Honoring Resistance and Survival: The Miss Major-Jay Toole Building Giving Circle
The Miss Major Jay Toole Building for Social Justice (MMJT), located at 147 W. 24th Street, is the birthplace of resistance and home to survival. MMJT houses organizations for and by people of color, centering on the experiences of queer, trans, and gender nonconforming folks, especially those who are low or no-income and homeless. Entering the lobby of the building, you face an elevator with buttons for seven floors lit up. On these floors, in order, exist The Audre Lorde Project (ALP), Streetwise and Safe (SAS), the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP), and FIERCE!. The 4th floor of MMJT was formerly the home of Queers for Economic Justice (QEJ). With public spaces in NYC for low/no-income queer, trans, and gender nonconforming people of color being eradicated rapidly, the Miss Major Jay Toole building provides a home, an organizing space, and a location for programs, services, opportunity, and resilience.
This space would not be possible without the efforts of Miss Major and Jay Toole.
Miss Major, a Black trans woman activist and community leader for trans women’s rights, was a leader in the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion in New York City, along with Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson. She is also a survivor of Attica State Prison and a former sex worker. She is the Executive Director of the Transgender, Gender Variant, Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP), an organization working “against imprisonment, police violence, racism, poverty, and societal pressures” for transgender women of color and their families. In the past, she has also done healthcare and organizational work for people with HIV/AIDS, and continues to work against the prison-industrial complex.
Jay Toole, aka Super Butch, has been organizing around queer and economic justice issues for decades. She became homeless at the age of thirteen, exiled from her home by her father because of her queer identity. For eight years, she was homeless, after which she spent five years in the shelter system. During her time on the streets, she suffered from police violence and was abused by the NYPD, and she became addicted to drugs and alcohol. After recovery and support from her queer family, she became the Co-Founder and the Shelter Director at Queers for Economic Justice (QEJ), a radical non-profit organization committed to promoting economic justice in a context of sexual and gender liberation. Today, she is working on opening Jay’s House, the first shelter for homeless queer adults.
Without the efforts, dedication, and resilience of these two individuals, many queer youth today would not have the access to community, shelter, food, leadership opportunities, resources, computers, education, and workshops that they do today. Let us give back to Miss Major, Jay Toole, and the organizations that have brought us family and are bringing us liberation.
The Miss Major Jay Toole Giving Circle was created by ALP, SAS, SRLP, and FIERCE! as a grassroots giving operation to honor the organizations and the legacies of Miss Major and Jay Toole. Without the Giving Circle, the MMJT organizations are forced to compete with each other for funding, destroying the community and partnership they are so dedicating to building. A gift to the MMJT Building for Social Justice will go to the programming and administrative priorities of these organizations. ALP, SAS, SRLP, and FIERCE! are committed to social justice by and for lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, two spirit, trans, and gender nonconforming people of color, low or no-income people, people involved the sex trades, and youth. A gift to them will go toward resourcing these communities. The Giving Circle’s goal is to raise $67,000 and $10,000 each will go to the Retirement Funds of Miss Major and Jay Toole to honor their living legacies. The remaining funds will be divided amongst the four organizations.
Give to the Miss Major Jay Toole Giving Circle!
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