Mutual Aid Fund is Back!

July 2021

It was hard to choose a headline among the things I want to share with all of you this month, but I think I unburied the lead (is that a thing?) with the subject line! ANYWAY, let’s dive in: 

Our Rural QTBIPOC/LGBTQ+ Mutual Aid Fund is back! We’ll open the form for requests in early August; if you want to donate, you can always do that here. Watch our website, emails, and social media for more info in the next week on how to request support and how to give (you can do both!). 

Continuing from last month’s newsletter, I want to update you all on two ways we’re moving right now. The first, we’re having conversations with OITO community members who are chronically ill, part of disability community, or have other access needs about ways to best move together. Exploring questions like: how do we keep offering accessible gatherings in ways that are engaging and offer true connection, both in-person and virtually? How do we deepen experiences for people across distance? Some of these questions are ones we’ve already thought about because we work across geography and some are new as norms are shifting around public health interactions these days. If you have thoughts about these issues and would like to chat, let me know! 

Relatedly, existing groups can now choose to meet in-person, virtually, or hybrid! For now, we’re only offering the option to existing groups (Trans Femme Chill Club, Brattleboro Area Non-Monogamy Group, Health Justice Work Group, and We Wake Up Like This [WWULT likely having this conversation more in the Fall]), to choose how the group would like to gather, and to what degree (given individual needs) people would like to mask/distance/etc. Eva will be available to support groups having those conversations together and making decisions to support consensus decision making in those spaces. And if all continues positively, we’ll be exploring offering open-to-the-OITO public gatherings later this summer and fall. 

Lastly, as a way of digging more deeply into our values around rest and personal sustainability leading to movement sustainability, our non-ED staff will be taking a six-week break during September and October. We’re seeing a lot of organizations do things like this lately! It feels really important to be able to support our staff in these ways with time that is qualitatively different than just a few days here and there. Fear not, I’ll be staying on to keep things running while Ain and Eva are getting some much-needed rest, to help support all of our needs and wants. This also means that we’ll be moving at a bit of a slower pace during that time. I’m so pleased that we can offer this type of space to our staff, whole organization, and community and thank you all for the very many kinds of support you give that makes any of this possible. 
 

Here for it, 

HB

--
HB Lozito

Executive Director
hb@WeAreOutintheOpen.org 

Thank you!

Together we raised over $19,000 in June for rural LGBTQ+ Joy, community, and power!

I was so honored to receive the support of our community to take a sabbatical earlier this year. And in the interest of continuing to have the benefits of that experience ripple out, I wanted to start a new newsletter section to share insights, readings, watchings, recipes, and more from my sabbatical time. I’m calling it “Post-Sabbatical Postscripts” AKA PS/PS. 

First up: a book,Change: How to Make Big Things Happen. This book explores social change theory and how to effectively spread complex ideas and drive powerful shifts among communities. One thing I’m taking away is something that I think we do really well here at OITO (and want to keep doing more of!): the idea of using “wide bridges” to drive community change. We’re not about having one influencer or celebrity being our mouthpiece, we’re about making many connections, weaving a strong network, and using the collective power of community (or wide bridges!) to drive complex, powerful, and lasting change. The Summit is such a lovely example of this in action and something I've very excited for us to return to in the not-too-distant future. I borrowedChange from the always fabulousBrooks Memorial Library, and encourage you to check out your local library!

If you read it (or parts of it),let me knowwhat you think.

--HB