October 2026
Beloved GSA Network!
As October comes to a close, we are witnessing a season of change - changes within our environments and changes within our own spirits. The dying leaves let go every year, and we call it beautiful. They’ll ask if it's a phase, to which we emphatically say: Yes. So is the moon. So is October. Change is the oldest law on this earth, and the people writing new laws against us are trying to legislate against the weather, the turning tides, even Mother Nature herself. They don’t realize that change is our superpower, a homeground we return to again and again.
Everything that drops this season becomes soil for the spring. The GSA that met under the campus trees in 1998, the student sent home for wearing the “wrong” thing, the teacher who left their door unlocked at lunch. The ground we stand on is thick with them. We are neither the start nor the end, because change is cyclical and so are our people.
“All that you touch, you Change. All that you Change, Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change.” ― Octavia E. Butler
This fall, districts are forcing teachers to out students, clear books from library shelves, and take down our flags. And still, every week at lunch, somebody saves a seat. This practice of belonging keeps young people alive under pressure, the way our people have always kept each other alive when the state would prefer we disappear. Spaces of belonging are the way we have survived generation after generation.
It is in those spaces that hope gathers. One student finds their club and brings a friend, the friend brings a cousin from two towns over, and the current pulls harder the deeper it goes. GSA clubs are the result of natural forces that unite TQ2S+ young people, even and especially when gathering, supporting, and acting together is considered defiance.
Studenthood is a blueprint for schools imagined by students for students: the right to learn, lead, and create as your whole self. Imagination is where every freedom we have was first rehearsed. So we imagine that future: Somewhere, a sixth grader is about to start a GSA in 2030, and the network we fortify this year is the one that will be there to hold them, to nourish them, to guide them through the changing seasons.
We feed the soil now before winter, so the spring harvest can bloom and be reaped for generations to come. Feed the soil to feed our souls - Become a monthly donor, start a GSA club, or bring someone into the current with you. When we stand together, feet firmly planted in the soil we’ve nourished, we make it clear that changing phases don’t faze us. Together, we turn with the tides, change with the seasons, and shapeshift like the moon.
We love you,
Maya LaFlamme & J. Gia Loving
GSA Network Co-Executive Directors
