The Haz Waste Program wishes all members of the LGBTQ+ community a happy Pride Month.
Pride Month is a time for celebration, reflection, and self-expression. But Pride isn’t just a party. Its history is rooted in a history of community-led struggle against issues like police brutality, homophobia, and transphobia. Pride would not exist today without the hard work of Black and Brown transgender women, including Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. Their efforts to imagine a better world and protest against police raids at the Stonewall Inn in 1969 sparked what we know now as the modern gay rights movement.
Today, many LGBTQ organizations carry on the legacy of these influential community members, doing work designed by and created for their own communities. One organization carrying on this legacy in our region is UTOPIA Washington, a queer and people of color-led organization working toward liberation for queer and transgender Pacific Islander communities across the state.
Based in south King County, UTOPIA Washington provides services and programming for queer and transgender Pacific Islanders across a range of areas, including health care and harm reduction, employment access, resource navigation, peer support groups, and offering physical places of refuge.
One program named after the Native Hawaiian proverb Mālama i ka ʻĀina – meaning “To respect and care for the land” – centers on raising awareness around the causes and effects of climate change on frontline communities, including queer and transgender Pacific Islander communities. The program gives queer and trans community members of color a space to voice concerns, take action, and claim their inclusivity in the process of political reformation around climate change impacting their communities.
Partnering with local nonprofit Living Well Kent, UTOPIA has also recently ploughed and tilled a quarter-acre of farmland in Kent, with goals of offering culturally appropriate produce to communities and to further cultivate, foster, and strengthen all community members’ connection to the land and its ecosystem of care.
This idea of respecting and caring for the land in ways that are designed by a community and for a community is a sound reminder of the importance of land stewardship. It shows us that when community needs are centered, more solutions around how to protect human health and the environment can emerge.
Learn more about UTOPIA’s commitment to advancing the health of Pacific Islander communities across Washington and protecting our region’s natural environment at their website or social media pages.
Pride Month is a time for celebration, reflection, and self-expression. But Pride isn’t just a party. Its history is rooted in a history of community-led struggle against issues like police brutality, homophobia, and transphobia. Pride would not exist today without the hard work of Black and Brown transgender women, including Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. Their efforts to imagine a better world and protest against police raids at the Stonewall Inn in 1969 sparked what we know now as the modern gay rights movement.
Today, many LGBTQ organizations carry on the legacy of these influential community members, doing work designed by and created for their own communities. One organization carrying on this legacy in our region is UTOPIA Washington, a queer and people of color-led organization working toward liberation for queer and transgender Pacific Islander communities across the state.
Based in south King County, UTOPIA Washington provides services and programming for queer and transgender Pacific Islanders across a range of areas, including health care and harm reduction, employment access, resource navigation, peer support groups, and offering physical places of refuge.
One program named after the Native Hawaiian proverb Mālama i ka ʻĀina – meaning “To respect and care for the land” – centers on raising awareness around the causes and effects of climate change on frontline communities, including queer and transgender Pacific Islander communities. The program gives queer and trans community members of color a space to voice concerns, take action, and claim their inclusivity in the process of political reformation around climate change impacting their communities.
Partnering with local nonprofit Living Well Kent, UTOPIA has also recently ploughed and tilled a quarter-acre of farmland in Kent, with goals of offering culturally appropriate produce to communities and to further cultivate, foster, and strengthen all community members’ connection to the land and its ecosystem of care.
This idea of respecting and caring for the land in ways that are designed by a community and for a community is a sound reminder of the importance of land stewardship. It shows us that when community needs are centered, more solutions around how to protect human health and the environment can emerge.
Learn more about UTOPIA’s commitment to advancing the health of Pacific Islander communities across Washington and protecting our region’s natural environment at their website or social media pages.