About Queer The Land
Queer The Land is a collaborative project grounded in the self-determination of queer, transgender, and Two-Spirit Black/ indigenous/ people of color (QT2BIPOC) and the vision of collectively owning our land and labor. Founded in Summer 2016 by two local QT2BIPOC community-based organizations, Building Autonomy and Safety for Everybody and the Queer & Trans Pan-African Exchange, we’re working to establish a cooperative network anchored by a community center and transitional and semi-permanent housing that meets the needs of working-class QT2BIPOC in the greater Seattle area. Our mission is to create a movement-building space that can generate income and become a political hub for QTBIPOC and our community organizing.
We’re seeking to fund the resources we need to create a QT2BIPOC-owned and operated cooperative in one of Seattle’s historical communities of color to include transitional housing, co-working space, venue space, communal space, and a community garden. We’ve been working towards this since summer 2016, when a group of working-class QT2BIPOC community and cultural organizers came together to brainstorm strategies to increase our communities’ housing stability, thus increasing our capacity to engage in critical movement-building work. Most of us had been and continue to be directly impacted by displacement and gentrification in Seattle.
What emerged from our initial conversations was a desire to create our own solutions to the housing crisis and other crises that disproportionately impact QT2BIPOC. The co-op we envision won’t only provide housing, but also a safer space for QT2BIPOC to create alternatives to the medical industrial complex, police and prisons, and more.
QTL Membership
The general membership level is open to anyone who has grown up, identifies and lives as a queer, trans, & 2spirit Black / indigenous / person of color. Non-QT2BIPOC are welcome to join as Allied Community Supporters.
Our Points of Unity
1. We unapologetically and deliberately center Queer Trans & 2Spirit Black/Indigenous/People of Color in our organizing, and commit to leadership that consistently reflects our membership base.
2. We believe in organizing that meets our basic needs, sharing resources and building collective life with the principle of “to each according to need, from each according to ability.”
3. We commit to undoing anti-black racism and transmisogyny in all of our organizing.
4. We believe in full ownership of our labor.
5. We commit to creating a nurturing relationship with the land on which we are based.
6. We recognize the history and current realities of state repression and police violence.
7. We believe in alternative forms of community-based responses such as restorative and transformative justice, and commit to setting and practicing community accountability values in our organizing.
8. We commit to resisting all imperialism and militarism in its local and global forms.
As people who come from legacies of enslavement, colonization and war, we acknowledge that we are on indigenous land and this project is currently based in the land of the Duwamish and Suquamish people. As people displaced by both historical and current global economic policies, we recognize our role in the displacement of indigenous people in the Pacific Northwest and are committed to fight with them in the collective struggle to free the land. We believe in our inherent right to self-defense and self-determination.
Our Projects
Queer The Land was formed to directly address the root causes and power structures that displace our communities and destabilize the organizing work that is vital to our survival. Here are the projects that we have in place to address these issues.