QUEER POWER, TRANS POWER: A Manifesto

queer power trans power a manifesto

FOR DEANDRE MATTHEWS

PHOTOGRAPHY BY STAS GINZBURG MANIFESTO BY QWEEN JEAN AFTERWORD BY ROHAN ZHOU-LEE

ROHAN ZHOU-LEE SINCE TIME IMMEMORIAL

Golden kulintang gongs softly tinkle under the warm summer sun. I step around a small crowd, smelling jerk chicken, pancit, and jollof rice. The Pride flag I wear, with brown and black stripes, swirls as a cape beneath my bright red terno, or butterfly sleeves, meant for women to wear. I wear these alongside a dark purple bulldog harness, which is considered to be masculine. White feathery wings float in my periphery. The weight of months of little sleep, endless fundraising during a global economic crisis, worry over safety in a pandemic, and increased policing, seem to shimmer out of existence. Somehow, self-love along with love of the ancestors, delivered this entire procession peacefully, in harmony, to a park filled with food.

My name is Rohan and I am an Asian American, as much as I am a Black American. This was the end of the very first Blasian Pride, created a year after the police murder of George Floyd and the latest major Black Lives Matter uprising. Its vision is to uplift Black, Asian, and Blasian LGBTQIA2S+ community in the midst of homophobia and transphobia. It has gained greater weight for me as we see the rise in anti-LGBT legislation across the country. Yet, anti-trans and anti-queer hate is nothing new, but rather a practice instituted by colonization.

What we understand as queerness was valued in African, Asian, Pasifika, and Turtle Island cultures well before Europe realized the Earth was round. In Pasifika, which is not to be considered Asian American, a rich and wide variety of gender identities existed well before colonization and the imperial forces of the United States. It can be argued that claiming any of these identities is a powerful act of resistance. The last king of Uganda, Mwanga II, was what we know today as bisexual. During the Han Dynasty of China, Emperor Ai cut off his sleeve when he had risen from sleep so as not not to disturb his male lover who was resting on his garb. This is now considered to be one of the greatest stories of queer romance in China. The hijra of South Asia as a gender survived the English invasion and their anti-same-sex relation laws. Evidence of same-sex relations can be found among the Harari of Sub Saharan Africa, even Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum from the Fifth Dynasty of Ancient Egypt.

The Blasian March is a process to decolonize for a better future. In order to do that, we must give ourselves permission to return to the ancient ways. These histories, alongside the 20th century resistance, especially during the Civil Rights Era, are critical to my work at the intersections of Blackness, Asianness, and Queerness.

BLACK POWER. ASIAN POWER. BLASIAN POWER.

In the past three years of organizing the Blasian March, I found myself excluded from both Black and Asian spaces. One BLM organizer had messaged me challenging one of our protest chants Asian Power!. Another suggested that I only went to Asian rallies. Others distanced themselves from me, ranging from backing out as speakers at the Blasian March to even going so far as calling me a media sellout. I understood that I only mattered as a Black person if I silenced my Asianness and reduced myself to a mere numerical statistic at their protests. I have also been ejected from Asian organizing spaces for being Black. This

pseudo political exile is deeply rooted in the white mythology that racial harmony cannot exist between Black and Asian communities. Black Asians are antithetical to the survival of identity, privilege, and contests for power within the political binary imposed on the Movement for Black Lives and Asian political struggle. This is constructed by the colonial state based on the mythology that we have never moved as one and in solidarity. These divisions, competitions for power, are because we live within colonial institutions that erase centuries of Afro-Asian resistance and liberation work. Starting with Filipino, Indigenous, and African maroons against the Spanish in the late 18th century, any point of progress in our society is done through the collective work of the oppressed. As a result we do not know our stories.

The Civil Rights Era exemplifies the quintessential symbiosis. In 1966, three years prior to the iconic Stonewall uprising, Tamara Ching, a trans Asian woman, along with other queer and trans people rose up against police brutality at the Compton Cafeteria in San Francisco. This was two years before the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., who collaborated with Asian American figures such as Grace Lee Boggs. Boggs and her husband James, who was Black, proved fundamental to the access to education for Black communities in Detroit. She was even labeled by the FBI as “probably Afro-Chinese” because of her involvement in the Black liberation work.

