Conversations with the Disability Project at the Transgender Law Center & the Trans Justice Funding Project

We’re so thrilled for Transgender Law Center’s takeover of our Instagram account this week! The Disability Project is an initiative of Sebastian Margaret housed at the Transgender Law Center. This programming lined up for you all will ground us in disability justice movements, connect disability justice to the uprisings for Black lives, and lift up the #TransDisabledBrilliance that is so often overlooked.

Today was a our second conversation featuring Gabriel Foster in conversation with Xoai Pham, Digital Media Sorceress at the Transgender Law Center. Black, trans, disabled, and brilliant. Gabriel Foster has been leading the Trans Justice Funding Project (click to support their invaluable work) to resource the many skills and talents in the trans community. Through Gabriel’s work, more of us are able to thrive, and not just survive.

Join us tomorrow for “Decriminalize Disability” an Instagram Live conversation with Ericka Dixon, Manager of Training Programs at the Anti-Violence Project and Syrus Marcus Ware, scholar, visual artist, activist, curator and educator. The conversation will be hosted Wednesday 8/26 at 11:30 am PT / 2:30 pm ET on Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls Instagram live.

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Full transcript below. The below is a transcript based off of the Communication Access Realtime (CART) transcription. CART is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility. CART captioning and this realtime file may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.

>> To the LGBTQ movement. Gabriel is the founding executive director of an organization called the Trans Justice Funding Project. It’s a community led funding initiative which was founded in 2012 to support grassroots trans justice groups that are run by and for trans people in the United States including U.S. territories. We know that funding for trans liberation work is so so needed right now and often the people who are deciding who gets funding don’t actually come from the trans community. So TGFP’s work is so crucial at this time. They make grants ‑‑ to carefully review every application and they center the leadership of trans people organizing around their experiences with racism, with economic injustice, transmissogeney, ableism, immigration, incarceration and so many other intersecting oppressions. Every penny they raise goes to grantees with no restrictions because they actually believe in trans leadership.

I’m super excited for this conversation. Yesterday we had a lot of folks from all over, Brazil, Romania, Ireland. Let us know where you’re joining from ‑‑ having a good Tuesday. Hey, Gabriel!

>> Hi. How are you?

>> You’re actually sideways right now. I think your phone might be ‑‑ there we go, yeah. We want to see your beautiful face right side up.

>> Thank you very much.

>> I was actually just, for our audience I was pointing out that the portrait behind Gabriel is Sylvia Ri Vera, who is a movement mother and is credited for launching the LGBTQ movement against all odds and even without the support of our lesbian, gay, bisiblings, the T has often had to act on our own. I was actually just asking folks where folks are joining from and I see folks from Mexico, Switzerland, Oklahoma, Hawaii. I was introducing TGFP and how it’s crucial for trans folks to decide where our funding goes at this time and the fact that TGFP’s grants don’t come with any restrictions, no strings attached, it’s so amazing as well. I know that a lot of folks really want to hear from you. I would love for you to introduce yourself.

>> Sure. Thank you so much for having me and coordinating the space. I want to thank everyone for showing up in the afternoon in whatever time zone of the world you’re in. I have never once done a live thing. In fact, I try to get out of it as much as possible. This feels really special and terrifying at the same time and I’m really excited to talk about the topic and to share a little bit more about myself and the work that I do and some of the thinking that I have been doing. Thank you so much for this incredible opportunity again. And to Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls. My name is Gabriel Foster, I use he/him. I live back at home in Seattle, Washington, and I’m the co‑founder and the executive director of the trans funding project which has been around since 2012. We give money to grassroots groups who are trans led doing justice work in the U.S. It has been an incredible journey and an incredible honor to be able to raise money and give it back to the communities that need it. Yeah, thank you for this opportunity.

