well, it looks like i spoke too soon about where i'm off to next. i was really fixed on Philadelphia and doing union organizing there, but i had a number of experiences that changed my mind. basically over the past year i have become increasingly radicalized about queer politics. one of the results was that i began rethinking my relationships (personal and organizational) and challenging folks on these issues. the response, in most cases, was...well, let's just say it was less than i had expected from radical folks and groups. i encountered liberal apologetics and tokenism, outright bigotry, and a shitload of silence. and despite the fact that i had read about these things in histories of social movements, i never thought that my friends and associations were going to let things go down like that. well, a few folks confirmed this belief, but most proved it at least over idealistic.
i had hoped that a general commitment to social change and to friendship would be enough to motivate people and organizations to take queer struggles seriously. what i learned, the hard way, was that it is not enough. and so i've come to the conclusion that i need to make my primary political and personal relationships to other people who have made radical political commitments to class, race, queer, and gender struggles equally. i can be part of organizations and relate to folks who have yet to take these steps, but i can't make them my community or my political home.
now, i've been looking for a radical queer organization for my entire life because i've been looking for a community where i wasn't "the only one". but i began making this a serious priority of mine back in 2005 (around the time i was coming out to my family). alas, alas, i never found anything that fit. but about a month ago now i found this group in Durham, NC called Southerners on New Ground (SONG).
as they describe themselves on their website:
when i read this i was ecstatic! for the past year or so i've been convinced of the centrality of political organizing in the US South, but i've had trouble moving from the northern organizing community to the southern one. and here was this group both queer AND southern!! so i started to think seriously about moving to Durham. after all, the union work, while offering exciting labor organizing opportunities, didn't have a strong position on queer issues or a Southern organizing strategy.
Southerners On New Ground (SONG) was founded in order to advance Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer multi-racial, multi-issued education and organizing capable of combating the Right’s strategies of fragmentation and division. SONG’s vision of a broad social and economic justice movement across the South, its mission to help build and strengthen that movement, and its strategy of multi-issue organizing remain as relevant, if not more relevant, today as when SONG was founded. SONG came out of conversations of Black and white southern lesbian leaders in 1993, each a long time activist on a broad range of issues, addressed deep concerns about the gains of the far right based on vicious divide and conquer tactics, particularly along fault lines of race, class and sexuality. They also expressed their hopes for helping build a broad social justice and civil rights movement where people and issues were connected and activists could bring their full selves to the organizing work.
i had been looking at Durham for awhile now. i had been attending seminars at this community org called El Kilombo Intergaláctica and it seemed that all the cool folks i met either lived there or were trying to move there. (example: i met this gorgeous guy when i was working concessions at a concert. he was wearing a subcomandante Marcos shirt and we hung out a few times. unfortunately he's str8 & spoken for, but he was moving to Durham because of the racism in Chapel Hill).
the area of NC that i live in is called the Triangle. it's composed of Raleigh, Durham, & Chapel Hill. each city has it's own major university and its own culture. Chapel Hill is a city that is organized around the University of NC, a rather elite public university, giving the town the sense of being a giant college campus (i.e. white, liberal, with the feeling that it's somewhat suspended outside reality). Raleigh is the state capital, with government and businesses being the central aspects of the city's culture. finally, Durham is home to Duke University, a private elite college. the unique thing about Durham is that the actual city is majority Black and working-class. it's a bit like Harlem, with Columbia privelege smack in the middle of POC poverty.
down here folks talk about Durham as if just walking outside will get you shot. but the city is vibrant with a POC queer culture, a community organizing tradition, and is a hell of a lot more attractive to me than Raleigh. i've even found a Black cultural organization that teaches African dance.
so i've decided to move to the local get-down spot: Durham, NC.
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