March 25-27 was Swarthmore’s annual Queer and Trans Conference. I was a part of the planning committee and also did some work with the artists’ collective I started (Zero Hour Artists’ Collective) to make advertisements and decorations for some of the events. This year our goal was to really integrate the Philadelphia community (more proactively) into our discussion of the theme, “Envisioning Queer Futures.” We had a really great skillshare dinner to which we invited queer and non-queer groups from Philly to come and present as well as to network and talk about the theme of our conference. Back in the summer hotpot! members expressed excitement about bringing Mia Mingus and Stacey Milbern to speak with us and it happened at this conference.
I think the conference was an overwhelming success and I was so excited to be a part of it. I learned so much from the talks and was inspired to do more in the groups that I’m already a part of.One of the biggest ways I helped was by coordinating a skype-in talk with Mia Mingus and Stacey Milbern, called “To the Other Side of Dreaming: Building Home as Disabled Queer Women of Color.” Check out their website here: http://dreaminghome.tumblr.com/ Not only is the work that they do incredible, but the two of them were such great speakers and amazingly inspiring! Here are some quotes from their talk:
“Interdependency is key to our liberation”
“I make sure I don’t take things out through (emotionally) ableism.”
“We need to acknowledge that we all have needs and that we can help each other.”
“We’re reclaiming what home could be.”
“Society says that valuable work means you work 80 hours a week…we need to redefine what it means to do healthy organizing.”
“NPOs today don’t cultivate care!”
“People are either respectfully distant or extremely intimate. We need to find a happy medium.”
“Holding a loving horizontal line so that you can bring people with you.”
“Where is the line between struggle and harm?”
“We can’t even remember what trauma is!”
“Infrastructure that’s community-based.”
by Miyuki
hotpot! Philly 