What We Do
Taking B(l)ack Pride is an event and a fiscally sponsored collective. We address the systemic isolation and displacement faced by our community as a result of their sexual and gender identities.
Connection
We believe in the absolute importance of our event and our collective to community. We have seen and heard testimonies of people who were otherwise feeling disconnected and disenfranchised in Seattle for the past 3 years due to COVID, and growing worries about job security, food insecurities, health, mental health and a lack of capacity to take care of themselves in the ways that they wanted and deserved, along with a disinterest in traditionally white centered Pride events.
Food & Entertainment
We seek to create a space that highlights some of our inter-community/inter-cultural similarities. Food and entertainment is often a way many of us in our own ethnic cultures as BIPOC show love, and care for the people in our lives. We bond over food, laughter and entertainment, so we want to really recreate a sense of family with our community.
Paying queer and trans performers
We are honored to be able to create opportunities for folks within our community to take part in planning and outreach for this event. Creating jobs and helping queer and trans performers maintain their financial stability, in not only hiring them for the event, but paying them what they are worth, was and is one of our continued goals.
Mental & Physical Health Care
We believe deeply in the wellbeing of our people. To this end, we want to make health care more accessible to our communities through offering HIV/AIDS care, safer sex supplies, harm reduction materials and HRT injection supplies, and COVID response.
Community Care
We create spaces for our community to take care of themselves and each other: opportunities to be held with bodywork and energywork, foot washing and soaking, and plenty of ways to cool down in the heat.
Building Power
Most of all, as this event progresses and grows we continue to build and share skills amongst ourselves to build collective power. Which is the key to collective liberation. While we know that our event will not solve every issue within our community, however we have seen the positive impact on the wellbeing of our community as we move through a time that is very difficult for us all.
Our Mission
We seek to empower the BIPOC transgender, queer and gender diverse communities to take charge of the ways we own our joy, grief, healing, anger, celebration, pride, expression of culture and community. We create opportunities for our community to collectively and intimately take part in celebration of the complexities of BIPOC QT experiences and culture.
Our Story
Our goal was to create a Pride space for BIPOC Trans & Queer folks in Seattle & surrounding areas.
We are all local organizers who participated in the historic BLM protests protests and marches in Seattle; both in and out of the CHOP/CHAZ area. Within all of that we did not see representation reflective of our transgender & gender diverse communities nor representation of folks who are the collective boots on the ground in our communities the other 250 days of the year.
We saw long time trans, gender diverse & queer BIPOC organizers (who actively organize related to the issues our communities face in relation to race, gender & sexual orientation) pushed to the side in favor of flashy opportunists looking for 15 mins of fame, & people who both intentionally and unintentionally undermined the work, priorities, & spaces created by BIPOC trans, gender diverse & queer organizers.
Additionally, there were also folks who have historically not cared about Black LGBTQ folks within our own community being uplifted as “Black Leaders” and collective mouthpieces for our whole community. However, we knew and saw that their goals and agendas would never address or align with the needs and issues present within the Black LGBTQ community, in overwhelming favor of the needs and issues present within the context of cis het normativity. We also know that as such, Black people are not a monolith and that our needs can be varying when discussing and addressing lived experience and intersectional identities.
We saw that conversations regarding collective liberation for Black people, paid no attention to our lived experiences and intersectional identities and WE WERE TIRED.
As such, with Pride month upon us, we sought to create a space where we could regroup, rest, heal, find familiar faces, build community, strategize, find moments of joy, love, compassion, and bask in the fighting spirit of pride as dictated by the historic contribution to the very intention of Pride by our Transcestors, Marsha P Johnson, & Silvia Rivera.
We also know that contrary to the common framework of their contributions, that Black and Brown trans women and folks were often thrown under the bus by white LGBTQ organizers. We know that our fight for pride wasn’t necessarily in the incident at Stonewall, but the creation of complex mutual aid networks, and chosen family systems as seen in ballroom culture, in storming stages in critique of mainstream cis, white gay LGBQ culture (as Sylvia Riveria did at the 1973 NYC Christoper Street Liberation Parade).
We looked at the overwhelmingly white and gay Pride enterprise in Seattle and all over the US that exploits the talents and contributions of Black and Brown LGBTQ folks, and knew that we wanted to opt out.
We also desperately needed a space to collectively grieve for our fallen; 2020 became one of the deadliest years for the trans and gender diverse community; especially for Black Transgender women and Trans Women of Color with 44 lives ripped away from us in total (2021 surpassed that at 47). Worldwide, 2021 was the deadliest year for trans people with over 375 killed.
We were memorializing our sisters and siblings often, both within the Seattle community (with the passing of Constance Blakeley, and LL Gimeno) as well as outside Seattle.
With the pandemic and the sheer amount of death and isolation present in our lives at the time, we felt that we just needed something else. We also wanted to root ourselves in the other parts of the “trans” story, which is that we are people. We seek love, companionship, family, fun, & laughter. We are nerdy, silly, goofy, serious, not serious enough, professionals, educated formally, educated informally, and the list goes on.
We are dynamic and different, and complex.
We found a space that acknowledges the whole of who we are as a community and as individuals in the creation of Taking B(l)ack Pride.
Find all the articles linked above, and more, on our Learn page.
Why Reparations?
The idea of reparations is central to our event: we want our event to be as sustainable and accessible to our community as possible.
Gentrification
Many BIPOC folks in Seattle and around the US are facing gentrification, forcing them out of communities they were historically redlined into. Areas like the Central District (TBP 2021), Beacon Hill (TBP 2020), Columbia City and Rainier Beach are being swallowed by tech workers and other transplants looking for affordable living. Meanwhile, long-time residents of these areas are being priced out and criminalized in the neighborhoods that generations of their families and friends have called home. Displacement has hit the BIPOC queer and trans community in Seattle particularly hard, including members of our organizing team.
