September 2024 Monthly Update

As an autistic kid growing up in the era of LeVar Burton’s Reading Rainbow, I knew from an early age there were few places cooler in the world than a local public library. And I am grateful as an adult to have rediscovered that magic (as my Libby app TBR list can confirm). Books have always held such a special place in my heart, and sometimes I find myself overwhelmed by everything on my to-read list, and what that means for all of the stories I won’t have the opportunity to experience. And still, even as a kid who made a summertime game out of reading, writing reviews, and swapping books to repeat the process with my best friend, it was not until I was an adult that I really found characters in which I could really see myself.

August 2024 Monthly Update

Last year, we launched The Freedom Sessions (TFS)–a program that aims to create a platform that provides education, awareness, and community engagement for the 2SLGBTQ+ community and their allies. We wanted to do more than just convene once a year during a conference, we wanted to build something that allowed for year-round learning and connecting. We hope you’ll join us for this year’s conference and TFS events to learn and develop best practices for organizing, community care, power building, and sustaining our liberation movement, together!

July 2024 Monthly Update

Raymond Williams said, “To be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing.” As we prepare to take some rest this month, we invite you to join us in focusing on the people, the spaces, and experiences that give you hope. What does that list look like when you’re really paying attention? I’ll start.

To pretend that the spirit of Pride celebrations is not rooted in the fight for collective liberation is to willfully misunderstand the 2SLGBTQ+ movement and the ongoing work to secure a future where we all have the safety to thrive. That future is not possible without a Free Palestine.

Every June, the world erupts in a dazzling display of colors. Pride parades, a kaleidoscope of joy, weave through concrete canyons. Yet, beneath the vibrant surface, a disharmony simmers. Rainbow capitalism, with its glittering facade, often overlooks the Earth's silent cries and the marginalized voices within the 2SLGBTQIA+ tapestry. This year, let us delve deeper, seeking a Pride rooted not in fleeting profits, but in the enduring wisdom of rematriation – the act of reclaiming what was stolen and nurturing a more just future.

As we mark a new pride month, I think back on the evolution of pride events. I think of Sylvia Rivera, at the end of her life, saying that queer folks had made ourselves so small at pride, to make room for capitalism to accommodate the comfort of straight folks, that there wasn't space for her, for trans people anymore. I hold that with me in this work. Each day, as I do it, I ask myself who we do this work for, and who is left out. I know we'll always do movement building imperfectly, such is the nature of being human. It's a necessary struggle, to build the table, to reimagine together, because this work, this movement, this pride, is something we do together.

When the State Board of Education Meeting Agenda for the May 23 meeting was posted in advance of the meeting in compliance with the Open Meetings Act, Oklahomans learned that for the second time in as many months, the process related to making comment at the meeting has changed. In response to the newest changes, Freedom Oklahoma issued the following statement

This month on May 5, folks across Turtle Island will lift up the advocacy and efforts to disrupt the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous relatives (MMIR, also abbreviated MMIWG2S+). If you’re reading this newsletter, curious why a 2SLGBTQ+ advocacy org is talking about MMIR, we’d ask you to be more curious about why all 2SLGBTQ+ advocacy groups aren’t talking about MMIR, something that concretely is an issue at the intersection of Indigenous and Two Spirit, Indigiqueer, Indigenous LGBTQ+ identities. Many LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations, don’t even include Two Spirit people in their acronym, don’t name them in their work, or tack them on to the end as an afterthought. So, as we enter May, not only are we asking you to do some deep intersectional movement work in learning from MMIR advocates, we’re also asking you to, again, help us call on folks across the movement to put 2S at the front of this work.

Today the Senate author of HB 1449, the trans erasure act, admitted to pulling a similar measure from the floor earlier in session, acknowledging the harm of the bill’s anti-trans purpose and rhetoric on 2STGNC+ Oklahomans grieving the loss of Nex Benedict. But it seems one caucus in the legislature has decided the space to disrupt the harm targeted at our most vulnerable community members is over, in favor of election years politics at the expense of 2STNGC+ safety and lives, as demonstrated with the party line vote advancing HB 1449, the trans erasure act. Following the passage of this bill and the accompanying rhetoric, Freedom Oklahoma issued the following statement:

We’re so grateful to Representative Turner for the trust they put in us when they put their name on a ballot. We’re grateful to the way they’ve continued to organize. And we wish them and their family some well deserved rest, peace, and joy, as Representative Turner takes the steps they need to ensure their wellbeing. It’s the least they deserve.