Audre Lorde Project
Encyclopedia
The Audre Lorde Project is a Brooklyn
, New York
-based organization for queer
people of color. The organization concentrates on community organizing
and radical nonviolent activism around progressive
issues within New York City
, especially relating to queer
and transgender
communities, AIDS
and HIV
activism, pro-immigrant activism, prison reform
and organizing among youth of color. It is named for the queer poet and activist Audre Lorde
and was founded in 1994.
, gay
, bisexual, two-spirit
and transgender
– people of color communities. It was founded in 1994 by a coalition of queer people of color led by Advocates for Gay Men of Color, a multi-racial network of gay men of color advocating for progressive HIV
policies. It was named for gay poet and activist Audre Lorde
, who had died in 1992.
The purpose of the Project emerged from "the expressed need for innovative and unified community strategies to address the multiple issues impacting LGBTST People of Color communities."
In 1996, the organization moved into its permanent home in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, parish house of Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church
.
As an organization seeking broad progressive social and economic justice, the Project works to promote multiracial coalitions with advocacy and community organizations as well as allies.
and queerphobic violence targeting people of color, in particular in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. The Collective organizes outside of the existing judicial/policing system, declaring that "strategies that increase the police presence and the criminalization of our communities do not create safety."
Originally called the Working Group on Police and State Violence, it began in 1997 in response to a rise in street violence and police harassment the organization believed was connected to the "quality of life
" policies of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
The group helped to found the Coalition Against Police Brutality and People's Justice 2000 soon after the killings by police officers of unarmed men of color Amadou Diallo
and Abner Louima
, as well as annual Racial Justice Days, focusing on the appeals of families of color who suffered violence by the NYPD.
The Collective manages the legal case for Jalea Lamot, a trans
woman who was arrested and brutalized by NYCHA police.
As part of a broader anti-violence and anti-oppression
approach, the Collective has collaborated with other progressive organizations, including the Rashawn Brazell Memorial Fund, the Third World Within-Peace Action Coalition, Racial Justice 911, Al-Fatiha Foundation
and the American Friends Service Committee
, following the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. The Collective's "war against terror meetings" focus on how homophobia and transphobia
are a part of the policies of the United States' "war on terror
". Following the start of the Iraq War in 2003, SOS helped to coordinate Operation Homeland Resistance, civil disobedience protesting the war.
and gender non-conforming
people of color. The group focuses on trans-related policies in jobs, housing and health care, including job training programs, resisting transphobic violence, HIV services and trans-sensitive medical services.
). The working group seeks in particular to build the leadership of undocumented immigrants, low-wage workers and trans, two-spirit and gender non-conforming immigrants. Every campaign is required to be relevant to these "priority communities."
The working group seeks to legalize all people within the United States as well as solidifying equal rights regardless of immigration or migration status. The group also places itself within the global justice and peace movements, and acts in solidarity with liberation struggles throughout the world. The working group's members "reject the us/them divide of citizens and foreigners, and are working toward a US foreign policy
rooted in nonviolence
, fair distribution of resources, and equity. We also recognize that the War on Terrorism
is both a war abroad and a war at home, oppressing our communities in many places at once."
The organization went on record in 2006 as opposing the three-tier "path to legalization" legislation (Senate bill 2611, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act
) and guest worker programs, declaring that "full legalization is a nonnegotiable demand."
Finally, the group seeks to increase understanding of transphobia and homophobia within immigrants rights and social justice movements and immigrant communities within New York City.
