N’Tanya Lee: Building Real Coalitional Queer Struggle

N’Tanya Lee discusses the shortfalls of single-issue queer organizing, reflecting on her work in the 90s, and how she carries those lessons into her current work through base-building and grassroots organizing within working-class communities of color.

BCRW and The Engaging Tradition Project at Columbia University co-convened a conference called Queer Dreams and Non-Profit Blues to examine the critiques emerging from queer and feminist activists and scholars about the impact of funding on social movement agendas and formations. During the conference, Hope Dector from BCRW and Dean Spade from The Engaging Tradition Project conducted interviews with many of the speakers about their analysis and strategies related to the conference themes. These interviews were edited into 30 short videos that aim to bring these critical perspectives into an accessible format for use in activist spaces and classrooms. These videos highlight the type of knowledge production that is possible when the boundaries between activism and the academy are actively traversed.