We added a training-the-trainers workshop to our June schedule for the Defund CPD campaign, helping to bring more facilitators into the fold, and spread the demand to abolish the Chicago Police Department to neighborhoods across the city. Our conversation with E’mon Lauren for The Real Hoodwives of Chicago podcast was joyful and moving, touched on Black radicalism, Pride history, and sex worker power, and can be listened to here. Our panel with Dylan Rodriguez and Derecka Purnell for the International Festival of Arts & Ideas on imagining abolitionist futures can be viewed here.

A portion of a discussion we had with Pony Zion (moderated by Robert Sember) originally posted on ArtsEverywhere in 2019 will be republished in an anthology titled And the Category Is… : Inside New York’s Vogue, House, and Ballroom Community by Ricky Tucker for Beacon Press in December 2021. Check it out alongside Beacon’s other Pride-themed titles.

We’ll be returning this month for the second summer in a row to the Abolitionist Youth Organizing Institute, convened by Project NIA, on July 7th. There we’ll be teaching two virtual workshops to young organizers around the U.S.—encouraging them to connect abolition to the unique struggles of their locales. We’ll also return to Pilsen Alliance on July 16th for the third consecutive summer to teach a Trans & Queer Resistance to Policing workshop to Latinx youth residents organizing against the gentrification of the historically Mexican neighborhood. We’ll close out the month by guest speaking at Engage Chicago (where we facilitated pre-COVID) discussing the current landscape of Chicago organizing with Northwestern University students.

We’re excited to share some developments on the way for the fall, stay posted here!

BH