Asian lesbians representing amongst other LGBTQ's at the Creating Change Conference in Atlanta, GA.
Specifically Three Day-Long-Institutes to look forward to checking out: API Focus, Racial Justice, and Class. Check out Creating Change Conference 2013 website for more institutes. For scholarship information specifically for APIs to attend the conference, check out API Scholarship.
AAPI Focus: Building a Queer AAPI Movement
Asian Americans, South Asians, Southeast Asians, and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) are the fastest growing minority group in the nation and constitute an emerging sector of the LGBT community. More and more LGBT AAPIs are coming out of the closet, yet they still face invisibility, isolation, and stereotyping. The needs and concerns of LGBT AAPIs are often overlooked in the LGBT community or marginalized in the AAPI community. To counter this, the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance (NQAPIA), API Equality-Northern California, and API Equality-LA are leading a coalition of organizations and individuals to present the daylong LGBT AAPI Institute. This will build on our successful AAPI Institutes in Minneapolis in 2011 and in Baltimore in 2012 and seeks to further the presence, visibility, and engagement of AAPIs at Creating Change and in LGBT social justice movements. The Institute is open only to LGBT AAPIs. Sessions will include a series of panels featuring experts in the field, proven activists and organizers, and interactive group discussions. Participants are very much encouraged to offer their own perspectives and opinions. We aim to create an AAPI movement space. Below are what the organizers hope participants can walk away with after attending the Institute.
- A network of fellow LGBT AAPI activists around the country
- Concrete ways to overcome barriers that frustrate LGBT AAPI organizing
- Strategies on pressing public policy issues, how to increase the visibility of AAPIs, and ways to counter homophobia in the larger AAPI community
- An understanding of Asian American, South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Pacific Islander queer histories in the U.S. with a focus on immigration patterns
- Skills building in local organizing, leadership development, and capacity building
- A better understanding of the multiplicity of our communities across gender, nationality, religion, and other lines and how this affects our ability to build a national movement
The Racial Justice Institute
The Institute's primary purpose is to offer Creating Change participants a range of tools for working more effectively towards racial justice in our churches, communities, campaigns, and workplaces. This one-day institute provides a balance of self-reflection opportunities with engaging learning activities and deeper intersectional analysis of how racial justice and LGBT liberation connect in contemporary social justice movements. The Racial Justice Institute has a rich history at Creating Change. Very well attended and well regarded, this Institute has grown exponentially in size and scope. Facilitated by a team of seasoned racial justice trainer/facilitators, the Institute will be steeped in an anti-oppression lens that reflects the intersections of gender, sexuality, class, ability and race to offer sessions that are creative, thoughtful and give participants practical skills to make a difference through the work we do every day.
The Institute's primary purpose is to offer Creating Change participants a range of tools for working more effectively towards racial justice in our churches, communities, campaigns, and workplaces. This one-day institute provides a balance of self-reflection opportunities with engaging learning activities and deeper intersectional analysis of how racial justice and LGBT liberation connect in contemporary social justice movements. The Racial Justice Institute has a rich history at Creating Change. Very well attended and well regarded, this Institute has grown exponentially in size and scope. Facilitated by a team of seasoned racial justice trainer/facilitators, the Institute will be steeped in an anti-oppression lens that reflects the intersections of gender, sexuality, class, ability and race to offer sessions that are creative, thoughtful and give participants practical skills to make a difference through the work we do every day.
CLASS MORE THAN EVER!
At a time of increasing crisis because of the current recession, the absence of an agenda for the LGBTQ movement that prioritizes class and race and the impact of the economic crisis on queer communities is deeply disturbing. This Daylong Institute, presented by Queers for Economic Justice, will help participants examine why queer poor and working class communities, often communities of color, remain invisible in most mainstream LGBT organizations. We will ask why class remains so hidden in the queer movement and explore how class bias and class assumptions determine the way that LGBT issues are deemed a priority or are not seen as "really" queer. To be more specific, economics and economic realities, fiscal policy and austerity measures, bank bailouts and bankruptcy, the dissections of social support services and the protection of others (read preservation of Social Security versus the dismantling of TANF), corporate welfare and welfare reform all have impacts that are specific to race, class, gender, gender identity, ability and sexual orientation. We want LGBTQ activists to think critically about the ways in which economic justice issues are embedded in every issue that the LGBTQ movement addresses and how this impacts LGBTQ people.
At a time of increasing crisis because of the current recession, the absence of an agenda for the LGBTQ movement that prioritizes class and race and the impact of the economic crisis on queer communities is deeply disturbing. This Daylong Institute, presented by Queers for Economic Justice, will help participants examine why queer poor and working class communities, often communities of color, remain invisible in most mainstream LGBT organizations. We will ask why class remains so hidden in the queer movement and explore how class bias and class assumptions determine the way that LGBT issues are deemed a priority or are not seen as "really" queer. To be more specific, economics and economic realities, fiscal policy and austerity measures, bank bailouts and bankruptcy, the dissections of social support services and the protection of others (read preservation of Social Security versus the dismantling of TANF), corporate welfare and welfare reform all have impacts that are specific to race, class, gender, gender identity, ability and sexual orientation. We want LGBTQ activists to think critically about the ways in which economic justice issues are embedded in every issue that the LGBTQ movement addresses and how this impacts LGBTQ people.