Dr. King also worked closely with Kiyoshi Kuromiya, one of the many Japanese Americans who survived the internment camps of WWII and joined many Black freedom fighters. Kuromiya marched with MLK on Selma and, when he was assassinated, would watch over the children. Kuromiya also made history as the first and only openly gay panelist at the Black Panther Party Convention of 1980, where Freddy P. Newton spoke openly in solidarity with the LGBT and women’s rights movements. This is in stark contrast to the homophobia and toxic masculinity within the present-day Black culture. Gender inclusivity has always been a critical thread in the Black liberation movement.

Another queer figure that we should look to is Bayard Rustin, an openly gay Black man who traveled to India and studied the techniques of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience. He incorporated these into his civil rights movement work, which would arguably become a hallmark of the time period. Unfortunately, he would decline in prominence in the civil rights movement after he was convicted of public sex.

During this period, the term model minority was developed to target Japanese American survivors of WWII, after a large wave of them joined Black organizers, particularly Richard Aoki and Nobuko Miyamoto with the Black Panthers and Yuri Kochiyama, who befriended Malcolm X. The last year of the Civil Rights Era, the

year King was assassinated, was the same year Asian America was born. Emma Gee and Yuji Ichioka, who coined the term two years after the introduction of the model minority, founded the Asian American Political Alliance, an Asian student resistance group at UCLA Berkeley that collaborated with the Afro-American Student Union, the Mexican American Student Committee, and the Native American Indian Association to form the Third World Liberation Front. This solidarity group organized for ethnic studies to learn about our histories, teach future generations, and, as per their 1969 declaration, to resist capitalism and imperialism in unity with other non-white people.

Asian Americans have been just as critical to our collective liberation as Black people. Without any of these moments of solidarity, we would never have civil rights. The censorship, sanitization, and erasure of these facts are tools of white mythology. White mythology has taught Asian America that we don’t have any history on this stolen land. It has taught Black America that it has always been alone in the struggle for emancipation. What is most dangerous about white mythology is that we have internalized it as truth through the institutions of public education. In order for the colonial state to flourish, it must defund education, ban books, and invest in violent structures such as policing, which have killed Black and Asian people alike.

To achieve liberation, we must adamantly require the alliances our communities have practiced for centuries. Black Power must enter into symbiosis with Asian Power. Both must acknowledge Blasian Power, for we have the beauty of wielding both. All three must join with Indigenous, Latine, Jewish, Arab and other queer, anti-racist, and disability justice movements, for Blackness intersects all of them. If not, we will remain intellectually and willingly enslaved to the colonial state. In the words of Bayard Rustin: “You have to join every other movement for the freedom of the people.”

FIREBIRD

Three years later I am standing once more at Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn, New York. The sun has shined down on the people I lead every Blasian Pride. We had just experienced smoke from the wildfires in Canada that colored our skyline orange, and now we are marching for climate justice. Black and Asian LGBT leaders spoke on the impacts of environmental racism. An LGBT Korean drumming group danced in a circle around Afro- and Indo-Caribbean trans people.

In that moment I thought of Black-Asian solidarity figures, like Yuri Kochiyama and

Malcolm X, Nobuko Miyamoto, and James Baldwin. None of them made change within the confines of their races. These boundaries were instituted by colonization. While we draw power from the idea of race, we must also learn where and how to suspend its limitations that lend itself to white domination. When we remain rooted in siloes, or as Toni Morrison would refer to as singular narrative, we choose to keep on the chains of our oppressors. To silence Asian American work within Black liberation is to join the same oppressors who have inherited the chains that dragged us across the Atlantic. To engage in anti-Blackness is to ally with the same empire that displaced so many of our people out of Asia. To only fight for ourselves is to remain in a state of perpetual limitation, self-segregation, and thus auto-oppression.

I am standing tall, despite the harm and hate I have felt in both the Black Lives Matter and Stop Asian Hate movements. I have learned from the legacies of Bayard and Tamara, Kiyoshi and Marsha, the value of seeing beyond the margins instituted by white mythology. I have taken the pain of exclusion and made flowers for myself. I have planted seeds that I may never see bloom. I may never live to see them make fruit of stars. That no longer matters. What matters most is that our communities heal from the physical, intellectual, and spiritual violence of the empire. For our own survival, each of us must learn our stories regardless of race to create the next chapter. Paramount to our liberation is imagining our power beyond the barriers of minority to create community, because this self-segregation keeps us oppressed and away from entering what Rosemary Campbell-Stephens calls the global majority.

In the words of Grace Lee Boggs:

“THE TIME HAS COME FOR US TO REIMAGINE EVERYTHING.”

