* This presentation was originally recorded in French. Closed captioning is available in both English and French.
Our communities were born in the embers of a revolutionary movement. The very concept of resistance flows through our veins. And yet, over the years, our systems of solidarity and mutual aid have gradually given way to a panoply of community organizations. Our protest demonstrations have become parades and festivals. Our struggle against 2SLGBTQ+phobic violence has been whitewashed (pun intended), becoming a movement for inclusion within oppressive bodies. The radical passion that fuelled our struggles has mutated, ceding its place to organizations which are more likely to seek funding from governments rather than make demands of them.
But what can we do when the organizations that are supposed to represent us leave queer and trans people of colour by the wayside? These same populations, integral to the birth of our protest movements, now see themselves excluded. With the Black Lives Matter movement and our collective awakening to systemic racism, our organizations are at a real turning point. But despite good intentions, we struggle to make lasting change. Using an auto-ethnographic approach, Vincent will review their experiences as a Black queer and trans person, and as someone who has worked with several community-based organizations. This presentation aims to confront us with the harsh realities about the inclusive work we do and encourages us to take a critical look at the long road ahead.
Vincent Mousseau is a social worker, educator, and community organizer based in Tiohtià:ke (Montréal, QC), on the unceded territory of the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk). They are currently doing a master’s degree in social work at Université de Montréal and hold a Bachelor of Social Work degree from McGill University. As both an activist and an educator, their areas of expertise include anti-oppressive framework, community outreach strategies for queer and trans people of colour, intersectional analysis, Black Lives Matter activism, and anti-assimilationist queer activism. Their current areas of academic interest surround intersectional models of identity development for Black 2SLGBTQ+ people and their effect on health and social service provision, as well as the creation of intergenerational and intersectional 2SLGBTQ+ spaces.
