For the GAY TIMES’ justice column, “Let’s Create Some Good In The World”: how to turn your election disappointment into action.

WORDS ELIEL CRUZ

The devastating results of the US presidential election, which will bring back the right wing extremist politics of Donald Trump, show us what is true: while voting is important, community organising will be life-saving. Every four years, many people zero in on the presidential election almost as if it is the pinnacle of political engagement. Voting can seem so important because, for many, it’s the bulk of their political work. But voting in elections cannot be the end-all of how you partake in politics. Voting is important and helps establish who we organise under, but we must still organise.

When most people hear politics, they assume it’s electoral politics, essentially supporting and voting for elected officials who, in theory, will take care of addressing societal ills and make it easier for everyday citizens to live their lives. Our votes elect people to power to legislate and to allocate our tax dollars, and in some ways, places the responsibility of “fixing” the world on them. That is one part of politics. But when organisers talk about politics, it is so much broader than elections. We are referring to how we see and interact with the world around us and the responsibility we have to be part of the world and in the work towards the liberation of all people. 

 

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When we organise, we create people power that circumvents the traditional power structures that exist predominantly in electoral politics. As we organise our communities, we are creating networks of care and support that don’t rely on the state and transform the way we survive during periods of crisis like those we faced under the first Trump administration. Organising empowers our communities to take care of one another and respond to each other’s needs, understanding that our struggles are interconnected and we are stronger together. 

To move from advocacy to organising requires intent to allocate time, labour, and resources towards your work. You must find a political home, a space amongst other organisers where you can struggle and grow with your politics, and build with your comrades. What the “work” looks like is up to you and your skillsets, and you don’t have to work at an advocacy organisation full time to do it. Abolitionist organiser and author, Mariame Kaba adapted a list from Frontline Medics on “Some Actions That Are Not Protesting or Voting.” 

Another great tool to understand your role in movement organising comes from the Building Movement Project called the Social Change Ecosystem Map. In this map, you’ll see various roles including Frontline responders, Visionaries, Builders, Caregivers, Disrupters, Healers, Storytellers, Guides, Weavers, and Experimenters. 

According to the Building Movement Project’s definitions, Weavers are “connectors for people, places, organisations or ideas”. Builders “develop, organise, and implement ideas.” Disrupters take “uncomfortable or risky actions to shake up the status quo, raise awareness, and to build power.” Caregivers “nurture and nourish the people around them.” A full list of definitions for all of the social change roles, a workbook to help get you started, and more is available on their website. 

Under this map, I am a storyteller and disrupter. I’ve worked on multiple advocacy communications campaigns, like the work I did advocating for Layleen Polanco, an afro-Latinx trans woman who died while being held in jail in NYC in 2019; and direct actions, like the Brooklyn Liberation and Gender Liberation Marches, over my decade of organising. For someone else, they’ll find themselves more drawn towards another one of the buckets of work, one that’s more aligned with their skills. When you find what type of work you want to do, find the movements you want to plug into: whether it’s LGBTQIA+ advocacy, work to end state violence and the war machine, fighting for a livable future through climate justice, or building mutual aid initiatives to address the immediate needs of your community. Wherever you feel the most called, show up and do your part. 

 

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Under the Trump administration, our communities will once again face relentless attacks. It will take all of us to respond and hold back the brunt of these attacks. Folks cannot only show up to rallies and demonstrations for a few hours and put their protest sign back in their closet. We’ll need a generation of new organisers, committed to their politics, working to fight back not just during the Trump years, but for the long term. 

I believe that every person, even you reading this, has a responsibility to create some good in the world. Organising is a lifestyle choice driven by a belief that we can build a better world, one that works for all of us, not just a privileged few, and in which we have everything we need to live long and fulfilling lives. But we can only do it if we do it together. I urge you to make that choice, for yourself, your loved ones, your neighbour, and those who will come after you who will benefit from the work you did to make the world a better place.

