Day Deux in 1/2

Hey Everybody,
Well, it's day deux. It's still amazing and it's SNOWING. Goodness, snowing but I'm inside, yes, inside. And it's just the afternoon and I've already seen a show. (I wrote this in the afternoon)

The Plenary:

This morning's Plenary included The Smoke, Lilies and Jade Arts Initiative. They were amazing like this day. Their piece was about the challenges of African American Gay and bisexual men. Done in performance art style, it began with all 5 performers processioning in by live violin. It silenced the room. Then it continued with stories of a gay sibbling influencing his little sister, a future person 'in the life'; a gay sibbling's ranting over his gay brothers funeral reception of relatives ignoring the fact that he was gay and how terribly they treated him; a man muses over being honest with his wife of love affair with a man and many other pieces that were expressed in song, poetry, prose with lots of 'realness'. If ya'll can get to Philly in April on the 29th to the 30th come see the premiere performance at the Freedom Theater. For more info go to www.myspace.com/liliesandjade. The performance wasn't all there was that was fabulous. The plenary was called Black Beyond Boundaries. The panel members spoke of how to improve the health outcome in the Queer African American communities. The mayor of Philidelphia, yep, the mayor, John F. Street, was the first to speak and gave a rousing Ally, from the heart, speech that reached everyone. I must say I was impressed. Every city needs a mayor that can think out of the box for the benefit of all the people. The folks that stuck out in my mind were moderator, Damon Humes. He was fun, articulate and to the point all at the same time. But what else would you expect from the Father of the House of Manolo Blahnik. Aamina Morrison, a transgender activist, spoke and I really enjoyed her impromtu talk. She was called last minute to help out. She spoke about her life in a funny and inspiring way that also urged us to support our youth while also believing in oursleves. Long time activist, and Nobel Peace Prize nomminee, Mandy Carter, spoke and it was just wonderful having her here. The Plenary ran over but it was so worth it.

$50,000 Workshop AKA Next Steps on National LGBT Tobacco Action Plan; Building Allies and Coalition: Lessons from Tobacco-Related Health Disparities

OK, running to my room. Grabbing my binder and Shän and off to my next workshop... a 3 hour joint. It didn't seem that long, though. I'm sure all my collegues have blogged about this workshop. It was our required workshop. Let me say what I felt about the session. It is powerful to sit with other activist and talk about how we, as a group, can massively create change. That's what we were doing. We were crafting ways to help our people stay healthy. Can you really ingest you, as a person, affecting 60,000 people? What you do affects how much they might choose to smoke or if they smoke at all. And you assist in creating the alternative they go to if they want to stop smoking. You affect many. Powerful, isn't it? But what really makes you tingle is that you create good that thousands, maybe millions, feel. Good. Now that's revolutionary.


Break

Yep, Ms. Energizer Bunny took one. But only for an hour. I zoned out, ate my wrap, smooched Shän bye bye (she was off to another workshop) and prepared myself for another two hourer...


The Bisexual Health Town Hall

In this gathering,it was about maybe 15 folks, we talked about how to deal with the health issues of bisexual. This was very intriging to me and to everyone else too. See bi folks have issues of identity and visibility. The identity issue is folks don't like the name "bi or bisexual". Bisexual I get. We don't say homosexual. Why would we still say bisexual. Bi is not majorly embraced either, though. So when it's time to gather and such only a percentage of "all gender loving folks" are at the table. Out of this we have the other issue of visibility. I did a workshop on this at the Task Force's Creating Change conference in November. If we can't see each other; if we don't know our culture; if we don't find common ground to relate on then how are we going to help and support each other? We can't dialogue, fully, about bi health issues when the "issue" is created by depression because of issolation or providers not knowing they are providing for a bi person. Out of this we looked at ways to address visibiltiy in relation to health care, be it mental or physical. Providers can show they are bi friendly and educated. Bi people can ask for/request providers that are educated on the LGBT community but in particular, bi people.From the discussion also we realized we have lots of work to do on the cultural end to raise visibility. That will truly start the healing.
OK, I got more to tell but I gotta be up at 7AM or at least try. I'll continue today's stuff tomorrow after my first workshop. Check with me later and have a great day!


Love,

Blue