BLMP 5 Years- A Review of Our 2022
Dear Family,
This year BLMP turned 5 YEARS OLD!
BLMP was founded 5 years ago to create safe(r) spaces for Black queer, trans, and non-binary migrants. It was created to give our people the ability to envision a world without forced migration, where Black LGBTQIA+ people are free and liberated.
We know that our journeys carry compounded risk at every point in the immigration process, but our experiences also carry the pathway to liberate ourselves and our people from the systems of oppression perpetuating violence against us.
As we celebrate 5 years of BLMP’s journey, we know still what we knew back in 2017: that the world is not and will never be safe for us until all Black people are free. We also know that we are our ancestors’ wildest dreams and that the pathway to liberation for all of us comes from the vision of those most oppressed.
As we get older, we definitely get wiser and we continue to breathe life and nourishment into the seeds we’ve planted together.
Like the last- this year has been hard yall!! We know you feel us.
But Look at US! We Made it Through.
This year, we continued to organize and build together across cities, regions, nation-state borders, territories, and throughout digital space.
We held each other and centered our humanity through the escalating intensity of imperial, capitalist, patriarchal violence and alongside the global rise of facism and forced migration inside and outside the ‘necropolitical’ ecosystem of the United States.
We, like so many, continued to experience and move through the deep pain of transitioned comrades and community members this year.
We continue to honor and elevate our dead as they guide us from the otherside.
And as always, We mourn for the dead and fight like hell for the living.
We held fast and remained committed to our edict and mission; to build a world without forced migration, where all Black LGBTQ+ people everywhere are free.
And as we close out this year- we honor the sacredness of change, of transition and we welcome this break to rest, reflect, recharge, and honor the stillness of the natural world.
We celebrate one another and our wins, we learn from our losses, and we invite ease and joy into this sacred work.
Get some good rest! We will see you next year!
Please join us in reviewing some of the highlights of the year in our 2022 End of Year Review below.
And remember,
BLMP, BLMP
Across the Land and Across the Sea
Aint no Borders got Sh*t on ME!
BLMP BLMP!
PS: Make sure to view and share our BLMP 2022 End of Year Review Reel on our social media platforms- @officialblmp
Becoming Home: Transcendence Through Transitions End of Year Celebration:
We had a BLAST virtually gathering and celebrating 5 years of building power for Black LGBTQIA+ migrants at our end of the year celebration — BECOMING HOME: TRANSCENDENCE THROUGH TRANSITIONS!
We held a robust program of speakers, performances, presentations, a film screening with panel discussion, DJ sets and more!
Whether or not you were able to make it, we deeply appreciate you showing up to support BLMP over the past 5 years and helping usher us into the next phase of our work and growth.
Thank you to all of our members, speakers and performers– we could not have done this without you. In case you missed it, head to bit.ly/blmp2022eoy to check out some highlights from the event and our ongoing end of year donation appeal.
We set out with an ambitious goal to raise 50k before the end of this year, and thanks to our amazing tribe and supporters, hit that goal with more than a month to go!
You helped us reach one goal, and that has supported us to imagine even more expansive resources and abundance for BLMP — so we have a new goal to raise $75,000 by December 31! We are feeling incredibly energized that we can exceed even further for our end of the year closeout.
BLMP Staff and Membership:
This year, BLMP was blessed to gain 40 new Black LGBTQIA+ migrant or 1st generation folks to BLMP membership over 7 membership orientations in 2022.
We continued to grow our base and build the knowledge, connectedness, engagement, and resilience of our membership through national programming and regional hubs.
Our phenomenal regional hubs expanded and hosted local and regional events as well as led and informed multiple BLMP programmatic events and training.
We continued to gather collectively to breathe and share with community in our monthly virtual healing sessions; the Cultivating Resilience Series- co-led by our wonderful healing facilitator, Terna, alongside rotating guest facilitators who offered a variety of healing modalities, discussions, and practice.
We also launched our monthly membership Political and Popular Education virtual space, where members and staff shared and discussed popular and political media, moments, and perspectives as well as learned and educated one another on radical Black political organizing, revolutionary Black history and popular movements of Black people throughout the world.
We expanded and are continuing to grow our staff and organization!!
Our new Co-ED’s Rose Berry and Oluchi Omeoga officially transitioned into their roles this year and have been hard at work leading the organization into this new and exciting era.
We were also ecstatic to add a new full-time staff member to our team as Digital Organizer, Karimi Ndwiga and are looking forward to adding two new members to our staff team as we search for a Communications Director and Development Associate.