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The breakdown between “activists” and “organizers” for our justice column LET’S MAKE SOME GOOD IN THE WORLD

WORDS BY ELIEL CRUZ
PHOTOGRAPHY BY Claude TRUONG-NGOC (Ctruongngoc)

Sometime in the 2000s, many became an “activist” for simply speaking out about injustice. In the wake of the 2020 uprisings, now everyone is an “activist,” at least in their Instagram bio. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as every person with a conscience should use their platform to advocate for good in the world, but this also allows many — celebrities, authors, musicians, influencers — to co-opt activism’s ethos for their personal brand by doing what I’d call the bare minimum. 

As the conversations on white supremacy, oppression, and systemic issues came to the surface in recent years, an expectation has grown for everyday people, regardless of their social following size, to use their platform to speak out on the trending injustice. As I’ve written before, “Our social media accounts are extensions of the ways we interact, learn, and connect with each other. And so we must also use them in ways that reflect our commitment to building the type of communities and world we need.” This includes speaking out in the digital world. The issue to me is that some see Story-sharing as activism in and of itself and fail to find deeper ways to change the world around them.

The question to ask yourself is: What is the material impact you’re making offline? 

The difference between activists and organizers

In their book Let This Radicalize You, abolitionist organizers Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba make an important distinction between those who do activism and those who are organizers. Activism, they say, “encompasses all the ways we show up for justice.” It can look like fundraising, attending marches or rallies, or bringing awareness to an issue on social media, but it all can be done alone.

Organizing is done with others, in which we are accountable to each other, and includes “relationship building and power analysis,” Hayes and Kaba write. Organizing is a specific, strategic methodology in service of movement building, as opposed to simply showing up for the movement. Though everyone does it differently, organizing can’t be done in a silo. 

During this time in our history where everyone and anyone is an activist, we desperately need more organizers. 

We’re in a period of social justice awareness that’s reached critical mass – whether it be the onslaught of legislative and cultural attacks against trans people, climate change and its impending catastrophic effects across the globe, homelessness, food insecurity, or a free Palestine. We’re thoroughly aware of all the bad in the world, but it’s time to get to work and create some good in the world. We need more organizers.

It’s my worldview that everyone, even you reading this, has a responsibility to give back to the world, and those with larger platforms and access to resources must be equitable in how they give back, beyond social media. You don’t have to work at a nonprofit organization or produce full-scale protests in order to be an organizer. It’s about figuring out the area of the world you’re motivated to change, finding the right people, and building something with them. 

Organizing is a specific, strategic methodology in service of movement building, as opposed to simply showing up for the movement. Though everyone does it differently, organizing can't be done in a silo.

Social Media is the beginning, not the end of the work. 

With a rise in social media advocacy, many are using platforms like Instagram to share aesthetically pleasing infographics and videos that, arguably, do more to promote their platform than to create tangible impacts on the affected communities. Consequently, many people feel that sharing those posts to bring awareness is sufficient engagement with social justice. While social media is an incredibly effective and powerful tool, you can take it a step further through digital organizing. 

“Digital organizing” is more than posting on social. The overarching goal of digital organizing is to move people to take action in the real world and make deeper engagements with a long-term campaign. Digital organizing can be used to lead people to sign a petition, or donate money, and ultimately, get someone to show up, rally, protest, or another in-person event. It often involves mass DMing, distributing folders with assets/infographics informing about your cause, and working at the interpersonal level. I’ve used digital organizing to get people to pack courts and have seen creative digital actions: like when queer men change their profile photo on Grindr to an image about a protest, flooding the grid with information on where to join.

If your social media accounts were to disappear tomorrow, what impact could you have?

Finding your “political home” should be a priority for any organizer. A political home is a place where you are in community with other organizers who push you to think deeper, hold you accountable to your politics and actions, and function as a hub for organizing and experimentation in advocacy. It can look like providing access to a space to host regular community meetings, launching a mutual aid fund, or just incentivizing a collective of friends with similar values to commit to working together regularly to make a difference. 

Organizing is about building movements. What have you built? 

Activism is often a one-off engagement, whereas organizing is about building public power. Usually, people think of power as something only available to people with money or in positions of authority over others, like in the government, with institutions like school systems. While these are traditional forms of power, organizing is about building people power that pushes, agitates, or disrupts those with traditional power over others. Though it’s easier said than done, you can use dedicated work and outreach to amass thousands, or even millions of people to demand change.

