Killings and Violence against Women based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

Tuesday, March 5, 2013 at 4:30pm

Armenian Convention Center
630 2nd Avenue (at 35th street)
New York, NY 10016

Panelists include human rights activists and speakers from Venezuela, Botswana, and Canada.

Around the world, people are targeted for violence and discrimination because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity. Lesbians, transgender and other gender non-conforming people–in both the global North and South–are particularly at risk. This violence, including rape, extrajudicial killings and torture is omnipresent and is often undocumented and underreported. Panelists will discuss research and activist and UN responses.

ARRESTED JUSTICE: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation
A Conversation with Beth E. Richie

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Panel: 4pm – 6pm
Reception & Book Signing: 6pm-7pm

King Juan Carlos Center
53 Washington Square South, Suite 201
New York, NY 10012

Please RSVP to Betsy Steve at betsy.steve@nyu.edu by March 1.

Panelists include:
Dana Davis – Associate Chair of the Masters Program in Urban Studies at Queens College, Faculty, Ph.D Program in Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center, and author of Battered Black Women and Welfare Reform: Between A Rock And A Hard Place

Catlin Fullwood – Interim Executive Director of Domestic Workers, Principal Consultant/OnTime Associates and veteran of many social movements including the women’s anti-violence movementCara Page – Black Queer Feminist and Anti-violence Organizer, Executive Director of the Audre Lorde Project, and former National Director of the Committee on Women, Population and the Environment

Elsa Rios – Founder of Strategies for Social Change, a women-owned coaching and organizational development firm, previously Founding Director of the Violence Intervention Program, and former Chief of Staff of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund

Andrea Ritchie – Police misconduct lawyer, Organizer and Coordinator of Streetwise and Safe (SAS), and co-author of Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the U.S.

The February 13th première is SOLD OUT! Catch this film at two other screenings in February:

Sunday, February 17th, 1pm (Doors open at 12:45pm)
Middle Collegiate Church – Sanctuary
112 2nd Avenue, New York, NY 10003
$10 Suggested donation at the door
After the screening a talkback will be moderated by Reverend Jacqui Lewis, Ph.D., Senior Minister, with director Mary F. Morten, documentary subjects Ace and Sheldon, and local youth!

Monday, February 18th, 7:30 pm (Doors open at 6:30pm)
Maysles Cinema
343 Malcolm X Boulevard, New York, NY 10027
Admission $10
Purchase tickets
Stay after the screening for a talkback with director Mary F. Morten, documentary subjects Ace and Sheldon, and local youth!

Woke Up Black documents a two-year period in the lives of five Black youth ages 16-21: Rosalee, the first in her family to attend college; Carter, a student athlete adopted by a gay couple when he was 10; Morgan, an engineering student from a predominately white suburb; Ace, a self-identified genderqueer activist whose family has difficulty accepting her identity; and Sheldon, a community organizer and new father. The film documents both day-to-day events in the cast’s lives, such as family gatherings and interactions with the justice system, as well as major milestones, such as high school graduations and first days at college. Most importantly, the film focuses on the youths’ ideas and opinions about the world in their own words, and presents nuanced images of their lives that go far beyond the twenty-second sound bytes we normally see on the news.

Gay filmmaker, writer, activist, Fan Popo presents two films, Mama Rainbow (2012) and New Beijing, New Marriage (2009), documenting LGBT lives and perspectives in China. Join us at the Ran Tea House in Brooklyn for the screening and a discussion with the filmmaker.

About the films:
Mama Rainbow (80 min, 2012)
For Chinese parents, finding out that their kid is gay usually presents a major tragedy, with the big majority utterly unable to accept the homosexuality of their son or daughter. However, during recent years a pioneer generation of Chinese parents have been stepping up and speaking out on their love for their gay kids. This documentary features 6 mothers from all over China, who talk openly and freely about their experiences with their homosexual children. With their love, they are giving a whole new definition to Chinese-style family bonds.