In 2004, the working group published a report, "Communities at a Crossroads: U.S. Right Wing Policies and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit and Transgender Immigrants of Color in New York City."http://alp.org/whatwedo/organizing/ir/report
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
-based organization for queer
Queer
Queer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT ...
people of color. The organization concentrates on community organizing
Community organizing
Community organizing is a process where people who live in proximity to each other come together into an organization that acts in their shared self-interest. A core goal of community organizing is to generate durable power for an organization representing the community, allowing it to influence...
and radical nonviolent activism around progressive
Progressivism
Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...
issues within New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, especially relating to queer
Queer
Queer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT ...
and transgender
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....
communities, AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
and HIV
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...
activism, pro-immigrant activism, prison reform
Prison reform
Prison reform is the attempt to improve conditions inside prisons, aiming at a more effective penal system.-History:Prisons have only been used as the primary punishment for criminal acts in the last couple of centuries...
and organizing among youth of color. It is named for the queer poet and activist Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde was a Caribbean-American writer, poet and activist.-Life:...
and was founded in 1994.
History
The Audre Lorde Project is an organization for queer – specifically, lesbianLesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
, gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
, bisexual, two-spirit
Two-Spirit
Two-Spirit People , is an English term that emerged in 1990 out of the third annual inter-tribal Native American/First Nations gay/lesbian American conference in Winnipeg. It describes Indigenous North Americans who fulfill one of many mixed gender roles found traditionally among many Native...
and transgender
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....
– people of color communities. It was founded in 1994 by a coalition of queer people of color led by Advocates for Gay Men of Color, a multi-racial network of gay men of color advocating for progressive HIV
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...
policies. It was named for gay poet and activist Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde was a Caribbean-American writer, poet and activist.-Life:...
, who had died in 1992.
The purpose of the Project emerged from "the expressed need for innovative and unified community strategies to address the multiple issues impacting LGBTST People of Color communities."
In 1996, the organization moved into its permanent home in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, parish house of Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church
Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church
Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church is a historic Presbyterian church complex located at 875 Elmwood Ave, Buffalo in Erie County, New York. The complex consists of the large cruciform-plan church building that was built in 1894 with an attached rear chapel. Adjoining them is the Community House...
.
Mission and Principles
The organization's mission statement is: "The Audre Lorde Project is a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit and Transgender People of Color center for community organizing, focusing on the New York City area. Through mobilization, education and capacity-building, we work for community wellness and progressive social and economic justice. Committed to struggling across differences, we seek to responsibly reflect, represent and serve our various communities."Racial Justice
The Project was begun to "serve as a home base" for queer peoples of African/Black/Caribbean, Arab, Asian and Pacific Islander, Latina/o and Native/Indigenous descent can work to further a collective history of struggle against discrimination and other forms of oppression.Radical Politics and Nonviolence
The Project's decision-making structure seeks to be "representative of our communities" and acts to promote existing queer people of color organizations, cultural workers and activists. The organization also acts in an explicitly feminist, anti-sexist practice because it believes women's leadership "continues to be de-valued and discouraged in broader LGBTST organizations/communities." In the public arena, it often engages in nonviolent civil disobedience.As an organization seeking broad progressive social and economic justice, the Project works to promote multiracial coalitions with advocacy and community organizations as well as allies.
Safe OUTside the System: the SOS Collective
The Collective is an anti-violence organization focusing on homophobic, transphobicTransphobia
Transphobia is a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards transsexualism and transsexual or transgender people, based on the expression of their internal gender...
and queerphobic violence targeting people of color, in particular in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. The Collective organizes outside of the existing judicial/policing system, declaring that "strategies that increase the police presence and the criminalization of our communities do not create safety."
Originally called the Working Group on Police and State Violence, it began in 1997 in response to a rise in street violence and police harassment the organization believed was connected to the "quality of life
Quality of life
The term quality of life is used to evaluate the general well-being of individuals and societies. The term is used in a wide range of contexts, including the fields of international development, healthcare, and politics. Quality of life should not be confused with the concept of standard of...
