Organizers of the Philly Trans March, in collaboration with the Reclaim Pride Coalition, produced the Philly Black Trans History Panel on Feb. 24, which took place via Facebook Live. Moderated by Cicely Smith, a Philly Trans March organizer who describes themself as fat, crafty, kinky, poly, pagen and gender-queer, the event consisted of a question and answer-style round table with performance artist and event organizer Icon Ebony-Fierce; ACT UP Philly organizer Jazmyn Henderson; Phoebe VanCleefe, who is an expert in Black, queer living disparities, a homelessness and sex work activist, and musician; and singer, musician, actor, and chef Marcuz James. An ASL interpreter, LC Lugo, signed along with the event participants while they spoke.
Philly Trans March organizer Bri Golphin co-organized the event. They gave some introductory and closing remarks, and led the group in a moment of silence for the Black trans lives that have been lost in the past year. At the start of the panel, James sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which has become known as the Black national anthem.
Smith asked the panelists a variety of questions ranging from what they do in their trans activism and advocacy work, how they got started in their respective fields, how their lived experience intersects with what they do for a living and more.
After some introductory questions, Smith asked Henderson, “what would you say is the biggest issue in our community that is not being talked about or advocated for enough?”
The first thing Henderson singled out: homelessness.
“Not just homelessness, but how we look at that and how we address it,” Henderson said at the event. “Take Philadelphia for instance. There’s too many empty, dilapidated houses that nobody’s doing anything with while we have thousands of people on the street. It doesn’t make any sense. Our mayor, City Council, everybody says, ‘we don’t know what to do.’ It should be a simple thing. That’s something that you hear about, but you don’t hear solutions ever.”
Henderson also does work through the local organization Black and Latinx Community Control of Health, composed of Black and Brown people living with HIV who strive to end HIV infections and regain control of healthcare in their own communities. At the event, Henderson spoke about the need for queer and trans people of color to be in positions of power in healthcare settings.
Smith asked Henderson how she would describe community control as related to the nonprofit industrial complex, “or any other system that actively oppresses us.”
“Seeing people who look like us, talk like us and act like us being the ones who are making decisions as far as what that organization is doing,” Henderson said at the panel. “Right now even when you go into a lot of nonprofits you see people who look like us behind the desk, but when it comes to who’s making the decisions, we’re never in the room. That’s not community control.”
Smith asked VanCleefe about her work as a public whistleblower for the Attic Youth Center, where she formerly worked, and how it has been looking for work since holding the organization accountable. In 2019, former Attic employees alleged that sexual assault of a minor occurred on the youth center’s premises and that racism permeated its staff.
“It was really tough looking for work,” VanCleefe said at the event. “I feel like I was kind of blacklisted because the way that everything came out was through Facebook Live, so that kind of lived everywhere. I also feel like when things like that happen, whistleblowers have a hard time finding work anyway because the companies don’t necessarily want their dirty laundry aired.”
When Smith asked VanCleefe what they would say to local nonprofit leaders who may have been watching the panel, VanCleefe said, “you need to be very conscious how easy it is to fall into tyranny. You need to be very conscious of how easy it is to fall into anti-Black frameworks and ideals, and moving in ways that do not honor the people you serve.”
Smith asked each panelist one question at a time, frequently changing topics from one person to the next. They asked Icon if they have seen any change in Philly’s LGBTQ performance scene since the town hall in 2020. Icon and Vinchelle, another local drag performer and activist, organized the town hall to call out white bar owners and event producers for their racist actions toward queer performers of color.
“Some things have changed, but there’s a lot of the same,” Icon said at the panel. “There’s a lot of work that still needs to be done. I feel like we need to start addressing things like colorism; we need to address the difference between POC and Black when it comes to equitable casting. Things are not going to happen overnight, you just have to keep holding people accountable.”
Icon also talked about their plan to revive the Phreak N’ Queer festival in Philadelphia, a multi-day festival that will feature performers and professionals from diverse walks of life. DJ Evil V started Phreak N’ Queer about 10 years ago, but passed the responsibility to Icon when they moved away.
“Phreak N’ Queer is basically all about queerness across the board, whether you’re an artist, a chef, a yoga instructor, a healer, a spoken word artist, a filmmaker and beyond,” Icon said.
James, the musician and chef, spoke mainly about his experience as a transmasculine person of color in the culinary industry, why he took a nontraditional path in the field, and why he started his own private dining business, Palate Marcú International Kitchen.
“I think that by default in my lived experience, I ended up a community chef,” James said in response to Smith’s question of how his lived experience influenced his goals in becoming a community chef.
“I didn’t even know I needed to be a community chef for the sake of, honestly, there’s not much representation for Black trans chefs. Especially being Black transmasculine and having this passing privilege, people often don’t see me. They just see the beard, the look, and they’re like, ‘oh, this gay guy.’ But there’s a bit more to this than that.”
James said he would like to create a development program for Black queer chefs who want to learn how to cook and learn about the industry. “I have only been successful because of community,” he said at the event.
To close out the panel, Smith asked each panelist how they define their resilience every day.
“I think it is the brand of confidence that you have to walk into the world with,” VanCleefe said at the event. “I think much of what I’ve experienced specifically with transition is that there’s a lot of stuff that will make you feel terrible. Dysphoria is really, really bad. But there is a level of walking into the world, a specific head-held-high kind of energy that comes with learning about yourself and learning who you are and trusting your own intuition.”
Donations to Philly Trans March can be made at: paypal.me/phillytransmarch/.
