Voices
Though I had my mom with me on our crew of activists, Soulforce’s action at the women’s Final Four basketball game this weekend was one of the more daunting in my dozen years of direct action organizing. From the moment we entered the arena, police crowded us, grilled us with questions, monitored us from above,…
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I am not oppressed, I am not a victim—I thrive, I rise, I am. A few months ago, I participated at an organization’s Board of Directors meeting. It was an intense gathering where we were all challenged to stretch beyond our comfort zones and look at how each of us participates in anti-oppression work and in…
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As my boyfriend Chris and I were walking down the stairs to the subway train platform to head to Sunday morning service at Riverside Church, I spotted it. That unmistakable fire engine red, poorly designed, ill-fitting cap that has become an emblem for all things sexist, racist, xenophobic, and anti-Muslim. We were still a ways…
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Hearing Rev. Dr. David P. Gushee speak at The Reformation Project’s 2014 National Conference remains one of the more powerful experiences I have had in my time with our organization. I, a Venezuelan immigrant, sat in the front pew as he spoke a convicting and prophetic word. This word made me weep for my adoptive…
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Last month, my column focused on the importance of intersectionality within the LGBTQ movement by highlighting the revolutionary work of Sojourner Truth, an escaped slave, abolitionist, and women’s rights activist. I’d like to continue to press the importance of intersectionality, particularly given our current political state. Of late, I’ve received a little criticism that some…
Read MoreEditor’s Note: Today, the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice made it clear that they will not uphold guidelines designed to help schools support transgender students. Our faith tells us trans students deserve to be treated with dignity and respect—this includes the ability to use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond with who they are.…
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Trigger Warning: discussions of pedophilia and child abuse For Milo Yiannopoulos—vulgarian, alt-right’s telegenic token gay and Breitbart’s polemical senior editor—his last appearance on a national stage may have finally come. And, the bridge too far for even his audience wasn’t Yiannopoulos’s misogyny, xenophobia, racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia or homophobia, to name a few, but rather his…
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I’ve long held that feminism, in order to be true and engaged and practical, must be intersectional. Such is also the case, I believe, for LGBTQ rights. The work of justice for queer people must also include justice for other marginalized groups. Because many LGBTQ people are also women, people of color, people with disabilities,…
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Every morning I wake up and I try to work for a better, more just world. I am a faith organizer for Reconciling Ministries Network. It is my job to spend each day working with people a little bit each day to do justice, and to push for a world where everyone has enough, where…
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