Our People Are Worth the Risks: A Southern Queer Agenda from the Margins and the Red States, By Southerners On New Ground (SONG)

Reprinted from the SONG website and from the Scholar & Feminist Online, a webjournal published by the Barnard Center for Research on Women: 

In the best parts of our tradition as LGBTQ people for liberation, we have resisted assimilation. We have held die-ins, we have risked our lives at pride celebrations, we have been willing to be part of spectacle and even to be hated—in the hope that our work would mean motion towards liberation. We have witnessed a mainstream LGBT movement that has moved away from these practices, and many of us have spent years in conference centers and hotel rooms all around this country pushing back against a mainstreaming of this movement. It is not enough to disagree with the mainstream agenda. We must be actively creating, resourcing, and organizing new strategies that move a politics of intersectionality into the fields, the small towns, the cities, the bedrooms, the televisions, and the visions of this country and this world. These strategies must work tirelessly to build contagious power with those LGBTQ people who have been left behind by a mainstream gay rights agenda and the unlikely allies who have been passed by. 

In the past two years, SONG has mobilized and transformed thousands of LGBTQ people in the South through two campaigns. In 2011, our campaign against anti-immigrant hate in Georgia unleashed the power of an unprecedented number of LGBTQ people in a fight for liberation that was not slanted “single-issue” toward the traditional definition of gay rights. In 2012, our fight against the antifamily amendment in North Carolina (denying the basic rights of all unmarried couples and our children) was named by the North Carolina News Service as one of the biggest grassroots efforts in the history of North Carolina. Both of these campaigns happened in the South: the part of the country that the media tells us is the most hateful and hostile to marginalized communities. We know without a doubt that all the successes in this work originate from the thousands of LGBTQ southerners and allies who led these efforts. They are voting for a new queer agenda with their sweat, risk taking, and voices. SONG listened to them, created an organizational container, and provided strategic direction. They did the rest. At every turn, when we reframed messages away from a narrow, single-issue, gay rights agenda, our people on the ground responded with vigorous affirmation, agitation, and effort.

All over this country, our people grow tired of a defensive, apologetic LGBT strategy against the right wing. Bullies do not stop when they are appeased. We have nothing to apologize for, and yet we watch as our own people and issues are publicly “de-gayed,” portrayed as middle-class and white—all in the name of eventual equality. In the South, we watch tall grass grow up over the houses where our neighbors used to live and over the businesses that used to populate our small towns. We watch as our family members are detained and deported, our comrades are pushed involuntarily into sex work just to survive, and our children are incarcerated. We turn on the television and hear a conversation about LGBTQ people every day that names us as perverted; sinful; and worthy of pain, isolation, and death. 

Yet our mainstream movement, which claims it speaks for us, tells us to wait for policy wins. We are assured that these wins will trickle down to us as some form of victory on our behalf. As people living in the South, as undocumented immigrants, as people of color, as trans people, as rural people, and as people with disabilities, SONG says this is not good enough. In the absence of stronger national leadership, we call on queer liberationists to build and amplify our power and take our rightful leadership regardless of the scale of our organizations: local, statewide, regional, or national. This article seeks to lay out a little bit more about evolving thoughts on how to do just that, from a Southern perspective on queer liberation. We hope that it inspires other groups (who have not already done so) to seize the moment, stop, listen, and respond to the conditions of today.

Greater New Orleans Organizers Roundtable Hosts Masquerade Party and Fundraiser This Weekend

This Saturday, at the New Orleans Fine Arts Center, a broad coalition of New Orleans activists known as the Greater New Orleans Organizers Roundtable will host their second Annual Masquerade Ball and Fundraiser. The Organizers Roundtable is a unique forum for combining efforts in the city's social justice community, and this event represents both a celebration of their efforts, a chance to connect with local activists, and a fundraiser to support the Roundtable's work.

The collaboration that would become the Organizers Roundtable began in late 2006, when a group of New Orleans activists began planning for participation in the 2007 US Social Forum. The group was convened by Dr. Kimberley Richards of the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond and Monique Harden of Advocates for Environmental Human Rights. They worked in coordination with a national organizing body that was bringing together the first US Social Forum.

The Social Forum began in 2001 with the first World Social Forum (WSF) in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil. It is not just a gathering, but a process in which a global movement of movements comes together to build popular power. The Social Forum was initiated in response to the World Economic Forum, in which the world's most wealthy and powerful people come together in Davos, Switzerland to set the policies that govern the world. The WSF is a response to that elite gathering. At the World Social Forum, all are welcome, and the gathering is aimed at countering the unaccountable influence wielded by the powerful people who gather in Davos. In addition to the annual World Social Forum, there have been smaller regional forums around the world, to make it easier for poor people from all countries to attend.

In 2007, for the first time, there was a US Social Forum (USSF). In keeping with the example set by the World Social Forum, the USSF was convened by grassroots, mostly people-of-color-led, organizations. The New Orleans coalition worked to make sure everyone from New Orleans who wanted to go could, regardless of ability to pay. In addition they worked to coordinate their participation, so that New Orleans activists could convey to activists from across the US the lessons learned from post-Katrina organizing. More than 300 New Orleanians went to Atlanta for the 2007 USSF, including poets such as Sunni Patterson, day laborers from the Workers Center for Racial Justice, former political prisoners like Mwalimu Johnson, and many more. New Orleans activists coordinated several workshops at the USSF, and collectively planned a plenary in which thousands of people from around the US heard from a range of New Orleans social justice fighters.

In the aftermath of the 2007 US Social Forum in Atlanta, the New Orleans organizations who had collaborated on USSF participation decided to continue meeting monthly to combine efforts. The group decided at this point to take on the name Greater New Orleans Organizers Roundtable, in tribute to a long-running pre-Katrina gathering organized by the Peoples Institute for Survival and Beyond. These monthly gatherings, usually held on the second Saturday of each month, became an important spot for collaborations and community building.

Since its inception, The Greater New Orleans Organizers Roundtable has become a crucial resource for New Orleans’ social justice community. Through an intentional process of trust and community building, The monthly meetings of the Roundtable have become a support and information network for a broad spectrum of organizations working on a variety of social justice issues in Greater New Orleans and throughout the Gulf South, ensuring that member organizations are informed about members’ campaigns and initiatives so that participants can share skills, information, and resources and support one another in their struggles. The Organizers Roundtable actively contributes to creating a vibrant local and regional movement that prioritizes the voices of oppressed people and nurtures alliances across race, class, age, nationality, and gender.

In 2010, the Roundtable worked to plan New Orleans participation in the second US Social Forum, which was held in Detroit. Although travel to Detroit is much more expensive than Atlanta, hundreds of New Orleanians were still able to travel to Detroit and continue their participation in this process, along with more than 10,000 activists from around the US.

The Second Annual Masquerade Ball and Fundraiser presented by the Greater New Orleans Organizers Roundtable will be this Saturday, June 25, at 1733 Constantinople St, from 7:00pm - 11:00pm. Tickets are $25 in advance and $30 at the door. The party features food and cold drinks, a cash bar, silent auction, musical performances, and a DJ. Masks are available for purchase at the door. The funds raised from the sale of admission tickets will be used to support community organizing and advocacy. You can purchase admission tickets at the Peoples Institute for Survival and Beyond ( 601 North Carrollton Avenue in Mid-City) or by emailing Derek Rankins Jr. at D.Rankins@gmail.com.