CUNY LGBTQIA+ Consortium helping organize ‘Queeribbean Crossings: Solidarity as Resistance’
Queeribbean Crossings’ is scheduled for Thursday, December 5.
The CUNY LGBTQIA+ Consortium, Queens College, and LaGuardia Community College are all sponsors.
The City University of New York’s (CUNY) LGBTQIA+ Consortium and Queens College are co-organizing a Caribbean-themed LGBTQ solidarity event later this semester, which will feature panel discussions, workshops, and drag events.
The institutions are partnering with the Caribbean Equality Project to host the third annual “Queeribean Crossings: Solidarity as Resistance.” The program is scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 5. LaGuardia Community College will also be contributing to the event.
“Queeribbean Crossings takes a transnational approach to building solidarity,” the page says. “The term ‘transnational’ here explores how queer and trans diasporic Caribbean struggle is not contained within one geography or history but forces us to contend with issues and struggles outside of the places we call home.”
Attendees will discuss various topics, which an Equality Project Instagram post describes as “areas of resistance.” Those will include “Beyond Decriminalization: Storytelling as a tool of solidarity for collective future building,” “Gender Liberation: Reproductive Justice and Legislative Reform Through Action and Education,” and “Community Safety: Trans organizing as resistance to attacks on gender-affirming care and bodily autonomy.”
The conference will also feature a showing of the short film “Caribbean Queen,” which explores LGBTQ and Caribbean identity.
CUNY is New York City’s university system, comprising twenty-five campuses. Queens College is a CUNY member institution.
A CUNY spokesperson told Campus Reform: “LGBTQIAA+ Programs at QC and the CUNY LGBTQIA+ Consortium are partnering with the Caribbean Equality Project to present the Queeribbean Crossings Conference on the Queens College campus on December 5. The college maintains a longstanding tradition of hosting events that seek to foster impactful conversations—as this one does—on social justice, immigration, and mental health, among other topics, to benefit our students.”
The CUNY LGBTQIA+ Consortium is dedicated to archiving LGBTQ history. “Our mission is not only to preserve LGBTQIA+ history, but to make it,” the organization’s page says. The group has chapters at various CUNY schools.
The CUNY LGBTQIA+Consortium has helped organized several other LGBTQ-themed events this semester. Last month, the organization’s Queensborough Community College chapter hosted a lecture from a speaker who identifies as non-binary called “Allyship is a Verb: Lessons from the LGBTQ+ Community.”
Less than a week later, the Consortium advertised a Q&A with a self-identified transgender Rabbi at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. Abby Stein is the author of “Becoming Eve: My Journey from Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi to Transgender Woman.”
The Consortium celebrated “National Coming Out Day” on Wednesday, October 16.
Campus Reform contacted the CUNY LGBTQ+ Consortium, Queens College, LaGuardia Community College, and the Caribbean Equality Project for comment. This story will be updated accordingly.
