Community Highlights
We have had the pleasure of creating and hosting many projects with our community! Here are some of the standouts from the last few years.
Pen Pal Program
In 2020 and 2021 Alphabet Alliance of Color launched the Written in the Stars Pen Pal Program in partnership with Black and Pink Seattle/Tacoma!
This program was suggested to us by a local Black elder as a creative way to connect Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (QTBIPOC) community members intergenerationally. We lovingly took this idea and ran, not only as a way to intergenerationally connect our communities, but also as a way to move away from computer and cell phone screens, as so many of us are fatigued.
We partnered with Black and Pink Seattle-Tacoma, because too often our incarcerated community members are forgotten, erased, and left out. There is so much knowledge, faith, and love held within prison walls. Pen pals received 10 pieces of specially designed stationary, 10 envelopes, a sheet of stamps, and info about their pen pal, and some guidance about how to interact.
Though this program has come to an end, we aim to continue to support intergenerational connections and to support our incarcerated community members.
Art: Avery Osajima
Policy Report
As Two-Spirit, Gender Diverse, Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, People of Color (2SGDQTBIPOC), we have experience and wisdom that can help improve conditions for everyone living within King County. In 2018-19, AAoC conducted a video project to help identify the strengths and disparities in our King County and Seattle community via a transformative process of collective storytelling and healing. We interviewed 72 2SGDQTBIPOC in our community. The result is a collective advocacy and policy platform done with radical imagination, but also an experience of interconnectedness and healing for ourselves, our ancestors, and future ancestors.
In this time of a global pandemic and uprisings to support Black lives, the outcomes of our video project are more pertinent than ever. From the 2SGDQTBIPOC interviewed, we have identified five overall areas of policy and community based change needed in Seattle to enhance identity, personal power, safety, and institutional, community-based, and interpersoer, safety, and institutional, community-based, and interpersonal support systems:
Visibility & Affirmation
Safety, Transformative & Healing Justice
Economic Justice
Health, Mental Health & Healing Access
Political Power
QTBIPOC COVID19 Community Care Workshops
In late 2020, we hosted a series of workshops to support our community in building care for ourselves and each other in the face of COVID-19. These workshops were focused in collective living situations and in the wider community, including incarcerated folks and those in recovery.
Care Webs
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Focused on building skills to care for each other sustainably outside of the medical-industrial complex, we mapped what allows us to ask for and give care well, and how ableism, racism, capitalism and sexism complicate who feels worthy of care and who is expected to care. We looked at examples of how people create care webs for disability, chronic illness, or mental health needs, and accessed some tools we can use to create a sustainable and just care economy. And, we dreamed what abundant care can look like in our lives and communities.
Care in Collective Living
The House of Jupiter
During this three workshop series, participants got to know the House of Jupiter and hear about how they have navigated COVID-19 while living together. Folks were able to reflect on their own housing situations, mapped their needs and relative wellness, and gained tools and resources to navigate household tensions. Participants also made an herbal remedy together and learned about how to plug into mutual aid efforts.
Collective Care with the Noirs
The Royal House of Noir
This ballroom house came together to discuss family past, present, and future; ballroom basics; and an overview of ballroom history, particularly in the PNW. Over three workshops, they discussed how houses have come together to support each other during COVID19, and offered movement based practices to care for your body at home.
Impact of COVID19 On QTBIPOC Incarcerated Folks
The Womxn’s Village
This event featured Shajuanda Tate, Ly Dararoth, Autumn, Kewee Hamilton, and Adrianna Taylor, who spoke on the prison industrial complex, mass incarceration, and how incarcerated QTBIPOC folks have been impacted by COVID-19. They also spoke about local prisoner support, solidarity, and abolition projects, including offering suggestions for communicating with folks inside.
QTBIPOC Recovery
La Espiritista & Carolyn Collado
La Espiritista (@iamgoddexx) and Carolyn Collado (@recoveryfortherevolution), founder of Recovery for the Revolution, co-facilitated a harm-reduction centered workshop for those in the QTBIPOC community interested in recovery from any form of addiction, abuse, or dependence. Both La Espiritista and Carolyn shared pieces of their personal journeys around recovery and offered their perspectives around harm-reduction, including recommendations on moving towards a more decolonial recovery.
The COVID-19 Vaccine: What QTBIPOC & QTPOC Need to Know
Ro Yoon & Heather Brand MSN, MPH
A moderated discussion with a local QTPOC researcher Ro Yoon (Fred Hutch Vaccine Trials and Community Engagement; she/her) and QTPOC clinician, Heather Brand (APRN, MSN,MPH; they/them), the event included an update on coronavirus and its mutant strains, vaccine development and safety, community representation in clinical trials, and vaccine hesitancy and access.
