The Challenges of Running a Queer Homeless Shelter in Jamaica

Here is another entry on homelessness presenting the issue as if it is unsolvable all the time, when we all know it is not exactly so; especially given how the only Safe House Project was dubiously closed in 2009/10. We must never forget JFLAG was silent towards JASL's board who made a decision to close the shelter pilot prematurely then leading to a backing up on older populations and new displacement cases.

also see previous homeless matters on Gay Jamaica Watch HERE (newer posts will appear first) Vice conveniently left out the most recent occurrences including internal maters and murder accusations and such (Gay Man Beaten And Left To Die In Sandy Gully, St Andrew) and (22-Y-O Gay Died by Electrocution After Trying to Jump a High Voltage Fence); also see the beginning of the issues from the closure of the project: The Quietus ……… The Safe House Project Closes and The Ultimatum on December 30, 2009

Have a read of the latest presentation on homelessness and see what you make of it:

Source: Viceland (bear in mind it is a paid site so we are subjected to paying to see happenings of our own country/population by a foreigner; talk about the insult to us and lack of principles, but what else is new?)

Homelessness is a massive problem in Jamaica. As of 2015, the unemployment rate in the country was 13.2 percent among adults, and a staggering 38 percent among youth. Perhaps unsurprisingly, in January this year, the Jamaica Observer revealed a 26 percent rise in homelessness over the past three years. The problem is particularly prevalent amongst the country's LGBTQ community, who comprise at least 40 percent 2011 of the overall homeless youth population.

Jamaica is not known for its progressive views on queer issues. In 2006, Time magazine asked if the island was "the most homophobic place on Earth." In 2014, a Human Rights Watch report found that over half of respondents in Jamaica had experienced violence on the basis of their identified gender or sexuality. Reports of corrective rape and the mob murder of gender queer youth Dwayne Jones have also made the headlines in recent years. Across the 1990s, dancehall fast became one of Jamaica's biggest exports, but it has been well documented how many of the scene's biggest stars performed lyrics that openly incited homophobia. While in the 1970s and 1980s the gay rights movement operated much more freely (the country even had known gay clubs and visible LGBTQ space), today activists conduct clandestine operations and hold discreet gatherings as mounting homophobic sentiments pervade public discourse.

Back in 2014, VICE News covered a group of queer homeless youth in Kingston, colloquially referred to as the "Gully Queens." This was part of an outpouring of international concern over the country's queer homelessness problem. Despite widespread media attention in the wake of VICE News's report, the very same group of homeless youth are still on the streets, and the hoped-for improvements have not yet materialized.

Part of the reason LGBTQ communities are so neglected in Jamaica might be due to the fact that almost 70 percent of the country identifies as Christian. Amongst many of them, it is believed that acceptance of LGBTQ persons is akin to turning one's back on God.

On the other side of the fence, seeking help from within the LGBTQ community is complex. As part of the investigation for the new episode of the VICELAND series GAYCATION, which focuses on the current state of LGBTQ life in Jamaica, Yvonne McCalla-Sobers, a leading Jamaican human rights activist and co-founder of LGBTQ-friendly shelter Dwayne's House, tries to explain the mentality: "LGBT persons who are able to have well-paying jobs, drive high-end vehicles, live in gated communities, will have few issues of homophobia, and they want to keep it that way so that they don't have to pay much attention to our youth here," she said. "[It's] class prejudice mixed with why are you doing this to draw attention to us? To make us look bad? "

This is not necessarily to say that there is a lack of sympathy for the homeless youth across the board among the middle-class members of the LGBTQ community. Rather, as J-Flag, Jamaica's leading LGBTQ rights organization stated in its 2013 Annual Report: "The diversity of Jamaica's LGBT community has been masked by the advocacy and media narratives that have focused on victimhood, crime and violence, sex and HIV." Therefore, when choosing issues to campaign for year on year, the middle-class members of the LGBTQ rights movement may be wary that consistently prioritizing the cause of the homeless youth will present the rights movement as a single-issue platform.

According to Dane Lewis, director of J-Flag, one of the greatest barriers to providing shelter for the LGBTQ homeless youth is a lack of funding. NGOs seeking to alleviate the burdens of the queer homeless youth were, and still are, locked in ongoing negotiations with both the government and international agencies for financial support that would help them address the issue on the ground. They find themselves consistently overstretched and unable to provide anything more than stop-gap support.