New Beijing, New Marriage (18 min, 2009)
On February 14, 2009, Valentine’s Day, a gay couple and a lesbian couple chose to have their wedding photos taken on Qianmen Street in Beijing–a busy, renovated shopping and tourist spot famous for its century-old old architecture. On this beautiful Spring Day in Beijing, the local residents and tourists from all over the country strolling along Qianmen Street ran into this lovely, yet unconventional wedding scene. Did they understand what was going on? Did the branded ‘New Beijing’ truly bring about ‘new concepts’ of love and marriage? The event attracted wide media coverage and public attention and became an important milestone in the history of China’s LGBT movement.

Fan Popo is a gay film maker, writer, and activist, who also organizes China Queer Film Festival Tour and promotes independent filmmaking in queer community in China. His documentaries have visited many international film festivals.

This event is organized by ITS (Institute for Tongzhi Studies), an academic research and exchange program based in the City University of New York led by Chinese speaking educators and researchers. As a joint project run by the Center for Women and Society and the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, the Institute for Tongzhi Studies (Tongzhi, the literal Chinese translation of comrade, is now widely used to refer to homosexuality) aspires to encourage discussions related to issues of gender, sexuality, and sexual health. Through education, research, and exchange, ITS coordinates with institutions with shared values in order to build a body of scholarly works to further the study of gender and sexuality in Chinese societies.

Join the facebook event page for updates!

Writeous! 

Celebrating Astraea’s Lesbian Writer’s Fund and supporting our Global LGBT Arts Fund

Friday, January 11, 2013

Doors @ 6:30pm, Program @ 7:30pm
Greene Space – new location!
44 Charlton Street
New York, New York 10014
Tickets $20 (No one turned away for lack of funds)

Buy a ticket

WORDS by Lenelle Moise, Staceyann Chinn, Jacqueline Woodson, Urvashi Vaid
MUSIC with Imani Uzuri
BEATS by DJ Tikka Masala

Food and drinks by WitchesBrew available for purchase
This event is wheelchair accessible

Innovative vocalist and composer Imani Uzuri is an eclectic artist who travels internationally from Morocco to Moscow creating and performing across various genres including concerts, recordings, experimental theater, performance art and sound installations. Uzuri’s work has been called “stunning” by New York Magazine and incorporates her interests in world culture, experimentation and sacred music. She has earned critical acclaim for her debut album, Her Holy Water: A Black Girl’s Rock Opera as well as for her collaborations with diverse artists such as Herbie Hancock, John Legend, Wangechi Mutu, Sandford Biggers and Vijay Iyer. Her new album The Gypsy Diaries which also features sitar, acoustic guitar, cello, violin, Japanese shinobue flute and world percussion, is a vibrant lyrical and spiritual sound scape and was named #2 on Rhapsody’s World Top 10 List Summer 2012. She is currently composing a new musical GIRL Shakes Lose Her Skin that she is developing with playwright Zakiyyah Alexander inspired by the works of Philadelphia Poet Laureate  Sonia Sanchez. Photo credit:Petra Richterova.

Lenelle Moïse creates jazz-infused, rhythmic performance texts about the intersection of race, class, gender, sexuality, memory and magic. Moïse is a current Huntington Theatre Company Playwriting Fellow and was a 2010 Hedgebrook Women Playwrights Festival Fellow. Her two-act comedy, Merit,won the 2012 Southern Rep Ruby Prize. She also wrote, composed and co-starred in the critically-acclaimed drama, Expatriate, which launched Off-Broadway at the Culture Project. Her other plays include Matermorphosis (commissioned by Serious Play Theatre Ensemble), Little Griot (commissioned by the Drama Studio), Purple (commissioned by the Kitchen Theatre Company), Cornered in the Dark and The Many Faces of Nia. Her solo performances, Womb-Words, Thirstingand Ache What Make (in development), have received standing ovations at theatres and colleges across the United States. Moïse was the fifth Poet Laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts, the 2012 Visiting Performing Artist in African & African Diaspora Studies at UT Austin and the 2011 Artist in Residence in Performance Studies at Northwestern University. She holds an MFA in Playwriting (2004) from Smith College. Her work has been published in several anthologies including Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution.

