ID: digital collage of mountains with a goat cropped in and a tiger hissing at a clock running away. On the top of the collage there is a long exposer image of stars in the night sky. In the middle the is a ripped piece of scrapbook paper that says “January”, with a Freedom Oklahoma logo just underneath.

Beloveds,

We know that we’re tasked with work that often feels sacred and impossible. How are we building a future where we all have the safety, resources, and community to thrive, everywhere we call home, while also seeing resources roll back, threatening the material sustainability of our organization and the livelihoods of the folks who show up each day in this work? How is this sustainable when living in our values creates conflict that a lot of our community is too traumatized to engage with towards repair? How do we live in our values, when it feels impossible to slow down and check in around news cycles that demand response and funding cycles that want extensive data-based progress towards goals that are decades in the making in a place like Oklahoma. How do we convince folks that we’re worth the investment, worth the work? That 2SLGBTQ+ safety isn’t real until it exists for folks in places like Oklahoma? How do we dream when we’re constantly pushed into spaces and situations that exacerbate scarcity and despair?

It’s 2026, and while many folks are talking about new years and big plans, we want to acknowledge, it’s hard to dream from a place of scarcity, burnout, and fear. We’re starting this year with our leanest budget in a long time, a reduction in capacity resulting from ever decreasing investment in trans led and trans centered work at a time when the needs are greater than ever. It’s a time when we’d love to pause and engage in deep strategic planning, in deep listening, in deep rest. And we know that desire extends across communities, as we hold the collective weight of policy and rhetoric targeting especially our 2STGNC+ siblings. It’s hard and heavy and we know that there is the ever present temptation of despair. And we’re holding all of that as we enter 2026.

If you’re a frequent reader of Freedom Oklahoma media, you probably know that I have a practice of naming my years–trying to set intentions for how I’m showing up, how I’m practicing hope, and how I’m focusing my energy for whatever is ahead. Last year that overlapped with our approach to Freedom Oklahoma’s work. But as we looked at 2026, as I thought about our organizational approach to a new year, 2026 offered a different perspective. So, as I think about movement work and Freedom Oklahoma in 2026, I’m offering the name The Pace of Progress: Everything for Everyone. Because while we focused 2025 on the ways we had to fight, I want us to approach this new year with the reminder that liberation is the long game, that deep rest is required for deep work, and that we have to center collective love, collective repair, collective healing, and collective joy, to ensure we leave no one behind.

And that's the intention woven into our vision and values.

What’s Driving our 2026 Lens

We want to always work from a disability justice lens, 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’ve worked 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 liberation is a community effort that takes place across identities especially inside community organizing. We are working to make sure Freedom Oklahoma will always be a 2STQ+ led and centered organization, 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.

The federal government is watching our online presence now more than ever, because its helping us share knowledge on how to take care of each other and fight back. Community care and connection flies in the face of the isolation the fascism thrives on. Our people and our organizations face increased targeting by our government and our law enforcement. But also people by individuals acting based on the harmful language and policy being put out at a federal and local level. At Freedom Oklahoma, we are deeply committed to crafting a future where all Two Spirit, transgender, and queer (2STQ+) folks have the resources, community, and safety to thrive. Across occupied Indigenous lands.

In Oklahoma & Everywhere we call home.

For me, when I think about the future I am trying to build, I often imagine the end of a dinner party. Moments where folks are pitching in to clear the table, do dishes, pack up leftovers, and generally pick up, even (and often especially) if it's not their house. There are people talking and catching up. There's often some form of art if not multiple forms--folks are playing music or watching a movie or sharing short form videos or looking over pictures or telling stories. Kids are playing together with folks pitching in for shared caretaking duties to allow other folks who have more full time parenting duties to get to relax and enjoy the company of others. We're all fed and comfortable and folks have ditched the buttoned up versions of themselves for what feels like community in practice. And on days it feels like the work I'm trying to do is impossible, I start with what I can do to make that dinner party vision of liberation a little more real, starting closest to home. A pace of progress that fights for everything for everyone, rooted in the possibility of making it real, starting as close to home as possible.

May your new year bring possibilities, space to gather, and what you need to fuel the fights and the joy needed to thrive.

In solidarity,

Cole McAfee