Few calls to action have been as powerful in movement building as that of the Combahee River Collective in 1977. The collective, composed of Black feminists who identified as and with the working-class and lesbians, demanded an active commitment “to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression,” seeing as their “particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking.” Decades later, this intersectional politics helped buoy the Movement for Black lives, Black Lives Matter, Black Youth Project 100, and other 21st century campaigns for racial, gender, class, and sexual justice. In celebration of Black History Month, the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, and the boundless, ongoing relevance of the Combahee River Collective’s message, this event brings together key activists working at the intersections of Black and queer politics in New York City.

Panelists:
Kiara St. James, Co-Founder and ED of New York Trans Advocacy Group
Kleaver Cruz, Founder, The Black Joy Project
Jewel Cadet, Community Organizer with Black Youth Project 100

Moderated By: Ayasha Guerin, New York University, Doctoral Candidate, SCA and Urban Democracy Lab Doctoral Fellow in Urban Practice

Note: Our featured image is of Pauli Murray, lawyer, Civil Rights Activist, Episcopal Priest, and (briefly) New Yorker. Murray identified as a lesbian and a recent biographer described her retroactively as “transgender.”

Presented as a part of Gallatin’s Black History Month programming.

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