April Update — Freedom Oklahoma

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What does Freedom Look Like to You?

For the last month the staff has been talking with each other, you online, and with the people in our personal community pods about what freedom, liberation, and joy look like. We’ve heard from community members about how joy feels hard to imagine for a number of reasons that span from work to the weight of the world around us.

One of the things that keeps me grounded as we fight for liberation, is remembering those who came before us and what we are fighting for. Our fight is to be free, freedom of our own making. Freedom for us all. We get to live proudly and out loud in the bodies we choose. This continued fight is tied to life and joy - the ability to access it, create it, and preserve it. Joy is a part of our liberation work and we can't let the current authoritarians that rule the American Empire think they get to take our joy or our lives. We build our communities anyway. We make joy, even and especially amidst the darkness. We fight and we fail, and we keep living and striving towards that liberated future by freeing one another in the present.

For Trans Day of Visibility, our Executive Director, Nicole McAfee (they/she), created a Zine and love letter to us all about finding love in their own body and being trans enough.

“Picture me with a sign, waiting for you at the airport escalator, saying welcome home. Home to yourself. Home to your community. Home in your own body, on your terms. As trans people, it can feel like there is no one willing to be bold enough to claim us as theirs, no spaces for us to belong, even within ourselves. But we're making a home in our bodies, in these places where the folks in power want to see us suffer, in the world we're building, together, where we all have the resources, community, and safety to thrive. So find that joy and homecoming however you can. Welcome. You belong here.” You can find this complete labor of love for self and others here.

I read this and I felt it deep in my bones. As most of us in 2-Spirit, trans, gender non-conforming bodies probably have experienced that sense of loneliness, of danger, at some point in time. Whether it's the isolation that comes from a family or a community that doesn't accept you, or tokenization without true support, we have heard that visibility without protection and support is a target.

But what we've also been doing in these conversations with each other and our communities is refocusing on how we build freedom right now.

Politicians have shown us that it takes them a long time to even consider answering our phone call. They’re not the folks who are standing there, welcoming us at the bottom of an escalator. They’re not even at home, waiting for us to arrive. They’re too focused on their one way ticket to whatever will get them praise, tell them they’re doing good, check off the box of change without any care about impact or cost to our community. We have built our communities, and our families brick by brick, of love and care and tears and sleepless nights. We build these things because we dare to imagine freedom where we get to love each other simply because we want to and not out of fear that we may never get the opportunity again. That’s evident with our Love Letters to Trans Oklahomans. Folks across the country have reached out to welcome us home, to share their art, to foster hope, and to help us imagine and build freedom, grounded in love, grounded in all the care that we owe one another. Trans Day of Visibility may be over, but the fight for our safety, our freedom, is far from done.

So I want to ask you: what does freedom look like to you? Are there ways you already see it showing up in your life? Are there ways you can see us building it together, unphased by policy, beyond the halls of power? Does it look like having your financial needs met, how about learning how to sew or connect with people around you? A pen pal or video chat? Spring is the season of growing, blossoming, rebirth. So how in this season of evolution, can we continue to grow and build something beautiful alongside you?

Let’s make freedom, for all of us, together. Let this season be a homecoming to our movement and ourselves.

With hope, vision, and a passion for Freedom,

Mauree Turner (they/them) - Director of Digital Organizing & Communications

Nicole McAfee (they/she) - Executive Director