To our dearest loved ones and community,
We are in need of your support to get some of our femme panelists to the Allied Media Conference this June in Detroit. We will be presenting a panel entitled I See You: Creating #FemmesOfColorVisibility And Community to recognize and name the specific black femme and femme of color labor, energy and struggles we hold in midst of this white supremacist, anti-black, patriarchal, capitalist culture all while we continuously build relationships, spaces, community, media and movements with one another. We see our work and this panel as a community investment.
There are a total of eight brilliant femmes going to AMC specifically for our panel but three (Kandace Creel Falcón, Alyssa Hernandez and Andrea Quijada) do not need fundraising for. Five femmes will need help covering the costs of lodging, flights and registration. On top of the those costs, we want to cover the total GoFundMe 8% fee the website deducts; 5% from each donation and 3% for a processing fee they take from each donation.
Housing will be at the WSU dorms. The total for that is: $750
We will all be flying from various locations/airports in the US including Los Angeles, Oakland and DC. Flights total: $2,250
Registration funds needed are: $250
GoFundMe fee (deduction): $260
Approximate grand total: $3,510
If we are able to surpass our goal, we will be using the extra money for food during the conference and travels between airport and WSU.
ABOUT OUR PANEL
The work and narrative of Black Femmes and Femmes of Color have long been erased by every facet of colonialist-framed history. Our session will discuss Black and Femmes of Color Visibility and how we create outlets that prioritize US, and our resilience. From films to collectives to on-line movements and hashtags, participants will walk away with strategies to amplify visibility both on-line & off. This session is a closed space for self-identified Black Femmes and Femmes of Color only.
THE TRACK AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT TO US
Track - Femme4Femme Media:
"Femme is a vision rooted in resistance and community.
Femme is a concept of femininity that draws its power from the queer, trans, Black, immigrant, indigenous, fat, poor, and disabled survivors of this world. Femme is a queer-of-color identity that is centered around embodying a femininity that transcends and challenges white supremacist patriarchal ideas of femininity as white, of femininity as weakness, of femininity as not innovative. Our femme challenges these notions and embraces femme as power, as survival, as cutting-edge and as community. The Femme4Femme Media Track will explore media that makes femme brilliance visible and irresistible. We will share the skills we need to create femme-centered media and build strategies for storytelling ourselves into the future. This track prioritizes queer and trans femmes of color, but is open to all femmes and people in solidarity with femme resistance.
This track is coordinated by Morgan Robyn Collado; Noreen Khimji, Cicada Collective; Kytara Epps, Caleb Luna; Cortez Wright"
The fact that our panel is so important because we have already grown a small group into something monumental and unprecedented. We have literally done so much to help our community by creating femme of color visibility on social media and impacting the lives of so many in such a positive way. We have transformed and revolutionized the way Black femmes and femmes of color work to build community and empower one another using social media as an incredible tool that gives us access to power. Our work has helped to create tangible, accessible spaces for so many historically disenfranchised femmes in addition to our successful and powerful online presence. Our panel is not only an opportunity for us to continue to grow, but a way for us to thank the community for continuing to support our biggest dreams and deepest passions. We aim to not only support Black femmes and femmes of color but to make sure that we do all that we can to keep each other alive and thriving.
Our panel is an opportunity for our work as Black femmes and femmes of color to be taken seriously. As queer femmes, black people and people of color, our histories and identities are all too often ignored, silenced, stolen and exploited for profit by m-o-c educators and activists, and delegitimized especially in academic and community organizing spaces. We can use this presentation as an opportunity for us to share with other passionate organizers and activists the importance of black femmes and femmes of color visibility, community building, and the necessity of documenting our own stories and struggles on our own terms and in our own words. It means the world to be able to be supported by our community and allies so that we may continue to do, as Laura Luna calls, our heart's work.