>> Yeah. Thank you for being here, Gabriel. I know these things can be a little nerve racking and we can definitely be honest about that and sit with all of the nerves that come with it. We were talking right before this call about how it’s not often that people get to show up in a space where they can bring their Blackness and their Transness and all those identities and lived experiences in one room and one conversation. I know you have some reflections about that. Would you mind sharing some of those?

>> Sure. I’m not really sure where it began. It feels like a little bit of an abstract, like different patch work pieces in my brain about how to answer this question. I came out when I was 15 the first time as a queer person in Seattle and got really involved with the Quakers as a young person and I got into activism pretty quickly. That felt like the first time there was a group or a community that was really like “come in, come in, come in!

“but I didn’t know what it meant to be a part of a group in that way. So I just knew there was work to do and we just knew how to do it. It was politicized through the Quakers around issues of LGBTQ justice, working with other young people, working around anti‑racism, folks with incarceration, and that’s kind of how I got my start. It was an interesting way to be a young person and jump into work that was multifaceted and so intersectional, but I still had to figure out where my own place in that work was and with my own identities. When I was 19, I learned that I was trans or finally admitted or came out to myself that I was trans I started to transition at 20.

So the work that I was doing with so many activists and organizers particularly in Seattle, I really loved doing that behind the scenes work. I liked to make whatever someone needed to move forward, but I didn’t want to be in the forefront and I frankly didn’t believe that I belonged in the forefront. I thought to be an activist or organizer, you had to look a certain way, had to be a certain way, had to be able to respond really quickly and have the bull horn at every rally and be fearless and charismatic and all these things that didn’t feel like me. So it felt more comfortable to be flanking the folks and supporting the folks doing that work. Over the years as I’ve moved around the country working with LGBTQ youth in Atlanta or working with incarcerated folks at the Sylvia Ri Vera law, or even through funding, it’s been interesting, and now to be positioned in this way where you’re pretty much expected to have all the answers and to be able to represent all communities all the time, which is kind of an impossible task, right?

And especially when you feel like you’re constantly questioning do I building here in this space, which I think a lot of us probably do in different ways and for different reasons. I think it’s been a real process, especially now, thinking when Sebastian Margaret who runs the disability justice project at TLC asked me to join and I had known Sebastian for years and he’s been an integral part of Trans Justice Funding Project, I didn’t know if I could identify publicly with the label or the position of being someone with a disability. People, as I’ve understood it, people with disabilities look a certain way or have certain disabilities that qualify. There can sometimes be a hierarchy. And I didn’t know if I fit or belonged or could claim that. So it’s been an interesting process really over the past six months to once again not try to “other” myself out of a place that has tried to embrace me and tried to bring me in. It’s been a constant struggle to really find my place. And again, I don’t think that’s unique to me. As someone who grew up Black, who’s been queer, is queer, and trans, and fat, and disabled in certain ways, like I’m always just trying to find my place that feels like home in a sense. And when I talk about or have learned more about what leadership looks like, I think what I really resonate most with is not only when people make opportunities for different types of leaders and for different expressions of leadership, but when they really make it clear that there are so many ways to participate and to be a leader and to be involved.

So I don’t know if that answers your question, but that’s definitely what’s been in my brain a lot. I can speak to more of that later. That’s just kind of what I’m sitting with, have been sitting with actually since I was a teenager until now.

>> Yeah. Yeah. It’s one of those things that’s a lifelong journey, right?

Thank you for sharing all of that. We and Sebastian were actually talking about yesterday how so many people, including myself, have always conceived of disability as something really ‑‑ ends up limiting our understanding of what disability can be and also ends up severing our connection with disability movements and disability justice because so many people have connections to disabled people in our families and among our loved ones. And we end up ‑‑ I think we end up losing the chance to really invest in that leadership when we feel we are not connected to disability in general. And when we are feeling connected, as we know, we’re all connected, it’s easier to see how all our liberation is intertwined. I think one question that comes to mind as you’re speaking your experience is: What are some of the unique experiences that you think you’ve had in your life and of other folks when you’re living at the intersection of Blackness, Transness, and disability?

