welcome to today's program and thank you for joining us i am see virginia feels for my man high and go president and current president and c e o of the national black leadership commission on a mission of the national black leadership commission on aids also known as in black and is to educate mobilize and empower black leaders to meet the challenge of fighting hiv aids and other health disparities in their organizing projects to win in media in concrete changes for their communities through direct action organizing membership lead advocacy campaigns educational training and political art and media they challenge and fight back against existence structures that thrive on the punishment of positive and queer folks is dedicated to ended homelessness and the h l v aids crisis in new york state and the stigma and discrimination and criminals asian that few all their existence on today's program we will speak with staff and advocates from career accuracy just a few facts according to the machinea coalition for the homeless report in two thousand especially among youth of color approximately thirty percent of l g b t q youth in the united states have been physically abused by family members because of their sexual orientation or gender identity or expression and l g b t q view are estimated to comprise of to forty percent of the homeless represented in the runaway homeless youth population studies further indicate that g b t youth have a one hundred twenty percent higher risk for homelessness which is consistent with  reports that show that l g b t q youth make up twenty five to forty percent of the home the youth populations here in new york city and other large cities compared with three to six percent of the general population statistics show that algae b t u are about three times more likely to contemplate suicide than their sis gender and heterosexual peers and about five times more likely to attempt suicide sometimes the numbers are even higher for trans gender you so he had to  all of these issues and to help us understand a lot of what is happening in the topics are done a sumpter and sing brad and thank you so much to both of you for joining us i know that the work you're doing is so incredibly important and so before we move to talk about that i just like to say with janae who is originally from new orleans have lived in the city almost four year now and janae is a graduate art student and a youth organizer at a vocal new york as there are accuracy organizer and she's working on her degree while he's also doing all of this incredible organizing and we have a sin bragg who is an artist and activist anderson is currently the outreach coordinator for the new york transgender advocacy group and working with various organizations around the city and beyond to try to combat systemic oppression and make an impact in their community and through art and performance  she helps to discover have people to discover their love for connecting inspiring and motivating others to come as they are so we're so happy to have both of you and another thing that i want to confidence helping them to be able to combat social justice injustices i would say in order to transform their own communities and to help them get involved in with our talk a little bit about exactly  what that means and perhaps some practices that you found to be really good and that all those might want to follow but before we get started on some of the question of two things i like you to first of all i like you to find did find several turns because what i find in the work that we do we often say things in our viewers so if we're making presentations in various forums and no idea what some of the terms mean so to start out why don't with the assigned gender from birth and you either want to transition physically or emotionally spiritually however you know everybody's transition is different is not the same as not a blink experience everybody's or extremely important in terms of the people we work with as well as others whom we're trying to partner with because i think it was president barack obama who said at one of the world aids day you've been all hands on nonconforming everybody needs to be at the table and we all need to work on this together to combat hiv discrimination and fight for social justice in the ways that many that both  you're involved with the other thing that i want to do is just briefly tell our viewers about the organization itself queer accuracy is probably a turn or of the name of an organization that many of our view defiant the reason why on this occurs also we look at the fact of homeless homelessness look at the factors of what it means to be street involved all these different factors that play a very key point into leading i guess the epidemic of thinking about  lasting change in bringing young people voices to the table it's so important that we need to be and that's how we can build a life together so you're basically here in new york city new york state now right ok and getting set up and ok and you talked a lot about using it to sexual know lynne's to your work so in your work how do you use it to sectional pro choice to address stigma discrimination against guys are very all inclusive you don't tell anyone that they're not allowed to be an ally or help because of their background or their experience or so yeah i feel like when i've done some of the direct action and i've done some of the organizing work with caracas i've seen a lot of different faces i've seen a lot of different people from different backgrounds different identities and it feels really all inclusive so it is about being inclusive that's correct and so using what we call an intersection alina it sort of brings everybody into this work yes and you're finding that to really make a difference as well when you think about and of course both the you're much too young to know maybe you'd read about it i'm sure but you know a lot of the struggles and the fights much earlier on with respect to h b o it's a lot of the work that act up led all of us to be much more proactive a lot of that and in many ways it was so dull in terms of looking at the one land and not being as inclusive and as  changes were made as achievements remain improvements were made i think that focus began to change and that's where we are now recognizing that because there are so many factors that impact our work so many social determinants whether it's poverty lack of education on the on the mental health issues until we take a focus on all of those issues and have a broader outreach to persons who are impacted and are living with hiv and aids we're going to keep fighting the same battle so i think that was part of what i was interested in in terms of what you said about taking who are over that age so how can we also think about the engine intergenerational perspective how we can bring both of those together and why we as a cropper see him being in this space which is so amazing is that everyone comes from different as a collective to make and make this positive change this other person who finds the only way we can move forward is if we start addressing the issue at hand and then making those prior changes so that goes back to looking at previous movements looking at how things were happening poetry i'm coming i'm working on a book i like to also write plays and i like my idea for the future the near future is to create employment initiative for under served demographics because of my intersection of identity  and i fall into a diff a bunch of different communities not just the old you beauty community and what i really want to do is provide an opportunity and a platform to basically authentically represent yourself from whatever community whatever identity or background you come from and tell your own story while telling my story and story of many other people around issues like homelessness like mental health like discrimination right i have a play that i wrote on colorism which like i have a lot of different