 On day 6 of #TransLoveNov, I send my love to Asher Kolieboi, the first person I think of as someone who challenges faith and spiritual workers to show up as healers and advocates. He's worked with a half a dozen different progressive organizations, is a university chaplain at Johns Hopkins, co-organized the 2010 Soulforce Equality Ride, co-founded Legalize Trans, and launched (un)heard: Transmasculine People of Color Speak! It's anyone's guess what he'll do next. Oh, he was at Ferguson too and is about to get officially ordained with the United Church of Christ.
With love and in solidarity #TransLoveNov
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 Miss Major Griffin-Gracy is a living legend, so I could not go this week without sending her some mad love. She was at the 1969 Stonewall Riots and became politicized while in prison. Miss Major only recently retired from being the Executive Director of the Transgender, Gender Variant & Intersex Justice Project, leaving it in the very capable hands of Janetta Johnson. Miss Major's legacy is now a documentary film called MAJOR!
With love and in solidarity #TransLoveNov  On day 4, I send my love to Chase Strangio, an attorney with the ACLU’s LGBT & AIDS Project, who advocates for and with incarcerated trans and gender nonconforming people. He represented TGNC folks when he worked at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, and founded the Lorena Borjas Community Fund for bond assistance to LGBTQ immigrants. Chase also writes a bunch of smart things, so I follow him on Twitter.
With love and in solidarity. #TransLoveNov  On the third day of #TransLoveNov, I send my love to CeCe McDonald, who took her experience of an unjust incarceration for defending herself against racist and transphobic violence and put it into prison abolition work. Her story is immortalized in the documentary FREE CECE! produced by none other than Laverne Cox.
With love and in solidarity. #TransLoveNov  Photo by Paolo Jara-Riveros Today I want to send my love to Bamby Salcedo, nationally and internationally recognized activist, advocate, community organizer and social justice advocate and professional. Bamby initiated the TransLives Matter National Day of Action, and organizes and works for the trans community, immigration, HIV, youth, incarceration, and Latinx communities. Learn more about and support the organization she leads, the TransLatina Coalition.
With love and in solidarity #TransLoveNov  The first week of #TransLoveNov goes to activists. On the first day, I want to send my love and gratitude to the original inhabitants of this land and all those at Standing Rock, putting their bodies and livelihoods on the line to protect our water. I want to especially lift up those at the Two Spirit Camp for protecting our water and for the daily work of decolonizing gender and sexuality.
Support them here and here and here. With love and in solidarity. #TransLoveNov  Since 1999, November 20th has been the day we remember and mourn the trans and gender nonconforming people we have lost - that we know of - since the previous Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR). In many places, including college campuses, TDOR is the only time when trans people seem to matter or even exist, ultimately reminding us - especially trans women of color - that we only seem to rise to people's consciousness AFTER our demise. Some have resisted this by moving towards a trans awareness week or even month to engage with us in a different way.
Today, I'm making a choice to engage with my trans peoples in a different way for the month of November. Each day during this month I will share a different post that is centered in love. I'm starting it off with the picture above, which I took about a week ago. The button in the center - gifted to me from someone very special - reminds me/us that there is no revolution without love and to thus do revolutionary work with and for love. Around the button are prayer beads that my sister gave me, made up of 21 evil eye ornaments, meant to ward off evil. So I surround revolutionary love with my ancestors' protection, connecting them in our connected and ongoing work of liberation. The posts in November will be broken into a series of four weeks. The first week will celebrate and honor trans activists, the second will highlight various trans cultural producers, followed by a week of personal shout outs to kin, and wrapping up with a week of trans contributions/works. There are way more people and contributions than any single month could possibly contain, but I wanted to start somewhere. Feel free to join me using the hashtag: #TransLoveNov With love and in solidarity. The cover of the latest issue of NASPA's Leadership Exchange caught my attention. It was a simple black background with the words "DISCOURSE or DISRUPTION" boldy and colorfully across it (pictured below). Given the temporal context of student activism across the U.S., I rightfully assumed this title was in reference to an article in the issue about campus protests. However, the false binary that the title suggested got under my skin, so I quickly went to the article inside. That binary and a particular suggestion that the authors shared about educating student activists about "time, place, and manner" pushed me towards a short twitter rant.  In reflecting on the questions posed of "how will higher education (the field, campuses, and individuals within both) respond - or not respond to A Vision for Black Lives? How do YOU want or will show up?" it is imperative that non-Black folks reflect on the anti-Blackness we've grown up with and internalized. Thus, it is my honor to re-publish, with permission, Dr. Liza Talusan's recent blog post entitled "I admit. I grew up anti-Black." Thank you Liza for your words and your willingness to engage with the world around you authentically.
If you've got some thoughts to share and willing to see it posted on this blog, send your submission and a little bit about yourself to [email protected] with the subject line "Moving the Vision Forward". Any type of submission is welcome, poetry, musings, open letters, etc. that are reflective in essence.  After putting out my post on some books by TGNC writers to check out, I had the pleasure of getting sent another book to read for myself. This was H. Melt's collection of short poems and essays documenting some of Chicago's queer and trans spaces and artists from their perspective. I recommend this quick, but not necessarily easy (as it is chokefull of emotions) read and here I offer some thoughts as to why. Thank you for writing and sending this to me H.
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