>> I’m sure there’s lots of different answers I could come up with but I think I’ll talk about being an executive director. It’s not something that I ever thought I would do or being able to do. It’s not something that I set out to do is be an executive director in philanthropy. I have a learning disability in math. I think that’s an interesting thing to be thinking about numbers all the time and also being like I don’t understand how numbers work and fit together. And I think for some people that feels laughable, like why are you doing the job that you do. But I think it’s been really important to not only do that and learn how to be firm in my place and position and figure out how to use that for good, but also I have been thinking about how to bring other people into those positions of power, whether through funding or being able to speak on something or for myself to learn from as well.

I think, yeah, like I mean, I think this might be known by most folks participating but maybe not, that there’s a lot of things that come into question when you are in particular roles. Let’s say as a supervisor or executive director or someone who’s thought of as a leader, especially as someone who is Black, Trans, and disabled. These are things that people tend to dismiss or that you don’t have a right to be here or wonder what you actually have to contribute. I feel like I’ve gotten to learn from a lot of people, some folks who are Black and disabled and some who are not, and I have been really grateful to have access to conversations and to readings and even have been able to work or be in deep friendship with folks like Sebastian, folks likely Roy Moore junior, cities ‑‑ Aaron Philip, K [Away from mic] just to name a few have all been in my orbit in different ways. All of these people have maybe not fearlessly to me but it’s been demonstrated that they have been fearless in their interdisruption and wanting to disrupt and interrogate and figure out more and talk about disability justice. Not just talk about it but really bring it to the center of conversations. And all these folks throughout decades have just been fighting and not letting down with that. And I think that’s been really formative to my leadership and learning as well. But kind of more abstractly to answer your question, I was reading this piece this morning by Patty Byrne and she wrote this that I wanted to share. She’s talking about the disability justice movement in general and so she said: Disability Rights Movement simultaneously invisiblized the lives of people who lived at the interjecting junctures of ‑‑ immigrants with disabilities, queer with disabilities, trans non‑conforming folks with disabilities, people who are homeless with disabilities, people who are incarcerated with disabilities, and people with disabilities who have had their ancestral lands stolen amongst others, so there are a lot of people who are a part of a lot of communities who are also folks with disabilities.

So I have been searching more. I don’t feel like I’ve always had access to Black Trans people who are folks with disabilities until maybe more recently. So I think a lot about as many of us think about representation and how much that matters and why I say that is because I don’t think I had a lot of folks that I had access to or knew of that were Black Trans disabled as I was growing up. When you don’t get to see people who represent you or who have a shared experience in positions, period, or even get to see them, period, but also in positions of power, it almost feels like that’s not possible. So I’ve really been appreciative, especially it’s come up to this point, I would say the disability justice movement, like many movements, is still budgeting and people are still finding their place and rooting themselves, but I also am looking to support and to learn more from especially Black Trans folks with disabilities, because I haven’t seen as many folks as I would like out there. But I’m so thankful for the few that I have. I think that is really meaningful not only to get to see folks but to really have the opportunity to hear from them in spaces like this and other spaces. I needed that and still need that.

>> What’s amazing, though, is that you end up being the person that you needed, right?

You are going to be part of the history for folks who are coming into movements now and folks who are younger than you who actually need someone who is a model of brilliance and leadership that is Black Trans disabled. I’m really curious about, in particular in your experience, in our world Transness has become so visible. It’s been several years now, I forget how many. It’s been several years since Laverne Cox was on the cover of Time. And now there’s trans people on TV, on the cover of magazines, Pose became the cast with the most openly transactors. And yet disabled still has a lot of limitations on how the public sees what is disability, what is disability justice, and who is considered disabled. As a result, it becomes hard for folks who are Black Trans disabled to actually tap into the disability not just as a condition of their body but also a political identity and the way that they move through the world and how they relate to themselves, their bodies, how they relate to each other, their jobs and what is considered leadership. You mentioned ‑‑ which I think becomes really ableist because not everyone can hold a bull horn physically. Not everyone can speak words into a bull horn. I’m curious what you think we lose when we don’t actually allow people to bring in their disability as a Black Trans person who is now beginning a relationship with your disability.