ideas around how to alleviate and dismantle stigmas surrounding different communities and people from different ethnic background and experience especially oppressed communities i really want to structured in a way where it seems traditional but when you walk into the space and when you walk into see my play you're going to see these characters and if you like but the book says this person is this this gender or this and this and i want those people to represent what that is for them so i do a lot of our around that poetry like i said plays and i involve myself a lot and i was doing a lot of work with  point had to take a step away just because of this also one of the people who experiences one of the experiences homelessness which is why i really was excited to come in and have a conversation today so facing that i haven't been able to work on some projects but i do have a lot of great ideas and i am working with a lot of different  just enough to so you know where you go i'm really looking i mean i really do enjoy the touch and feel of a book like a intimate experience with a with books i love to read so i really want it to be interactive in that way i member the first poetry book that i picked up which was wife own which was how to teaching my mother how to give birth by words on shire the feel of the book itself was just something that stayed with me to cover the drawing the  rations i really want to make something that incorporates both are and where it's not just a book that you're ok but which is just pretty bland and it's poems but i want to do something like are you familiar with the  think it's r o r l's time who does drawings with every poem i'm really inspired by that and i want to have a book that has a little drawings to represent what i'm either experiencing and thinking of when i write these poems so that's what  to do well sounds like the vision is certainly there i mean with your determination you're going to be very successful and we certainly thank you and i look to supporting you in that effort some of the work that my organization in black throughout new york state and what we find in working with a lot of young people is that they too want to be heard we've had some focus groups with young people specifically around prac pre exposure prophylactic just to find out where they were in there or where is their education their understanding of course needless to say they're not taking prep for me different reasons some personal and other things but what we do find is that they want to be heard and i take intend to those steps in ways to try to maximize their voices and some of that we're saying voting which is very important so how certain communities that even goes from being out of being within the black community we have to use these different campaigns different policies that we work and we want to be certain in the table or want to be within those spaces making the decisions with you so that's like the biggest thing that we think and what we do with it and if that isn't happening that's when we make change and we're like ok this is happening want to do a direct action when do x y and z because if you're doing something you're addressing something that's within our community or the most most high risk communities in general why not ha those spaces making the decisions with you as it is affecting them so that's the biggest thing that we focus on and as being a young person and as being a person in general we all want to be hurt and extend we all went on for our voices to be acknowledged we all want all of those things so how can we start thinking and shifting our way of thinking for a second and put ourselves another person perspective just for a second and be like oh wow this person like every house is being a space our kind of want to be sitting down with you making those are those decisions so when we think from their perspective  from learning each other i always say that we all we are our teachers and students of one another we all learn something and we are teach something to one another so that's the biggest thing that we do as carcassi is like hockey we get our people at that table we like shift and they're different  has a story and everyone's story needs to be heard and that goes back to their earlier conversations about being inclusive in terms of the land a lot of the tables i set it and see places it is still not as inclusive in work in that regard so what are some of the other pressing issues in the community that you like to give voice to and know what we're doing with homelessness was some of the of the pressing issues that you'd like to give voice to that you'd like viewers to know at least about not only just homelessness but just humanizing under served communities as a whole we have a lot of issues right now today where children are being put in cages trans women are being shot stab  we've been fighting literally if we undressed all of these educated terms and words all we're doing is asking for our fellow human beings to say i acknowledge you as a human yeah you you have all the organs i have you do on earth with me we have to share it like i don't i don't understand i mean i'm pretty sure a lot of people don't understand why we're still fighting for human rights when i can look  understand i recognize gymnasium and i can look at you you're human i can look at anybody outside understand that that's a human being but on paper legislative politics institutions we're not human which is amazing to me i feel like we need to work on instead of trying to do what they call implement democracy in other countries we need to start at home and we need to start with education systems we need to start part of me  really we need to start with dismantling incarceration incarceration systems and as we revise our politics and as we revise our legislation we need to go back and revise the mistakes we made you can't say marijuana is legal now so there's tons of young black men young black women young people of color that are still in jail for a life sentence with life sentences with ten years over things like marijuana i just think we need to be we need to practice what we preach and we need to truly be present and be aware and be intentional about the change that we want to make not to show and tell sort of oh look you guys have rights now oh look you can get married but you're still not human we don't want that what i'm saying is we need to begin pardon me i'm a little jittery you're doing that we need to begin with especially like you said earlier language is code well if you can say that english the english language is very coded in itself and i feel like especially around politics we need to be very specific in nuance on what it is that we want you because that's how they found the loopholes if you're not specific so to begin with that i want to eradicate the word tolerance i don't want to be tolerated i want to be accepted for who i am and if you can accept that so be it but i don't want there to be this pseudo acceptance where i still feel unsafe in communities that say they're for me serving me or affirming to my identity and the communities that i fought with it you'll have actually done a one in the media get it out there among the masses of people from the perspective that was just discussed because that is what i think is listen we know that we talk about it we here and you know we gotta do a great job in terms of getting it out there so unfortunately our time is up and i'm going to just thank both of you the queer ocracy team for joining us today and for those who are watching for more information about the program you may call nine two nine three two zero seven eight two for me to learn more about in black a i invite you to visit our website in the l c a dot org and also look for in instagram linked in and you to the man had a neighborhood network brings these programs see you to better inform you the viewer about the important topics that impact your health and well being so please let your