"The reality is such a project requires a significant investment to run a program that has been envisioned and designed by the various stakeholders invested in the response to homelessness." Lewis said. "Despite submitting proposals to major development agencies, the response has not been favorable."

McCalla-Sobers and Lewis have been spearheading efforts to set up The Larry Chang Centre, an LGBT youth homeless shelter named after the pioneering founder of J-Flag. Though they are hopeful that this year they will receive the last leg of funding needed to make the shelter a reality, the country's pervasive homophobia will likely make finding staff willing to work for an LGBTQ organization, as well as keeping the premises safe, significant challenges.

Until that happens, there are other groups in the country stepping up to help. The National Anti-Discrimination Alliance (NADA) is a Jamaican organization "committed to protecting the rights and freedoms of all people regardless of social or cultural biases." They have provided LGBTQ-friendly safe houses and private shelters for the homeless since 2014. NADA is a small-scale operation, relying largely on the kindness of volunteers willing to open their homes for those in need. When that's not an option, the group will pool their resources and rent a residential property that can be run as a safe house. The shelters can only take on a few guests at a time and operate on a word of mouth basis, but nonetheless, NADA represents a small but significant victory in the struggle to provide shelter to displaced members of Jamaica's LGBTQ community.

Andrew Higgins, founder of NADA, believes that they have so far been able to avoid becoming a target of anti-LGBTQ groups by operating as a "non-discriminatory" organization rather than a "pro-LGBTQ" organization.

The fact still stands, though, that NADA's shelters are primarily aimed at people who are newly homeless, rather than those who have been living without shelter for several years. With a high occurrence of HIV and other medical problems within the long-term LGBTQ homeless community, as well as a high rate of unemployment and training, any shelter will have to provide more than just a roof in order to see the long-term homeless youth rejoin broader society. Therefore, for shelters like NADA's with limited funding, the best strategy is to focus energies on those who have just become homeless in the hope that they can prevent them from becoming homeless in the long-term.

For McCalla-Sobers, it is the fate of the youth population who have been homeless for some years now that she is trying to address once and for all.

"They've been traumatized. Re-traumatized. And traumatized ten times on top of that. People often speak about their behavior, and I'm not sure how I would act in their place." McCalla-Sobers says. "They have made it clear to me in the past; what they really want to do is leave this country."

As it becomes clear that even when provided with shelter many among the LGBTQ homeless youth have been displaced for so long that they believe it is impossible to ever feel at home again in their own country, the need to address their circumstances is more crucial than ever.

Follow Roxy on Twitter.

Learn more about the lives of queer Jamaicans on the latest episode of GAYCATION on VICELAND. Find out how to watch by clicking here.

ENDS

While other persons try in there own way to assist the image of the homeless MSM/Trans persons has been tarnished so badly by reports that it is difficult to get cooperation from persons in terms of temporary shelter.

also see:
Jamaican Artistes wanted to 'clean up' the streets, Say homeless gays not a good look for Jamaica, JFLAG yet to respond 2013

YOUNG MSM/TRANSGENDER WANT TO BE TREATED AS CITIZENS NOT POTENTIAL HIV/AIDS VICTIMS 2014 (wordpress blog)

Community based crisis sheltering is still an option for the displaced 2013 and more from GLBTQJA sister blog HERE (newer posts will appear first)

Let us see where things go from here even as groups as old as in their twenties cannot seem to or want to directly deal with homelessness despite knowing homelessness is the most visible consequence of stigma.

Peace & tolerance

H

LGBT History Month - GLABRISH LGBT Newsletter

The final post in the LGBT History month series for this year, here is GLABRISH a monthly tabloid that was circulated in 1997 to 1999, it had everything from the local suss, facts, trivia and HIV/AIDS information. Limited copies are in my possession(see samples above) and was pulished by private individuals and JFLAG operatives.


It was revived by a Gay writer Chris Eaton for a short time in 2002 but was laid to rest finally as time did not allow himself and his allies to continue the tabloid and the community took a while to warm up to it as the original readers had since moved on to online publications and chatrooms that were fast becoming the rage.


Mr. Eaton now resides in the United Kingdom.