>> Sure. I’ll speak from a personal place and then I’ll bring it back to a wider. I have been going through some testing recently over the last couple weeks. It’s been really intensive. There have been IQ tests and can I follow direction, do I make sense of what’s being told to me. And I, you know, have struggled for a long time. I dropped out of high school when I was 15. And I think for a long time I thought it was really related to homophobia within the school system that I was in. I thought maybe I just couldn’t follow the programming. I had been in special ed classes a lot and for different reasons throughout my schooling. And then I just finally was done. I think I also got politicized and I was like: This is bullshit in history class. But the homophobia was also happening at the same time. That was then.

Through this testing, I came home the other week from three hours of intensive testing and was talking to my partner on the couch at the end of the day and I just started to cry. I just, like, I’m not a big crier, I think it’s really important but it’s always been hard for me. And I was ugly crying on the couch and just really upset. I think what was coming up for me during this testing is all the ways that I had to think about my past and think about when participation has looked really different for me or when I felt, again, like an other, especially in a space with a lot of folks that might feel like others. It made me think a lot about working, employment in general and part of my tears and my deep sadness was this feeling that I wake up in the morning and I have this total fear to go to work because I don’t know how to have answers to everything, which I think is a pretty common thing for a lot of people but especially folks in leadership positions. But I also don’t understand how to do all the tasks required of me. And that feels like something not a lot of us want to share with our personal people or publicly to say I don’t know and actually I don’t know how to complete tasks. It’s incredibly difficult. So I just had this total meltdown once again like where is my place?

Where do I belong?

Where do I get to have the body I have but also the brain that I have and the way it functions that can be honored, respected, maybe work and function differently than other people expect but it’s still valid and still has a place. I think that that has really ‑‑ also, having worked with young people who have had differing abilities and disabilities, it’s made me think a lot about how do we have conversations with our friends and family?

When we talk about work or organizing, once again, what is this table that we’re creating and can everyone actually be at it but can everyone participate when we’re there. I have been thinking about creating space for people, not just like we have been taught but really, if we are talking about liberation, the question again and again, and again, in my mind and in the know mind of folks I know, whose liberation?

Who deserves liberation?

And if we can’t figure out for everyone to show up as best they can or however they can, then whatever are we actually doing and is it in service of liberation. I feel like my work at the law project was really big and influential because she constantly begged the question around like respectability, politics, and ability, and who gets to show up. What I mean by that is Sylvia rif era is this iconic figure and she’s known for a lot of things. And she was rowdy as fuck. She didn’t go around worrying about ‑‑ she wasn’t this cookie cutter perfect type of activist you could put in a space. She gets up on stage at Pride and interrupts the shit out of the conversation and says what about our siblings who are incarcerated?

That’s an example that I look to and look for. Marsha, there’s a really great quote by her, I’m blanking now, but she is like I may be crazy, but that don’t make me wrong.

So these are very iconic figures, black Trans welcome, a Latinx Trans work who worked together in collaboration with all the experiences that they were to start STAR and really take care of their communities. I think that when we create more barriers to access in all the ways, whether people can literally get into a building, whether people can participate or not, whether you’re allowing different types of participation, as long as we’re putting these barriers and even with funding, right, who can access funding and who can’t, I think as long as we continue to idolize the Masters tools to try to work towards change, we’re always going to leave people out. And we always will do a huge disservice leaving people out and we won’t actually get the best of what we all can offer when we work together.

