LIVE PRIDEFULLY: Love and Resilience within Pandemics
When: Wednesday, June 23 and Thursday, June 24 | 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
How: Facebook and YouTube LIVE | @CaribbeanEqualityProject
June 23, 2021: Live Pridefully: Love and Resilience within Pandemics (Night One)
June 24, 2021: Live Pridefully: Love and Resilience within Pandemics (Night Two)
Join Caribbean Equality Project on Wednesday, June 23 and Thursday, June 24 for "Live Pridefully: Love and Resilience within Pandemics" - a virtual two-night event in commemoration of Pride Month and Caribbean Heritage Month, a celebration of queer Caribbean resilience through a racial justice lens, while fostering critical conversations related to pride, migration, surviving colliding pandemics, and coming out narratives. The program will feature a tribute to the beloved international activist and writer Colin Robinson, intergenerational panel discussions on Caribbean LGBTQ+ visibility, gender justice, safety, and beyond, as well as migrant histories and stories driven to construct healing spaces through storytelling, embodied resilience, dialogue on accessing mental health and immigration services, educational presentations, and cultural performing arts. The Caribbean Equality Project's pride 2021 celebration benefits our COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund, which supports undocumented Caribbean LGBTQ+ immigrants and asylum seekers impacted by the coronavirus in New York City.
This forum is an intergenerational space in nature, grounded in community building, focusing on uplifting those who, out of fear, live in the shadows to safely access resources and share their experiences of living without essential health care, mental health care, and legal status. Through a multidisciplinary approach, "Live Pridefully: Love and Resilience within Pandemics" produces an opportunity for activists, organizers, academics, and artists to empower vulnerable community members impacted by COVID-19, family abandonment, isolation, and living with HIV, which adds another layer of stigma, shame, and discrimination to seek support and find community.
This dynamic event will showcase the intersections of Caribbeaness, LGBTQ+ identities, culture, dancers, musicians, drag performers, and poets, including undocumented and HIV-affected creatives, who the global coronavirus pandemic has disproportionately impacted.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, queer and trans immigrants of color have lived in a constant state of fear and isolation. From experiencing food insecurity and lack of access to equitable healthcare to the rising rates of anti-Asian violence and police brutality against Black bodies – Black and Brown marginalized people have been under attack. Before we can heal and protect our vulnerable communities from these senseless acts of violence and discrimination, we must name them. It's about eradicating white supremacy, racism, gender-based violence, xenophobia, and misogyny.
As the pandemic continues to spread and disproportionately impacts low-income and working-class immigrant communities, we want to uplift the multitude of ways that Caribbean LGBTQ+ people have persevered throughout history, even before and during the coronavirus pandemic. "Live Pridefully: Love and Resilience within Pandemics" will be hosted in solidarity as we fight on for justice and collective liberation within colliding pandemics.
This event is part of our annual "L.O.V.E.: Living Our Values Equally," a benefit that celebrates the intersectionality of queer Caribbean love through empowerment and interdisciplinary performing arts. Despite this event traditionally taking place on the last weekend in February, "Live Pridefully: Love and Resilience within Pandemics" is being reimagined and will occur during Pride Month to adequately accommodate pre-production and participants' safety. To learn more about L.O.V.E., click here.
The project's ongoing goals are to create networks of support, celebrate, educate, build capacity and highlight the cultural diversities and colorful identities of the diasporic Caribbean LGBTQ+ community in New York City and beyond.
This event is made possible (in part) by the Queens Council on the Arts with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. This project is also made possible with funds from the Decentralization Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and administered by the Queens Council on the Arts.
Presenters and Sponsors
