April was full of surprise developments! Kay Ulanday Barrett featured our words in Lambda Literary, alongside those of TGNC poets Féi Hernandez and Lady Dane Figueroa, in an interview on the practice and politics of trans poetry. Our first piece for The Funambulist’s Correspondents series is also live, illustrating how increasing police budgets are connected to gentrification, and underlining that the demand to defund police is also a demand for rent control, affordable housing, and thriving wages. (Look for our second piece in the series in October.)

In addition to our previously scheduled speaking and teaching engagements, we joined youth organizers Bresha Meadows, Asha Edwards and Lil Tree on a panel titled Abolition & Revolutionary Imaginations for the sociology class Race and the Politics of Incarceration at UIC. We also facilitated our first session for the Social Justice Initiative’s Portal Project, holding space for an activist cohort to reflect and expand on the future of abolitionist, anti-capitalist, and environmental justice movements. We will facilitate a total of six sessions for the cohort over the next year, concluding the project in spring of 2022.

We’re taking some time away to be with family after a long season of loss, but will return at the end of the month for #NoCopAcademy’s toolkit dropping on May 24th. We’ll be moderating several short panels focused on the successes and lessons of the campaign, and directing folks to current youth organizing efforts in Chicago that need our support. Please join us if you can.

BH