Articles in Resources
Community Bake Sale to benefit the Four A’s
It’s time for Scott’s annual Bake Sale for the Four A’s, and it’s happening on Mother’s Day. So stop in and buy your mother a delicious treat, or bake your mother’s favorite dessert for the auction and raise money for AIDS services in Alaska.
“Please bring some yummy baked goods to auction/sell, or yourself to bid on sweet treats, or both! Check out the Live and Silent auction items, our special guest bakers, or just buy something yummy to take home from our buy-and-go table! This event benefits the Alaskan AIDS Assistance Association (Four A’s.)”
The annual bake sale brings out some of the best bakers in the community. If you like sweets, don’t miss it.
Date/time: Sunday, May 8, 2011 from 4pm – 7pm.
Location: Mad Myrna’s, 530 E 5th Ave, Anchorage, AK
Further info: See the Facebook event page.
Keep track of this and other events in LGBTQ Alaska with Bent Alaska’s new & improved events calendar.
“Inside and Out” and Creative Outreach at IAA
The Fairbanks public is invited to “Inside and Out” tonight, a First Art Friday exhibit at Interior AIDS Association and part of their Creative Outreach program.
This exhibition will include stories, posters, and artwork from agency consumers of the Interior AIDS Association. The presenters chose the title “Inside and Out” because some of them are telling stories or sharing concepts that have had to remain hidden for years, while others are sharing artwork that they have never shared outside of their immediate friends and families. There will likely be stories of recovery, struggles, prejudice, and unique original artwork.
Samuel Johnson has been working with people at IAA to put their stories together and consolidate artwork for the show.
“It won’t be artsy in the same way that other FF openings will be… it will have posters, written stories, pictures, and art that folks here have made. Some of it relates to the above themes, and some relates to the person’s own interest or efforts at drawing and art.”
The previous IAA story event on April Fools Friday showed digital stories related to HIV/STD Prevention. Check out Samuel’s cool digital story about finding IAA and joining the Creative Outreach project:
Interior AIDS Association Creative Outreach Digital Story from Samuel Johnson on Vimeo.
Inside and Out
Date/time: Friday, May 6, 6:00-8:00 PM
Location: Interior Aids Association, 709 W. 2nd, in downtown Fairbanks, across from Gambardella’s.
Cost of admission: Free
Further info: See the Facebook event page.
Keep track of this and other events in LGBTQ Alaska at Bent Alaska’s new & improved events calendar.
Step Up, Step Out for Alaska Pride
The NorthView‘s spring issue is online, full of updates on the activities at Identity, including a review of the Community Center fundraiser, their new visibility campaign “I am Identity,” and this Alaska Pride article by incoming co-chair Felix Rivera (reposted with author’s permission.)
Alaska Pride asks each and every one of us to Step Up, Step Out
By Felix Rivera, Incoming Co-ChairThis year, the steering committee behind Alaska Pride is looking to step up the 9-day celebration in June, the annual Alaska Pride Fest. The dates this year are June 18 – 26.
The theme the group has selected is reminiscent of happenings throughout the country: Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was repealed, the Defense of Marriage Act is being scrutinized by White House administration, and states around the country are passing pro-equality laws.
But still, the work is not done. Anchorage still does not have an equal-rights ordinance protecting GLBT folks from undue discrimination. Even more, our GLBT brothers and sisters in Africa face threats to their lives on a daily basis. Some have even lost their lives fighting for justice.
This summer, we ask each and every Alaskan to Step Up, Step Out. So what does that mean exactly? Haven’t attended Pride Fest in a few years? We ask you to Step Up and support your local community. Want to put on an event for Pride or volunteer, but haven’t found the motivations to do so? We ask you to Step Out of your comfort zone and become involved.
Each and every one of us should follow this motto. This year, Alaska Pride asks that you run with it! After all, that is what Pride is all about: Alaska Pride promotes state-wide gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender equality through education and celebration.
This year, to help us better follow our motto, the steering committee has decided to put the two umbrella events of Alaska Pride Fest and Pride Conference under one label: Alaska Pride. Both of these serve to help educate ourselves on what it means to be GLBT in Alaska, but also to celebrate our Pride.
In essence, Alaska Pride Fest serves as the heart of Alaska Pride. Alaska Pride Conference serves as the
head. Head and heart. One cannot exist without the other.One heart, one mind, Alaska Pride.