" policies of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
The group helped to found the Coalition Against Police Brutality and People's Justice 2000 soon after the killings by police officers of unarmed men of color Amadou Diallo
Amadou Diallo
Amadou Diallo was a 23-year-old Guinean immigrant in New York City who was shot and killed on February 4, 1999 by four New York City Police Department plain-clothed officers: Sean Carroll, Richard Murphy, Edward McMellon and Kenneth Boss. The four officers fired a total of 41 shots...
and Abner Louima
Abner Louima
Abner Louima is a Haitian who was assaulted, brutalized and forcibly sodomized with the handle of a bathroom plunger by New York City police officers after being arrested outside a Brooklyn nightclub in 1997....
, as well as annual Racial Justice Days, focusing on the appeals of families of color who suffered violence by the NYPD.
The Collective manages the legal case for Jalea Lamot, a trans
Trans
Trans is a Latin noun or prefix, meaning "across", "beyond" or "on the opposite side".Trans may refer to:- Science and technology :* Cis-trans isomerism, in chemistry, a form of stereoisomerism...
woman who was arrested and brutalized by NYCHA police.
As part of a broader anti-violence and anti-oppression
Anti-oppressive practice
Anti-oppressive practice is an anti-oppressive social work practice theory. It seeks to acknowledge oppression in societies, economies, cultures & groups and aiming social work to remove or negate the influence of the oppression.-References:...
approach, the Collective has collaborated with other progressive organizations, including the Rashawn Brazell Memorial Fund, the Third World Within-Peace Action Coalition, Racial Justice 911, Al-Fatiha Foundation
Al-Fatiha Foundation
The Al-Fatiha Foundation is an organization which advances the cause of gay, lesbian, and transgender Muslims. It was founded in 1997 by Faisal Alam, a Pakistani American, and is registered as a nonprofit organization in the United States...
and the American Friends Service Committee
American Friends Service Committee
The American Friends Service Committee is a Religious Society of Friends affiliated organization which works for peace and social justice in the United States and around the world...
, following the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. The Collective's "war against terror meetings" focus on how homophobia and transphobia
Transphobia
Transphobia is a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards transsexualism and transsexual or transgender people, based on the expression of their internal gender...
are a part of the policies of the United States' "war on terror
War on Terror
The War on Terror is a term commonly applied to an international military campaign led by the United States and the United Kingdom with the support of other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as well as non-NATO countries...
". Following the start of the Iraq War in 2003, SOS helped to coordinate Operation Homeland Resistance, civil disobedience protesting the war.
TransJustice
TransJustice is an advocacy organization created by and for transTrans
Trans is a Latin noun or prefix, meaning "across", "beyond" or "on the opposite side".Trans may refer to:- Science and technology :* Cis-trans isomerism, in chemistry, a form of stereoisomerism...
and gender non-conforming
Gender variance
Gender variance, or gender nonconformity, is behaviour or gender expression that does not conform to dominant gender norms of male and female...
people of color. The group focuses on trans-related policies in jobs, housing and health care, including job training programs, resisting transphobic violence, HIV services and trans-sensitive medical services.
Working Group on Immigrant Rights
The Working Group on Immigrant Rights consists of volunteers who are queer people of color born outside of the United States (including Puerto RicoPuerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
). The working group seeks in particular to build the leadership of undocumented immigrants, low-wage workers and trans, two-spirit and gender non-conforming immigrants. Every campaign is required to be relevant to these "priority communities."
The working group seeks to legalize all people within the United States as well as solidifying equal rights regardless of immigration or migration status. The group also places itself within the global justice and peace movements, and acts in solidarity with liberation struggles throughout the world. The working group's members "reject the us/them divide of citizens and foreigners, and are working toward a US foreign policy
Foreign policy
A country's foreign policy, also called the foreign relations policy, consists of self-interest strategies chosen by the state to safeguard its national interests and to achieve its goals within international relations milieu. The approaches are strategically employed to interact with other countries...
rooted in nonviolence
Nonviolence
Nonviolence has two meanings. It can refer, first, to a general philosophy of abstention from violence because of moral or religious principle It can refer to the behaviour of people using nonviolent action Nonviolence has two (closely related) meanings. (1) It can refer, first, to a general...
