We continue, Devising Freedom

Published December 13, 2024

“If now isn’t a good time for the truth, I don’t see when we’ll get to it.” Nikki Giovanni

Two years ago, GSA Network convened in Sante Fe, New Mexico to draft our organization’s national strategy, Devising Freedom. Last month, after the elections, we returned to that cold desert, thirsty for clarity in our assignments. 

We end 2024 steadily in our re-membering of deep knowings by offering the following resources to sustain your GSA clubs and TQ2S+ youth groups. Some resources are built by us, some are from partners, others are offerings from across community. 

We’ve split them up using the four pillars of Devising Freedom

• Homecoming as community building: The disruption of TQ2S isolation through base-building, cooperative leadership, resource sharing, and collective action.

• Truthtelling as storytelling: Systematically recording & preserving the experiential wisdom of TQ2S+ youth in service of posterity and political praxis.

• Spiritsustaining as healing justice: Tending to the material realities of TQ2S+ communities, individuals, and their families by employing a holistic arsenal of spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and somatic defenses against state violence. 

• Stargayzing as world-building: Cultivating the political will to move beyond all forms of captivity through intergenerational wonder, creativity, and ancestral instruction.

As we share these resources, we honor the resilience and brilliance of our youth, whose power continues to shape our shared journey toward liberation. 

Through our collective wisdom, we are reminded that the work of freedom is both a practice and a promise

rooted deeply in the communities we build

the stories we tell

the healing we embrace

and the worlds we create together.

To our youth leaders,

Allow yourself the dignity of falling to your knees.

Allow yourself to surrender to (in awe of the sheer magnitude of) decay.

Do not ask why.

Do not run in the circles of your mind.

Do not talk yourself out of fury or fire.

Feel into the sweep of nausea that arrives when an era dies.

With your head tucked into the darkness of ground,

feel the burn of a decomposing empire.

Let the disorientation of the moment be digested

through your sweat and the salt burning your eyes.

Let yourself melt away.

Memory is your architect and will pull you back.

And when you rise, face forward.

Reach wide and feel your community anew, damp with the film of clarity.

Then move.

Our organizational strategy, Devising Freedom, and its praxis, STAR School, is the work of building political will and prefiguring a new world. We remain faithful to the clarity of political struggle in this work. For GSA Network, this commitment manifests in resourcing TQ2S+ youth and constructing pathways that defy and dismantle oppressive systems at their core.

In that spirit, we turn to STAR School’s inaugural curriculum, the Protest + Community Safety Toolkit as an offering to share amongst youth who are wading in the tar of despair. Protest, a path worn deep by countless feet, remains an accessible entry point into the collective work of refusal. We refuse to go backwards in time and struggle as trans, queer, and two-spirit people. We are here and we are here for good.

Maya + Gia

HOMECOMING

“I see a political home as the group of people, formally organized or informally organized..with whom I am in deep community, committed to principled struggle, engaging in rigorous political education and I am accountable to them and they are accountable to me as we work together to do actions, create campaigns, build political power through political strategy, and to win.” - Erika Dickerson-Despenza, Black feminist playwright

• Register Your GSA

• 10 Steps for Starting a GSA

• How to Get More Members & Allies – GSA Network

• Educational Justice Campaign – GSA Network

• Civic Engagement – GSA Network

• life cycle of an organizing campaign

• How Do I Take Action Where I Am? 