The Glabrish had everything from the local suss, facts, trivia and HIV/AIDS information. Limited copies are in my possession(see samples above) and was published by private individuals and JFLAG operatives. Some were held by The Jamaica Forum for Lesbians Allsexuals and Gays JFLAG but were not in so good a condition similar to the Gay Freedom Movement Archives that were subsequently returned to its co-founder Larry Chang after much agitation from myself and some others.

Fortunately we were able to find these before they went the way of done for in time to share them with the world as our culture sadly is not one of preservation or archiving for historical purposes and reflection.


Look out for more on previous activities in the LGBT community here in Jamaica.

Pride in who we are …. luv unu self yeaaahhh!


Peace and tolerance


H

Early Jamaican LGBT History

1976: Meeting point in New Kingston: The Closet

It seems that the first gay club, named The Closet, was established in New Kingston around 1976.

1976: The first Jamaican gay association is founded

Chinese-Jamaican gay man and political organizer, Larry Chang, organized a gay group in Jamaica, called the Gay Freedom Movement (GFM) as early as 1976 in a fiercely hostile climate. He held the position of General Secretary and was Publisher and Editor of its newsletter: Jamaica Gaily News. The newsletter was first named The Toilet Paper. As of issue No.3, Larry decided that the name was no longer relevant and changed it to The Jamaica Gaily News, which was a take-off on the Jamaican daily newspaper The Jamaica Daily News. .

Songs Of Freedom documentary – Interview with Larry Chang

Songs Of Freedom: Compelling Stories of Courage and Hope by Jamaican Gays and Lesbians 

Excerpt taken from an interview recorded in 2002, available in the documentary Songs Of Freedom.'When I graduated, and it was time for me to think about coming back to Jamaica, I made a conscious decision that I would come back here to contribute to nation building and all of that sort of stuff but on my own terms. /// Having met more and more people, I sort of know my way around gay Kingston, at least what there was at the time. And after I got my own apartment, of course, it became open house for a lot of gay people. If those walls could talk, if my dining room table could talk. These stories it would produce. A lot of people would have come out in my house. There has been all kind of revelations, breakdowns, emotional trauma and everything that you can think of that happen at my house. /// Sometimes after, there happen to be a club called The Closet, which was actually in the heart of New Kingston. I was going on well for quite a while and then we had the eternal problem of gay on gay violence, we had a lot of who we now refer as downtown people who would come there, would pick fights, break bottles, try to stab each other all that kind of wonderful behavior.

And the viability of the club therefore would be threaten by this type of behavior.As a response to this problem of violence, a few of us decided to get together and call a meeting to see if we could develop some sense of community among gay people where by we could turn to each other, just to find out what was on gay people’s mind: why all this violence, why all this self hatred, because that what it was down to: self hatred. What could we, as a population, do to address this. So we called a meeting at The Closet. There was a fairly good turn out and a very good participation. And out of that came a comity of six people, who came together to form the Gay Freedom Movement. At the end of the first meeting, I remember that I pull together (a none page mimeograph - sorry - a one-sheet mimeograph), a one-sheet newsletter, just reporting on what the proceedings were. I irreverently called this The Toilet Paper, because after all, the meeting has taken place in a closet.

It was Toilet Paper No.1 and we went to issue No.2. And by the time the third issue was come out, I said “no, I can’t keep calling this ‘The Toilet Paper’ has it is no longer appropriate”, so I change the name to The Jamaica Gaily News, which was a take-off on the Jamaican daily newspaper The Jamaica Daily News. At about the same time too, a letter had come out in The Daily Gleaner from a Helen Sommers Overcan, on the subject of population control. She was basically giving an historical overview of all the different methods of population control that have been attempted by different people. Among these she listed infanticide, and fracticise all the other things that you can think of.

