Everyday Heroes: M'Bwende Anderson and Carlos Blanco

Not only is it one of my supremely rare double blog days, but for the first time, I am giving my Everyday Hero recognition to two individuals: M'Bwende Anderson and Carlos Blanco.

From time to time, I recognize individuals that walk the walk and go way above and beyond in surprising and powerful ways. Both of these individuals, recently, as I have been working through some challenges have shown up to provide love, care, and support that was unlooked for, unasked for but so very much needed.







M'Bwende Anderson

To begin with, I have known M'Bwende Anderson for a very, very long time. I first met M'Bwende when I was a queer youth organizer in the late '90s. At the time, M'bwende was a staff member of the National Youth Advocacy Coalition, which for roughly 15 years was the national voice for LGBTQ youth in Washington, DC. I loved M'Bwende from the gate. Their personality, charm, and caring spirit was evident in everything that they did. For the first year or so of our acquaintance, I only saw M'Bwende sporadically at Creating Change or at NYAC's Youth Summit, but then, for a brief time, I joined the board of NYAC as it was struggling to go through a process of confronting the structural racism that existed within the organization and the movement. It was a hard process made harder by an executive director that was truly struggling to confront his own white privilege in so many ways.

I didn't last very long on that board.

But over the years, M'Bwende and I have come into contact now and again, and though I don't know them deeply, there has always been a love there that I am so happy is reciprocated. I think that they are one of the most loving people that I have met. And this Summer I benefited from that love and support directly, and I know so many others that also have been lifted up by that fierce love...one of whom is another love of mine, Jaime Grant, M'Bwende's partner. That coupling makes me moist now and again. But I digress.

Carlos Blanco

I met Carlos about a year and a half ago when I walked into the office of QEJ as a part time contractor. Carlos was this fierce ghettois Columbia student with a helluvalot of swagger and a heart as big as ummm his...ummm...feet. (His feet are huge).  From the gate, I recognized the power of this human being. He was gentle, fierce, sassy, committed, radical, and had a hunger to learn that I haven't seen in anyone for a very long time. He was ok with being wrong and because of it rarely found himself having to remove those size 14s from his mouth....while some of us (ahem me...) are constantly chewing on some size 11s.

If Carlos loves you, he lives that love. It is humbling. It is beautiful, and it is a way of being and living that belies his 22 odd years that he has been walking around this planet. Carlos is living proof that a mentor does not need to be someone that is older than you. A mentor is someone that has something that you want in your life and can show you, by living, how to acquire it. Carlos is one of those people in my life. And I am blessed that I get to watch and see just how fiercely he is going to change this world for the better.


Thank you to you both for all the love that you have given. I hope to repay it with abundance one day. You are my Everyday Heroes.

Creating Change 2012 First Entry

At this very moment, I am on an Amtrak train hurtling (or chugging---chooo choooooo) towards Baltimore for what would be my 14th Creating Change since 1998 if I hadn't missed a couple, but is instead my 11th. But still...DAYUM!

I will never forget my first Creating Change...picking up Erik Christensen in Coya Artichoker's car and driving from Minneapolis to Pittsburgh with a brief stop for a very expensive speeding ticket just before hitting P-Burgh.

How very much my life, organizing, and work has changed since 1998.

At the time I was still in college...a junior/senior at the University of Minnesota and wondering what the Hell I was going to do with my life.

Today, I am living in New York, working for Queers for Economic Justice, a published author, HIV positive, a sometimes hot mess, but loving, living, and dreaming big and in ways I never knew possible those 14 years ago.

I am always skeptical when I am heading to Creating Change, but this year it seems that most of my favorite people ever are going to be at the conference. I am re-plugged in to the conference in a different way, and I am filled with a ton of optimism. We shall see what we shall see.

This year I am faculty in both the Economic Justice Institute and the Sex Justice Institute as well as participating in two workshops, one on the future of sexual orientation and the other on reclaiming sexuality for people living with HIV and disabled folks. I get to work with folks like Amber Hollibaugh, Carlos Blanco, Sebastian Margaret, Kenyon Farrow and so many other transformative and amazing human beings.

My life is blessed.

I am definitely looking forward to this conference, reconnecting with so many of my beloved community/family members. 2012 is the year.

Stay Tuned.

When Things Feel Easy, You are Doing Right

(This blog is dedicated to JT Mikulka, Amber Hollibaugh, Jay Toole, Reina Gossett, Carlos Blanco, Doyin Ola, and Felix Gardon...thanks for doing the work with me and helping me do my own)

Let me tell you a little bit about something I know a whole lot about: A HARD HEAD MAKES MORE A SOFT BEHIND

To translate that from Country Negro into High Whitey: if you keep doing the things that you know are going to get you in trouble, you end up getting your ass kicked. That phrase was one that was used quite often by my Mom and step-Dad when I was growing up. My Mom is blonde as one of those little evil children from the Village of the Damned, but she speaks fluent Negro and several dialects of Country and Ghetto, so she easily adopted this saying early in my life.

What this has meant for me as an adult is that when I am doing something that I am not supposed to be doing, or even less actively fucking up but still doing what I WANT to be doing instead of what I really SHOULD be doing, things get unnecessarily hard, complicated and eventually painful. When I go on ahead and do the things that I might not, perhaps, like to be doing in that moment but are the things that I was meant to be doing or should be doing or agreed to do or are in my best mental, physical, spiritual interests...then...magically...life and everything in it seems to run as smoothly as a river running downhill.

Lately...I have been doing my damndest to do what I believe is right as opposed to what I believe is in my best interest or...even better...what would benefit me as opposed to those around me, WHILE, at the same time, taking the time, space, place, and interest in myself enough to make hard choices, hard decisions that have ultimately played out to be the absolutely right choices to have made (even with some less than healthy detours).

Delayed gratification has become a source of ULTIMATE satisfaction in my life lately. Some of you know of what I speak.

Lately, I have learned that by being present, firm, steadfast, honest, vulnerable, scared, hopeful, and showing up as best I can and being transparent about the outer limits of what that means has lead me to some amazing insight and brought me into some truly humble and uplifting spaces. It has also deepened my relationships with old community and new community...and there have been such moments of unexpected care and joy, silliness and happiness, depth and celebration that I truly am feeling blessed right now today.

This doesn't mean shit has been easy. In the last six weeks, I have gone through a hard and damaging break up. I have made dumb choices. I have had to check my own instincts and desires around folks in my life that I care about. I have had to ask hard questions and sit with uncomfortable answers. I have had to let others around me have their own process without trying to control it or myself, and I have had to hear the word no, not now, and not yet in times and places when I have wanted to kick my feet and scream like a wee little bizatch.

Temper tantrums were so much easier when I didn't weigh 185 pounds and stand at six feet tall.

In the end, this business of growing up is not just about acting right (or acting as right as you can as best you can) but it is about welcoming blessings into life and accepting them as yours. I am blessed...I am way blessed...and when I can get up the gumption to get the Hell out of my own way...those blessings flow and surge like the River Nile flooding its banks and bringing life giving sediment to the surrounding landscape. Flood on Mama Nile...my landscape is ready.