Training and skills development

Media Training for Young LGBTI Activists

26 September 2012 from 11h00-15h00. Iranti-Org, has been in collaboration with media activist, award-winning Nigerian writer, women’s rights activist, new media consultant, and philanthropist, Spectra. She is the voice behind the afrofeminist media blog, Spectra Speaks (www.spectraspeaks.com), which publishes news, opinions, and personal stories about gender, media, and diversity in Africa and the Diaspora. If you are interested please write to Iranti-Org intern, Nqobile Zungu (intern@iranti-org.co.za), who is putting this workshop together.

SpectraSpeaks

Spectra is an MIT-educated, novel-writing, video-game-playing, community organizing, cartoon-watching, business book-devouring immigrant queer masculine of center woman of Color currently living in Boston.

She founded the first multicultural LGBT group for women in New England (QWOC+ Boston), and is known within the LGBT people of color community and across mainstream LGBT, feminist, and other progressive circles, for the fun and boundary-pushing strategies she’s concept-ed to increase consciousness of diversity, unity, and pride within and across New England’s mainstream queer community.

In her own words: “During the course of my work (and via my personal journey as an “iqwoc”), I have felt both overwhelmed and discouraged by the “progressive” media’s narrow (and mainly white) perspectives on an array of social issues. Africans and Africa are routinely and frequently infantilized under the guise of selflessness and new age philanthropy; the LGBT movement often sounds like the white gay male marriage fight; feminist perspectives often carelessly leave out women of color; women of color narratives ignore the complexities of the immigrant subset (Latinas, Africans, Asians etc), and the list goes on and on. My blog is the natural response to this nonsense.”

In 2010, Spectra was honored by Fenway Health and the History Project for her work with women and the LGBT community. She was also accepted into EMERGE, a distinguished women’s training program for aspiring political leaders. Spectra is a frequent speaker at conferences, universities, and social change forums across the east coast, and is an avid blogger about all things women, diversity, movement building, and leadership as it pertains to the African Diaspora. Read her blog or follow her daily musings on Twitter @spectraspeaks.

Source: Spectra Speaks