Offsetting Costs
It was important for us to have this event in Seattle where most of us live and have deep roots, memories and families. In reimagining the forms community/grassroots reparations efforts could take, we decided to encourage white allies, supporters and accomplices to pay reparations. These funds offset the costs of our event, pay performers what they are worth, and keep the event financially accessible to the community that we belong to.
We have been absolutely blown away by the love and positive and supportive response to this event, and to our reparations model, by both BIPOC folks and White folks. With the support of folks who understand the importance of BIPOC only spaces, we’ve been able to sustain an amazing event with funds left over to plan the next year’s event for the past 2 years.
Black Spaces
We are deeply appreciative of all of those who support us, as well as those who do not; all give us the motivation to continue doing the work that we do and highlight the incredible need for spaces we can call our own.
Too often we create spaces for ourselves, and find those spaces inundated by well-intentioned (and not so well-intentioned) white folks who do not immediately understand the importance of having spaces where we can be free of the confines of caretaking their comfort, code switching, or enduring stereotypical characterizations or pathologizing judgements.
The criticism of this event being indicative of reverse racism (which by the way doesn’t exist) absolutely highlights the fact that there are folks who, as beneficiaries of white supremacy, believe they are entitled to ALL spaces, and that the goal of EVERY space should be to make sure they are as comfortable as possible in those spaces.
BIPOC trans folks have not historically had the same luxury—so our event is truly an act of rebellion and rejection of the status quo: we must allow, and be ok with, what we do being policed and dictated by people who do not share our values, cultures, experiences, and clearly do not have our healing at heart.
At Taking B(l)ack Pride we are in charge of the ways we own our joy, grief, healing, anger, celebration, pride, expression of culture and community, and tasked with intimately designing the criteria for all of it, with US in mind.
White Accomplices
We fuel this design with the donations of willing and supportive allied white community members. We do not see the issue, but believe that folks are probably upset that there are white folks that exist who absolutely see the necessity of spaces like ours. These supporters see it as a personal responsibility to make sure that our communities have what they need, to take a 10 hr break, even if on a small scale.
To those upset at our methods and our goals we offer two quotes:
“Those who benefit from oppression can’t set the agenda for liberation because they will always choose their comfort and power over other’s humanity and justice.” — Dante Stewart
“How you hating’ from outside the club, when you can’t even get in?” — Chris Brown
Find all the articles linked above, and more, on our Learn page.
Meet the Core Organizers
Mattie
(They/Them)
Mattie is a proud Liberian/Grebo, parent, trouble maker for social change, & local Trans Health expert, educator, and organizer. They are also co-founder of Trans Women of Color Solidarity Network. They played a central role in creating and passing SB5313 (Gender Affirming Treatment Act 2021) along with other trans and allied organizers, law and policy makers. In their work they continue to advocate and organize to create accessibility, reduce, and eliminate barriers for the Washington State trans and gender diverse community accessing gender affirming care. Their current work focuses on the elimination of BMI limits on gender affirming surgical procedures. They believe that Taking B(l)ack Pride is a magical event because of the ways that it centers the mental health and wellness of Black and Brown trans and queer folks which is especially important due to the isolation, and feelings or anxiety and depression that the pandemic has exacerbated. They hope that they can continue to bring TBP to life for as long as Seattle will have it! In the meantime you can catch Mattie dreaming of getting a tan at the beach while catching up on some reading.
Evana
(They/Them)
Evana is a core member of Queer The Land (QTL), a QTBIPOC advocate and affordable housing organizer. Evana leads the housing circle in QTL, nurturing the dreams of QTBIPOC of building a home and safe community space. Their passion is not only working on unique housing strategies but also finding ways to combat the mental aspect of displacement and gentrification. Evana has also worked for the City of Seattle in the Parks Department for 8 years, working as a recreation attendant, event scheduler, and assistant coordinator. Evana is a featured organizer in the book Nourish, a collection of short stories, photos, and recipes from 10 local Seattle organizers. Evana is a part of the Bill and Melinda Gates 100 Changemakers Project with a permanent plaque in the Discovery Center. Evana participated in the entire legal process of purchasing Queer the Land’s new 12-bedroom home in Beacon Hill, Seattle. Evana is a proud Houston native and currently lives in the south end of Seattle. Evana has over 100 plants and is a collector of unique carnivorous and rare plants.
Renata
(She/Her)
Renata Bobata is comical tough guy and advocate for homeless services and community builder. She has worked in social services in the greater Seattle area for almost a decade and remains unimpressed. She strives to find and build spaces of joy and laughter in community.
Lourdez
(They/Them)
Lourdez is a parent, artist, and organizer. They are a co-founding member of Trans Women of Color Solidarity Network. QTBIPOC healing and liberation guides and centers all their work.
Former Organizers
Momma Nikki
(They/He/She)
Momma Nikki, is a Non-Binary Haitian Artist who wants to keep Queer & Trans BlPOC at the center of their work. They are one of curators for Legendary Children and an artist mentor with a local non profit. They produced their first documentary in 2017 and is currently working on some local film projects. Their band, Holy Pistola, has been quietly dropping singles over Covid and has plans to release some solo music later this year. If they aren’t in the studio creating music or editing film, they are imagining new ways to make safe spaces for Queer/NB/Trans folk, sex workers, and non conforming artists. Taking Black Pride is just the beginning of creating safe spaces on a grand scale.