• Ten Free Ebooks for Getting Free

• No Matter Who Wins the Election, These Queer Grassroots Organizations Will Keep Doing the Work

TRUTHTELLING

"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the world, but then you read.” -James Baldwin, Black queer author

• Nat’l TRUTH Council Members talk Reproductive Justice

• A Changemaker’s 8 Step Guide to Storytelling

• NPR Storytelling Blueprint

• GJLP Storytelling Workshop

• 38 Queer Anthems of Resistance For When You Need to Scream Into the Void

• LGBTQ Youth React After Trump Wins the 2024 Presidential Election: "We Have to Keep Going"

• The LGBTQ+ Political Wins in an Otherwise Devastating Election

• New Day Films

SPIRITSUSTAINING

"Hope is a discipline."- Miriame Kaba, Black abolitionist organizer and curator

• Dealing with Hostility & Opposition – GSA Network

• What to do if you’re Harassed or Discriminated Against – GSA Network

• Trans and Queer Wellness Resources

• THRIVE Lifeline

• Trans Lifeline

• The Okra Project x BetterHelp

• Everywhere is Queer

• Resources for Dealing with Post-Election Grief

• Pink Unicorn Guide for Survival

• Trans Legal Survival Guide

• Pink Unicorn Guide for 2STGE+ Survival

• Helpful LGBTQ+ Resources 

• Trevor Project- Finding Support and Building Community after the 2024 Election

STARGAYZING

"To be truly visionary we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality."- bell hooks, Black feminist author

• Transinclusive Emergency Crisis Fund/ Mutual Aid

• Practicing New Worlds: Abolition & Emergent Strategies — Interrupting Criminalization | Research In Action

• Cognitive Distortions for Creative Activists

• Abolition Feminisms Vol. 1 

• Justseeds | Downloadable Graphics

• Artists for Radical Imagination

• Building Irresistible Movements - Forward Together

Scholarship opportunity from eQuality Scholarship Collaborative for Northern California and Central Valley students: They’re now accepting applications for 2025 eQuality Scholarships. eQuality is California's foremost program recognizing LGBT+ and ally youth for their service to the LGBT+ community. They  award scholarships to graduating high school seniors, community college transfer students, and medical students.

In 2024, eQuality awarded 17 scholarships totaling $126,000. For 2025, they expect to award about a dozen $6,000 scholarships.

Applicants for the high school scholarships must:

• be a resident of or attend a high school in northern or central California;

• have completed or complete high school or equivalent since 1 July 2020; and

• plan to attend or have begun attending an accredited post-secondary institution (college, university, or vocational/trade school) for the first time in 2025.

The eligibility requirements are somewhat different for community college transfers and medical scholarships. Applications must be completed no later than January 31, 2025. Please visit www.equalityscholarship.org for details.

Paid Survey Opportunity from the Lavender Lab 

The Lavender Lab, an LGBTQ+ and BIPOC research lab at the University of Maryland, is inviting LGBTQ+ teens of color (ages 13-17) to join our paid confidential study, and we need your voice! The study focuses on the resilience, stress, health, and overall well-being of LGBTQ+ teens of color. The results from this study will inform future interventions for our communities. You must be a) LGBTQ+, b) 13-17 years old, and c) Black, Indigenous, or Person of Color.

Complete this brief confidential eligibility form to find out more.

Youth Freedom Fund GSA Minigrants

The Youth Freedom Fund applications are open to provide $500 mini grants to GSA clubs all over the country! Past awards have gone to support trans and queer students to go on field trips, visit LGBTQ community centers, and host their monthly meetings. Applications close on Monday, January 06, 2025.

To qualify, ensure your club is registered with us this year and has the backing of an adult advisor or school administrator. The application should be completed by your club’s President, Vice President, or Adult Advisor.

Apply to the Youth Freedom Fund. Let’s devise freedom together. 

Questions? Email us at development@gsanetwork.org.

Thank you for reading the fifth installment of Stardial. GSA Network offices will be closed for winter rest from December 16-January 3rd. 

We leave you before our hibernation with this question to discuss in your meeting spaces, over a meal, or in your heart: 

What would a school look, sound, and feel like if it was built to nurture joy, freedom, and care for everyone?

Feel free to respond to this newsletter with your learnings, as well as any questions and ideas you’d like to suggest for future Stardials.

we love you.

J. Gia Loving + Maya LaFlamme

GSA Network Co-Executive Directors