M.M. Volume 01, Issue 04

DECEMBER 2024

To our youth leaders,

Allow yourself the dignity of falling to your knees.

Allow yourself to surrender to (in awe of the sheer magnitude of) decay.

Do not ask why.

Do not run in the circles of your mind.

Do not talk yourself out of fury or fire.

Feel into the sweep of nausea that arrives when an era dies.

With your head tucked into the darkness of ground,

feel the burn of a decomposing empire.

Let the disorientation of the moment be digested

through your sweat and the salt burning your eyes.

Let yourself melt away.

Memory is your architect and will pull you back.

And when you rise, face forward.

Reach wide and feel your community anew, damp with the film of clarity.

Then move.

Our organizational strategy, Devising Freedom, and its praxis, STAR School, is the work of building political will and prefiguring a new world. We remain faithful to the clarity of political struggle in this work. For GSA Network, this commitment manifests in resourcing TQ2S+ youth and constructing pathways that defy and dismantle oppressive systems at their core.

In that spirit, we turn to STAR School’s inaugural curriculum, the Protest + Community Safety Toolkit as an offering to share amongst youth who are wading in the tar of despair. Protest, a path worn deep by countless feet, remains an accessible entry point into the collective work of refusal. We refuse to go backwards in time and struggle as trans, queer, and two-spirit people. We are here and we are here for good.

We love you,

Maya LaFlamme & J. Gia Loving

GSA Network Co-Executive Directors