✨🌈 March 2022 For #TransWeekofVisibility art in partnership with artist, Rommy Torrico. Image features quote from middle school youth from one of our LAUSD workshop!✨ We must stand alongside our Trans Youth. Trans youth across the country deserve our support, our love, our care, and our advocacy. We also must follow Trans youth’s leadership, and vision. They deserve a possible world filled with equity, love, rights, and justice now!! We also kept in mind how Trans visibility has been essential in the ways that it has helped our communities break out of isolation, connect to resources, and build mutual aid strategies that are oftentimes life saving. Our transcestors have fought long and hard for us to get us where we are today and yet we have so much more to do and visibility alone is not enough. Visibility and representation alone will not liberate us. We need policies & system change on all levels, we need our allies and comrades to join our efforts and follow our leadership, we need state allocated funding for trans-led organizations and services. We also need more intersectional movements, we need access to nourishing food, adequate medical care, stable and safe housing, stable income, and for our voices to be heard from reproductive justice to environmental justice to cultural movements. We want our communities to be heard, and not for individuals to be tokenized. We also recognize that Visibility has also come at a price. Oftentimes our communities, in particular Trans youth, BIPOC trans and gender non-conforming, non-binary trans femmes are targets of violence due to transphobia, racism, state violence and femmicide. Beyond this one day #TransDayofVisibility we imagine allyship and solidarity for our Trans community to be an ongoing commitment throughout the year. A better world is possible for Trans communities. A better world is possible for our Trans youth, Trans elders, and all our Trans siblings. [You can download images from this folder, we do ask that you credit Gender Justice LA ( IG @genderjusticela ) and also the artist Rommy Torrico (IG : @Rommyyy123)
ID:1st image a brown youth wearing write pink stripped shirt and jeans is kneeling on the ground as they plant some seeds and flowers. Quote above them
reads: “I can’t wait till Trans people of color in a hundred years are welcomed by all our communities and that we are really truly seen and not set in labels or boundaries and that we are free to flourish”- Trans Youth in 6th grade. Bottom text reads: “Protect Trans Youth. Listen to Trans Youth , Trust Trans Youth, Love Trans Youth, Support Trans Youth”. Colorful flowers in pink and yellow and green surround the bottom image.
ID: 2nd image slide is a pastel color square image with plants and flowers. In the middle reads “Protect Trans Youth”
ID: 3rd image is a similar pastel color square image with plants and gold leafs. In the middle is a quote from a middle school trans youth that reads “My wildest dream is that there is no second thought to who we are. No second thought to the change we are. No second thought to how we dance and shake, to breathe we take. No second thinking in fact, just thought and that’s all”
ID 4th image is a similar pastel color square image with plants and gold leafs. In the middle is a quote from a middle school trans youth that reads “I am not the same as those who came before me, but I will pick up their shields and wear their armor, I will raise their flags, and fight for what they fought for. I will stand up for those who fell because I have felt at least a portion of what they have. I dream that the world will be a museum, a SYMPHONY OF ART HARMONIZING TO MAKE A SINGLE SUND, A SINGLE SOUND THAT MAKES THE WORLD WE LIVE IN”
ID: 5th image is a similar pastel color square image with plants and gold leafs. In the middle is a quote from a middle school trans youth that reads “ I want trans people of color to be running the world and trans elders of color are celebrated and numerous”
Art from the Transmasculine Health Justice: LA Report
This project is led by a core team and volunteers comprised of trans health organizers, researchers, educators, cultural workers, policy advocates, activists, and artists working across Los Angeles County. TMHJ:LA is part of a broader strategy within Gender Justice Los Angeles and includes research and community organizing by and for trans people to advance health justice in California.
The project started with #TMHealthLA, an arts-based health promotion campaign with support from the City of Los Angeles AIDS Coordinator’s Office. This included a photography exhibit featuring portraits by and of Transmasculine people set against iconic backdrops and neighborhoods across Los Angeles. The show opened at the downtown public library in Los Angeles and has since traveled to multiple venues across the county.
This project inspired a participatory action research initiative in partnership with the UCLA Department of Social Welfare. We conducted interviews, focus groups, and the Transmasculine Sexual Health & Reproductive Justice Research Survey which included 310 transmasculine participants. We have held community meetings to discuss the work and presented findings at Los Angeles City Hall, several academic and practitioner conferences, and with local activist networks, health workers, policymakers, funders, and researchers.
We formed the Transmasculine Health Research Justice initiative in 2020 to use our data to identify advocacy goals and future research priorities. Based on this analysis, we developed a report focused on the health and health care inequities facing transmasculine people in Los Angeles along with foundations for action to advance health justice. We published our 2021 Web Report April 7, 2021.
Our current work focuses on the four items in our take action agenda. If you are interested in getting involved, sponsoring a presentation, or supporting our future work, reach out!
Below is art created for this report by artist, Rommy Torrico.
🌎 April 22, 2022 🌎 #EarthDay becomes co-opted by corporations, fast fashion, and multi-million dollar businesses we want to uplift our BIPOC frontline communities who have been fighting for environmental justice. It is our BIPOC communities that understand that the fight for our Earth is not a single issue, but at the intersection of many issues like racial justice, economic justice , a fight against extractive economy, a fight for a world that is liveable for all living creatures, fight for Indigenous rights, a fight for migrants and climate refugees, and a fight for all youth. We celebrate Earth Day with the understanding that for us Earth Day is everyday. Earth is a home to all of us, which includes our trans communities. Our voices and our people can’t be left out in the environmental movement!
ID : Pink background. In the middle there is an illustration of two people holding planet earth. Clouds and stars surround them. Text reads: “Happy Earth Day 22 April 2022. Remember we need to protect our earth and trans youth! Remember Ecological and environmental justice can’t leave behind trans liberation! Remember everyday is earth day for frontline communities impacted by climate change!”
