Hearts on a Wire is a Philadelphia-based collective of transgender and gender variant (“T/GV”) people building a movement for gender self-determination, racial and economic justice, and an end to the policing and imprisoning of our communities.
Hearts on a Wire is a Philadelphia-based collective of transgender and gender variant (“T/GV”) people building a movement for gender self-determination, racial and economic justice, and an end to the policing and imprisoning of our communities. Because we recognize the harm and trauma that imprisonment causes, we work to support those most impacted by mass incarceration, specifically T/GV communities of color. Our approach is trauma informed and rooted in transformative justice – we believe that everyone is impacted by harm and violence and that everyone is capable of personal transformation. Within this framework, we imagine and work towards sustainable alternatives to punishment and imprisonment. Because mass incarceration effectively portrays incarcerated people as incapable of personal transformation, we work to break down stigma and elevate and nurture the humanity of our inside membership. Our work aims to disrupt the cycle of imprisonment and reincarceration by creating community both inside and outside of prisons.
This organization is supported through the Funding Queerly Giving Circle, which is housed at Astraea.
The Gender Expansion Project’s mission is to promote gender-inclusive education and awareness surrounding transgender, transsexual, intersex, and gender diverse people through evidence based care, education, research, advocacy, public and private policy, and respect in transgender health and wellbeing.
Trans Queer Pueblo is a base-building racial and gender justice organization that is collectively governed by a growing membership of 300+ trans and queer undocumented and documented migrants and people of color in Phoenix who organize to transform our city toward fellowship, family, community autonomy, self-determination and liberation.
Photo credit: Diego Nacho
We are an autonomous LGBTQ+ migrant community of color who works wherever we find our people, creating cycles of mutual support that cultivate leadership to generate the community power that will liberate our bodies and minds from systems of oppression toward justice for all people. Our projects are focused on creating health justice and autonomy including a free clinic, building the power of migrant mothers through theater and literature, ending the criminalization and incarceration of LGBTQ+ people of color through community-run legal clinics and support of LGBTQ+ detainees throughout Arizona, reclaiming our own stories through art and media, inserting our voices into politics and public life through creative and strategic direct actions and campaigns like #NoJusticeNoPride and #EndManifestationLaw and building local queer and trans economies by creating cooperatives and businesses run by TQPOC. We combine service providing and community organizing to create autonomous community power to transform our city.
Self-identifying as a trans* organization that fights for LGBTQ rights and human rights, Istanbul LGBTI Solidarity Association formed in 2007 in response to experiences of transphobia.
Self-identifying as a trans* organization that fights for LGBTQ rights and human rights, Istanbul LGBTI Solidarity Association formed in 2007 in response to experiences of transphobia in larger LGBT groups and out of a need to provide a space that recognized how gender identity, class and ethnicity interacted with sexual orientation. Their core activities include providing legal and social support to LGBT people who experience discriminatory or violent policing practices, monitoring transphobic hate crime cases, conducting street actions to protest human rights violations and raise awareness of trans* issues, engaging in broader movement advocacy to include SOGI protections in Turkey’s constitution, and providing trans-sensitive sexual health and psychosocial counseling. They recently supported production of a documentary film “Trans X Istanbul,” which was presented at the Istanbul International Film Festival in international competition section and won a Special Mention/Face Award. The film was used to launch a campaign against transphobic hate crimes and hate speech called the “We need a law!” campaign. Launched on Trans Day of Remembrance, 70 people from 7 cities mobilized and marched together to the parliament in Ankara. In 2013, they launched the “Trans* Guest House Project,” which continues to serve as a transitional home for queer and trans* asylum seekers from Syria, Iran, Iraq and refugees from inner Turkey.
Invoking the rich cultural tradition of resistance in the South, BreakOUT! builds the power of LGBTQ youth to create a safer and more just New Orleans.
Invoking the rich cultural tradition of resistance in the South, BreakOUT! builds the power of LGBTQ youth to create a safer and more just New Orleans. Youth members produced a film “We Deserve Better” to highlight their experiences with criminalization and their demands to end discriminatory policing practices. As part of their broader “We Deserve Better” campaign, BreakOUT! secured groundbreaking language in the Proposed Consent Decree between the New Orleans Police Department and the Department of Justice that is the most extensive in the country to date and specifically prohibits profiling of LGBTQ people based on gender identity and sexual orientation. BreakOUT! has also maintained correspondence with those inside the notoriously violent Orleans Parish Prison. They recently published a report, We Deserve Better: A Report on Policing in New Orleans By and For Queer and Trans Youth of Color, in order to identify and move forward needed reforms. BreakOUT! continues to fight against laws that profile and criminalize their community members, and to build nationally with allies as part of the Get Yr Rights National Network.
Check out our 2018 International Trans Day of Visibility video featuring an interview with BreakOUT’s former Executive Director, Wes Ware:
Freedom, Inc. (FI) challenges the fundamental root causes of violence against women, queer and trans folx, and youth through leadership development, radical service providing, and community organizing in low-income communities of color–focusing on Black and Southeast Asian communities.
Freedom, Inc. (FI) challenges the fundamental root causes of violence against women, queer and trans folx, and youth through leadership development, radical service providing, and community organizing in low-income communities of color–focusing on Black and Southeast Asian communities. FI’s anti-violence work includes working against systemic and institutional violence of poverty, sexism, racism, heterosexism, and cisgenderism as well as their interpersonal expressions of domestic and sexual violence. Their programs aim to change cultural norms into which people are socialized (addressing the root causes of violence and internalized oppression) and build capacity for survivors as leaders in their communities to organize for institutional change and accountability.
