Group Snapshot

FIERCE!

Recent Accomplishments and Upcoming Projects

On October 16th, 2004 FIERCE held a march, rally, and mini-ball we named “35 years after Stonewalll, queer youth of color still fight police brutality. THE REBELLION IS NOT OVER!” This action started out with a mock “awards ceremony” (press conference) that presented our “Save Our Space” campaign targets with awards including police harassment and the demand for an end to “Operation West Side” a 6th precinct policing initiative aimed at trans women of color suspected of sex working. Following the awards ceremony, hundreds of trans & queer youth of color and their allies marched down Christopher Street to the Pier demanding and end to the 1am curfew instituted by the Hudson River Park Trust and a demand for a West Village community commitment to bringing back a late-night drop in center for transgender and queer youth. Later that evening, we packed the Brecht Forum as we hosted “The Rebellion is Not Over!” mini-ball, that turned out to be not so mini. The ballroom scene has traditionally been the place where many of the youth that have been displaced from the Pier and West Village have gone to seek support and continue building community. We were able to successfully mobilize a huge part of ballroom scene and used it as an opportunity to do outreach to potential new members and educate a larger part of the FIERCE constituency about our struggle and how to get involved.

In December of 2004, 10 core members of FIERCE graduated from the Education for Liberation Project, Level 2. ELP2 graduates were able to learn concrete organzing skills that they were able to put into practice in pulling together our 10/16/04 action and mini-ball. The media team & outreach teams succeeded in reaching their outreach goals and positive media coverage for the day of the action.

We also released the first issue of the FIERCE! ‘zine in October ‘04 focusing on the quality of life policies and the effects they have on the youth in the West Village. The ‘zine provided information on the quality of life policies, "Know Your Rights" for police search and seizure, art, poetry and stories from FIERCE!'s constituency, and resources for queer youth of color and homeless youth. We hope to be producing another ‘zine for the summer of ‘05.

This March, we will be initiating our third year of  The Education for Liberation Project (ELP), which is a paid training program which provides comprehensive community organizing, political education, and anti-oppression trainings to TLGBTSQQ youth of color, especially those who are low-income. As a means to increase the leadership and organizing skills of current and future members of FIERCE!, ELP combines interactive workshops and practical hands-on experience in organizing. Ultimately, ELP strives to help develop a new generation of community organizers dedicated to social change work in historically underserved communities. This unique program provides a systematic way for young people to gather the self-esteem, skills, and knowledge required to effectively advocate to transform of institutions that circumscribe their lives.

In April ‘05 we will be facilitating a campaign planning retreat that active core members and staff will attend to evaluate our previous year’s campaign work and how we want to move forward in ‘05. We will present new campaign target(s) and allies research and we will conduct a power analysis visual mapping that will help us assess where we need to build relationships, where we need to put pressure on the people who have the power to give us what we want, and where we can most strategically use our resources in a timeline of escalating direct action tactics. We will also be developing our outreach plan for ‘05, which include our basebuilding goals and timeline during the crucial summer period in which we will continue with our police harassment surveys and petition to eliminate the 1am curfew of the Hudson River Park.

We are also planning on launching a Cop Watch program that developed out of increased reports of police harassment and brutality from our membership and larger constituency. Learning from organizations such as the Malcom X Grassroots Movement, who have operated successful Cop Watch programs in Brooklyn, we hope to use this program to document racist & transphobic police misconduct and provide our constituency with a place to take community safety and accountability into their own hands. This program will work well in conjunction with our already exisitng Know Your Rights trainings and police harassment surveys. Cop Watch also plans utilize the support of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, the Peter Cicchino Youth Project of the Urban Justice Center, and Paper Tiger Television to grow this program as well as possibly produce a follow up to our documentary “Fenced Out” with the video footage we’ll get over the summer.