Space to Breath: Uniting Communities Workshop at USSF
Western States Center's workshop at the US Social Forum provided a space for LGBTQ people of color and allies to come together, to reflect, to share experiences, and to make connections to continue the work of LGBTQ equality in communities of color.
Running a workshop at the 2010 US Social Forum, held in Detroit, offered an incredible opportunity and also an immense challenge. Western States Center had the opportunity to reach 20,000 folks from different organizations, backgrounds, from across the nation and around the globe. The catch, however, is you usually get their attention in 20 minute increments, because there were over 1,000 workshops, not counting plenaries, performances, people’s movement assemblies, and just hang out sessions.
I had no idea what to expect in terms of audience for Western States Center’s workshop, Uniting Communities: LGBTQ Equality in Communities of Color. Which was probably a good thing, as whatever I imagined would have probably been wrong.
We had around 80 people come and participate in the four and a half hour workshop that focuses on The Center’s newest curriculum tool Uniting Communities: The Toolkit. The Toolkit focuses on supporting organizations of color to move through an LGBTQ equality process within their organizations and out in the community.
The workshop moved from using the Center’s LGBTQ/Racial Justice/Immigrant and Refugee timeline to create a shared history and framework, to moving into commonalities and differences in historic and current oppression, to using real life case studies to explore LGBTQ people of color experiences around detention, policing and incarceration.
Folks who came wanted to talk about LGBTQ issues, people of color issues, ally issues, and mostly LGBTQ folks of color issues. Many of the people who came and stayed for the entire workshop (our US Social Forum Superstars!) were LGBTQ folks of color who felt excited to have a space to engage in conversations amongst other LGBTQ people of color, as well as the allies in the room. It was not a queer people of color only space, but a space that centralized the experiences, organizing work and leadership of queer folks of color.
- Participants checking out the Timeline
Because of this, we spontaneously decided to shift some of the workshop time to sharing personal stories as LGBTQ people of color and allies, making that human connection. At the end of the workshop, folks had decided to create a listserve to be able to continue these conversations after the dispersal of the Social Forum glow.
Whatever expectations I might have envisioned for an almost five hour workshop on the second to last day at the US Social Forum, I know that this one, because of the participants, exceeded any expectations I might have had. It reinvigorated me and reminded me again how important creating allies in communities of color is, to support the leadership, experiences and voice of LGBTQ people of color.