, fair distribution of resources, and equity. We also recognize that the War on Terrorism
War on Terrorism
The War on Terror is a term commonly applied to an international military campaign led by the United States and the United Kingdom with the support of other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as well as non-NATO countries...
is both a war abroad and a war at home, oppressing our communities in many places at once."
The organization went on record in 2006 as opposing the three-tier "path to legalization" legislation (Senate bill 2611, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act
S. 2611
The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act was a United States Senate bill introduced in the 109th Congress by Sen. Arlen Specter [PA] on April 7, 2006. Co-sponsors, who signed on the same day, were Sen. Hagel [NE], Sen. Martinez [FL], Sen. McCain [AZ], Sen. Kennedy [MA], Sen. Graham [SC], and...
) and guest worker programs, declaring that "full legalization is a nonnegotiable demand."
Finally, the group seeks to increase understanding of transphobia and homophobia within immigrants rights and social justice movements and immigrant communities within New York City.
In 2004, the working group published a report, "Communities at a Crossroads: U.S. Right Wing Policies and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit and Transgender Immigrants of Color in New York City."http://alp.org/whatwedo/organizing/ir/report
GO: Youth Organizing
The GO working group focuses on projects affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, two-spirit, trans, gender non-conforming and queer youth of color. It is open to those 20 years old and under only.Facilities Program
The Audre Lorde Project acts to "build capacity and support the organizational development" of queer people of color organizations by making available the Project's meeting space, office infrastructure and training as well as offering technical assistance, networking and coalition-building opportunities.Staff
As of October 2010, the paid staff of the Audre Lorde Project are as follows:- Collette Carter, Co-Director
- Kris Hayashi, Co-Director
- Chelsea Johnson-Long, Program Coordinator: Organizing (Safe OUTside the System)
- Jovan Sage, Program Coordinator: Membership
- Lolan Sevilla, Program Coordinator: Leaders Roundtable/Program Assistant: Admin and Development
- Mya Laylani Vazquez, Program Associate: Organizing (TransJustice)
- Becca Wisotsky, Program Coordinator: Organizing (3rd Space Support)
Awards
In 2000, then-executive director Joo-Hyun Kang was awarded the Union Square Award from the Fund for the City of New York. In its award, the fund declared the Audre Lorde Project to be "an important cultural and information center in New York City."See also
- Audre LordeAudre LordeAudre Lorde was a Caribbean-American writer, poet and activist.-Life:...
- Sylvia Rivera Law ProjectSylvia Rivera Law ProjectThe Sylvia Rivera Law Project is a legal aid organization based in New York City that serves transgender, intersex and gender non-conforming people. The organization was formed in August 2002 by attorney and transgender civil rights activist, Dean Spade...
- Teaching for social justiceTeaching for social justiceTeaching for social justice is an educational philosophy designed to promote socioeconomic equality in the learning environment and instill these values in students. Educators may employ social justice instruction to promote unity on campus, as well as mitigate boundaries to the general curriculum...
- Black Radical CongressBlack Radical CongressThe Black Radical Congress or BRC is an organization founded in 1998 in Chicago. It is a grassroots network of individuals and organizations of African descent focused on advocating for broad progressive social justice, racial equality and economic justice goals within the United States.-History:At...
- Critical ResistanceCritical ResistanceCritical Resistance is a national, member-based grassroots organization that works to build a mass movement to dismantle the prison-industrial complex...
- The New York Foundation
External links
- Audre Lorde Project website
- Profile of then-executive director Joo-Hyun Kang, CurveCurve (magazine)Curve is a lesbian magazine in the United States. It covers news, politics, social issues, and includes celebrity interviews and stories on entertainment, pop culture, style, travel, and a website that hosts an internet forum focusing on lesbian issues, active since 2000.The magazine was first...
magazine