August 2024 Update
ID: “August Monthly Update www.freedomoklahoma.org/news” with our logo and a background image from the 2024 Pride parade.
Join us at The Freedom Sessions Conference!
Last year, we launched The Freedom Sessions (TFS)–a program that aims to create a platform that provides education, awareness, and community engagement for the 2SLGBTQ+ community and their allies. We wanted to do more than just convene once a year during a conference, we wanted to build something that allowed for year-round learning and connecting. We hope you’ll join us for this year’s conference and TFS events to learn and develop best practices for organizing, community care, power building, and sustaining our liberation movement, together!
-
For our inaugural conference in 2023, the theme was “Allyship in Action,” where we focused on meeting the needs of the 2SLGBTQ+ community, removing barriers that keep us from thriving, and highlighting the importance of intersectional and intentional care in the movement. Topics included HIV decriminalization, abolition, mutual aid, digital safety, and more. Our keynote speaker was multimedia content creator Rubén Angel, AKA Queer Xicano Chisme, and we worked with amazing people, groups, and organizations paving the way for 2SLGBTQ+ joy and hope, which you can find in our conference archive here. As Covid-19 still impacts our communities, we’ll be hosting our annual conferences virtually so everyone across the state can participate. We had over 100 attendees join us throughout the day last year and we hope to see you there to help make this year even bigger!
This year, our theme is “Safety to Thrive.” We know that we can’t conflate queer liberation with progress at the Legislature. Our lives don’t get better as soon as policies and laws are implemented. And, our support systems don’t disappear when they vote us out.
Our communities have fought endlessly for the ability to be safe and thrive and that has been by no one’s help but our own. Join us as we explore real community care: harm reduction, unionizing, cross-liberation work, disability justice, two-way masking, finding joy within the margins, and more. We’ll be kicking the day off with our keynote speaker, dr. charlie amáyá scott (@dineaesthetics), a Queer, Trans, and Indigenous scholar, educator, and advocate. Then, tune in to workshops hosted by groups like Red Dirt Collective, Black Queer Tulsa, Mask Bloc OKC, and New Disabled South.
We hope you’ll join us in setting the tone for the conference at the pre-conference session hosted by The Restorative Justice Institute of Oklahoma, get to know some of the presenters during a Welcome Night hosted by Practice Practice Project, engage in a day of learning during the conference, and keep world-building with us throughout the year.
In solidarity,
The Freedom Oklahoma Team
Important Links and updates:
Volunteer with us!
Volunteer Training
Freedom Oklahoma has a small staff and depends on volunteers to help make change happen across the state. Join us virtually on Wednesday, August 7th at 6:30 pm for a volunteer training session! We'll go over how you can support us with school board research and calling courthouses to gather information for our Name Change Clinics. Afterward, you pick a shift to get volunteer hours on your own time. To participate in volunteer tasks, you'll need access to the internet, a computer/phone, and/or Google Workspace.
August Community Groups
Join us!
It's Back-To-School season! Come hang out with us virtually and check in about all that's happened while we were away in July and what's coming up this fall! We will share space in community to express our joys, concerns, and hopes for Oklahoma. We can also talk about skill-building for policy change, too. Feel free to join as and when you are able. Participants will have to register with the email address associated with their Zoom account to log into the meeting for the security of all participants.
Thanks for a beautiful july!
This past month we had the pleasure of hosting and participating in community events. Whether you joined us for the Western Oklahoma People’s Hearing, participated in the virtual school board training, added stitches at the Euphoria Quilt’s quilting bee, got support with your legal name change through our clinic, or helped us expand our programming through the youth & young adult listening session: THANK YOU!