Trump isn't going to do or say a damned thing to save your azz when the hammer comes down on you for being a bigoted douchenozzle.
The number of shows I put in the 'Must See Trans TV' category is rising with each passing year as it is acknowledged in Hollywood that trans people exist, and we have interesting and compelling stories to tell.
The next #MustSeeTransTV scripted show I am eagerly looking forward to watching is Pose on FX when it debuts June 3.
Pose is set in late 1980's New York City, a time in which the ballroom scene was beginning to blow up.
Executive producers Ryan Murphy, Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson began assembling the show in March 2017. It is also being produced by Janet Mock and Our Lady J, who will also be on the writing team with Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Steven Canals.
Leiomy Maldonado and Danielle Polanco will be choreographing the show's ballroom scenes.
Pose will also have the largest ever cast of TBLGQ characters to date for a television show.
After a six month nationwide search, it was announced that trans actors Angelica Ross, MJ Rodriguez, Indya Moore, Hallie Sahar and Dominique Jackson were cast along with cisgender actors Ryan Jamaal Swain, Billy Porter and Dyllan Burnside.
Evan Peters, Kate Mara, James Van Der Beek and Tatiana Maslany later joined the cast, but when the modern dance teacher for creative reasons was changed to an African American character, Maslany exited the production with Charlayne Woodard taking her place.
The pilot episode of Pose was filmed in October 2017, with the eight episode first season beginning production in February.
The trailer was finally released on April 12, and so looking forward to seeing my sis Angelica Ross on this show along with the other trans actors who are a part of the Pose cast.
Looks like the peeps who want the bigoted status quo to stay intact in Pearland are having a hard time dealing with the reality that their once sleepy little suburban town is a multicultural city of over 130,000 people.
With the city evolving to become a diverse metropolis, the political leadership of it at city hall and the school board need to reflect that reality.
Daniel Abdullah Hernandez is running for the Pearland ISD school board's Position 4 against incumbent Sean Murphy. That board is close to flipping to liberal-progressive control if the conservative faction controlling it now lose one or two more seats.
If that happens, PISD's homophobic and transphobic superintendent Dr. John Kelly is probably going to be one of the casualties since he is a polarizing figure there.
Hernandez has not only been critical of Pearland ISD's treatment of trans kid Kai Shappley, he has also been critical about the district's racial and fiscal problems.
Hernandez would also be the first Latinx person amd Muslim elected to the PISD board should he be successful in winning his race on May 5. Hernandez is also the imam at the Pearland Islamic Center.
Dalia Kasseb, who ran for the Pearland City Council last year, is making another run at a Pearland City Council seat. You'll remember that anti-Muslim rhetoric was deployed in her race last year in which she led all candidates in her race by getting 41% of the ballots cast.
Unfortunately that wasn't enough for her to win the seat outright on Election Day. Kasseb was forced into a runoff for that Position 7 seat that she unfortunately lost.
She does have two other challengers for the Position 4 seat in Sonny Atkins and Adrian Hernandez, and was endorsed by the Texas Democratic Party. Here's hoping that Kasseb is successful this time in making history, capturing the seat on the Pearland City Council that eluded her last year and does so in 2018 without a runoff.
If she does accomplish that feat, she would become the first Muslim to win a political race in Brazoria County in addition to becoming the first to win a Pearland city council seat.
But there are some peeps in Pearland who aren't liking the fact that since 2000, the town has grown more diverse. It is now 47% Anglo, 25% Latinx, 17% African American and 9% Asian.
While it's denied by city leaders, there is an increasing divide between the longtime conservative leaning residents and the more liberal progressive ones in the newer, more ethnically diverse suburbs west of FM 518. It's starting to play out in the city's politics.
A hidden camera recently caught an elderly white woman tearing down a Daniel Hernandez campaign sign. There was YouTube video of it happening, but of course it has been taken down in an attempt to protect the guilty party who didn't know she was on camera when she performed her nefarious deed.
Stealing, defacing, mutilating or willfully destroying a political yard sign on private property is a misdemeanor crime in Texas punishable by a $2500 fine, a year in jail or both.
The same thing is reportedly happening to Kasseb's yard signs according to one of my Pearland TransGriot readers.
Good luck to both Daniel Hernandez and Dalia Kasseb as they both seek to make electoral history in Pearland. Shame on the folks who are engaging in thuggish political behavior.
Early voting starts on April 23, so Pearland peeps, make your voices heard and beat back the election bigotry that is occuring once again in this city.
The bottom line is that Pearland is getting diverse, and the people who are seeing public office there will only continue to be more representative of the entire community, not less so
Today starts the zodiac period from April 20 to May 20 of all us proud members born under the sign of the Bull, AKA Taurus/
The long list of famous people born under this sign include Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, Queen Elizabeth II, George Clooney, Stevie Wonder, Janet Jackson, Jessica Alba, Cher, George Lucas, Rosario Dawson, Jet Li, Carol Burnett, Mark Zuckerberg, and some award winning blogger y'all may have heard of.
But I know y'all didn't surf over here to read a post in which I pop my collar about all things Taurus.
I know it's Friday, and y'all wanna know who earned this week's Shut Up Fool Award.
So let's get to it.
This week's winner I'm going to the Mother Continent for in Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni
President Museveni claims the practice has been pushed on Ugandans by "outsiders," and argues that the mouth is solely for eating.
"Let me take this opportunity to warn our people publicly about the wrong practices indulged in and promoted by some of the outsiders," he told the press during an address.
"One of them is what they call oral sex. The mouth is for eating, not for sex. We know the address of sex, we know where sex is," he continued.
Yeah, right. You have 41.5 million people in your nation, and they are probably like the rest of the world laughing at your azz for even saying something that cluelessly stupid before they engage in consensual oral sex
You want to ban it because you probably aren't getting it on the regular.