BIOS (of those needing funding)
Dulce A. Garcia
Dulce is a fierce Queer Xicana Femme born in Mexico City and raised in East Los Angeles. Blending her book smarts with her street smarts, she has passionately served underrepresented and underserved communities for over a decade, while never forgetting her roots. As a sexual health educator and filmmaker she advocates for self-empowerment through education that is fun, non-judgmental, and accessible to her audience regardless of their age, gender, sexual orientation, race or ability status. Her film "With Conviction" won the Audience Award at the Queer Women of Color Film Festival and recently screened in Paris, France at the International Lesbian and Feminist Film Festival.
Danielle Stevens
Danielle is a radically compassionate warrior womyn & afro-futurist healer with a gentle and sharp unapologetic tongue. A dreamer in all senses of the word, Danielle is enchanted by the complexities and variability of love, life, and freedom. As a gender-nonconforming femme person and lover engaged in work related to anti-oppression education, social justice activism, and community organizing (particularly within black, femme, queer, and trans people of color communities), Danielle’s life work is engaging in coalition and movement building amongst various communities, as our liberation depends on it. She dreams of worlds in which folx who are targeted by institutional forms of violence can posses and access the blueprints, tools, & frameworks necessary to activate our self-determination, authenticity, liberation & freedom. She is committed to honoring the collective ancestral truths & generous elder wisdoms that flow through her body, guiding her visions of liberation. She is currently the Co-Founder and Co-Editor-In-Chief of This Bridge Called Our Health: (Re)imagining Our Minds, Bodies, & Sprits, a queer and trans-inclusive intentional space for the writings, testimonies, narratives, and creative expressions by and for women and femmes of color of all genders about the intersectional experiences that shape and impact our health and healing.
Vanessa Durand (V)
V has been a social justice activist and community organizer for the past 8 years. They have worked with numerous progressive organizations in L.A. and Washington D.C. advocating for LGBTQ-inclusive reproductive justice legislation and access to healthcare services for queer, trans, and gender non-conforming youth. V is an unapologetically fat, genderqueer Xicana femme who is passionate about building community and creating a positive online atmosphere for femmes of color on social media. They are one of the co-creators of #FemmesOfColorVisibility.
Laura Luna P.
Laura Luna is an Inland Empire born and raised chola bon vivant & self-identifying queer fat xicana femme who lives and loves in Los Angeles. Laura Luna has been curating safer spaces for LGBTQ & gender variant communities with her work in LA & on the Internet for over a decade. Previous projects include the Fierce Fashion Futures Track at the 2013 AMC, Invincible Fashion Show for the Butch Voices 2010 LA Conference, Femme Fashion Stylist for the Queerture Fashion show at the 2011 UCLA Queer Studies Conference and was the co-creator of Sappho’s Return a production company she co-founded with Natasha Dyer which focused on producing visual and performance art spaces for QWOC in the early 2000s. Laura Luna currently focuses her community work on creating safe(r) spaces & community for Femmes of Color both on and off line and is one of the co-founders the LA Femmes of Color Collective & co-creator of #FemmesofColorVisibility hashtag. You can find her and her self-care selfies @laura_luna
Jo De La Torre
Jo is a stylishly dreamy brown femme healer mami who braids (self)healing strategies, communal care, adornment, poetry, majestic tender lovin', ancestral magic and artistry into the spaces they encompass. They are a committed radical cheerleader for their loved ones/chosen familia. They wholeheartedly support accessible, not so academia-driven domestic revolutions for all gurls and femmes (nonbinary, trans, cis) and encourage intuitive, erotic power as Audre Lorde define the erotic. Jo is a mother, a core member of the LA Femmes of Color Collective, a music enthusiast, a baby bruja, a comprehensive care-giver and a community builder. IG @chillonaapple
We want to express deep appreciation for every single donation we receive and/or helping us by sharing our link to your various social networks. No donation and signal boost is too small in support of making all of our dreams of attending AMC for this panel come true.
