With everything I had against me, I am still here,
I am still Black, I am still Trans, I'm still powerful,
I'm still strong, I'm still present.
I'm feeling alive, excited.
With COVID 19, we're all excited to be alive.
My style says confident, mature, definitely leader,
someone that commands and demands a certain quality
and respect in life.
I understood from the time when I was on the street,
when I was doing sex work, I wasn't drawn to being naked,
and walking around in a thong.
Having the opportunity to be clothed in a way
that made me comfortable, and still be able to go
out there and, and survive.
Oh, yeah, I'm going to mind that.
So let's get something to put on the floor.
People just automatically assume that I'm unapproachable.
People automatically assume that I am a bitch,
and at times I can be, if you pluck me the wrong way,
you're going to get plucked back.
One of the things people don't really know is
that I love everybody.
Even if I don't know you, I'm willing to hug you,
and actually hold you, before COVID.
Now I'm a little scared.
People assume that I had to have come from the bottom to exist.
I was raised from a very regular middle class family,
went to Catholic school, went to the Boy Scouts,
went to Bible camp, did all the normal stuff
that all the normal kids did.
Gender identity was just my difference.
Having an open heart came from a childhood of wanting to be accepted,
and wanting to be a part, and never being a part.
And at the same time always wanting to be seen,
or heard, or felt in my femininity, and then somehow trying to hide something
that was so obvious to everybody.
If you just look back on my life, I didn't do any of the normal things.
I didn't play in dirt.
I didn't like sports.
I didn't want to be outside with the kids.
I lived in an imaginary world of curtains, and dresses, and my mother's heels.
I always knew I wasn't gay.
I was turned completely off by the word transvestite,
and there was not yet a word Transgender.
What applied to me was young woman, young lady, that was it.
I never felt comfortable.
I never felt at home.
I never felt like I belonged.
I kept leaving.
I kept missing curfew.
And once I ran away, I kind of never went back.
I slept on a train for a while, until I got punched in the face.
That was a rude awakening.
I went from the A train to Covenant House, stayed in Port Authority for a while,
and the bath houses on 42nd Street, and gradually got sick
and tired of all of it, and knew that there was
something still missing.
There was something I still didn't know, which was my gender identity.
It wasn't until I met a lady named Deray Princess that I knew.
She asked me to come inside and give her a shot.
I was like, "A shot?
I can't do this."
And she did it to an orange, showed me how to do it,
and then pulled her butt cheek out, and I gave her her hormone shot.
And then she opens up her robe and said, "this is what you're going to be."
As a young trans woman, some of those words of advice
came at a really pivotal time in my life.
I was a club kid. And having someone like grab me by the heels
and say, "You're worth so much more."
Those are lessons that changed me. It made me whole.
So, with the tragedy of being homeless, I had so much.
No, the sex work began when I had discovered
the shelter system.
I actually went to Fort Washington, where there
was an abundance of Trans women, and those Trans women
told me in order to stay in that shelter, I would have to work
for my keep, and dressed me up and took me out.
I don't know about anybody else's experience,
I know mine was scary.
Going out there, the being out there, to meeting someone,
possibly having sex with someone I don't know, all of it.
Then the Board of Education sent me to the Gay and Lesbian Center.
That did not work, because I wasn't gay or lesbian.
And as a Transgender person, I was told to sit outside of the circle,
and if I had any opinion, raise my hand.
Well, at that moment, I discovered, "Fuck you,"
and walked out, realizing that whole train ride home,
that once again, I did not fit in.
It led to me discovering I liked myself a lot more
than these people ever gave a damn about me.
So why need them?
The journey to stopping sex work.
There was this horrible Trans woman, who I not only helped,
I helped her get a job.
I helped her get not one job, but two jobs.
I helped her get an apartment, and this Trans woman got arrested,
and in lieu of her arrest, she said, I was a Madam,
someone that has a bunch of sex workers working for them, which I wasn't.
They did a sting on my house, and they sent
an under cover in, and at the time I had an ad,
and my ad was for fetish work.
In the state of New Jersey, fetish work is,
as long as you don't accept money, legal.
So when a young man came in my house, I guess they told him
in his little earpiece to ask if I had drugs, and
at the time I had marijuana, and it was hanging on
these cute little magnets, hanging on my refrigerator.
Right after I told them where the marijuana was,
there was a knock on my door.
They were lots of police in the hallway.
They kicked the door in, threw me down on the floor once,
picked me up and threw me down on the floor again,
and then decided to ransack my apartment.
My arrest didn't turn out to be what it was supposed to be.
I got arrested for a $10 bag of weed, and on top of doing all of that to me,
I winded up serving 30 days in jail with no warning,
my dog almost died.
I was lied to by the D.A., some horrible D.A.
in New Jersey with a horrible toupee.
In 30 days, I came out of jail with a purpose,
and a sense of revenge.