Please check out our website at AlaskaPride.org, and email us at info@identityinc.org if you are interested in being a sponsor, individual donor, vendor, or volunteer.
Thanks to Felix Rivera and Emily Kloc for stepping up as the incoming Alaska Pride co-chairs, and to current co-chairs Johnathan Jones and Gail Palmer for the great work they’ve done and are doing for Alaska Pride.
What are you going to do for Alaska Pride?
Injustice at Every Turn
“Every day, transgender and gender non-conforming people are marginalized because of their gender identity and expression.”
This In The Life video features the personal stories of Ja’briel and Michelle, two trans women. Their experiences highlight the findings of the first comprehensive transgender discrimination study, recently completed by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force.
Watch the video:
The study Injustice at Every Turn “brings to light what is both patently obvious and far too often dismissed from the human rights agenda. Transgender and gender non-conforming people face injustice at every turn: in childhood homes, in school systems that promise to shelter and educate, in harsh and exclusionary workplaces, at the grocery store, the hotel front desk, in doctors’ offices and emergency rooms, before judges and at the hands of landlords, police officers, health care workers and other service providers.”
There are no laws in Alaska protecting transgender people from discrimination or harassment.
When we allow injustice against a group of people, unstable individuals may feel they have permission to act on that prejudice and cause physical harm, like in the violent attack on a transgender woman in a Baltimore McDonald’s last week.
Driftwood to Wasilla: Moose Sausage from a Lesbian Hunter in Alaska
“Whenever people ask me about the Tour, I always tell them the surprise hit for me was our journey to Alaska.”
The I’m From Driftwood team visited Alaska in November for their national LGBT story project, and the first video interview from Alaska was recently uploaded. They also have five written stories posted by LGBT Alaskans from Eagle River, Anchorage, Juneau and Kotzebue.
For Nathan Manske, project organizer of I’m From Driftwood, Alaska was a high point of the 50 state tour. When Lambda Literary asked “What was one of the most exciting or moving moments while on the road?” he replied:
Visiting Alaska was very memorable. It felt like a foreign trip on a domestic tour. I really had no idea what to expect from the people or places or community but what I found was that the LGBT community there was very tight-knit and diverse. We collected stories from teens in Wasilla and one from a villager, which is what native Alaskans call themselves. I know it’s feeding the stereotype a little to say it felt like a foreign land, but it did in the best way possible.
A quick little story…we were leaving Wasilla on our last day in Alaska, going back to Anchorage, and I told a new friend we had met who was driving us around that I was bummed I never got to have a moose burger. He explained restaurants can’t serve moose; you actually have to hunt them to eat them. He then told me he has a lesbian hunter friend who usually has some fresh moose in her freezer. He called her up and sure enough…we stopped by her place and she gave us some moose sausage. Moose sausage from a lesbian hunter in Alaska. Memorable indeed.
Nathan also told Windy City about Alaska:
Alaska and Hawaii fell at the midpoint of the trip and were very special points during the tour. “They weren’t easy to get to,” Nate remembered. “But that’s why we thought it was so important for us to go.” Nate reminisced that Hawaii seemed like a bit of a vacation, having been on the road for nearly two months. They hung out at Hula’s (Honolulu’s only gay bar) every day.
While in Alaska, they were recognized by a guy at Mad Myrna’s in Anchorage. He turned out to be an excellent tour guide taking them up to Wasilla, a town notorious for one of its residents: Sarah Palin.
“I felt it was important to get a story from Wasilla to show the LGBT youth there that someone is thinking about them in a positive light,” Nate said, “and to let them represent Wasilla the way they want it to be represented.”
They collected two video stories by young gay men from Wasilla: Cody and Lewis. Bent Alaska posted Cody’s video last week and we look forward to seeing Lewis’ video.
The team also wrote about the trip to Alaska on their IFD tour blog. They blogged about staying at The Copper Whale Inn, a gay-owned B&B in downtown Anchorage, meeting LGBT people at the Gay & Lesbian Community Center and at the bar Mad Myrna’s, spending a few hours in Wasilla, and collecting at least 5 video stories during their visit.
