Power, Care, & Accountability with the Trans Women of Color (TWOC) Solidarity Network
The Trans Women of Color Solidarity Network, based in Seattle, provides unrestricted financial resources for Two-Spirit, Trans Women, and Femmes of Color in the region to support their self-determination and confront the systemic economic disempowerment and violence they face. In addition to funding the collective liberation of trans women of color, the TWOC Solidarity Network also creates opportunities for collective community care.
Blue Heart’s Lindley Mease had the honor of speaking with Mattie, a Core Member of the Trans Women of Color Solidarity Network.
Interview edited for clarity.
Lindley: Can you share who you are and how you came into this work?
Mattie: My name is Mattie, and my pronouns are they/them. The Trans Women of Color Solidarity Network is really revolutionary in that we provide low- and no-barrier financial assistance. We have specifically done that as folks who have worked at nonprofits that often require trans women to rehash their trauma and their pain in order to get access to funding. We see this when people fill out our form: they go into a long story into why they need the money. We tell them, you don’t have to tell us. In fact, we often tell people, you can use this money for a new dress, to get your nails done, you can use it for your bills if you want to, you can use it for a birthday dinner.
I think that’s something that sets us apart from a lot of other collectives and nonprofits. Because we’re largely a donation-based collective, we’re able to have a lot of say in how we give out that money. We didn’t want to be gatekeepers. We also wanted to create a sustainable fund so folks always had a lifeline or a fund for expenses that come up every day that may or may not be bills.
Our initial fund started with one of our members recognizing the privilege of being a trans person with insurance and only having to pay a $40 copay for their top surgery. They created a GoFundMe to raise money for community work. Prior to that, myself and Isyss, Lourdez, and Kelsen [other Core Members of TWOC Solidarity Network] were doing a lot of community sharing and resource finding for other folks within the trans community. We were the folks people were calling to help get trans women in our community housed. A lot of money was coming out of our own pockets. We were just thinking: what is going to be sustainable in the future? When Kelsen created this GoFundMe around their top surgery, we ended up raising around $2,000. We were able to use that money to give little cash grants to trans women of color in our area. From there it grew into TWOC Solidarity Network, where we were bringing in donations, and trying to find grants that didn’t require us to have a fiscal sponsor, because at the time we were just a grassroots collective of a few friends who wanted to be able to support our community in as sustainable way as possible. We started in September 2018, and since then we’ve been able to give over $800,000.
Lindley: Wow!
Mattie: Another member, Constance, was instrumental in helping us develop our network and develop our knowledge and skills around supporting sex workers. She died last year. One of the projects we were working on right before she passed was really her baby, something that she felt passionate about, and that was housing. I think we were all chatting on Facebook one night, and someone saw a school bus that had been retrofitted a little. Constance was like, “let’s buy a bus!” [Laughs.] And we were like, “yeah, I think we’re going to buy a bus.” We ended up purchasing the bus. Over the next couple of days, Isyss was like, “so, don’t be mad at me, but I bought three more buses.”
We ended up with four buses! The intent behind these buses was to provide temporary housing for our community, but that was put on hold because Constance passed away. We spent a good while grieving, and we still are. It’s hard to do when you’re actively trying to support community as well. But we find strength in the fact that we know this is something that Constance would have wanted us to continue doing.
Lindley: Where are these buses?
Mattie: At a church. We’re trying to turn them into temporary housing. But after Constance passed, we wanted to think bigger. We have been applying for pretty sizeable grants so that we are able to buy an apartment building.
Another project is Taking B(l)ack Pride. Our latest iteration of that event was in dedication to Constance, because Constance was instrumental in creating Taking B(l)ack Pride. It’s something that we created during the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP) days in Seattle. We found that it wasn’t all that safe for Black and Brown trans folks. We were being left out of a lot of conversations regarding police violence and safety in our communities. We decided, let’s come up with something where we can talk about our experiences, where we can find healing amongst other Black and Brown trans folks, where we can celebrate Pride and not have to perform queerness, which is a prevailing feeling in a lot of traditional Pride events. We knew that we wanted to create an event that was mostly free for our community members, and we knew that we wanted to be able to sustain the event long term, and also be able to pay performers something that was equitable. From that sprang the idea of charging white guests reparations to enter the event.
We were able to not only pay our performers super equitably, but also keep the event completely free for Black and Brown trans and queer folks. We re-created that event this year at Jimi Hendrix Park, and we were able to fly performers out from other states, host one of the hugest balls of the year, feed our community, and provide healing for our community. We had massage therapists out there, we had community healers, we had people giving foot baths and keeping people cool, we had medics out there, we had safer drug use tents for folks, we had flowers, we had so many different things for our community to do, and it was all free.
We’ve made it our goal to be able to provide necessities to our community. During the fires we were able to purchase a lot of air purifiers and give those out to folks. We have a stockpile of boutique makeup from Thrive Causemetics, who have been super amazing at supporting the trans community in general. We’ve been able to donate supplies to trans and queer folks doing organizing work for their communities in other countries. During the hurricanes in the Philippines, we were able to donate supplies, we were able to donate money for queer and trans folks who were doing the work and making sure that their communities were taken care of and had the tools necessary to rebuild after those events.
We had a program for a little while where we partnered with Pink Moon Farm, which is a trans-owned and operated farm, to provide fresh produce and eggs to our community. Right now, we are supporting someone in our community who is struggling with mental health issues, and we were able to form a care team for them.
