Spaces And Resources For Queer And Trans People Of Color To Grieve, Process, And Heal After The Orlando Pulse Shooting

Dear one,

We love you. Really. Really really. Dear precious gift to the world, thank you for being alive. Thank you for living.

Peacock is hosting a drop-in space in Oakland on Saturday 6/18 from 1pm-3:30pm, for queer and trans people of color to come make art, build an altar, cry, dance, access QTPOC counselors fluent in English and Spanish, and just be together.

More info in English and in Spanish here: 
https://www.facebook.com/events/638322992982478/

QTPOC Space to Grieve, Make Art
Saturday 6/18
1pm-3:30pm
Liberating Ourselves Locally (LOL) - 1234 23rd @ E. 14th (International Blvd)., OAKLAND

Meanwhile: Check out the resource list below. (Some of the links are Bay Area -specific.)

If you are a queer/trans Puerto Rican/Boricuex/Latinx and/or in the Arab/African/Middle Eastern/Muslim/South Asian community, we're sending extra love and tenderness your way as you mourn, both now and in the future, as those in power keep trying to tokenize, co-opt, control, use, and turn us against each other to further the agendas of white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, and empire.

Thank you to all the queer and trans people of color who have created public vigils, spaces to make art, altars and moments to grieve at events, and who have asserted that, because queer and trans communities of color are most-impacted by this, it is critical and urgent to listen to and take direction from the leadership of queer and trans communities of color--especially queer and trans Puerto Rican and queer and trans Muslim communities.

Some resources for holding, processing, and healing are below.

Sending much love and wishes for healing, for everyone.

<3 <3
Peacock Rebellion

Some of the many community events in the Bay for the week of 6/13-6/19:

Monday 6/13 - LQBTQ Healing & Metta
Tuesday 6/14 - Spectrum Queer Media's Oakland Queer Open Mic
Tuesday 6/14 - East Bay Meditation Center's Alphabet Sangha
Thursday 6/16 - Contigo - A queer latinx fundraiser for fam in Orlando
Thursday 6/16 - Taboo - Spectrum Queer Media's monthly QTPOC affinity group
Thursday 6/16 - East Bay Meditation Center's People of Color Sangha
Friday 6/17 - A Queer + Trans POC Encuentro: Holistic Healing, Community, and Self-Care
Friday 6/17 - Oraciones Para Orlando 
Friday 6/17 - Queer Qumbia - benefit for Bloom: Transgender Community Healing Project
Saturday 6/18 - Peacock Rebellion - QTPOC-only Space to Grieve, Make Art
Saturday 6/18 - Pulso del Amor Continúa
Sunday 6/19 - A Free QTPOC Day Party

Many other events to join community at this month:
Peacock's QTPOC Pride Event Guide

Spaces welcoming queer and trans folks to come stop by:

Qulture Collective -open Monday thru Friday, 8a-4p. All queer-run, mostly QTPOC. Co-working, small cafe space, gallery.
Four Elements Fitness - All classes are free through 6/18; check the class schedule.

Hotlines:

Trans Lifeline: 877-565-8860
GLBT National Hotline: 888-843-4564
National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs: 212-714-1141 (English and Spanish)
GLBT National Youth Talkline: 800-246-7743
DeHQ: LGBTQ Helpline for South Asians: 908-367-3374

QTPOC Counselors:

LGBTQ Psychotherapists of Color - Bay Area
Peacock Rebellion's Low-Cost QTPOC Mental Health Directory - needs to be updated
National Queer and Trans Therapists of Color Network - stay tuned for the launch of the directory
Therapists of Color Referral Share

Health fairs and clinics:
Bloom Transgender Community Healing Project
Healing Clinic Collective

Some self-care strategies:

How to Be Tender in Your Grief While Holding Orlando in Your Heart - Danielle Stevens
Things We've Done to Support Individual and Collective Healing
In the Wake of the Orlando Massacre: 7  Ways I Take Care of Myself During Depressive Episodes - Taylor Steele

Thanks to our board member Ms. Cherry Galette for gathering many of the resources below

Videos, articles and statements centering queer and trans people of color:

Latinx LGBTQ Community & Its Stories of Survival Should Be at Center of Orlando Response - Isa Loyola
American Ugliness: Queer and Trans People of Color Say "Not In Our Names" - Jack Aponte
The Pulse Nightclub Shooting Robbed the Queer Latinx Community of a Sanctuary - Veronica Bayetti Flores
Queer Latinx: Tired of Being Targets - Louie A. Ortiz-Fonseca
It's Not Safe to be a Queer Person of Color in America - Alan Palaez Lopez
It's OK to Let Vulnerability Sink In - Julio Salgado
Responses - Familia Trans Queer Liberation Movement
Do Not Militarize Our Mourning: Orlando and the Ongoing Tragedy Against LGBTSTGNC POC - Audre Lorde Project
Collection of Quotes from Queer Latinx about the Orlando Shooting
Statement from the Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity
From Charleston to Orlando: Reflections on Massacre in a Time of Backlash - elias h. lyles
Queer, Muslim and Unwelcome at the "New Stonewall" - Eman Abdelhadi
Collection of Quotes from LGBTQ Muslims
To My Fellow QTPOC Mourning the Orlando Pulse Shooting: We Need to Love Each Other- Nik Moreno
Only When I'm Dancing Can I Feel This Free - Alfred Soto
In Honor of Our Dead: Latinx, Queer, Trans, Muslim, Black - We Will Be Free / En Honor a Nuestros Muertos: Latinx, Queer, Trans, Musulmanes, Negros - Seremos Libres - Black Lives Matter

A few things you can do right now:
We Fight 2 Live
Pulse Victims Fund

Artist response from Alexis Pauline Gumbs:
Pulse

Artist response from Christopher Soto:

All The Dead Boys Look Like Me
For Orlando

Last time, I saw myself die is when police killed Jessie Hernandez
A 17 year old brown queer, who was sleeping in their car
Yesterday, I saw myself die again. Fifty times I died in Orlando. And
I remember reading, Dr. José Esteban Muñoz before he passed
I was studying at NYU, where he was teaching, where he wrote shit
That made me feel like a queer brown survival was possible. But he didn’t
Survive and now, on the dancefloor, in the restroom, on the news, in my chest
There are another fifty bodies, that look like mine, and are
Dead. And I have been marching for Black Lives and talking about the police brutality
Against Native communities too, for years now, but this morning
I feel it, I really feel it again. How can we imagine ourselves // We being black native
Today, Brown people // How can we imagine ourselves
When All the Dead Boys Look Like Us? Once, I asked my nephew where he wanted
To go to College. What career he would like, as if
The whole world was his for the choosing. Once, he answered me without fearing
Tombstones or cages or the hands from a father. The hands of my lover
Yesterday, praised my whole body. Made the angels from my lips, Ave Maria
Full of Grace. He propped me up like the roof of a cathedral, in NYC
Before, we opened the news and read. And read about people who think two brown queers
Cannot build cathedrals, only cemeteries. And each time we kiss
A funeral plot opens. In the bedroom, I accept his kiss, and I lose my reflection.
I am tired of writing this poem, but I want to say one last word about
Yesterday, my father called. I heard him cry for only the second time in my life
He sounded like he loved me. It’s something I am rarely able to hear.
And I hope, if anything, his sound is what my body remembers first.