Streetwise and Safe: LGBTQQ Youth of Color Standing Up to Police Abuse and Criminalization (SAS) is a collaborative multi-strategy initiative to develop leadership, knowledge, and skills among LGBTQQ youth of color who have experienced gender-and-sexuality-specific forms of race and class based policing, particularly in the context “quality of life” policing and the policing of sex work and trafficking in persons.
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Streetwise and Safe: LGBTQQ Youth of Color Standing Up to Police Abuse and Criminalization (SAS) is a collaborative multi-strategy initiative to develop leadership, knowledge, and skills among LGBTQQ youth of color who have experienced gender-and-sexuality-specific forms of race and class based policing, particularly in the context “quality of life” policing and the policing of sex work and trafficking in persons. SAS has been very active in the Communities United for Police Reform (CPR) campaign, and is the only LGBTQ youth of color organization part of CPR’s steering committee. Their critical participation highlights the ways in which “Stop and Frisk” practices not only affect black and brown men, but LGBTQI youth of color in particular. SAS, along other NY-based grantee partners, contributed to the passing of the Community Safety Act. More recently, they pushed the passing of a partial “No Condoms as Evidence” policy and are now part of the decision making table evaluating policy implementation. SAS and BreakOUT! are leading the Get Yr Rights National Network.
Sayoni was founded in 2006 by six women from diverse backgrounds, age, economic status and ethnicities.
Sayoni was founded in 2006 by six women from diverse backgrounds, age, economic status and ethnicities. They came together to increase queer women’s leadership in social justice activism and the advancement of LGBT rights. They engage in a variety of strategies, from hosting public forums and cultural organizing for “Indignation,” Singapore’s Pride Month, advocacy with state institutions, increasing representation of LGBTQ issues in the media, using UN mechanisms, regional advocacy, to research and advocacy on LGBT rights . Taking a explicitly rights based approach to activism, they often work with broader civil society groups to assert the recognition of LGBTQ lives and communities in the context of wider social and political goals. Similarly within the LGBTQ movement, they resist ‘single issue and identity-based politics’ and raise the visibility of LBT communities. In 2016, Sayoni launched a highly popular activism event called “Human Writes,” which brings together participants from all walks of life to compete in a spoken word competition on a range of human rights themes. At the regional level, Sayoni is an active member of the ASEAN SOGIE Caucus and along with the Chinese Lala Alliance, is hosting a South-South learning hub to share skills and train LGBTQ communities on using treaty bodies like CEDAW and CRC to make changes back in their respective countries.
Coalition Advocating for Inclusion of Sexual Orientation (CAISO) is a coalition of individuals and groups connected to LGBT communities in Trinidad and Tobago.
Coalition Advocating for Inclusion of Sexual Orientation (CAISO) is a coalition of individuals and groups connected to LGBT communities in Trinidad and Tobago. CAISO’s aims are to foster a forward-thinking, visionary and humane approach to sexual orientation and gender identity; secure full inclusion in all aspects of national life, social policy and citizenship; develop capacity, leadership and self-pride in communities; and mobilize an advocacy movement for social justice. CAISO has participated in Trinidad and Tobago’s constitutional reform process, advocating for human rights protections. The organization provides legal and psychological accompaniment to LGBT members who experience human rights violations, and engages in ‘everyday lawyering’ with the long-term goal of building up documentation for a decriminalization case. They also use popular education and a ‘wholeness and justice’ approach to engage LGBT community members in healing past trauma, building resilience and taking collective action.
Founded in 2007, the Grupo Latinoamericano de Estudio, Formación y Acción Feminista (GLEFAS) is a leading regional group that is initiating important dialogues, conversations, and political actions within the feminist and lesbian feminist movement.
Founded in 2007, the Grupo Latinoamericano de Estudio, Formación y Acción Feminista (GLEFAS) is a leading regional group that is initiating important dialogues, conversations, and political actions within the feminist and lesbian feminist movement in Latin América and the Caribbean, as well as other social movements and land struggles in the region, looking to join efforts for more comprehensive policies to confront different forms of oppression. As Caribbean and Latin American anti-racist and decolonial feminists, one of their goals is to produce autonomous knowledge from their own positioning as black, indigenous, and lesbian activists from the South. They collaborate with non-white and mixed-race women (or women of color, as it is commonly used in the United States) who are committed to intersectional politics and views in Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Peru, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Ecuador, Brazil, the United States, and Europe. In response to the regional context of war, militarization, and violence, GLEFAS seeks to produce a political analysis from an anti-racist, anti-military, anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, feminist lesbian perspective. GLEFAS seeks to support the creation of collectives in different countries of the region. *** En Español*** Fundado en 2007, el Grupo Latinoamericano de Estudio, Formación y Acción Feminista (GLEFAS) es un grupo regional líder que está iniciando importantes diálogos, conversaciones y acciones políticas dentro del movimiento feminista y lésbico feminista de América Latina y el Caribe, así como con otros movimientos sociales y de luchas territoriales en la región en la búsqueda de aunar esfuerzos para políticas más integrales que impliquen enfrentar diferentes formas de la opresión. Una de sus metas como feministas antirracistas y descoloniales latinoamericanas y caribeñas es producir un conocimiento autónomo desde sus propios posicionamientos como activistas lesbianas, indígenas y negras del sur. Colaboran con mujeres no blancas y mestizas comprometidas con una mirada y una política interseccional (o de color, como se dice comúnmente en Estados Unidos) en Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Perú, República Dominicana, México, Ecuador, Brasil, Estados Unidos y Europa. En respuesta al contexto regional de guerra, militarización y violencia, GLEFAS busca producir un análisis político desde una perspectiva feminista y lésbica antirracista, antimilitarista, anticolonial y anticapitalista. GLEFAS busca apoyar la formación de colectivos en diferentes países en la región.