I found myself to write a letter back to the Gleaner, responding to this letter that it was a very good letter, but she had a gearing ommition that she had not listed homosexuality as a time honored and natural means of population control. I suppose the Gleaner couldn’t believe that anybody would have written a letter like this to them. So they called me to confirmed: “did you really write this letter and signed your named to it and blah, blah, blah”. And I said “yes”. Except that I didn’t just signed my name, but I put under it: Gay Freedom Movement. At that time, the Gay Freedom Movement did not exist, the meeting at The Closet has not yet been held, but I felt that if I put the name of an organization behind my name, that the letter would have a little bit more impact, a little more clout, and that I was not just a voice crying for inunamist. Those two things kind of came together at a point in time, to give us that historical event, which we now referred as the Gay Freedom Movement, which I think happen in the mid to late 70’s.It was at the height of Michael Manley’s area and democratic socialism where the political climate, emphasis durable values, participation, co-operation, sharing, rights and all of these things. It was a very fertile time for ideals, movements, concepts, people-based initiatives. I think the Gay Freedom Movement was born at the right time. There is nothing that happen before its time. It was time for it than. ///The GFM had basically two objectives, one was to educate ourself has who we were. We are talking about consciousness raising, self awareness, that type of thing. An the other objective was to educate others, meaning the public. /// We had connection with almost every gay group right across the world, from Scandinavia to South Africa, to Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Israel, you name it.

We had this change arrangement with these groups, we would send them Jamaica Gaily News and they would sent us their publications. Because of the breath of our international connections, when the whole AIDS epidemic broke out, we were able to have up-to-date information on AIDS, long before anybody in Jamaica knew about it. We were fairly well prepared, at least in terms of being armed with information. I think that is one of the things to witch I attribute the fairly low incidence of HIV among the homosexual population in Jamaica. /// 

We started a Pen Pal club because we would have letters from all over Jamaica and all over the world, requesting Pen Pals. That was one of the most popular features that we carried in The Gaily News. I remember in particular one letter from this guy who signed his name and his address was Cornpiece District, Hayes, Clarendon. I was very trilled to know that we were reaching isolated rural people who otherwise would have no kind of contact with anything or anyone gay. And the fact that we were reaching these people, to me it prove that we were doing something worthwhile.

LGBT History Month Jamaica's (Caribbean's) First Gay Organization - Gay Freedom Movement

The first gay organization in Jamaica was the Gay Freedom Movement (GFM), founded around 1974 by five Jamaicans and an American Jesuit then working in the island.

It focused on consciousness-raising within the LGBT community and professional organizations, issued a newsletter, Jamaica Gaily News, and ran a Gay Youth Program, Prison Outreach Program and a free STD clinic.

General Secretary, Larry Chang, who was also publisher and editor of JGN, was one of the first Jamaican to come out publicly, being interviewed on radio and the then JBC-TV and through his letters to the press. Brian Williamson also came out on television in the 90s.

Before he fled to the US in 2000 where he was granted political asylum in 2004, he had helped found Jamaican Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays (J-FLAG)

Archived GFM materials, some of them originals drafts for letterheads etc were held by JFLAG until 2011 when they were digitized after being removed by founder Larry Chang from their possession:

Genesis of the Jamaica Gay Freedom Movement Archive

Larry Chang

Even at the time, I was fully cognizant of a responsibility to posterity to leave a paper trail. After all, we were creating history by being the first gay rights organization, as far as we knew, in the Caribbean.

As general secretary and editor of our newsletter, Jamaica Gaily News (JGN), the onus was on me to sort, file, and secure the archiving of our correspondence and publishing output. Duly labeled and boxed, these remained intact and in reasonable condition well past the demise of the Gay Freedom Movement. The materials survived the handover to my successor, St. Hope Thomas, who meticulously pasted instructions on the top of the box that they should revert to me in case of his death. When that did eventuate, his family duly complied with his wishes. In 1999, I left Kingston, passing the archives on to the Jamaican Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals, and Gays (J-FLAG), which shared office space with an AIDS nonprofit organization. I included my personal collection of a complete set of JGN issues for safekeeping. Big mistake.

The first inkling I had of anything amiss was from e-mail messages I got, in succession, from Emily Paul and Anthony Hron, both Peace Corps volunteers with J-FLAG. They were concerned that the archives were not secured, casually placed in a room with a roof that leaked and that was subject to infestation. Tropical moisture and insects are no respecters of the written word. I contacted everyone I could think of who could possibly do anything to rectify the situation but it seemed no one could take any initiative. When Emily returned to the United States she arranged for the Tretter Collection of the University of Minnesota, which specializes in LGBT material, to receive the collection. Many e-mails flew back and forth but no one could come to a decision. The J-FLAG officers’ attention was understandably focused elsewhere, since their own survival and security as an organization was under constant threat. What’s a few boxes of old papers?

