M.M. Volume 01, Issue 03

November 2024

To Illuminate / We Teach Each Other / Generation After Generation

Our time in schools, especially in our adolescence, should be fertile ground for growing and tending to students as community members, who will help sustain our peoples’ connections and enable the bigger “us” to regenerate societal structures that truly serve the people. At its core, education must be liberating for students, not used as a weapon of control. The radical potential for sites of learning in the United States is often thwarted by the defunding of our communities’ public schools, exploited as sites of hyper-policing and used as recruitment yards for corporations and military; compounded by the consistent erasure and banning of diverse histories, capital violence through student debt, the status quo of capitalism and criminalization is maintained— but not without the peoples’ appropriate and creative resistance, thankfully.

Now is the time for trans, queer, and two-spirit people across generations to reach forward another 50 years together—and do our part in building and sustaining a queer learning safety net(work).

Remember S.T.A.R.?

When street kids in New York gathered under the umbrella S.T.A.R. (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries), they were doing what they knew must be done to keep alive their queer kinship network. Youth organizers (aka House Mothers) Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson intended to do more than care for their children (peers). “Doing more” for young TQ2S+ people included dreams of community learning.  While their projects were unsustained with lack of wider community support, their leadership and legacy live on through our memory and study. 

What they knew remains true today for TQ2S+ learners: to be our most present as students, we must feel welcomed, safe, and supported. Networked youth, like GSAs, are a bridge to the past AND toward this future for campuses; STAR Freedom School will be our training grounds.

Meet STAR Freedom School.

STAR Freedom School is an expansion of GSA Network’s programming under our organizational strategy Devising Freedom, designed to support, educate, and empower trans, queer, and two-spirit youth. Built upon more than 25 years of youth organizing, STAR Freedom School provides a multidimensional learning space where TQ2S+ community share essential knowledge for resilience and power building.

With its three core tracks, STAR Freedom School invites you to find your role in building this collaborative journey of learning and liberation.

Three Core Tracks of STAR Freedom School:

• Curriculum Development & Training-of-Trainers
  Our growing library of toolkits, videos, trainings, mental health resources, and artistic materials tailored for TQ2S+ youth and their allies. Curated by our Curriculum Advisory Committee and created with young people supporting local grassroots organizing through our STAR Fellowship these resources are crafted to build youth power.

• STAR Youth Organizing Fellowship
  A leadership development initiative supports grassroots organizations in our National Association by providing stipends and training access for TQ2S+ youth fellows they identify. These fellows engage in local advocacy, develop educational content for the STAR Curriculum that aligns with grassroots priorities, and lead narrative-shifting campaigns. Through training and storytelling, fellows challenge stereotypes, counter harmful narratives, and create pathways toward liberation, strengthening both local and national movements for education justice and policy reform.

• Stargayzing
  The fourth pillar of our Devising Freedom strategy is where we actively practice the future we envision. This initiative empowers us to reimagine and build alternatives to today’s learning environments through intergenerational experimentation, culture work, and artistic design. It serves as a creative space for interdisciplinary artists and thinkers to craft transformative educational models that are anti-capitalist, community-centered, and radically inclusive.

STAR Freedom School, an extension and reframing of GSA Network’s core programming, is an evolving program that equips TQ2S+ youth with the resources, leadership development, and alternatives to build a future grounded in collective liberation and empowerment. Follow along as we grow the school!

What do you think 3035 feels like for our descendants? Do you see any portals to that future world today?

We love you,

Maya LaFlamme & J. Gia Loving

GSA Network Co-Executive Directors