Urvashi Vaid’s leadership in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) and social justice movements spans civil rights, LGBT, philanthropic, academic, and grassroots organizations. Vaid will read from her newly released book, Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class and the Assumptions of LGBT Politics. Vaid is Director of the Engaging Tradition Project at Columbia Law School’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law, studying how gender and sexual justice movements can effectively engage tradition-based resistance.  In 2012, Vaid co-founded LPAC, the national lesbian political action committee whose goals are to support feminist, progressive and pro-LGBT campaigns.  She is a member of the Board of the Gill Foundation, the leading funder of LGBT rights in the US. Vaid is former CEO of the Arcus Foundation, a leading global funder of LGBT human rights and great ape conservation (2005-2010). She was Deputy Director of the Governance and Civil Society Program of the Ford Foundation (2000-2005). Vaid was the executive director (1989-1992) of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), where she also worked as media director (1986-1989) and director of its Policy Institute think tank (1997-2000).  As a staff attorney at the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) from 1983-1986, Vaid initiated work on HIV/AIDS in prisons.

Jacqueline Woodson is a three-time Newbery Honor winner, two-time National Book Award Finalist, winner of a Coretta Scott King Award and three Coretta Scott King Honors, and the recipient of the LA Times Book Prize and the Margaret A. Edwards Award for her contributions to young adult literature.  Her many award-winning novels include LOCOMOTION, EACH KINDNESS, BENEATH A METH MOON, AFTER TUPAC AND D FOSTER, FEATHERS, and MIRACLE’S BOYS. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York. Photo credit: Marty Umans.

 
Staceyann Chin is a Jamaican spoken word poet, performing artist and LGBT rights political activist. In addition to performing in and co-writing the Tony-nominated Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, Chin has appeared in Off-Broadway one-woman shows and at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. She has also held poetry workshops worldwide. Chin’s poetry can be found in her first chapbook, Wildcat Woman, and Stories Surrounding My Coming, as well as numerous anthologies, including Skyscrapers, Taxis and Tampons, Poetry Slam, Role Call, Cultural Studies: Critical Methodologies. In 2009, Chin published her autobiographical novel, The Other Side of Paradise – A Memoir. Her work has been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Pittsburgh Daily, and has been featured on 60 Minutes. She was also featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, where she shared her struggles growing up homosexual in Jamaica.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

12pm – 12am
The Lesbian Herstory Archives (Map)
484 14th Street
Brooklyn, New York 11215
Suggested donation: $5-10+, no one will be turned away

Held on the twentieth anniversary of Audre Lorde’s transition to becoming an ancestor and the year of Adrienne Rich’s transition/passing, the marathon will feature readings from their poetry and essays, as well as Audre Lorde’s biomythography, Zami, and Adrienne Rich’s autobiographical reflections, Institution of Motherhood. LHA will offer access to their unpublished papers housed at the Archives, Lorde’s lectures and talks, audio recordings of Lorde and Rich reading their work, and film screenings. In addition, artifacts and photos from their archival collections will be displayed and passed around. Especially welcome are your memories and thoughts on their impact on your own life and work.

Read the detailed schedule for the event.

If you cannot attend, but would like to support the marathon reading, you can contribute or spread the word on LHA’s fundraiser for the event.

It’s time to come together.

Be in queer community on Election Night. Come watch the presidential returns with Astraea and Pillow Café, among friends and family. Whatever the outcome, let’s join each other in solidarity and support.

Tuesday, November 6th, 2012

6:30 till we all go home.
Come before 7 to catch happy hour.