With a rise in social media advocacy, many are using platforms like Instagram to share aesthetically pleasing infographics and videos that, arguably, do more to promote their platform than to create tangible impacts on the affected communities.

Organizing is about sustaining movement work 

Campaigns to change issues, legislation, or bring justice to people impacted by injustice can be a typically long-term, multi-year project that requires strategy, power analysis, identifying key targets, and a lot of tenacity. For example, I work with Justice Committee, an organization working to end police and racialized violence in New York City. Justice Committee supports families with loved ones killed by the NYPD by guiding them through the complicated process of holding police officers accountable. More often than not, these campaigns can take upwards of 5-6 years and require on-the-ground advocacy and sustained digital comms plans that keep the story in the forefront of people’s minds. 

For electoral politics, identifying legislation to enact or change means organizing lobby days and sustaining relationships with elected officials, allies, and politicians whose minds need changing. Organizing is a long-term, often lifelong project in which we will be part of many campaigns to make a difference. 

Who are you accountable to?

My friend, organizer, and author Raquel Willis often speaks about her “accountability circle”: people that check in on her, and who she can tap when she’s unsure if she’s moving in the right ways. Every organizer should have a group of people who aren’t afraid to send you that text or give you a call when you start to stray. In addition to that group of people who hold you accountable, you must also work laterally with the communities you aim to advocate for. Whose life will be made better by your organizing? And how can you get those people in the room with you when you create the strategy? We must always keep the people at the center of our organizing to keep us true to our politics.

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For the GAY TIMES’ justice column, “Let’s Create Some Good In The World”: learn about activists past and present using this method called “birdogging.” 

WORDS BY ELIEL CRUZ

In 1992, ACT UP NY activist Bob Rafsky interrupted then-Presidential candidate Bill Clinton live on cable news at a campaign event in Midtown. 

“We’re not dying of AIDS as much as we are dying of 11 years of government neglect,” Rafsky shouts. A visibly angry Clinton scolds him for being discourteous in a heated exchange. Two days later, the Clinton campaign met with ACT UP and agreed “to make a major AIDS policy speech, to have people with HIV speak to the Democratic Convention, and to sign onto the UAA’s (United for AIDS Action) five-point plan.” 

Was Bob Rafsky wrong for interrupting a Clinton fundraiser while he and all his friends were dying of AIDS @ChrisDJackson? pic.twitter.com/FQi2O4aSx4

— Jason Rosenberg (@mynameisjro) March 11, 2020
This tactic is known as “birddogging”: when a private citizen or activist employs “dogged” methods to disrupt electeds, politicians, or public figures at events, at their homes, or anywhere they might see them in the flesh.

Birddogging creates a moment of friction between an activist and a politician, whether it’s Rafsky, movement icon Jennicet Gutierrez, or my friends, the organizers Jason Rosenberg and LaLa Zanell. With the influx of birddogging surrounding the climate crisis, the war on Gaza, or other US military spending, there is and always has been a hot debate that follows about whether birddogging is “appropriate” or wrong on principle. Recently, NY mag’s Jonathan Chait called it “illiberal and dangerous.” 

As an outsider or someone not connected to social justice movement work, birddogging might seem rude, tactless, or improper, but this kind of direct action is often meticulously planned weeks in advance, with clear goals in mind, and shouldn’t be written off simply because it goes against perceived social norms.
Why do people think this highly effective and storied method of protest is “dangerous” or disrespectful?

Disruption is essential to most forms of protest in order to stop or pause the status quo, and has played an integral part of arguably every major civil rights movement in history. Those who seek to problematize it are likely unaware of, or are ignoring this history. They also likely do not want the issue being raised to be heard, and/or have never organized a day in their life. Birddogging is a time-honored, non-violent protest tactic that cannot and should not be quelled by respectability politics. 

Birddogging creates a story that is picked up by the press, raising the activist’s issue to headlines.

Take Jennicet Gutierrez, who famously interrupted President Barack Obama during a Pride event in 2015 about his deportation policies, some of the worst of any administration. The following press hits highlighted the ways that Obama’s immigration policies hurt LGBTQ people, including, at the time, some 75 trans detainees. It also highlighted Gutierrez’s organization, Familia TQLM as a source of support and advocacy for LGBTQ immigrants.