THANK YOU TO EACH PERSON IN THIS BOOK FOR TRUSTING ME AND GIVING THEIR TIME AND PRESENCE SO GENEROUSLY.

ALANA

The Stonewall Protests

Christopher Street June 2021

JOELA

Accountability Rally for Kathleen Casillo & Andrew Mercer

Downtown, NYC December 2021

GREG VON LAVEAU

The Stonewall Protests

Marcus Garvey Park, Harlem May 2021

GIOVANNA

Tommy Playboy Memorial Service

Angel Orensanz Foundation, NYC May 2023

BLACK DRESS

Slut Walk 2022

Jackson Heights, Queens

September 2022

ADRIENNE

The Stonewall Protests

Christopher Street March 2021

ALANI Slut Walk 2022

Jackson Heights, Queens September 2022

SIBLINGS

Queer Liberation March

Foley Square June 2023

LET US LIVE!

March for Queer & Trans Youth

Autonomy

United States Capitol March 2023

ALETHEIA & JAY

Slut Walk 2022

Jackson Heights, Queens September 2022

I’M GAY! Dyke March 2023

Washington Square Park

June 2023

NA-LEKAN

George Floyd Remembrance

March & Vigil Foley Square May 2021

KALANI

NYC Dyke March 2022

Washington Square Park June 2022

JAKOB

Coney Island, Brooklyn August 2021

WE KEEP US SAFE

The Stonewall Protests

West Side Highway October 2020

BITCH BOY

NYC Dyke March 2022

The New York Public Library, 5th Ave. June 2022

SPIRIT

Justice for Breonna Taylor

West Side Highway March 2021

ANNEY

NYC Dyke March 2022

Flatiron District June 2022

JOSUAWRTH

Harlem Pride 2023

West Harlem June 2023

The Stonewall Protests

Christopher Street May 2021

RAQUEL WILLIS

Coney

LADAY E. TUCKER

Queens

JERMAINE

National

BAN DESANTIS NOT BOOKS!

FLORIDA QUEERS FIGHT BACK!

LYNCHED

QUEERS 4 PALESTINE

Queers

RINOR, JASON & YVES

ELIYA

Riegelmann

PARIS L’HOMMIE

Abolition Park (City Hall) July 2020

BASIT

Brooklyn Liberation March for Trans Youth

Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn June 2021

ALI

The Stonewall Protests

Christopher Park September 2020

KYLE

The Stonewall Protests

Christopher Street June 2021

GIA LOVE

March Against TLGBQ Hate Bushwick, Brooklyn September 2021

I HEART DYKES

NYC Dyke March 2023

Flatiron District June 2023

NOLAN

Advocacy Ball

Christopher Street Pier May 2024

THE KOZSTER

Riis Beach Pride 2023

The People’s Beach, Jacob Riis Park September 2023

MAXIM

Riis Beach Pride 2023

The People’s Beach, Jacob Riis Park September 2023

GINO & DYLAN

Washington Square Park

September 2022

DONOVAN

Trans Visibility March

South Harlem October 2020

BOY WITH BANDAGES

NYC Pride 2021

Washington Square Park June 2021

FUCK SCOTUS

All Out for Climate Change Foley Square June 2022

VOGUE IS FREEDOM!

Justice for O’Shae Sibley

Mobil Gas Station, Midwood, Brooklyn August 2023

PLUTOE, SHEA & WILL

Black Transwomen Cookout

Herbert Von King Park, Brooklyn August 2022

ANIKA

O’Shae Sibley Memorial Service

Christopher Street Pier August 2023

PAULIE

The Stonewall Protests

Christopher Street June 2021

REST IN POWER O’SHAE

Justice for O’Shae Sibley

Mobil Gas Station, Midwood, Brooklyn August 2023

SELF MADE

The Stonewall Protests

Christopher Park June 2021

SEX WORKERS

Slut Walk 2023

Jackson Heights, Queens September 2023

SEX WORK IS WORK!

Slut Walk 2021

Jackson Heights, Queens September 2021

LUBI

The

JEEROND

The Stonewall Protests

Marcus Garvey Park, Harlem May 2021

CHALA

The Stonewall Protests Christopher Street June 2021

JOJO

March Against TLGBQ Hate Bushwick, Brooklyn September 2021

The

KAM & SINN

The Stonewall Protests Christopher Street June 2021

The

Remembering