One week till liftoff

I've never stayed in The City (as my East Coast friends at Oberlin call it), but all that changes in a week and a day. Plane tickets, tentative couches to sleep on, and a project are all set. Now all I have to do is brainstorm thank-you gifts for my hosts and figure out the mundane details, like subway stops. Subway stops are going to be a problem for me.

Thanks to my friend and queer activist/community organizer extraordinaire, I'm going to be working with Queers for Economic Justice. I'm with QEJ that there are issues not addressed enough by our country's largest and most visible LGBTQ rights organizations now, which focus largely on same-sex marriage. Marriage -- which I agree is a right all Americans should have regardless of sexual orientation -- isn't everyone's issue. For instance, it may not be that important to the transgender person experiencing violence in a prejudiced shelter system. LGBTQ people in safe situations - myself included - campaign for same-sex marriage because it is the one of the last rights we feel we have not obtained. This is not the truth. I'm excited to work with QEJ because they focus on the facets of homophobia and violence that have fallen through the cracks. For instance, QEJ works with shelter systems to let that transgender person decide to reside with men or women's section, based on where he/she/zie feels the safest. These are the kind of stories that the mainstream media can't cover with pictures of white, upper-middle class men or women kissing outside the mayor's office.

My stories/thoughts/theories during January will be here. I'm a naive 18-year-old from Ann Arbor, MI, and I am sure my brief tenure with QEJ - and New York City - will challenge me to think a lot about life, activism and community. Here's to 2010.