I felt powerless and helpless, unable to do anything to mitigate what I envisaged to be an impending great loss. Had I been on spot, I would have gone and rescued the papers myself. But there was nothing I could do from a thousand miles away, and without any encouraging or supportive response, much less consensus. The saddest part was the seeming lack of appreciation or understanding of what was at stake.

In 2003, I saw Gareth Henry, then co-chair of J-FLAG, at the premiere of Songs of Freedom in New York. [1] I spoke to him about retrieving my copies of JGN. He promised to look into it when he went back to Kingston. I never heard anything from him and the next thing I knew he had applied for asylum in Canada. Two years later, I discussed the matter with Thomas Glave, who offered to investigate on one his trips to Jamaica. I asked him to retrieve at least my personal set of JGN copies. During the course of several trips, many e-mails, and through direct contact with several people, it transpired that the newsletters could not be found. There was, however, a box of papers. We felt that it was imperative to secure whatever was left.

Wanting to be preemptive but not autocratic, we widened the conversation to include many more concerned parties to agonize over ownership, copyright, logistics, and procedure. At some stage of the discussion, Howard Fulton and Dane Lewis of J-FLAG; Julius Powell; Natalie Bennett; Stephen Fullwood of the Schomburg Center; Jonathan Ned Katz of OutHistory.org; and Rosamond King, Angelique Nixon, and Vidyaratha Kissoon of Caribbean IRN have been involved.

At every step of the way, Thomas Glave was instrumental as facilitator, go-between, and interlocutor, and ultimately as courier—he physically retrieved the material and brought it to New York in a suitcase. The material was then lodged with Jonathan Katz, who began digitizing but found it more than he bargained for; only a few documents made it to OutHistory.org. Eventually the Caribbean IRN saved the day by teaming with Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) to digitize the collection and make it available online. This is a major accomplishment, launched with appropriate gravitas at Brooklyn College in June 2011. A huge debt of gratitude is due to all involved.

The next stage will be to resume the conversation about ownership and custody of the collection. The Schomburg Center may still be interested, but now that the physical integrity of the archives is not at risk, perhaps we can take a more studied approach and explore other options. One thing that is underscored is the critical importance of securing our collective intellectual property so we can shape our own history and write our own stories. It will be imperative, then, to overcome the cavalier attitude toward documentation and preservation that seems to typify Caribbean response. Who writes the history determines the agenda.

Cultural theorist Stuart Hall notes, “Silencing as well as remembering, identity is always a question of producing in the future an account of the past.”[2] Sexual minorities have for too long been silenced, written out of history. It is time that we find our voice, write our stories, and determine our place in that history. The process of reclamation has already begun, with Patricia Powell’s reference to Gaily News and its personals column in A Small Gathering of Bones, and through Kanika Batra’s scholarly treatment published in Small Axe.[3] The great pity, and great credit to Batra, is that to access the material she had to go to the Canadian Gay and Lesbian Archives, which inherited the collection from the defunct Body Politic, with which JGN had an exchange subscription. The other option I am told would have been the COK Archives in Amsterdam, but I have not been able to confirm this. The bottom line is that this material should be available to Jamaicans, inJamaica.

My hope is that successive poets, writers, and painters will find in the archives the references and inspiration to launch their own visions and flights of the imagination to enlarge and embellish our ongoing stories. From a practical point of view, scholar Natalie Bennett is of the opinion that “current activists in JA could learn a lot from the strategies . . . used more than two decades ago.”[4] Would that the other box is found, placed in the capable hands of Caribbean IRN to be digitized and preserved. These are our stories.

Last word from Stuart Hall:

No cultural identity is produced out of thin air. It is produced out of those historical experiences, those cultural traditions, those lost and marginal languages, those marginalized experiences, those peoples and histories which remain unwritten. Those are the specific roots of identity. On the other hand, identity itself is not the rediscovery of them, but what they as cultural resources allow a people to produce. Identity is not in the past to be found, but in the future to be constructed.[5]

Larry Chang is an environmental designer, publisher, life counselor, and founder of EcolocityDC, which seeks to address environmental, economic, and social sustainability issues. He has been introducing the Transition model to the Washington DC region, with a particular focus on urban sustainability through farming and intentional community development. He was a co-founder of the Gay Freedom Movement of Jamaica; the general secretary, editor, and publisher of Jamaica Gaily News; and a co-founder of J-FLAG.