In community,
V Durand
Danielle Stevens
Jo De La Torre
Laura Luna
Dulce A. Garcia
We are in need of your support to get some of our femme panelists to the Allied Media Conference this June in Detroit. We will be presenting a panel entitled I See You: Creating #FemmesOfColorVisibility And Community to recognize and name the specific black femme and femme of color labor, energy and struggles we hold in midst of this white supremacist, anti-black, patriarchal, capitalist culture all while we continuously build relationships, spaces, community, media and movements with one another. We see our work and this panel as a community investment.
There are a total of eight brilliant femmes going to AMC specifically for our panel but three (Kandace Creel Falcón, Alyssa Hernandez and Andrea Quijada) do not need fundraising for. Five femmes will need help covering the costs of lodging, flights and registration. On top of the those costs, we want to cover the total GoFundMe 8% fee the website deducts; 5% from each donation and 3% for a processing fee they take from each donation.
Housing will be at the WSU dorms. The total for that is: $750
We will all be flying from various locations/airports in the US including Los Angeles, Oakland and DC. Flights total: $2,250
Registration funds needed are: $250
GoFundMe fee (deduction): $260
Approximate grand total: $3,510
If we are able to surpass our goal, we will be using the extra money for food during the conference and travels between airport and WSU.
ABOUT OUR PANEL
The work and narrative of Black Femmes and Femmes of Color have long been erased by every facet of colonialist-framed history. Our session will discuss Black and Femmes of Color Visibility and how we create outlets that prioritize US, and our resilience. From films to collectives to on-line movements and hashtags, participants will walk away with strategies to amplify visibility both on-line & off. This session is a closed space for self-identified Black Femmes and Femmes of Color only.
THE TRACK AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT TO US
Track - Femme4Femme Media:
"Femme is a vision rooted in resistance and community.
Femme is a concept of femininity that draws its power from the queer, trans, Black, immigrant, indigenous, fat, poor, and disabled survivors of this world. Femme is a queer-of-color identity that is centered around embodying a femininity that transcends and challenges white supremacist patriarchal ideas of femininity as white, of femininity as weakness, of femininity as not innovative. Our femme challenges these notions and embraces femme as power, as survival, as cutting-edge and as community. The Femme4Femme Media Track will explore media that makes femme brilliance visible and irresistible. We will share the skills we need to create femme-centered media and build strategies for storytelling ourselves into the future. This track prioritizes queer and trans femmes of color, but is open to all femmes and people in solidarity with femme resistance.
This track is coordinated by Morgan Robyn Collado; Noreen Khimji, Cicada Collective; Kytara Epps, Caleb Luna; Cortez Wright"
The fact that our panel is so important because we have already grown a small group into something monumental and unprecedented. We have literally done so much to help our community by creating femme of color visibility on social media and impacting the lives of so many in such a positive way. We have transformed and revolutionized the way Black femmes and femmes of color work to build community and empower one another using social media as an incredible tool that gives us access to power. Our work has helped to create tangible, accessible spaces for so many historically disenfranchised femmes in addition to our successful and powerful online presence. Our panel is not only an opportunity for us to continue to grow, but a way for us to thank the community for continuing to support our biggest dreams and deepest passions. We aim to not only support Black femmes and femmes of color but to make sure that we do all that we can to keep each other alive and thriving.
Our panel is an opportunity for our work as Black femmes and femmes of color to be taken seriously. As queer femmes, black people and people of color, our histories and identities are all too often ignored, silenced, stolen and exploited for profit by m-o-c educators and activists, and delegitimized especially in academic and community organizing spaces. We can use this presentation as an opportunity for us to share with other passionate organizers and activists the importance of black femmes and femmes of color visibility, community building, and the necessity of documenting our own stories and struggles on our own terms and in our own words. It means the world to be able to be supported by our community and allies so that we may continue to do, as Laura Luna calls, our heart's work.
