Long-time Philadelphia community organizer Tyrell Brown has been appointed executive director of the radical social justice organization galaei. Brown previously served as the organization’s deputy director alongside former executive director Ashley Coleman.
“When I got the news, it felt so heavy because I think for so long I’ve been organizing, working behind the scenes not just here, but in many other capacities,” Brown said. “To have the board here and other leaders in the community recognize me as someone that could stand in this position and lead this historic organization, it’s humbling.”
Brown has had a wealth of community activism experience in Philadelphia; they helmed local organizational efforts for Bernie Sanders’ campaign for president and carried out mutual aid and community organizing work with Reclaim Philadelphia. They have worked as a preschool teacher, directed the Wynnefield Residents Association’s camp programming, and co-developed children’s programming for the Philadelphia Trans Wellness Conference. Through their leadership at galaei, Brown co-organized the Philadelphia Pride march and festival in 2022.
“The Board of Directors is confident in Tyrell’s abilities to fulfill galaei’s founding mission of serving and providing a space for Philadelphia’s Latinx/o/a/e community while expanding its reach to serve all queer, trans, black, brown, indigenous, and people of color,” the galaei board wrote in a press release.
As galaei’s new executive director, Brown’s first priority is to reinvest in the culture at the roots of the organization, they said. David Acosta founded galaei in 1989 “to confront the pain, hurt, and fear resulting from the loss of LGBTQ+ Latinx lives to the HIV/AIDS crisis,” according to the organization’s website. Galaei stands for the Gay and Lesbian AIDS Education Initiative.
“There were many stewards since then, including Gloria Casarez and so many other leaders in this community that came to this organization for resources as Latinx folks that were under-resourced,” Brown said. “Though the scope of the organization was never explicitly to cut out anyone, that was a very big focus.”
From there, Brown hopes to embrace people in need of direct resources in the larger Philadelphia community.
“We don’t have the means to sit here and bottleneck resources in our community,” they added. “There’s so many people that are in need, not just in the queer community at large, but so many people that are in need right here in Norris Square Park, right here in Kensington.”
To that end, the team at galaei has already hit the ground running by doing monthly food and produce distributions as well as having more community groups such as monthly self defense classes and weekly yoga classes. When Brown talks about direct resources, they mean physical items that can provide immediate relief, like food and clothing.
“We say it over and over again — we cite the statistics that the queer community, particularly Black and Brown queer and trans people, are one of the poorest demographics in the country, if not the poorest,” Brown added. “As a result, people don’t realize that tangible resources sometimes mean cash; it means food; it means transportation. These are life-saving things that people don’t understand that we need. I know that because galaei had a big hand in saving myself, and so many people that are working here right now, and so many others in the past.”
Brown emphasized the need to emulate the work of Philly’s visionary leaders to get resources to the community and continue the community conversations about the importance of having Black and Brown-led organizations serve as resource hubs.
“If we’re still going home to empty cupboards and empty refrigerators and we still can’t pay our bills on time, if we’re going home to situations that are abusive or if we’re not able to go home at all — we need organizations, particularly ones that are led by Black and Brown people, to be stepping up,” Brown said. “Not everyone feels comfortable going to any old organization.”
Making galaei more vibrant is another of Brown’s goals as executive director. In addition to Gloria Casarez’s mural on the outside of galaei’s space on Fontain Street, Brown would like to put out flags and other symbols to show people that galaei “is a brave space for queer people to come for resources or for respite,” they said.
Brown believes in the notion of celebrating queer love as an act of defiance, they said, an idea that they would like to incorporate into galaei’s programming and overall mantra.
“When we come together as a community, when you hold your partner’s hand on the train or on public transportation, when you kiss your partner at the mall, it is an act of defiance,” Brown said. “That’s a celebration of your love, of your authenticity, and of your god-given right to be who you are in this world. So I believe in celebrating that on a small scale, and I believe in celebrating it as a representation of who we are on very large scales.”