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[1] Songs of Freedom is a Phillip Pike documentary on Jamaican LGBTs.

[2] Stuart Hall, “Negotiating Caribbean Identities,” in Gregory Castle, ed., Postcolonial Discourses: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 283.

[3] Patricia Powell, A Small Gathering of Bones, with an introduction by Thomas Glave (Boston: Beacon, 2003); originally published by Heinemann Educational Publishers in 1994. Kanika Batra, “‘Our Own Gayful Rest’: A Postcolonial Archive,” Small Axe, no. 31 (March 2010): 46–59.

[4] Personal correspondence with author, 13 August 2009.

[5] Hall, “Negotiating Caribbean Identities,” 291.

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Article hyperlinks:
[1] http://special.lib.umn.edu/rare/tretter.phtml[2] http://dloc.com/icirngfm[3] http://www.clga.ca/index.shtml

Peace and tolerance 

H

Larry Chang ........ a Reintroduction

Chinese-Jamaican gay man, political organizer and spiritual counselor, Larry Chang has much to offer the Asian-American, LGBT, Caribbean-American, and People of Color communities.

Larry was born in Jamaica of Hakka Chinese immigrant parents; he is a founding member of the Jamaica Forum of Lesbians, All-Sexuals & Gays, J-FLAG . He had previously organized a gay group in Jamaica, the Gay Freedom Movement (GFM) as early as 1978 in a fiercely hostile climate. He held the position of General Secretary and was Publisher and Editor of its newsletter, Jamaica Gaily News .

A leader and active participant of the community for equal justice, Chang came to the U.S. as a refugee in 2000, and was granted political asylum in 2004. He currently resides in Washington, D.C., where he continues to educate and work for equal justice in the United States and for Jamaica. He is featured in the Phillip Pike documentary, Songs of Freedom, which had its world premiere in Toronto in January 2003, and has been shown in selected US cities, Toronto, Montreal and Kingston. He also appears in Dangerous Living: Coming Out in the Developing World , which documents the struggle for human rights of LGBT people in the global south; it premiered at the New York Film Festival in June 2003.

He completed Religious Science Studies to Level 3 under Dr. Rev. Elma Lumsden at the Temple of Light Church of Religious Science in Kingston, Jamaica, and has been profoundly influenced by Zen Buddhism. Introduced in May 2006 to much acclaim at Book Expo America, Larry's anthology of quotations, Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing is now available in bookstores and online, as well as the follow-up, Wisdom for the Soul of Black Folk . He's currently at work on Wisdom for the Soul of Queer Folk, slated for release in 2008.

He has the enthusiastic support of many scholars:

"Larry Chang is a first-rate activist, and a superb thinker and analyst of political/social issues. Anyone who hears him speak will not be disappointed."
- Thomas Glave
Assistant Professor, Department of English, General Literature and Rhetoric
State University of New York (SUNY), Binghamton, NY, USA
Author of Whose Song

"Larry Chang brings a special spirituality to whomever he meets. He has the amazing ability to transcend race, ethnicity, gender, religion and sexual orientation in his efforts to heal the planet. His wisdom might well be the path that we need to lead us to both individual and global peace."
- Jerry Wright
Professor, Social Work and Anthropology
Savannah State University, Savannah, Georgia, USA

"... dependable, thorough, focused, and knowledgeable about the arts ... He is not, however, limited to being an "expert" in the arts. His interests are diverse, and he has been able to combine history, mathematics, anthropology, psychology, and sociology into an integrated whole that define him as both an intellectual and a practitioner of his craft."
- Davilla T. Davis
Former Professor/Director, Study Abroad Programs
Morris Brown College, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

"I have had many opportunities to meet with Larry Chang. Invariably I have come away greatly enriched. He is a man of enormous knowledge and wisdom, an excellent counseller and speaker, a true humanist. I have learned a lot about Jamaican culture, about spirituality, about human nature, from him."
- Wolfgang Binder
Professor/Academic Director, North American & Caribbean Literatures
University of Erlangen, Erlangen, Germany

"Larry Chang is original and insightful. He is a speaker well worth inviting to provide new perspectives and stimulate discussion."
- Frank H. Wu
Professor, Howard University School of Law
Washington, DC, USA
Author of Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White

Larry Chang is an ENGAGING SPEAKER with experience as a SPIRITUAL COUNSELOR, WORKSHOP FACILITATOR, WRITER and ARTIST. His diverse background caters to a spectrum of communities such as the LGBT, People of Color (POC), Asian-American and Pacific Islander (AAPI), Caribbean Diaspora Communities and in fields of LGBT, Asian-American, Gender, History, Latin American & Caribbean Studies.