Birddogging catches politicians off guard and on the record.

Critics of birddogging usually frame their arguments in a way that prioritizes the time, decorum, and stature of a politician over the average activist or citizen. But this line of thinking is antithetical to the very value of protest, which is a tool for creating equitable public power. Politicians get to have one-way conversations for most of their careers, working with massive PR machines and meticulously crafted speeches that side-step key issues with strategically vague language. 

Birddogging creates a rare, direct line to elected officials.

There are only so many ways a private citizen can contact legislators and those with power. You can send emails or make phone calls, often read or answered by staffers who, while required by law to relay the information to their bosses, drop the message into a bucket of hundreds if not thousands of messages from constituents. Often, thanks to advocacy tools that allow for email campaigns, the messages sent are similar and repetitive in wording, sometimes making it so elected officials dismiss the concerns raised. That is not to say those tools aren’t important or effective. Still, nothing will replace the impact of showing up and having a politician see and hear demands in person.

Not all birddogs have the immediate response you’d like, but it will always surprise your target, who, as most in power do, assume they will live their lives uninterrupted. 

Birddogging corners politicians into making a commitment or choice.

Sunrise movement is a group of predominantly young people working to curb the impacts of climate change by advocating for a Green New Deal and other policies that will keep the world from getting hotter and more uninhabitable. In January, they showed up at the Republican Iowa Caucuses, interrupting candidates Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, and even Donald Trump to bring attention to their ties and financing by fossil fuel companies.

“Many politicians in both parties are beholden to Wall Street, oil and gas CEOs, and lobbyists. Birddogging is a way to shine a light on how a politician’s positions and donors are out of line with what most people want,” a representative from Sunrise Movement said via email. “A strong birddog forces politicians to make a choice: do they answer the question in a way that makes them look bad, or do they physically or metaphorically run away from the question, which also can make them look bad.” 

A few things to consider before birddogging: “Get clear on your goals and then prepare for multiple scenarios, Practice, Make a plan for social media and press, and ask simple and clear questions that don’t require specific knowledge.”

Birddogging can unveil how politicians really feel about an issue.

Founded in 2002 in response to the US invasion and war in Iraq, Code Pink is a feminist, women-led grassroots organization dedicated to supporting peace and ending U.S. warfare and imperialism. Since October, they have been regular fixtures in the halls of the Senate Building, birdogging Republican and Democratic senators alike on their continued financial support of Israel. 

“Part of our mission is to expose the war machine. We use birddogging as a way to hold elected officials accountable and to be visible for peace and justice,” said a representative for Code Pink. “Elected officials tend to keep themselves isolated from the rest of the world in order to avoid truth and accountability. It is easy for them to continuously pass horrendous policies while they are allowed to stay ‘hidden’ from public opinion. Bird-dogging politicians gives the public the opportunity to express dissent in a direct way that a politician cannot hide from.

“Bird-dogging incidents have viral potential, so when the media fails to cover a certain narrative, a good viral bird-dog can interject that narrative into the news,” they said. 

Other things to consider are the optics, and make sure you’re ready to document: “Do you want a man going after a female politician on women’s issues, or does it make more sense to come from a woman? Plan to have multiple people with you, if possible, to film and photograph from different angles.”

It’s an opportunity to make a politician’s bad decisions look even worse:

A brand new, youth-led group is putting politicians on notice in Washington D.C. “WE DO NOT DO PETITIONS. WE DO DIRECTION ACTION” says their website, which emphasizes the need for protests in favor of elevating climate action as a top political issue. They have been boldly interrupting CEOs and elected officials for their ties to fossil fuel companies and shutting down their events. 

Recently, a protester interrupted an event at Harvard University with Joe Manchin, calling him out for selling young people’s futures and accepting more money from fossil fuel industry than any else in the Senate. This testy exchange prompted Manchin to stand up to the young person, seemingly ready to put his hands on him, but instead, another person close to Manchin intervenes and pushes the protestor down to the ground. This moment picked up in the news but also points to the potential harm that can come from birddogging. While interrupting and birddogging can be effective, it can also put you at risk for violence or arrest. Depending on your issue, like these young people fighting for a liveable planet and future, it still can be worth the risk.

