Group Snapshot

FIERCE!

What is FIERCE?

FIERCE! is a community organizing project for Transgender, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two-Spirit, Queer, and Questioning (TLGBTSQQ) youth of color in New York City. We are dedicated to exploring and buidling power in our communities through a mix of leadership development, artistic and cultural activism, political education, and campaign development while taking care of ourselves and each other. We take on the institutions that perpetuate transphobia, homophobia, racism, ethnic conflict, gender bias, economic injustice, ageism, and the spread of HIV, STIs, STDs, and other mental and physical health crises that make daily survival a terrifying challenge for many TLGBTSQQ youth. FIERCE! organizes against the injustices of the criminal “justice”, housing, employment, education, and healthcare systems. We believe in the ethic of organizing by us, for us.  NOW THAT’S FIERCE!

FIERCE! was founded in March of 2000 by a group of TLGBTSQQ youth, mostly of color, filling a city-wide gap and becoming NYC’s only community organizing project for TLGBTSQQ youth. We founded FIERCE! out of a sense of urgency that the collective voices of TLGBTSQQ youth be heard in New York City. Fueled by direct experiences of racial, economic, gender, and age oppression, members of FIERCE! have been working to build bridges between movements for justice. Already, FIERCE! has worked to turn police violence against TLGBTSQQ youth into a public issue and have advocated for alternatives to incarceration that don’t subject TLGBTSQQ youth of color to the racism, transphobia, and homophobia of prisons and juvenile detention centers.

FIERCE! was founded on the principle that TLGBTSQQ youth must realize and manifest their own social and political power to change their conditions, to shape their futures, and to become effective agents of change in their communities. Our work is guided by a three–pronged approach: (1) community-building and membership development; (2) leadership development, political education and skills-building; and (3) campaign development and base-building. We seek to build our membership’s capacity and leadership in order to organize effective, high-impact campaigns that can affect policy and build mass power.