When I was able to turn that arrest into a lifetime's work
of advocacy, I took ownership and created my own agency
where I can do just what I've been doing for a lifetime, taking
care of my community.
When I got arrested, I was a Program Coordinator Supervisor
at Jersey City Connection in New Jersey.
I had actually started the first Transgender group,
the first hormone therapy session in New Jersey.
What was pretty clear was that Black Trans people
were not going to be paid appropriately, so I had to do sex work.
My job gave me rent, and that's it.
Sex work gave me the cars, it kept me off public transportation,
and still helping the people I was helping.
All of that work, and all those positions, and all that notoriety that
came with it did not come with the money that needs
to be attached, but it came with a supervisor that was
making 80, $90,000 a year that didn't know dick
about Black Trans Lives.
So my supervisor, who was not equipped to do the job,
actually made more money than I did.
We're tokenized and used by most non-for-profits in New York City.
We're not paid appropriately.
We're not treated appropriately.
We're not even treated with dignity or respect.
By me owning my own agency, I am the dignity and respect
I require and expect out of everyone in this world.
It's Gays and Lesbians living in a Transgender society.
Why?
Because I said so, because we have never
been considered first, so I put us first.
When you see that the rich history of Gay and Lesbian life, and the history
of Trans life is barely heard about.
By my agency buying a building and creating
a Leadership Academy, that's the first time in history
a Black Trans woman has one, had equity for community,
something only designed for us.
In a city of privilege, we have never been given
anything for ourselves.
You got Bailey House for people that are dying.
You got Marsha P. Johnson House for some other shit.
You don't have anything for leadership that says,
I am creating.
I'm given an education.
I'm helping you get an education.
I'm helping you reach the next level in what tomorrow and
sustainability looks like.
That's what G.L.I.T.S is doing.
That's what me and my team are doing.
We're creating what utopia looks like for a community
that's otherwise never had it.
When I'm home alone.
Living alone, being Black and Trans comes with an air of worry.
A young man, my next door neighbor had passed away,
and his father told me to go upstairs and check on him to see him,
and I ran upstairs and he was gone.
I helped in every way possible, only to have
his best friend say I was a drug dealer.
Sweetie, I've never sold drugs in my whole life.
I can't just be Black, Trans, and powerful.
I've got to be a drug dealer.
So I've learned to put a mask up with people
that are abusive, offensive, disgusting, and beneath me.
Hurt people teach hurt people how to be hurt people.
Broke people teach broke people how to be broke people.
But damaged people teach decades of damage to navigate the waters of oppression
without letting it damage you, without getting the water stains of life
on myself because you're damaged.
That's a power, to reflect the bad and turn it into good.
That's a power.
I cry a lot, so I cry a lot.
There's a lot of pressure on you when so many people need
change and want change, and want a little piece of you,
and you are not able to turn it off.
Those vulnerable times when I am alone, and like, the holidays
because of COVID, not being with my staff, and my kids,
not having them with me.
I just love them all so much, and I'm so used
to that love because that love inspires me to continue to do this work.
I want them all to know that I adore each and every one of them,
the ones I don't know, the ones that I'm going to to
meet, the ones that message me and say, "Can you?" and I say, "Yes."
To being someone they can look up to and be inspired by,
but also someone that commissions them to do better in life.
We need more of us in every room, so there's no room that will keep us out.
That every door should be open, and every ceiling should be broken.
And it needs to reflect all of this Transness.
All of us.
Let me explain something.
It took me 55 years to be Trans.
It took white people all of 10, 20 years to become
them, they us, our, you name it, and Trans people still don't
have their position in life.
But now you have all these other pronouns, and Trans people still don't
have what they deserve.
I do think everybody should be what they want to be,
and that's okay.
That's okay.
But a Black Trans woman is still fighting to be
a Black Trans woman, when a world has accepted 15 other damn pronouns.
I'm sorry.
These terminologies mean dick to me, when my very existence
is still in question.
Hmm.
I can't believe I'm doing this, guys.
Don't you bring your asses over here.
When we're all together, my staff, my kids, my family, my mom.
It's rather unusual.
We're all convening in ways that is unheard of,
because society thinks that we don't do these things.
We are not the norm.
We don't have holidays.
We don't have lives.
We don't have celebrations.
We're just somehow the oddities that does all the freaky shit,
but we don't do the normal things in life.
We're loving, and that's the time when I feel the prettiest,
and I feel wanted and I feel held, and I feel like there is no
light that's dim in the room.
To be born in 1964, and it now be 2020, and I'm still here.
When the statistics say that we're not supposed to be here.
I am here.
I'm thriving.
I'm loving.
I'm now carved out in history.
I want us to always see each and every year as the next step
out of oppression, because we are the creation
society has stopped us from being.
We are the next step forward.
We are forever and ever.
Now can I get dressed?
Hi, we're Elisa and Lily, the mother and daughter
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