Beyond Inclusion, Beyond Empowerment Released

By Liz Goodwin

After over ten years of work, Leticia Nieto, PhD, has released the first written record of her anti-oppression curriculum. The book is beyond words. With a central text outlining the key components of the model, images, poetry, prose, personal story, and quotes thread through as well. This weekend in Olympia, community members gathered to celebrate the release of this book, as well as two other creative pieces, and hundreds attended. Professors, students, children, comrades all celebrated Dr. Nieto’s completion of this project, a project that included many of the voices in the room. In fact, story and poetry contributors filled the room.

The event was a five-hour affair at a dance club venue called The Vault. From the ceiling, where a disco ball might normally hang, were decorations of red and orange paper streamers with gorgeous flowers. A huge movie screen stood next to the main stage to bring the sounds of Los Cavaleras and Sin Fronteras – and tamale, cupcake and popcorn vendors – as well as beautiful art – lined the walls. In addition to the release of the book, the film The Life I Got to Live, telling the story of Alicia Barrera in rural Chile, survivor of the Pinochet regime, was shown and released. Sin Fronteras played tunes from their new recording, Galopa, traditional and nueva cancion music. This is the third work that was released. Hence, the event name, Memoria, Musica, y Liberacion, bringing sound, word and visual together – extravaganza style.

To read entire post, click here.

Take Back the Bridge for Everyone - A Participant's Perspective

By Anne Phillips

Recently, I attended Stacey Prince and Teri Mayo’s event, “Take Back the Bridge for Everyone”

Vine Ministries Church organized their second annual “Take Back the Bridge” event to have a community and church response to the people who are committing suicide by jumping off the Aurora bridge.

Stacey Prince organized this event after contacting Pastor Rainwater, and his choice to discount the fact that 30% of youth suicides are LGBTQI and the rest can easily be argued connected to some manifestation of oppression.

To entire post, click here.

Take Back the Bridge for Everyone

This past weekend, TJP founder Stacey Prince and her partner Teri Mayo organized an event called Take Back the Bridge... for Everyone. Originally an event co-sponsored by the Seattle/King County Crisis Clinic and Vine Christian Ministries, Stacey and Teri thought it was very important to raise awareness in the community of suicide risk factors for LGBTQI youth and adults, and also to call attention to the detrimental role that faith communities can play when they promote messages of intolerance. The event was very well attended by 40 people including TJP co-founder Anne Phillips and several other TJP members. It was a success in increasing visibility of issues of critical importance to LGBTQI individuals. It received news coverage and fostered much discussion on the internet.

To read entire post, click here.

Bullying

- by Stacey Prince

Several months back I began collecting information and resources for an article on bullying in the schools. Discrimination and harassment experienced by youth, and the related social justice issues, are something we have not talked about very much yet in TJP. This was before what is now being termed an "epidemic" of teen and young adult suicides that can be directly linked to harassment, bullying and violence experienced by LGBT youth. I'm sure many of you have seen the terrible stories, too many to recount, in recent weeks about teen suicides. Most recently there was the young Rutgers student who killed himself after peers posted video on the internet of him being intimate with a male partner. There was the 13 year old in California who hung himself after being taunted by classmates for being gay, and the 15 year old in Indiana who hung himself under similar circumstances. Then there were the five suicides, including three by gay teens, in a single Minnesota school district.

Results of the 2005 Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) Climate Survey showed that while 22% of the general student population feels unsafe in school, 74.2% of LGBT students reported feeling unsafe. Further, based on data from the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, the CDC, and estimates that approximately 30% of youth suicides are related to sexual orientation, the National GLBTQ Youth Foundation recently concluded that over 1,400 GLBTQ youth between the ages of 10 to 24 complete suicides, and an additional 15,000 contemplate committing suicide, each year. Even these whopping numbers are likely to be under-estimates since the sexual orientation of youth suicide victims is not always known.

To read entire article click here.