We Were ALWAYS HERE #BallroomMade
Across the U.S. and around the world TGNC and BIPOC communities are finding their culture and history under attack once again. Free speech and democracy as we know it are threatened. Books and CRT were just the beginning. The human and civil rights of tens of thousands of individuals are in danger. Countless innocent people who simply wish to express themselves through art and fashion are being criminalized, and face literal and cultural extinction.
Drag is a prime example. In the U.S., the history of Drag-history happens to also Black history. Drag finds it’s origins the social gatherings intended to be safe spaces for TLGBQ+ folks, organized by a former enslaved person named William Dorsey, born in Maryland, 1860. Swann and these events are the progenitors of America’s Drag, Ballroom, and Trans-Pageantry art sub genres.
This history (or BIPOC TLGBQ+ history more generally)
We will provide expertise, and tools and training and other support directly to communities (especially ones under increased and renewed attacks from far right factions) with the objective of defending themselves and their communities from far right attacks. This tool box will enable them to declare; investigate; protect, preserve and share their own history, local or otherwise. These tools include a hybrid approach historic preservation, combining tested techniques like oral history projects and the written word, with technological advances like digital mediums such as social media and AI.
There will be a heavy emphasis on helping local movements and communities identify local history, especially historic sites and districts with BIPOC-TLGBQ+ history; this history is there, we just need to empower people declare and protect it.
Additionally, many cities and towns in the Deep South like Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Alabama, have quietly hosted unofficial Black-Trans areas and districts for more than a century. This history is waiting to be rediscovered and preserved.
MORE ABOUT STARR Originally formed by Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera in 1969 after the Stone Wall Riots, STAR(R) was one of the first Trans led organizations to help New York City’s Trans, Gender Non Conforming, and Sex Worker folx in acquiring immediate daily needs such as housing, food, and community. In addition to mutual aid work, STARR also fought for laws protecting TGNC and Sex Worker folx in addition to battling their own homelessness, and discrimination within the LGBTQ+ community.
Today, Strategic Transgender Alliance for Radical Reform extends Sylvia and Marsha’s legacy by building lasting and productive bonds between other existing organizations, action groups, political and non-political lobbying entities, public corporations, sovereign governments and individuals involved in the global human rights movement. Over 50 years later, STARR still upholds their main efforts of giving immediate needs to the TGNC community; a roof over their heads, food in their bellies, and a family to count on!
STARR is here to coordinate potent actions that lead to lasting change in law and policy; with the goal of creating a safe global society for Transgender, gender queer people or anyone who lives outside of the gender binary; in appearance, action or identity.