One of the things I’ve also been thinking a lot about in this time of Corona, as some of us who might be more lucky and privileged to work from home right now, who have access to computers and they’re able to be working from home and not be unemployed or looking for jobs and housing right now, I’ll just speak for myself, I have been really thinking about this piece around disconnection and how much people are feeling the disconnection of just wanting to have people over or meet with people or just have that social interaction. And immediately, I think maybe in March, as soon as this started to roll out in Seattle with COVID, I was like oh, my gosh, folks in disability justice work for years and years and years have talked about what it means to not be able to participate. And for some of us, the internet and these tools that we’re using, Instagram Live, Zoom, emails, FaceTime, these are ways we’re learning how to connect, and there’s a part of me that’s so scared ‑‑ I’m also a super introvert and afraid of people ‑‑ so I’m really scared about what happens if we start getting to be in person more and then that gets lost. Who loses out when we ‑‑ as important as those social interactions are, I really deeply hope we don’t lose these forms of communication that people who can’t leave the home for whatever reason can still participate with others and help to break that isolation.

I think another lesson that is not a new lesson but I think has really come to the surface for some people around the topic of COVID is not just about isolation about interdependency and I think this is something that disability justice activists and organizers have been talking about for years and years. Again, there’s a real importance about like when you have to work with others or depend on others or work in service of others, but we can’t do this alone. And I think that while we are disconnected, I think some of us are learning the importance of interdependency, whether that means I’m going to bring some groceries to my mother or neighbors because they can’t leave the house right now, how can that just be something we all do all the time, right?

This isn’t just a one time incident. I think this crisis, this pandemic has really brought to the surface a lot of things and issues that were already in existence, but now more of us are being forced to learn from these lessons or to open our minds and open up more to how can we really work together and be in something together in a different kind of way. And there’s so many other things, I think. It’s kind of funny to watch the news or the media talk about we’re in this together. And I’m like, oh my goodness, queer and trans communities and folks with disabilities have had to do this for so long and now here it is in this big kind of global way. And then like what are we learning from this moment?

If and when it is gone, are we all just going to leave all that in the dust and leave it behind?

In my ask to people or my ask to myself, it’s like thinking about leadership, thinking about inclusivity, thinking about just people in general, like what are the things that we can learn from these times and implement moving forward, knowing that a lot of what we’re learning or grappling with or struggling with are things that a lot of people have always had to do. So how do we hold on to that and learn from that and move forward, again, towards liberation and thinking more expansively and more beautifully about what can liberation actually look like?

>> So much wisdom. I hope you’re seeing in the comments and all the hearts that are fluttering up that you’re receiving so much love. First of all, I want to encourage folks to send in any questions or comments that you have. If there are questions, we can do a little bit of Q&A afterwards. It made me a little emotional just thinking about you feeling like you weren’t capable or that you were ‑‑ that you weren’t hitting the mark and you had put so much pressure and weight on yourself to do that.

Because I think a lot of folks maybe on this call and just folks who are not in trans activism organizing communities know how crucial you have been to the trans movement, a larger problem of disabled folks and particularly Black Trans disabled folks feeling this immense weight to be a specific way in order to value themselves and it makes me think about the people who are young people today what they might be going through because they are putting a similar kind of pressure on themselves. I’m really happy that you brought up Sylvia and Marsha as usual. Marsha celebrated a 75th birthday yesterday. So happy birthday, Marsha. You’re watching over us for sure.

I remember you saying something so beautiful and poignant when we first met in Seattle a couple months ago. It feels like years ago that we met. I remember you speaking about Marsha and Sylvia and just talking about how they might have been perceived as disabled if they were alive during this time and if they were among our peers in this time.

And you spoke really beautifully about how, in a lot of ways, we erase disability from our history. Sometimes unintentionally, but because we’re now understanding disability in a more expansive way, we’re able to see that disabled activists have laid the groundwork for so much of what we experience today, Marsha and Sylvia being trans disabled Black and Latina women who laid the foundation that are part of the movement we’re here on today. I would love to hear your thoughts on what the cost is when we erase disability from our history?