Pillow Café-Lounge
505 Myrtle Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11205

RSVP on our facebook event

If you aren’t on facebook, you can RSVP here.

Directions to Pillow Café-Lounge
By Subway: G train service is suspended. Take the C train to Clinton-Washington and walk north on Washington to Myrtle Avenue. Turn right on Myrtle Avenue until you get to 505 Myrtle b/w Grand and Ryerson.

Take A or C to Jay Street & take the B54 bus to Mytle b/w Ryerson and Grand.

By Car: Take the Manhattan Bridge, cross Tillary and make the first left onto Myrtle Avenue. Take Myrtle straight down (about a 5 minute drive) until you get to 505 Myrtle b/w Grand and Ryerson.

Meet the Activist: A Talk with Xiangqi
Thursday, September 27th
5:30-6:30pm
Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice
116 East 16^th Street, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10003

A rapidly growing city both in terms of population and of cultural diversity, Shanghai is home to one of the most active and thriving community of queer women in China. Quickly growing, Shanghai’s queer women activists are using online community, street politics, cultural work, social gatherings, and education to raise awareness. This Thursday, Astraea welcomes Xiangqi, founder of the leading queer women’s group Nu’Ai (“Women Love”) to share the story of this organization’s seven year history and her own experience as a queer social activist in Shanghai.

This event will be held in Mandarin Chinese and English. 

Xiangqi is one of the first queer social activists in China. In 2002, Xiangqi established one of the largest online forum for Chinese queer women, LESCN. She also started the first online radio program for queer women in mainland China. When the Chinese Lala Alliance (CLA) was founded in 2008, Xiangqi was appointed its Secretary General and has since worked for CLA. Xiangqi is also one of the co-founders and administrators of the Shanghai LGBT Center.

In 2005, Xiangqi founded Nu’Ai, the first Shanghai-based NGO for queer women. Nu’Ai has played an important role in not only in local queer communities and national queer organizing, but also in Shanghai’s feminist activist scene. Nu’Ai initiated local performances of “The Vagina Monologues” and recently lauched a street campaign against sexual harassment which aroused wide public concern, and was called “China’s Slutwalk in the Internet Age”.

上海拉拉组织与社群
嘉宾：想起
时间：9月23日，周日，下午2：00-4：00
地点：纽约LGBT中心310室（208 West 13th Street, New York）
中英文双语
本活动免费入场

随着经济发展和城市扩张，上海的人口和文化多元性均而不断地迅速发展。这座城市也拥有中国最积极活跃的拉拉社群。这一年轻且持续发展的群体正在不断摸索着路径和策略，寻求将中国同志社群的活动从互联网社区拓展到实体的街头政治、文化行动、社会集会、提升公众意识以及同志群体公众可见度等。这周日在LGBT中心，我们邀请到上海最主要的拉拉组织之一“上海女爱”的创始人想起，请她与我们分享女爱七年来的活动，以及她作为拉拉以及在上海的社会活动家的经验。

关于想起：
想起是中国拉拉社群最早的社会活动者之一。2002年想起建立了名为LESCN的中文拉拉网络论坛。LESCN迅速地吸引了几千名会员，并成为了中国最大的拉拉论坛之一。她还主导创立了中国大陆第一个拉拉网络广播站。2005年，想起在上海创立了“上海女爱”，这是上海最早的拉拉非政府组织。女爱不仅在当地社区中、之后还在全国串联中起到了愈渐重要的作用。近年来，女爱的行动不单局限在同志社区，更在上海的女性主义运动图景中扮演了重要角色：连续几年来女爱组织了《阴道独白》的本地化；最近女爱又引领了反对性骚扰的街头行动，这一现在被称为“网络时代的Slutwalk”的活动引发了全国广泛的关注。
自华人拉拉联盟在2008建立至今，想起被委任为并担任华人拉拉联盟的秘书长。
想起是上海同志中心的合作创始人和管理者之一。