Our Mission

Freedom Oklahoma works to build an Oklahoma where all 2SLGBTQ+ people have the safety, community, and resources to thrive.

Freedom Oklahoma advocates and organizes across Oklahoma and among the 39 sovereign tribal nations to build a future where all Two Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and fuller spectrum of people whose sexuality or gender or romantic identity exists beyond a heteronormative, binary framework (2SLGBTQ+), have the safety, resources, and community to thrive, everywhere we call home.

Our vision

We reimagine our future and organize to build it. Together.

At Freedom Oklahoma, we know 2SLGBTQ+ people have been under attack on this land since settler colonizers first arrived. That history is at the root of this work. The undoing and the reimagining. We believe it is critical to build power and engage in education to achieve collective, community-based safety. While we fight harmful policy attempts, we also search for opportunities to build and move forward with and in community that is caring for one another. Because we can live in abundance when we share. It is tough and intentional work, and we do it imperfectly, accountable for the harm, always striving to do better, to grow our table, to make sure everyone in the community finds their home in this movement, while especially centering our community members who are most often marginalized and excluded. As an organization, we will forsake popularity and even funding to avoid compromising on behalf of the rights and safety of 2SLGBTQ+ people. Two-Spirit, Transgender, and Queer liberation is the work. This is not about rights within systems that were never meant for us, it's about freedom. And the 2SLGBTQ+ community is not a monolith, and therefore we as a single organization cannot claim to do this work on behalf of everyone. Rather we seek to do work with and among our community members, with a growing coalition of accomplices, and until the community safety we seek is realized. The future we're building is not just safe, it's joyful.

Can we count on you to be a part of it?

Lesbian herstory archives image of someone at a Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade with a sign "There's Dykes in Oklahoma Too"

Street art with text "Black Lives Matter Sandra Bland"

a mural in OKC at Plaza Walls with pride flag colors and text "You Belong Here"

Our Context

Founded in 2015 as a result of a merger between The Equality Network (TEN) and Cimarron Alliance, Freedom Oklahoma is the result of a real time need to organize an educational and people-based response to attacks targeting 2SLGBTQ+ folks. Over time, the organization has seen a number of changes to the board and staff, greatly expanded our areas of work, and begun to reflect on how we best show up for and with our community in the urgent work ahead rooted in our movement lineage and with a commitment to community most historically marginalized, excluded, and under-resourced. We organize around our 5 key values, Intentionality, Interconnection, Transparency, Safety, and Accountability, to drive our work in building people power towards the resources, community, and safety we need to thrive across Oklahoma, and everywhere we call home.

We work from a disability justice lens, from an abolitionist, Indigenous, queer politic, rooted in the Black radical tradition as Cedric Robinson defines it, “a collection of cultural, intellectual, action-oriented labor aimed at disrupting social, political, economic, and cultural norms originating in anti-colonial and antislavery efforts.” As an organization founded from intra-system advocacy, we work to free ourselves from the constraints of respectability politics, rooted in white supremacy, and have returned to the radical roots of our movement engaging in values-based praxis, following the leadership of those who have long paved the way for change in our community–rooting our work in information sharing aimed at informing community, power building, and art-based activism. We know that liberation is a community effort that takes place across identities and movement spaces.

As a 2STQ+ (Two Spirit, transgender, queer, plus) centered organization, we are committed to doing work in a way that never compromises on behalf of those most historically marginalized and excluded, including Two Spirit folks, trans folks, queer folks, Black folks, Indigenous folks, disabled folks, poor folks, folks whose existence and/or survival has been criminalized, people living with HIV, people who use drugs, folks who engage in sex work and other pleasure and/or survival economies, folks without access to fixed housing, folks without documented immigration or citizenship status, folks who have been or are currently incarcerated, and others who have had the systems of the status quo try to treat their dignity and autonomy as anything other than inherent.