>> I think the cost is high. I think that we’re seeing that and noticing that. I hope a lot of us are noticing that more and thinking about that. I think that one thing I would like from everyone on this right now, no matter how we’re positioned or how we exist in the world, to just really think about what the loss is when we erase anybody’s identities, but in particular folks with disabilities. I think that it’s been helpful for me to learn more about the history of folks with disabilities and their contributions. I would even say like ‑‑ I was thinking the other day about something that I heard. So I have been doing a lot of fun but nerdy book reports with a group of people. We like jump online and we have these book reports. This is what we do for fun, times of COVID, but then we share all these different learning. I have been learning a lot around The Atlantic slave trade and the way that capitalism really puts value on bodies and takes their humanity and humanness away and bodies for the sake of production equaling money. And I think that Black bodies, I think that Native American land and folks with disabilities, like I think ‑‑ I think race, class, gender is all a part of every conversation to some degree but I have been thinking a lot about what we value as productive, what we value as leaders, what we value as sexy, what we value as worthy.

So I think like when we are always in this mindset or especially folks in the U.S. who have been indoctrinated in capitalism, it’s hard to get out of that framework. We got taught to ride a bike in a certain way or move down a path in a certain way. It’s always trying to resist and fight and remove some of the vails that have been put upon us. I think when we don’t remove those things, when we don’t question, we lose people, but we also lose ourselves. Right?

Just to get really personal again, I recently had a cousin who committed suicide a few months ago. And this was really striking for my family because for everyone they thought he was doing really well, right?

He had just come out of prison, he had a job, he was taking care of one of my aunts. People were really excited for him and then we just found out he was just kind of gone. And I remember his father on the Zoom funeral just shaking and crying. He said that was too much for anyone to hold. We had no idea what he was experiencing or going through and he said we all have shoulders.

I think to the extreme we lose people because we lose them in their lives with disabilities and we don’t get to connect with their learning, their lesson, their teaching, their humanity, and in fact I think we also lose our own in that process.

I, again I’m sorry, I tower melean, I saw this quote that she spoke and she said there’s too much at stake not to name ourselves in the stories we pass down because this is our time and this is our life. I almost want to write that and put that up again because I feel like for anybody this is not the time to be erasing folks, this is not the time to be erasing stories and narratives, this is not the time to be excluding each other. I think we are at a crux of where like we don’t have a choice anymore to be complacent or silent or not work towards justice. And for those of us who want to stay out of it or everything’s too political or we can’t deal with it, there’s a whole host of other people who don’t have that choice, right?

A lot of us don’t get to be like I need to opt out or I can’t deal with this, like as we move through the world in the bodies we’re in. This is our life and this is our time, too. So I think ‑‑ my greatest hope is that on all fronts there is more work around intersectionality and I don’t mean that as a buzz word today. Intersectionality is your struggle is my struggle but not and my struggle is your struggle and not. I think cross movement work is a part of that, but I also think cross learning is also integral and also having conversations and building with each other. I feel like there’s really important pieces of the work and that can look like moving policies forward. That can look like voting. That can look like this or that for certain people, but on a really basic level, I think we also have an opportunity as the world has been interrupted in a way that I’ve never experienced in my lifetime, that like we gotta get our shit together, like all of us, right?

And this can be looked at as a curse or a blessing. I’m hoping to see ‑‑ I’m hoping to build and I really mean that, not just as a word to put in a grant application or because it sounds good. I think this is the time where we really have to build or we’re either going to slip back or it’s going to be worse than it’s ever been before. So I think this is an opportunity for us all to show up, and also, again, recognize that people show up in different ways. And however they show up is important. Some people can’t leave the house. Some people can’t have conversations. Some people need to shutdown. We need to make space for them too. I think one of the things when I joined the disability project that Sebastian said to me is that we’re moving slow and we’re taking time. And I was like “what!

