Everyone Deserves a Home • An Update from Development Associate Randy Ford
Hi community,
My name is Randy Ford (she/her/Goddess) and I’m the Development Associate for Lavender Rights Project. I’ve been with LRP since 2019 when I joined the WA Black Trans Task Force. I’m an artist, performer, and former dance educator where I used to teach all ages from K-5 to college-level adults. When the pandemic closure hit, I was faced with choosing to continue teaching virtually or continue this work with LRP, also virtually. After weighing both for a while, I decided to step back from teaching and commit to LRP and my personal art practice. It hasn’t been the easiest transition. I LOVE TEACHING. I miss it so much. Dancing in a studio, sweating, falling, trying again and again to get the step was what fueled my creativity. It got me up in the morning. When we closed down, my students and I were devastated. It was the most awkward way to enter an early summer vacation with no idea of what was to come. For some, virtual teaching was a very accessible way to stay connected, but for me I knew all too well that this was not sustainable, especially for teachers. Educators are consistently underpaid and undervalued and a lot of folx don’t realize how much it takes to teach, let alone teach virtually.
Can you imagine teaching a dance class live in a two-bedroom apartment on the 3rd floor? Enough said.
Thankfully I’m an artist who loves to be in service to her community and LRP’s mission for liberating gender-diverse communities is equal to my passion for teaching.
Since being with LRP, I’ve been able to harness my passions and skills from being an artist and channel them into this community work. Recently, I’ve been onboarding as Development Associate, which means I help our Development Director Natasha connect and work with our donors to support our mission.
Not gonna lie, IT’S A LOT! And I’m learning quickly this is definitely a two-person job. My ED thought it might be beneficial to buff up my resume being that I raise money for my art and a lot of our donors recognize me through performing. Since April, I have been learning the ins and outs and last month I had to come up with an entire proposal for September as part of my final onboarding process. After what felt like studying for a college midterm, I got the final approval on my proposal and we are moving forward with the “Everyone Deserves a Home'' Birthday Campaign!
LRP is entering our 5th year as a by-an-for organization. We’ve changed so much to where we are not just a legal services non profit for the LGBTQ+. We are also not the same predominantly white-led org we were a couple of years ago. Since the inception of the WA Black Trans Task Force (2019) and the pandemic closure (2020), we have been hard at work trying to ask ourselves: Who are we serving? Are we the same LRP we were 5 years ago? What’s our new mission?
We’re using August and September, September being our birthday month, to reintroduce ourselves to the community and bring Housing back to the forefront of our agenda. LRP is the only organization in the PNW that is specifically advocating for FREE Black and Trans specific housing. Yes, there are shelters out there for the LGBTQ community but because of racism, harassment, ableism, and transmisogynoir Black and Indigenous Trans women are left vulnerable to the violence we are seeing.
Last year, due to the events of George Floyd, CHOP, and the nation’s uprising, LRP’s WA-BTTF distributed over $77,000 in direct relief aid to Black Trans Women and Femmes in King County, South King County, Pierce County, and Olympia. This was all from grants that we had applied for, crowdfunding from the community, and peer-to-peer fundraising from individuals and businesses. Our Housing Initiative got so much attention that LRP is now one of the leading organizations for inclusive and equal housing for Black Trans Women and femmes.
The “Everyone Deserves A Home” Campaign is a birthday fundraiser using our Target Registry, created by our Housing Project Manager Ebo Barton, to help furnish our future Home for Black Trans Women and Femmes. Say we get a building next month or tomorrow we want to be able to provide everything you would need in your first apartment as a displaced member in the community. 2021 has been a record breaking year for anti-transgender legislation, gender-based violence, and more QTBIPOC are scrambling for housing. We need to bring the community’s focus back to this cause because we know the violence is directly linked.
“Housing instability” has many definitions but overall “encompasses a number of challenges, such as having trouble paying rent, overcrowding, moving frequently, staying with relatives, or spending the bulk of household income on housing”. 38% of Black transgender people live in poverty compared to 22% of cisgender Black people. 42% of Black transgender people have experienced or are experiencing homlessness. It’s important to note these were statistics before the pandemic.
We have some amazing partners that have agreed to use their locations for drop-off sites for donations! If you buy an appliance or item from somewhere other than Target and you still want to contribute, Gay City and Starbucks on East Olive will have donation bins for you. We also will be utilizing our new Tacoma office as well for folx. We are asking that everyone please bring brand new & boxed or packaged items. This Delta Beta Lambda virus is no joke and we don’t want any of your old couches from college. Please keep those!
Housing has become one of LRP’s core values and areas of impact. We are super excited to celebrate and share with you where this 5th year is headed! Until then, please donate and share our registry link: https://www.target.com/gift-registry/gift/bttf
We have some really exciting partnerships with Gay City and Starbucks on East Olive, to name a couple, plus more fun announcements coming soon!
Everyone Deserves A Home, especially Black and Indigenous Trans women and Femmes. This community has been living under a social pandemic and state of emergency well before 2020 closed us all down. We are already going to surpass last year’s 45 reported murders by the end of 2021. Will you join us and stick with us? We’re always looking for volunteers if you want to get involved in our direct services. If you are connected to wealth and property, how can you use your resources to help keep Black Trans Women and Femmes safe?
If you’re well-connected and know a lot of people, how can you help amplify information and calls to action? If you see violence, how are you stopping it and setting a culture for inclusivity? Everyone can play a huge part in the liberation of QTBIPOC. We just have to actually start doing it. I shared my story of who I was before this work because I wanted to show you all that, even in our own lanes, we can make the biggest changes and impacts to the world. We don’t have to be anyone other than ourselves to get involved in these causes. We are enough. Let’s do this, community.