Literally! Gender Justice LA Dignity and Justice Campaign's Theatre of the Oppressed program was on tour! For most of us, this was our first time at the Philadelphia Trans Health Conference and the Allied Media Conference. For some of us, this was our first time on a plane and on the East Coast!
In our workshops, we discussed community-based responses to violence using images, machines, and Forum Theatre. In our images, we invited participants to show different experiences with the police state and the prison system as low-income trans* folks of color and allies, as well as resilient resistant responses that our people are making happen every day. Our Forum Theatre piece (featuring Yoyo, Jovan, Mitali, Alette, Julianne, Ezak, Chella and Shruti) was developed by sewing together many individual experiences of interacting with our broader community, hospitals, and LGBT non-profits, inviting audience members to practice making interventions in these different settings. We had amazing feedback from our three workshops-- one person's evaluation even said that this was the best workshop they had ever been to!
To keep building our ongoing movement, some of our group members made a stop in New York City to visit Audre Lorde Project, Fierce!, and Sylvia Rivera Law Project. It felt important to build and exchange with organizations on a similar political wavelength to address experiences of trans and queer people of color within police and prison systems.
We came back with our brains and hearts full, and all the more motivation to keep going! Join us for our report back at the next GJLA monthly membership meeting:
Full conference report back
Monthly membership meeting
For more info, contact Ezak.