On October 29, Models of Pride held its 25th annual conference at the University of Southern California with over 1000 attendees aged 14-19 participating in the event which was created for queer youth. The conference included over 100 workshops to help transition LGBTQ youth into adulthood.
Although the resource fair unfortunately included corporate, military, and CIA recruiters, Los Angeles representatives for the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the People’s Congress of Resistance offered an alternative to these pinkwashed “opportunities.”
PCOR tabled in the center of the fair, inviting students interested in activism to consider running PCOR workshops in their own campus organizations. Engaged students reached for copies of the PCOR Manifesto
and enthusiastically claimed they wanted to fight fascism and attacks on the LGBTQ community in their communities. These students talked about liberation and their politicized identity while 50 feet away, CIA
recruiters displayed their “don’t ask, don’t tell” policies in hiring LGBTQ folks. Military recruiters in the same space lied about the benefits of enlistment despite the unique and material violence LGBTQ people face within the military.
Around 50 students filled the standing-room-only workshop led by the People’s Congress of Resistance on student activism. The workshop consisted of talks on pressing current issues by local activists from a wide spectrum of ages and gender identities. It began with a video message from Chardonnay, a Black trans woman and activist, in which she talked about her being new to activism and the tips she’s learned from her involvement thus far. Next, Kimberly Mendieta talked about her organizing efforts in her high school to fight for tenants’ rights and the struggle to end gentrification and homelessness. Other topics discussed by representatives from PSL, ANSWER Coalition, and PCoR included organizing against anti-transgender bathroom bills, a call to cancel student debt, Black Lives Matter, anti-war organizing, nuclear freeze, the Stonewall protests and the fight for peace in Korea.
The workshop concluded with a talk by Jennicet Gutiérrez, a founding member of La Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement and a “trans woman who is undocumented and unafraid.” She relayed her role in the struggle for undocumented people under the Obama administration’s massive amount of deportations and now the Trump administration’s efforts to repeal DACA and escalation of ICE raids. Gutiérrez explained how we must unite the struggles of trans people, women, undocumented people, and victims of the prison-industrial complex. She offered concrete opportunities for these students to demonstrate for these causes such as participating in Trans Day of Remembrance and several upcoming ICE detention center protests.
As the students in the room echoed these frustrations against injustice on all fronts, Gutiérrez invited the room to shout, “My existence is resistance,” loud enough for neighboring workshops to hear. This statement recognizes how LGBTQ youth are politicized for their existence under capitalism’s bigotry and violence–a reality reflected in trans people’s life expectancy being only 30-32 years old. The workshop served to encourage students to begin and continue organizing on their campuses as queer students who understand how all these struggles coalesce‒and that unity is the surest path to justice.