We are still here, still fiercely queer, still loving ourselves and our people hard, still committed to the North Star of fighting for a world without forced migration, where all Black LGBTQ+ people everywhere are free.
We FINALLY got to see and feeelll each other’s energy at our first in-person (and COVID safe) full staff retreat in Atlanta, Georgia. There, we got to meet old fam and new, plan and review our internal and external priorities, and kick it with local membership.
Building Narrative Power:
BLMP Communications grew tremendously this year! BLMP Strategic Comms continued to ‘Flip tha Script’ and build narrative power in 2022 throughout various press and media interviews, digital and social media strategy, events, and more.
We staged narrative interventions, trained and built strategy, and worked to ‘change the story’ by developing and engaging strategic communications tools to interrupt popular harmful narratives and interject critical historical and Black diasporic analyses of the moment.
We are also very pleased to have lifted up our community’s narratives in key settings, for example, BLMP hosted a press and community briefing on the LGBTQIA+ refugee crisis in the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, where a group of mostly Ugandan LGBTQIA+ migrants have faced violence and struggled with official indifference; and moderated a congressional briefing with The LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus, Rep Quigley (D-IL) and other members of Congress on the urgency of ending Trans detention and abolishing ICE.
Deportation Defense and Malaika Network:
BLMP Deportation Defense arm supported the release of and provided post-detention support for 12 LGBTQIA+ Jamaican migrants who were detained at the Otay Detention Facility, located in San Diego, CA. We are actively supporting many detention cases and campaigns, namely the ongoing campaign to #FreePaulWhite- a Black bisexual migrant who has been detained since August 2020.
Read more and share with the #FreePaulWhite action toolkit.
We were also pleased to select our 2022 fellows and launch the 2nd cohort of the Malaika Network this year. Staff and Malaika Network fellows were able to be supported this year with 1 on 1 mentorship from 2021 Fellows, stipended personal projects, as well as attend the first strategic retreat, held in Houston, TX.
The Malaika Network is a national, stipended cohort of BLMP members who participate in extensive training on deportation defense and post-release support and who play an active role in BLMP’s deportation defense work.
Malaika Network participants are BLMP members who have direct experience(s) within immigration detention and who want to expand their organizing knowledge on how to support deportation defense and abolish harmful systems.
Garifuna Committee
This year, our powerful Garifuna Committee, led by our GC organizer, Aneiry Zapata, expanded its membership, vision, and programmatic activities and events.
The Garifuna Committee is a membership committee of 50+ directly impacted Black queer, trans, Garifuna migrants. This year the committee got BUSY — from holding a glamorous Garifuna quinceañera in Houston, TX with live performances and drumming, to organizing a series of Charlas to discuss a range of topics- from the QT ( queer trans) experience in Honduras to discussions on HIV/AIDS and sexual health data.
The GC also organized an inspirational youth program for the children of BLMP members/ committee members to enjoy in 2022.
Uncovering the Truth Digital Report
BLMP was happy to support the development and launch of a groundbreaking new study and report: Uncovering The Truth: Violence and Abuse Against Black Migrants in Immigrant Detention.
This report was a coalition effort, led by BLMP, Freedom for Immigrants, BAJI, UnDocuBlack Network, and BAJI.
The findings of this report illustrate the systemic abuse of Black migrants in immigration detention, an incarceration system rooted in anti-Black racism.
Defend Black Women’s March
Divinely right as Beyonce’s Renaissance album dropped, BLMP sponsored and participated in the second annual, Defend Black Women’s March in Washington DC in July of 2022.
We had a deliciously powerful time together marching, grieving, building, and celebrating International Black Radical Feminisms with Black Women Radicals, Anielle Franco- Executive Director of the Marielle Franco Institute and sister of the late Marielle Franco.
We strategized and built all weekend alongside our members and dozens of organizations calling for global solidarity for Black Women and Femmes, Trans, Non- Binary, and LGBTQIA+ people to build a movement that values, protects, and nourishes ALL of our lives.
Pilgrimage for a Better Future
Through our Dignity not Detention coalition work, BLMP took part in the Pilgrimage for a Better Future, a coordinated pilgrimage of directly impacted people, faith leaders, and allies who traveled across California to demand just closures of prisons and immigrant detention centers. Our amazing member leader and DND coalition leader, Gill, repped BLMP in this 5 day journey!
Thank you for your support and we’ll see you in 2023,
Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project (BLMP)