Background and Topics:

SPIRITUAL UNFOLDMENT
- with training in Religious Science and dharma study, Larry assists in the exploration of life questions within the paradigm of the sanctity and beauty of the individual ensconced in and inseparable from the multidimensional whole. He has developed a playful yet incisive tool, reading Wisdom Cards a la Tarot, to facilitate this process. His ideas are even now coalescing into a discourse known as I-sight.

EMPOWERMENT
- based on training and experience in the human potential movement and drawing from experience of working with LGBT, spiritual and alternative health groups, artisanal and rural micro-entrepreneurs.

"Larry Chang was contracted to provide technical design expertise and training in product development to mainly small and medium size enterprises focused in the innovative industries. He has a capacity for connecting with the client and assisting in bringing forth their highest potential."
- Valerie Veira, CEO, Jamaica Business Development Centre, Kingston, Jamaica

WORKING WITH DIVERSITY/BUILDING BRIDGES
- being an Anomaly: Asian in Black Jamaica, Gay in homophobic Jamaica, Asian-Jamaican in African-America, Hakka in predominantly Cantonese Chinese-America, Free-Thinker in an increasingly Fundamentalist Orthodoxy, Exile with no Country, A ROLE FOR THE ETERNAL OUTSIDER.

WORKING IN THE LGBT PEOPLE OF COLOR COMMUNITY

HISTORY of Gay Activism in Jamaica, Chinese in Jamaica, Legacy of Slavery in Gender Roles, Violence & Homophobia

INTERRACIAL RELATIONSHIPS : Asian/Black intimacy

THE TYRANNY of anal sexism among MSM

Larry is available to individuals, groups and organizations as a presenter and facilitator at a nominal fee. He is initiating a new service,
SoulVentures - Exploring the Possible
offering counselling, coaching, imagineering, spiritual/holistic marketing and promotion.

Recent Presentations Include:

Participant, HIV Community Coalition Seminar on Religion, Spirituality, and Sexuality
Washington, DC, February 2002
Panelist, 12th Biennial Midwest Asian Pacific American Student's Conference, "Transcending Boundaries: Communities, Crisis, and Resistance"
Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, March 2002
Presenter, Asian Pacific American Awareness Conference (APAAC): "Affirming Identity"
Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, April 2003
Presentation/Workshop - "Building Then Breaking Out of the Box: Claiming, Creating and Transcending Identities"
Panellist, "Examining Jamaica's Policy towards Homosexuality & Dealing with the Impact of International Scrutiny"
presented by Jampact , St. Francis College, Brooklyn, NY, January 2005
Speaker, Amnesty International 2005 Get On the Bus Rally
All Souls Church, NY, April 2005
Speaker, hosted by Rainbow Pride Union
SUNY Binghamton, NY, April 2005
Panellist, "Beyond the Music: Reggae and the Cultural Contours of Homophobia," Stanford University Black Law Students Association Conference, Stanford, CA, February 2006
Speaker, hosted jointly by Amnesty International and Lambda Union
Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, April 2007
Speaker, hosted jointly by Asian Students Union and Rainbow Pride
SUNY Binghamton, NY, April 2007

also see:

Genesis of the Jamaica Gay Freedom Movement Archive

The Journey to Upload the Jamaica Gay Freedom Movement

Who Knows it Feels it

Larry Chang

The chorus of response from church, state and constabulary to accusations of state-facilitated violence and abuse of Jamaican GLBTs has been “give us proof.” I am particularly disappointed in the Information Minister’s response to the HRW (Human Rights Watch) report (accusing the Jamaican government of systematic abuse of gay people in Jamaica and how it links to the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic). Burchell Whiteman taught me to appreciate the metaphysics of Wordsworth and Blake at York Castle High School; but if anything is “unacceptably insensitive” (Whiteman’s dismissive response to the report), it is his lack of intellectual curiosity. If he is ignorant of systematic homophobic abuse or, worse, if he does have some inkling, his lack of compassion for the oppression and suffering of the GLBT community is appalling. I am also let down by the Tourism Minister and her demand for proof that Jamaica’s gay men are being slaughtered.

