Fund Queer and Trans Liberation

Pride this year is bittersweet for Black & Pink National. 

We are proud of our identities as queer people. But we recognize the countercultural and revolutionary meaning of the word “queer.” To be queer is to live in direct opposition to racist white cis heteropatriarchy and the destruction it wages. Yes, we are proud to be queer. But our queerness is rooted in protest. And our protest, in our queerness. 

During a time of erasure, violence and active hate, we return to the abolitionist root of our organization. We seek to build a work without prisons. We seek a world where we all are free. 

We build our programming from a space of community need but also out of recognition that queer and trans people need and deserve alternative structures. We've watched over the last few months as states try to eradicate trans people. We will not stand for this and we fight by continuing to create our own spaces, both literally and figuratively.

Building systems outside the system brings us closer and closer to full abolition of the Prison Industrial Complex and all of its harms. Many corporate and foundation funders struggle to see the vision of our work. It can be hard to imagine hopeful work like ours when there is so little programming like it. 

Our Sex Worker Liberation Program recognizes the labor and talent required to do sex work and the lack of structural support for it. We build collaboratively with workers for safety and for success. Our support services programs meet people where they are to give them what they need most, establishing structural safety through housing, gender-affirming care and other essentials. Lydon House serves as a space of respite and healing for those who have recently left prisons. Our PenPal and newsletter program serve as lifelines of support to those currently inside the belly of the beast. And we've continued to co-create groundbreaking research, including our recent collaboration, Protected and Served?, a survey of LGBTQ+ people and people living with HIV. 

Black and Pink provides food to those who need it and safe spaces to sleep. We help our members complete their job search or find a gender affirming doctor. We bail people out of prisons and give them money when no one else will. We show up again and again because we believe that it is community care like this that builds a world without carceral harm. And we can only show up because of people like you, who care so very much. 

Please consider a donation. In the name of hope, of pride, of protest, of liberation. We can only build the world of our dreams with visionaries and supporters like you by our side.