Brayla Stone was a17-Year-Old Black Trans Young Woman Murdered in Arkansas

Brayla Stone RIP

Updated to correct typographical errors. Brayla Stone was a 17-year-old Black transgender woman who was murdered near Little Rock, Arkansas on Thursday June 25, 2020. Her body was discovered inside an abandoned vehicle along a walking path in Sherwood, Arkansas in the middle of the afternoon. Stone’s murder comes at the heels of a reinvigorated […]

This week, I turned a curve (I hope) and began to emerge from a ten week struggle with symptoms of bipolar disorder. First, I was hypomanic followed by a nasty depressive episode and wrapped up with a bout of a mixed state fusing depression with irritability and anxiety through my various mood statuses. During a […]

Video: Black Parade With Lyrics

In a post titled “Black Parade Route,” she wrote. “Happy Juneteenth. Being Black is your activism. Black excellence is a form of protest. Black joy is your right. ‘Black Parade’ benefits BeyGOOD’s Black Business Impact Fund, administered by the National Urban League, to support Black-owned small businesses in need.” Under that, she shared several Black-owned […]

Updates in the Murders of Three Trans Women of Color

Trans Women of Color

Some updates in three recent murders of three trans women, two whom were Black women and a third who was Latina, apparently of Mexican descent. Police have identified a suspect in the brutal murder and dismemberment of Black trans woman Dominique Rem’mie Fells. They are searching for 36-year-old Akhenaton Jones, who is considered armed and […]

Why I’m Not Going to Cancel My Post-Gazette Subscription

The reasons to despise the Block family owners of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette are almost endless. From the Washington Post And yet the most toxic relationship in American media right now may be between Post-Gazette journalists and its publisher, whose family has owned the paper for nearly a century. That includes the ‘bad’ ones running media […]

My Pride Queer Comfort Box

Pittsburgh Foster Kitten

It is hard to do some shopping when you have nowhere to go, noone to see, and nothing to do. Boo hoo. I’m pulling myself out of week 8 of terrible mental health symptoms. I am going to buy myself some comfort as a bit of resiliency against the remnants of this mixed state. So […]

Update on Pgh MasQUe ProjecT as we head into Pride Month

Pgh MasQUe Project

In April, we co-launched the Pittsburgh MasQUe ProjecT in partnership with TransPride Pittsburgh. Our immediate goal was to secure face masks to distribute to the trans and queer community through donations and by identifying affirming vendors. By mid-May, we had distributed more than 1500 masks to individuals and to LGBTQ organizations. We asked the Pittsburgh […]

Selena Reyes Hernandez, 37, was a Latina Trans Woman Murdered in Chicago

Selena Reyes Hernandez was killed on May 31 after spending 20 minutes with her murderer. She was 37 and lived in Chicago. The young man who killed her was an 18 year old high schoo senior. At this point we know more about him than we do about her. From the Chicago Sun Orlando Perez, […]

Pgh Media Outlets Lift Up White, Cis Voices and Allies to Examine SCOTUS LGBTQ Ruling, Disregard Black Voices

I am deeply dismayed that most of the regional media coverage of yesterday’s stunning civil rights win for the LGBTQ community has centered white cisgender and heterosexual folx. I don’t understand how these journalists could have been so deeply embedded in recent events without questioning why all the ‘deciders’ are white cisgender folx? Or incorporating […]

A Mental Health Crisis Wrapped in the Middle of a Pandemic While the People Rise Up

Content Note: bipolar disorder, suicide data, coronavirus Since late April, I have been miserably immersed in a mental health crisis – first, hypomania and then, depression. For more than two months, I have been very ill and struggling to slog through it. It has been nasty, wrapping entrails around me to distort my thoughts, trigger […]