Aloun Wood used to tramp through the hills of rural St. Andrew evangelizing as Catholic Charismatics with her close friend, Brian Williamson, who later helped found J-FLAG and was murdered last summer. If she can no longer include him in the ambit of her Christian char-ity, the least she could do is acknowledge his victimization. Have those years of fellowship meant nothing?

But Whiteman is right to the extent that “it is the people who must set our agenda in respect of the legislation which we pass or the repeal of any existing laws.” Why should the government heed any bleeding-heart foreigners who wish to impose their standards on us? Leave aside for a moment that the laws in question are of colonial origin. While majority rule prevails in a democracy, invariably there are minority rights which need to be protected from the tyranny of that majority. The government’s own technocrats and Select Parliamentary Committee have so recommended. Even some Opposition members are beginning to make supportive noises.

But there has been no voice heard from the oppressed. We are the people too, capable of contributing to that agenda. Maybe we have been cowed into submission, silenced by fear. We have no spokesperson, instead hoping for and depending on well-meaning foreigners to speak out for us in the tradition of Wilberforce and the Abolition Society. No Nanny or Sam Sharpe insight.

Those capable of articulating our cause are dead, have fled or are lapping their tails in the safety of their closets. In their daily struggle for survival, the “downtown sports,” wielders of the ice pick and brok balk [Jamaican patois for “broken bottle”], misdirect their anger at each other instead of at the society which persecutes them for loving inappropriately. No champions there. But I shouldn’t talk; I ran. Whiteman is technically right, if abhorrently wrong. The wheel is not squeaking, so there’s nothing to fix. While they may have been working in the background, J-FLAG has been conspicuously silent. The apparent overseas initiative has not been lost on the commentators who rush to paint the EC, Peter Tatchell and OutRage!, and now HRW, in imperialist and racist colours. How would they know about expatriate Jamaicans’ involvement? We cry interference and imposition of foreign culture but puff up ourselves about leading the charge against apartheid and injustice in Haiti and elsewhere, setting examples for benighted nations to follow. When it suits us, it’s “One Love, One World,” but not when the finger points at us. Then we play the race card or the sovereignty card.

But sovereignty does not mean much when the country is in hock to the hilt and expected earnings from tourism and entertainment are based on the oppression and exclusion of sexual minorities. Brand Jamaica has a defect, and soon no one will buy. An Observer editorial grudgingly admits “a high degree of homophobia in Jamaica, which may, at times, lead to violence against homosexual men” but tries to mitigate the severity by claiming that reports are exaggerated and contextualizing it against the overall high crime rate. This perspective does not lessen the injustice, the outright denial of basic human rights, the untold physical and psychological torture that many Jamaican gays undergo. Life is hard for many Jamaicans, but it becomes for GLBT citizens unnecessarily so with government complicity. Instead of paying heed to the message, the authorities have berated the messenger for coming from abroad to interfere. Inspector Ionie Ramsay has been the only one to say she’ll look into the complaints. In my estimation, the HRW report is balanced, fair and objective, echoing my own experience and confirming reports I have received. 

It points the way forward for Jamaica to join the ranks of civilized nations with tolerant, open societies. The alternative is to degenerate further into a narrow fundamentalism hostile to difference and diversity where deejay values, vigilante justice and community enforcers ensure conformity. In this climate, the prospect of GLBT citizens’ being accorded basic human rights and the fundamental liberties enshrined in the Jamaican Constitution seems a long way off. Before we can even get there, it seems we have to deal with the monsters of nervous nationalism, religious bigotry and heterosexist insecurity.

That’s not going to happen anytime soon.

In the meanwhile, we’ll do what we’ve always done: dissemble and survive. like the good descendants of slaves that we are. We’ll continue to be the preferably hidden, unspoken part of Jamaican life, not protesting or raising our voices but playing our not-inconsiderable role in government, business, academia, the church, the arts, services and professions.

Too bad for those who are visible by being transgender; living in the wrong place or having the temerity to stand up and be counted.