“and I was like you have to have a meeting and have a Zoom meeting and answer all these emails and have all the tasks and the things that come along with that. That’s a lot for all of us. Manual labor, office labor, we’re supposed to be on go and responsive even to text, I’ve had to not text as much because my brain can’t handle all the emotional energy. And I think one of the things I’m appreciating from the disability justice work and particularly from Sebastian’s words is it’s okay to go slow. And actually, while there are urgent things we need to move on, we have to have the time and space for different people to move at different speeds. Again, if we’re always moving at lightning speed, we are going to leave people behind and some of the folks we leave behind are the most critical voices and experiences and people to the movement. I think an ask for myself and the greater world is to figure out we talk a lot ‑‑ I feel like if you have been suffering through the presidential debates or just life, purpose is something that a lot of us are grappling with or thinking about, like what is my purpose. For me it’s been particularly hard to find my purpose in a world that centers white supremacy culture, especially in the workforce. So trying to undo and let go while still being in service in our work with people but I think there’s gotta be different ways in making space to do that or we are going to lose.

>> Yeah. I’m really sorry for your loss, first of all, Gabriel. It makes me think about the fact that when we don’t make space for all the ways that our bodies show up in the world and we put pressure on ourselves or our loved ones to be whatever definition of well or healthy we have or we have been taught by a society that doesn’t make space for many definitions, we actually lose people. And I think that if anything, I want to emphasize a point that you made around the fact that what disability justice has called us to do, among many things, is to really see disabled folks as a mirror to ourselves and see disability as an opportunity to actually re‑examine how we think about our own bodies and how we value our own bodies, how we value other people in a way that’s more expansive and as a result more gentle and more caring so that everybody can not only have access to the spaces that bring us joy and fulfillment, but that we all have the opportunity to thrive in whatever ways that we want to thrive. And so I feel really grateful for all the work that you’ve done and continue to do to ensure that your community and our communities have that ability to thrive and your work is so valuable to all of us. I don’t know if you got told enough, but we love you and appreciate you. I’m so grateful that you’re here with us doing this work. So thank you.

>> Thank you so much. I would love to, if I have a second to just read one last thing that has been really sitting with me.

>> Yeah. Let’s close with that, with your closing thoughts.

>> Thank you. And thank you again for this space and, again, to TLC, Smart Girls. I feel really humbled to be here. This book came out not too long ago. A lot of people are looking for solutions. There’s a lot of critiques and different things that are hard and difficult and challenging for everyone also these days and a lot of folks put forth a lot of beauty and have done a lot of thinking. So I’m diving into bionsy bible. They did not ask me to plug this. The book, ‘Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement’ is about strategies and stories from the transformative justice movement, which I also think if anyone is just hearing about that I would encourage you to look more into that. This book was written by two people I [away from mic] Ejeris Dixon and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha edited this book. So the incredible Lexis Paul Ingham writes in the forward: This is a gorgeous text created by people who imagine that a more ethical and loving world can emerge in the middle of the worst muck, racialized, ableist heterocapital. The primary offering here is the space to be. Be here. Be all over the place. Be messy. Be wrong. Be bold in your hopefulness. Be confused in community. Be reaching past isolation. Be part of the problem. Be hungry for after. Be helpful in the midst. Be so early in the process. Be broken by belief be bolstered by brave comrades. Be unbelievably unready. Be alive. Thank you all for this opportunity. I hope this was helpful. It was really a joy to talk with you especially, and to not see everyone’s faces and to see your comment and I really appreciate the time for everyone to be here today.

>> Thank you so much, Gabriel and thank you, everyone, who joined with two Black Queer Trans folks. Folks who needed a transcript.

Click to learn more about the Disability Project at the Transgender Law Center and the work of the Trans Justice Funding Project.