BIOS (of those needing funding)
Dulce A. Garcia
Dulce is a fierce Queer Xicana Femme born in Mexico City and raised in East Los Angeles. Blending her book smarts with her street smarts, she has passionately served underrepresented and underserved communities for over a decade, while never forgetting her roots. As a sexual health educator and filmmaker she advocates for self-empowerment through education that is fun, non-judgmental, and accessible to her audience regardless of their age, gender, sexual orientation, race or ability status. Her film "With Conviction" won the Audience Award at the Queer Women of Color Film Festival and recently screened in Paris, France at the International Lesbian and Feminist Film Festival.
Danielle Stevens
Danielle is a radically compassionate warrior womyn & afro-futurist healer with a gentle and sharp unapologetic tongue. A dreamer in all senses of the word, Danielle is enchanted by the complexities and variability of love, life, and freedom. As a gender-nonconforming femme person and lover engaged in work related to anti-oppression education, social justice activism, and community organizing (particularly within black, femme, queer, and trans people of color communities), Danielle’s life work is engaging in coalition and movement building amongst various communities, as our liberation depends on it. She dreams of worlds in which folx who are targeted by institutional forms of violence can posses and access the blueprints, tools, & frameworks necessary to activate our self-determination, authenticity, liberation & freedom. She is committed to honoring the collective ancestral truths & generous elder wisdoms that flow through her body, guiding her visions of liberation. She is currently the Co-Founder and Co-Editor-In-Chief of This Bridge Called Our Health: (Re)imagining Our Minds, Bodies, & Sprits, a queer and trans-inclusive intentional space for the writings, testimonies, narratives, and creative expressions by and for women and femmes of color of all genders about the intersectional experiences that shape and impact our health and healing.
Vanessa Durand (V)
V has been a social justice activist and community organizer for the past 8 years. They have worked with numerous progressive organizations in L.A. and Washington D.C. advocating for LGBTQ-inclusive reproductive justice legislation and access to healthcare services for queer, trans, and gender non-conforming youth. V is an unapologetically fat, genderqueer Xicana femme who is passionate about building community and creating a positive online atmosphere for femmes of color on social media. They are one of the co-creators of #FemmesOfColorVisibility.
Laura Luna P.
Laura Luna is an Inland Empire born and raised chola bon vivant & self-identifying queer fat xicana femme who lives and loves in Los Angeles. Laura Luna has been curating safer spaces for LGBTQ & gender variant communities with her work in LA & on the Internet for over a decade. Previous projects include the Fierce Fashion Futures Track at the 2013 AMC, Invincible Fashion Show for the Butch Voices 2010 LA Conference, Femme Fashion Stylist for the Queerture Fashion show at the 2011 UCLA Queer Studies Conference and was the co-creator of Sappho’s Return a production company she co-founded with Natasha Dyer which focused on producing visual and performance art spaces for QWOC in the early 2000s. Laura Luna currently focuses her community work on creating safe(r) spaces & community for Femmes of Color both on and off line and is one of the co-founders the LA Femmes of Color Collective & co-creator of #FemmesofColorVisibility hashtag. You can find her and her self-care selfies @laura_luna
Jo De La Torre
Jo is a stylishly dreamy brown femme healer mami who braids (self)healing strategies, communal care, adornment, poetry, majestic tender lovin', ancestral magic and artistry into the spaces they encompass. They are a committed radical cheerleader for their loved ones/chosen familia. They wholeheartedly support accessible, not so academia-driven domestic revolutions for all gurls and femmes (nonbinary, trans, cis) and encourage intuitive, erotic power as Audre Lorde define the erotic. Jo is a mother, a core member of the LA Femmes of Color Collective, a music enthusiast, a baby bruja, a comprehensive care-giver and a community builder. IG @chillonaapple
We want to express deep appreciation for every single donation we receive and/or helping us by sharing our link to your various social networks. No donation and signal boost is too small in support of making all of our dreams of attending AMC for this panel come true.
In community,
V Durand
Danielle Stevens
Jo De La Torre
Laura Luna
Dulce A. Garcia
Organizer and beneficiary
Laura Luna P
Beneficiary