“Alaska was the surprise hit for me on the Tour. They’re a special people, those Alaskans. The LGBT community was very tight-knit. At Mad Myrna’s, there seemed to be an even mix of gays and lesbians. They all seemed to band together and appeared to be the perfect example of a unified queer community. The Alaskan scenery was breathtaking but it was all the people sticking together and creating a warm community that I’ll think of when I think of Alaska.”
Thanks for including Alaska in the I’m From Driftwood project!
Growing Alaska’s LGBTQ non-profits and students
Tiffany McClain is coming to events in Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau this month to talk about Pride Foundation and the good work they’re doing to fund LGBTQ non-profits and students in Alaska.
Sara’s News Roundup 4/17/11
Recent LGBT news selected by Sara Boesser of Juneau, Alaska.
1) Leonard Pitts: Rights are rights, not gifts
Middleton Journal, March 23, 2011
2) California May Require Teaching of Gay History
Los Angeles, New York Times, April 15, 2011
3) GOP Antigay Site Vanishes
Advocate, April 12, 2011
4) Coming Out: The story of one openly gay athlete
Boston Globe, April 11, 2011
5) 9 million U.S. adults say they are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, study finds
Los Angeles Times, April 12, 2011
6) Kristen Chenoweth, ‘Glee,’ ‘Modern Family,’ ‘Project Runway’ among GLAAD Media Award winners
Los Angeles, Canada Yahoo News, April 11, 2011
7) First locally produced lesbian magazine appears in stores
Taipei, Taiwan, China post, April 10, 2011
8) NOM Strategist, Louis J. Marinelli, Declares Support For Same-Sex Marriage
Louis J. Marinelli Website
9) Gay Americans Make Up 4 Percent of Population
ABC News, April 8, 2011
10) Getting Your Numbers Straight, So to Speak
Huffington Post, April 4, 2011
11) Corvino: The meaning of transgender
365Gay.com, April 15, 2011
12) Mississippi Republicans are against interracial marriage
Mississippi, 365Gay.com, April 11, 2011
13) Filmmaker Traces Evolution of ‘Intersex’
Harvard, Harvard Crimson, March 28, 2011
14) Bodies in Doubt: An American History of Intersex
Amazon.com
15) Trans rally to storm Canberra!
Australia, SameSame, March 24, 2011
16) Malaysia Censors Lady Gaga
Malaysia, Advocate, March 17, 2011
Dining Out For Life – Fairbanks
Join Interior AIDS Association (IAA) on April 28, 2011 for Dining Out for Life. A portion of your check goes to IAA when you dine at a participating restaurant on this day.
Restaurants
Ivory Jack’s (11am to 5pm)
Bobby’s Downtown (Dinner)
Lavelle’s (Dinner)
We would also like to thank our sponsors for this event, Interior Graphics & Printing. Please let the restaurants and sponsor know that you appreciate their generosity.
Celebration of Change 2011
Celebration of Change: “Asking, Telling, Celebrating!” will be held on April 23 at 7pm in the UAA Wendy Williamson Auditorium. The after-party is at Mad Myrna’s, and your Celebration of Change 2011 ticket stub gets you into Myrna’s free that night.
This year’s Celebration theme is inspired by the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the military’s gay ban, and honors Alaska’s women service members.
Celebration of Change is the annual fundraiser for Radical Arts for Women (RAW), a Lesbian and Feminist philanthropic organization that funds Alaskan women art projects.
Although it is respectfully an all-women produced and performed show aimed to give Alaskan women a venue to learn skills in event production and encourage their individual artistic talents, ALL are welcome to attend so invite your friends, partners, boyfriends, girlfriends, wives, and husbands! Just keep the children at home, for this is an ‘at your own risk’ performance for the mature audience.
Tickets are $15 at Metro Music & Books, the GLCAA, and at the door.
Celebration of Change 2011
Saturday, April 23, from 7-10pm
UAA Wendy Williamson Auditorium
Anchorage, Alaska
What it would sound like if all queer students and their allies were silenced
Today is GLSEN’s 2011 Day of Silence.
“Hundreds of thousands of students at thousands of middle schools, high schools and colleges will take some form of a vow of silence to bring attention to anti-LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools.”
Why?
- Because nearly 9 out of 10 LGBT students experience harassment in American schools each year.
- Because 60% of LGBT youth feel unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation.
- Because nearly 1 out of 3 LGBT youth missed school in the past month because of safety concerns.
Think about the voices you’re not hearing today.
