January 2019

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Happy New Year! May 2019 be a period of positive manifestation for each one of us.

We’re kicking off the year by leading a small series for queer Asian and Pacific Islander org Invisible 2 Invincible on January 15th. Together we’ll be pod mapping—an exercise for taking inventory of support networks and community resources in anticipation of moments of crisis. We’ll tie this into a larger vision for abolition, generating options for violence prevention and accountability that do not rely on police and prisons.

On January 25th we’ll be facilitating Chicago inJustice: anti-racist action and mass incarceration at McCormick Auditorium at Northwestern University from 5pm to 7pm. This open dialogue will unite youth and organizers in an exploration of what Ruth Wilson Gilmore terms “non-reformist reforms” for fighting mass incarceration. Undergrads and high school students will be in conversation with members of Chicago Community Bond Fund, and Black & Pink Chicago. Open to the public, this event will include opportunities for immediate action steps. Feel free to come through!

We’ve been fans of the AirGo Radio podcast for a minute, and it was such an honor to be a featured guest there just before the close of 2018. We sat down with Damon Williams and Daniel Kisslinger to talk about gentrification in Chicago, trans resistance, loving Blackness as key to global liberation, among many other things. You can check out the full episode here.

Shoutout to Mary Mattingly, whose exhibit What Happens After at BRIC House—where we premiered an excerpt of our in-progress performance piece World After This One in September—was named one of the top 15 art shows in Brooklyn for 2018 by Hyperallergic! We’re so grateful to Mary for including NIC Kay and ourselves in this project. Congrats!

Lastly, just before the end of 2018, we reached the $200/month goal on our Patreon page! Thank you deeply to all those who have become patrons and supported our work through this venue. We are working on finding ways to give back to you soon!

BH

December 2018

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In 2018, we led political education workshops for 14 different organizations, published 6 articles, facilitated 3 retreats for 2 collectives, completed 2 residencies, and premiered an excerpt of our new performance piece, World After This One. We hope to continue all of these efforts into the new year!

We are once again reaching a pausing point with our faves at Assata’s Daughters, as the Azubike fall session wraps up at the end of this month. We cannot express how much the youth leaders in this program have grown in their facilitation skills, and how often this fall they have taken our breath away with their insights, passion, and commitment to becoming stronger community advocates. We love them so much, and can’t wait to see what 2019 brings as they step more fully into their facilitator roles inside of AD!

We’re excited to share that the script of our performance piece Dancer As Insurgent will be published for the first time in the forthcoming bilingual anthology Elements of Vogue, an accompaniment to the exhibit by the same name, which premiered last fall at CA2M in Madrid. We remain proud to be a part of this evolving project, celebrating radical histories of resistance inside the ballroom scene, and grateful to the staff at CA2M for allowing us to share our work. More info about this publication will be available in the coming year!

If you’re looking for a way to give back for the holidays, we’d so appreciate you becoming a patron through our Patreon page, or sharing the page with others in your life, and helping us reach our goal of $200/month!

We’ll see you all in 2019!

BH

November 2018

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We’re linking up with About Face Theater‘s queer youth theater ensemble on November 10th. We’ll be leading a brief Power & Privilege workshop coupled with a Queer & Trans Resistance to Policing workshop, focusing on queer history in the city of Chicago, as youth prepare to draft their own original play in celebration of AFT’s 20th anniversary this coming summer. We wish them luck!

We want to give a special love and appreciation shoutout to participants in our Vogue and the Prison Industrial Complex workshop for the ARTivism series at UIC’s Latino Cultural Center last month. During a painful week of anti-trans violence, we were floored by students’ commitment to trans liberation, and the connections they made between voguing and body positivity, free and accessible arts practices, and money bail abolition. It was a joyful and healing space we needed, and we hope it was for staff and students as well.

We’re taking the remainder of the year to rest and wrap up our current commitments, and so will not be taking on any new projects for the rest of 2018. Please feel free to hit us up if you would like to book us for workshops and projects in the coming year.

BH