Birdogging reminds politicians they cannot ignore their voters: 

Too often, voters are taken for granted and expected to fall in line by Election Day, regardless of any concerns they may have about how their representatives are handling issues like abortion, climate change, the attacks on gender-affirming care, or war mongering. Jewish Voices for Peace is one organization reminding the Biden administration that they cannot simply ignore how voters feel about the United States’ unflinching and unrestricted military support of Israel. At a recent fundraising event, JVP and a coalition of organizations worked to get protestors inside to disrupt.

Despite 45 of them being flagged and denied entry before the event, at least 10 protestors were able to make their way in and remind Biden that they were not going away or stopping.

“They had tried so hard to not let us in,” Sandra Tamari, executive director of the Adalah Justice Project, a Palestinian advocacy organization that helped organize the protest, told Rolling Stone. “It felt maybe in some ways it was pure luck that we could get some people in — but also a testament to the power of our moment and the size of our movement. They can’t track everyone.”

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In a new GAY TIMES column about justice, “Let’s Create Some Good In The World,” a seasoned activist breaks down how the legendary Cecilia Gentili taught him to do just that.

Words by ELIEL CRUZ
Photography by COLE WITTER

I first met Cecilia Gentili while working at the New York City Anti-Violence Project. She was a steering committee member at DecrimNY, a coalition currently working to decriminalize sex work in New York. She was an electrifying presence in my movement circles and beyond, committed to our liberation, and dedicated to using her voice to advocate for better conditions and policies for her people. But beyond her impact, she gave the best hugs, smothering you in, as she’d say, her “massive tits.” She was truly one of a kind, an organizer whose impact is immeasurable, whose sense of humor was unmatched, and whose absence will be a tremendous loss for decades to come. 

There are few people like Cecilia. Her singularity, combined with her background as an immigrant and sex worker, is the reason her passing reverberated around the globe last month. She was the epitome of a community leader, a one-of-a-kind storyteller, and an irreverent human who transformed her personal hardships into levity. She fought for immigrants, HIV prevention, and sex worker rights, as well as healthcare, housing, and cash for trans people. 

On the news or in our social feeds, we read about activists in these fields all the time, and often they become deified or exceptionalized. Cecilia was more than an “activist,” she was an artist and mother to many. It was her everyday commitment to others that we can adopt for ourselves as we keep her legacy alive. I’m honored to have been one of the many people she mothered or mentored. This is what she taught me and what she’d want me to share with you, or any budding activist.

Cecilia was more than an “activist,” she was an artist and mother to many. It was her everyday commitment to others that we can adopt for ourselves as we keep her legacy alive.

1. THE POWER OF ONE PERSON

No organizer works in a silo. That’s activism 101. The whole point of organizing is to build power within community, and good organizers like Cecilia always bring people together for collective action. 

But often, when looking at the state of the world, the question we ask ourselves is: “What can I do?” “How will my actions make a difference?” The answer: join others asking themselves the same questions. Believe that, one connection at a time, the difference you can make is boundless. Cecilia was known for bringing people together to dream ideas to fruition. Like her namesake healthcare clinic C.O.I.N. at Callen Lorde, providing free healthcare to sex workers in NYC. She also worked in coalitions to secure over $15 million of funding at the city and state level for trans people and was a main plaintiff in a lawsuit against the Trump administration to defend trans healthcare under the Affordable Care Act. She didn’t do it alone, but she believed in her own enormous impact, and that is a mindset we can all adopt as we learn to find and do our work.

2. TURNING TRAUMA INTO POWER

Most organizers or activists indeed begin their work out of necessity, informed by their own needs and experiences with violence or trauma. That was certainly the case for Gentili, as documented in her memoir Faltas, whose experiences with sexual violence, religious discrimination, and seeking asylum in the US drove her to advocacy. 

This is complex because too often in media, and especially in how Cecilia’s narrative has translated to press in the aftermath of her passing, there is sometimes an overemphasis on traumatic stories that can pathologize, deify, or dehumanize activists for the sake of a simpler, flattened story.

