JusticeAid Spring Public Forum

POSTPONED! |   Sunday, May 15, 2022, 4 PM  |  The Riverside Church of New York
We ran into some conflicts with our fabulous speakers,
so we are planning to reschedule – stay tuned!

For young people who identify as LGBTQ, these are perilous times. Adolescence and young adulthood for them often mean conflicts with family, classmates, and community members who cannot accept who they are. The results of this intolerance can be depression and anxiety, homelessness, and even suicide. Now, along with these stresses, young trans and queer people are confronting a global pandemic and renewed assaults on their rights in states like Texas, Florida and Ohio.

At our Spring Public Forum, Erasure: The Otherization of Queerness, our featured speaker, TransLast Media creator and award-winning journalist Imara Jones, will set the stage for a discussion, “Freedom to Be Queer: Overcoming Marginalization, Criminalization, and Erasure” with panelists Charles King, CEO, Housing Works, and Jorge Membreño, Deputy Executive Director at SMYAL. The uplifting music of the Resistance Revival Chorus will help us celebrate all the colors of the rainbow. The forum is free; please RSVP.

MEET THE PANEL

IMARA JONES

Award-winning journalist, thought-leader, and content creator Imara Jones pushes the envelope to help us think in new ways so that we can save ourselves and the world around us. 

Jones created TransLash Media, a cross-platform journalism, personal storytelling, and narrative project, which produces content to shift the current culture of hostility towards transgender people in the US. As part of her work at TransLash, she hosts the WEBBY-nominated, TransLash Podcast with Imara Jones as well as the investigative, limited series, The Anti-Trans Hate Machine: A Plot Against Equality. 

Jones was featured on the cover of Time Magazine in 2020 as part of its New American Revolution special edition. In 2019 she chaired the first-ever UN High Level Meeting on Gender Diversity. She has been featured regularly in The Guardian, The Nation, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR, Mic, and Colorlines. Jones has held economic policy posts in the Clinton White House and communications positions at Viacom. She is a 2021 Nathan Cummings Foundation Fellow and a  2019  Soros Equality Fellow.

Imara holds degrees from the London School of Economics and Columbia University.

CHARLES KING

Charles King is one of the founders and CEO of Housing Works, Inc. a community-based, not–for–profit that provides a full range of services including housing, health care, mental health, chemical dependency services, legal, advocacy, and job training and employment for homeless men, women, and children living with HIV/AIDS and other chronic conditions. Charles served on the governing body of UNAIDS as a member of the NGO Delegation to the PCB and was Co-chair of the NYS End of AIDS Task Force. He is currently the co-chair of the Ending the Epidemic Subcommittee of the NYS AIDS Advisory Council. He also co-chairs ACT Now: End AIDS, a national ending the epidemic Coalition, and co-chairs the Visioning Committee of the National AIDS Housing Coalition. Charles holds both a Law Degree and a Master of Divinity from Yale University and is an ordained Baptist Minister.

JORGE MEMBREÑO

Jorge Membreño is SMYAL’s Deputy Executive Director. A licensed independent clinical social worker, Jorge previously served as the Director of Youth Housing and Director of Clinical Services at SMYAL, where he was instrumental in establishing its Clinical Services Department that provides on-site individual and group therapy, clinical supervision to staff and interns, and resource navigation to LGBTQ youth across the organization.

Prior to joining SMYAL, Jorge worked as a social worker and clinical supervisor in school and mental health agency settings. As a social worker, he has worked with youth on issues of homelessness, substance abuse prevention/intervention, mental health disorders, and stress and anxiety management. Much of his work has encompassed the spectrum of LGBTQ counseling including the areas of gender, sexuality, and transitioning.

Born in DC and raised in Northern Virginia, Jorge is the son of Salvadoran immigrants. He holds an undergraduate degree from Christopher Newport University in psychology with a minor in music, and a Master’s degree from Boston University’s School of Social Work.

Photo: Michael Key, Washington Blade

RESISTANCE REVIVAL CHORUS

The Resistance Revival Chorus (RRC) is a collective of more than 60 womxn, and non-binary protest singers, who join together to breathe joy and song into the resistance, and to uplift and center womxn’s voices. Led by musical director Abena Coomson-Davis, the chorus members are touring musicians, film, and television actors, Broadway performers, solo recording artists, gospel singers, political activists, educators, filmmakers, artists, and more, representing a multitude of identities, professions, creative backgrounds, and activist causes.

The RRC was founded in the wake of the 2017 Women’s March. Their music centers around women in music and addresses how historically marginalized women have been in the music industry. They’ve backed Ke$ha at the GRAMMYS, performed on The Tonight Show with Jim James, sung Spanish lullabies to detained migrant children outside a New York holding facility, and been shouted-out on Twitter by hometown hero Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

We are thrilled to forge our fourth partnership with the historic Riverside Church, an interdenominational, interracial, and international congregation in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. A focal point of global and national activism since its inception, The Riverside Church has a long history of social justice. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered sermons at Riverside between 1961 and 1967, most famously Beyond Vietnam on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before King’s assassination.

The Mission and Social Justice Commission seeks to transform individuals, communities, and systems of racial, economic, social, and environmental oppression. It encompasses 16 ministries, including Maranatha, which seeks to foster greater understanding and equity for LGBTQIA people and their allies. Other ministries include: The Lift Every Voice & Vote Ministry, The Prison Ministry, Sojourners Working with Individuals in Detention Centers, the Latino Ministry, and Black Lives Matters, among others.

SMYAL (Supporting and Mentoring Youth Advocates and Leaders) supports and empowers lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth in the Washington, DC, metropolitan region. Through youth leadership, SMYAL creates opportunities for LGBTQ youth to build self-confidence, develop critical life skills, and engage their peers and community through service and advocacy. Committed to social change, SMYAL builds, sustains, and advocates for programs, policies, and services that LGBTQ youth need as they grow into adulthood. Learn more about SMYAL here.

JusticeAid invites you to enjoy a unique live concert hosted by Emmy Award winner Mark Ruffin, featuring contemporary artists Paula Cole, Valerie Simpson, Nona Hendryx, Terri Lyne Carrington, Madeleine Peyroux, Allan Harris, Morley, Chris Bergson & Ellis Hooks, and Samara Joy performing a tribute to Bessie! Empress of the Blues. 100% of ticket sales and sponsorships will provide unrestricted funds for JusticeAid’s 2022 grantee partner, SMYAL (Supporting Mentoring Youth Advocates and Leaders).

As an organization at the nexus of justice and the arts, JusticeAid fittingly salutes Bessie Smith, who used her magnificent voice and theatricality to pioneer the genre of blues music and propel it into popular culture. Her music empowered women to be fearless, to express their sexual freedom, and to understand that a working-class woman doesn’t need to alter her behavior to be worthy of respect. Indeed, her songs still live and breathe because they are relevant today.