(Originally Published on Queer Voices on 4/24/2014)
If you listen to NPR / PRI in the U.S., you already know Jian Ghomeshi as an award-winning broadcaster, writer, musician, producer and host of the multimedia phenomenon known simply as “Q” — or as The Washington Post calls it, “the most popular new arts and culture radio show in America”. If you are Canadian, or at all familiar with Canadian media, pop culture, or the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), then you know Jian Ghomeshi is a household name in that country — and he is well on his way to becoming one in this country as you read this.
Born in London, England, of Iranian descent, Jian Ghomeshi is smart, talented and handsome — a triple threat with a sharp tongue, unabashedly advocating for the voiceless among us along his journey to the top. He was recently named one of Maclean’s Magazine’s “50 Most Important People In Canada” and one of Read the rest of this entry »
In case you missed it live on-air last night, I was the guest on Out Loud Radio this week talking about community work, summer tour, racism in the LGBTQ community, and more. I chat with Sasha Buchert from KBOO for a good 40 of the 60 minutes about why we are doing the work we are doing at (and for) Q Center in Portland, my dream for the world, and more.
To stream the show online, click HERE.
(Originally Published on The Huffington Post on 3/14/2012)
This past weekend my partner and I went to see a performance of A Lesson Before Dying, Romulus Linney‘s play set in a small Louisiana bayou town in 1948. It was based on the 1993 novel of the same name by Ernest J. Gaines and is about a young black man who has been wrongfully accused, convicted of murder, and awaits his death in the parish courthouse. While in court the convicted man’s life is compared to that of a hog, and this becomes his truth. His godmother enlists the unwilling aid of the town’s young plantation teacher to carry out her mission of teaching her godson to walk to the electric chair like an innocent man rather than the animal the white man has made him out to be throughout his life. Questions of racism and morality are confronted in visits between the two men for the duration of the piece and, in the end, the lessons shared and learned transform them both — along with the entire town.
After the very moving, emotional performance ended, founders of the August Wilson Red Door Project (an organization that “uses the arts as a catalyst for creating lasting, positive change in the racial ecology of Portland”) took the stage for a dialogue about the experience we had just collectively emerged from. Their organization posits that “all people, regardless of personal, cultural, and social history, internalize values and beliefs of the world they have been raised in. While some of these values and beliefs enable creative achievement and success, others create a sense of profound limitation and self-doubt. This doubt can be described as internalized oppression — a process by which people come to accept and internalize the inaccurate myths and stereotypes they have been exposed to.” The idea is that “no one is immune from having to wrestle with a sense that something is holding them back, regardless of background or privilege”, and they founded their organization on the belief that “with the right education, exposure, and support, everyone is capable of growing their capacity to create, to achieve, and to thrive.”
At one point during the very emotional post-performance chat, while illustrating how this particular story speaks to a universal human rights issue and making a correlation between the civil rights movement in the United States and some current world affairs and battles being fought in the name of race and religion in other lands, someone in the audience said the following four words about Americans: “We are past racism.” The room fell silent, aside from a few gasps. I could feel the sting in the air and could see the pain that one sentence had caused in the faces of many others in the room. Read the rest of this entry »