But Cecilia refused to be flattened. She’d tell sad stories of her past but still keep the punchline. She’d throw shade at herself and others as an act of love and comradery. She refused perfection, refused to be worshiped for her trauma, and instead relished what was dark, funny, different, and complex.

3. THE MAGIC OF STORYTELLING

Among Cecilia’s greatest gifts was her ability to tell a story. She could captivate an audience: on stages at fundraising galas, on the megaphone at protests, at city council giving testimony, or at her off-broadway one-woman shows like Red Ink and The Knife Cuts Both Ways. Storytelling, to her, was an advocacy tool that had the power to shift even the most staunch antagonistic perspectives, and it was a skill she nurtured and cultivated.

4. F*CK THE SYSTEM

As LGBTQ+ people, in the US and around the world, we know the state will never be our savior. Throughout history, the systems meant to provide support tend to fail, fall short, or leave behind the most marginalized in our community. 

Cecilia’s answer to this was often mutual aid. “Mutual aid is the radical act of caring for each other while working to change the world,” offers Dean Spade, author of his book of the same name. When governments fail to respond to, or create infrastructure for our respective crises, it is ordinary people who find bold and innovative ways to share resources with one another. Cecilia was extraordinary, yes, but she was also deeply human, and what she did with her life is something everyone can do in their every day.

She was constantly crowdfunding money for trans folks in need. She’d find loopholes and back doors to get cash, care, employment, healthcare, or advice to anyone who needed it. Often this was direct care right from her pocket book, but if not from her, she’d use her extensive network to find what was needed, often just for one single person

5. F*CK RESPECTABILITY 

The right spaces will invite us in, and the wrong ones will continue to exclude us based on dated expectations of decorum, diplomacy, social status, wealth, appearance, how we conduct ourselves, express ourselves, or talk about things like sex, or race, and discrimination. 

Cecilia rarely let her integrity or selfhood be diminished in order to be legitimized by organizations or elected officials. She was always strategic and often made compromises to focus on the long game. But she always remained true to herself when she was doing the work.

6. POLICY CAN COME FROM ANYWHERE

And when you couldn’t “f*ck the system,” Cecilia was smart enough to work the system too. The legislative process can be intimidating to most people outside it, and that’s on purpose: legislative practice is kept inaccessible as a way to gatekeep from the average person. 

I saw this at play when we fought together for Layleen Polanco, an afro-Latinx trans woman who died while being held in solitary confinement in Rikers Island in 2019. In Cecilia’s tireless fight to repeal the “Walking While Trans” ban, a loitering for the purpose of prostitution charge, the law was successfully repealed in 2021.

For us to hold the intensity of organizing, we must also create and prioritize space for joy, foolishness, games, play, and pleasure-seeking. 

7. ALL OUR MOVEMENTS ARE CONNECTED

Across her many intersections, Cecilia Gentili seamlessly made connections between movements and preached on the importance of showing up in solidarity. Throughout the years, she rallied in solidarity with Black Lives Matters protests, advocated for Intersex communities, and educated people about the spread of monkeypox. Most recently, she was arrested protesting alongside actor Indya Moore and advocacy organization Jewish Voices for Peace for a ceasefire in Palestine.

8. JOY IS NECESSARY 

I frequently spent time with Gentili at the club or during social events, almost as much as we spent time in meetings strategizing or building campaigns. Organizing is often heavy and challenging work, if not draining and demoralizing. For us to hold the intensity of organizing, we must also create and prioritize space for joy, foolishness, games, play, and pleasure-seeking. 

It’s one of the reasons Cecilia started TRANMISSION FEST, New York City’s first all-trans music festival. Joy is a necessary mode of replenishing our movements, and it’s important for every organizer to find a healthy balance between their work in confronting systems of violence and finding spaces that emulate the world we seek to create. 

The work of organizing to change the conditions of our world does not have to be soul-sucking. Despite the intensity of organizing, we cannot lose ourselves, our hopes, dreams, or happiness. As Cecilia has shown us, our liberation is bound up together, and showing up for each other can and should be fulfilling, joyous work. 

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