One of the biggest things that we like to share with people is that this is not our job. We are volunteers. This is something that is near and dear to our hearts because we’re trans folks, too. I think the folks that we support can see themselves reflected in us, and oftentimes we’re friends. The Seattle trans community is big, but also very small.
Also, we want to carry on the tradition not only of our cultural ancestors, but of our transcestors who created these amazing systems for mutual support and making sure our community always had its needs met and that our community was always okay. Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera had a house they would open up to other trans folks and give them a warm bed, let them take a shower, and give them clothes and a warm meal. We like to be able to pass those traditions on to the baby transes who are just getting into organizing and getting to know the community and finding out who they are. We’re trying to instill that this is our culture: as trans people we help each other, we support each other, we have our needs met. To us, that’s something that we feel won’t ever change.
Lindley: Beautiful. I’m curious whether you think about yourselves as part of a movement. How do you think about building power over time?
Mattie: That’s a super complex question. What we’re doing is obviously movement work. Every day that we wake up and we’re breathing, it’s an act of resistance. It’s an act of empowerment to survive in a society and in a world that doesn’t want us to exist. As I said before, we see ourselves reflected in our community. We are current and former sex workers. We are folks who are housing insecure or have lived as homeless folks. We are folks who are by no means rich. We are folks who have struggled with employment. We are folks who are current drug users or former drug users. We are folks who are parents. We are folks who take care of our parents. We are folks who embody so many different intersections and experiences, and so many different paths. To us, it’s, “I survived, now I’m passing on that knowledge and that experience of survival so that we can move forward together.” You can’t have a movement if the people propping up that movement aren’t around. A big part of movement work is just making sure that while you’re protesting and while you’re fighting, that people have their basic needs met, that people have those community connections, that people know that there are people that are there for them. It’s not just something that’s political, even though I feel like our lives are inherently political. It is our life. We live the work that we do.
Lindley: This is a very basic question: why trans folks of color? Why is this work central and critical to the wellbeing of all of us?
Mattie: You can’t really create any sustainable change unless you are seeking to validate, to empower, to serve, to meet the needs of, to give a seat at the table, etc., to the most marginalized folks in the room. I think that trans liberation is very central to Black liberation. It’s very central to size liberation. It’s very central to the liberation of immigrants and undocumented folks, and so many people at so many different intersections. Within all those groups, it is trans folks and queer folks who tend to suffer the most, whether they are Black and trans, or fat and trans, or an immigrant and trans. We feel that, in being able to serve our own communities, the trickle down effect is that we are creating or setting the stage for collective liberation.
This is one of the things that we had conversations about during the protests last year and with the Black Lives Matter movement. A lot of us — specifically our Black members — felt that when we would engage in these movements, it was often “either/or.” It’s either we’re talking about Black liberation or we’re talking about trans liberation in these larger conversations about Black lives. Oftentimes our own communities see these things as separate issues, but I am just as much trans as I am Black. Because these things are central to our identities, they’re extremely important to address.
Again, you can’t achieve any collective liberation unless you’re directly seeking the liberation of the most marginalized in the room. I think that’s always been something we’ve believed in, and something we’ll continue to believe.
Blue Heart: I’m curious what you think solidarity is. What does it mean to you to be a network for solidarity?
Mattie: What’s really important to us is the action of solidarity. There are a lot of solidarity statements and declarations of solidarity, but we take a lot of time to think about what that actually means in practice and what that looks like in practice. What that means for us is that we aggressively hold each other accountable. We’ve developed the type of relationships where we are secure enough in our friendships that we know and acknowledge that we are constantly growing, and we can and will make mistakes. When we do make mistakes, we accept and take responsibility. This group is unlike any group of friends or colleagues that I have met or been a part of before. When we call each other out, we’re also calling each other in. There’s never any doubt that we love each other. When you trust that someone loves you and cares for you and truly wants to see you grow and truly wants to see you fulfill your purpose in movement work, nothing that they say is ever going to create a situation that looks like a Facebook thread. We just have a lot of respect for each other.
We also welcome our community to hold us accountable. We try to be as transparent as humanly possible. An example is, about a year ago, we had an extortion attempt by someone who claimed that we were misappropriating funds. We take things like that seriously. Not a lot of collectives do this, but we shared private messages with this person. We want to continue to build trust in our community. We don’t have anything to hide. Our goal is to serve and to be there, and we are super upfront about that. If we are serving our community, then we’re at the community’s mercy. They control and set the tone for what we do. Why would we not listen to our community and what the needs are? If they say, “there’s a lack of trust here,” we’re absolutely on board for whatever our community needs in order to reestablish that trust. Thankfully it was just this one person who ended up also trying to extort some other collectives and orgs, as well. It was a horrible situation, but it only made us stronger and deepened the trust our community has in us.
Lindley: For folks who are working in solidarity with you, who may not be coming from your communities, what do you think is helpful, and what do you think is not helpful?
Mattie: What we don’t need is people with an agenda. So many people use trans issues and trans people and trans experiences, and some of the tragedy in those experiences, to prop up their own careers and agendas, or to make money off all those things. We don’t need people who think that they know more than we do about our own experiences. We don’t need doctors who think they know more about our trans bodies than we do.
For people working in solidarity with the trans community, I would say that what’s helpful is money, what’s helpful is listening, what’s helpful is valuing and centering the needs of trans folks. We need more spaces where trans folks can just be themselves, whether that’s community connection spaces or spaces to heal. Also, getting the trans community’s needs and wants from the community, as opposed to assuming [what their needs and wants are].
Lindley: Thank you so much!
