LOS ALAMOS PRIDE NEWS RELEASE
On Wednesday, April 2, 6 pm Mountain Time, transgender advocate and public speaker Ben Greene will be giving a virtual presentation on creating advocacy skills for LGBTQ+ folks and their allies.
The online 90 minute event “Future Dreaming and Your Advocacy Superpower for Queer Folks and Allies” will center around skill-building exercises and teaching attendees how to take concrete actions to create the world they want to live in. Acknowledging the current unprecedented political environment in the United States as a driving force for many advocates and would-be advocates to be more involved in the work of creating a better world, Greene will present an array of skill sets that people can use through all aspects of everyday life. He will also weave in topics of resilience and joy—key ingredients in the recipe for meaningful and sustainable changemaking.
You do not need to be an expert to attend this event – Greene invites people of all “identities, knowledge levels, and skill levels” to attend and learn.
Register for a free event ticket on Eventbrite; attendees are encouraged to donate monetarily in order to support the event, but it is not required to attend.
This event is being advertised nationally and co-organized and co-publicized by Los Alamos Pride and the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico. There will be resources available to connect you to local organizations where you can start making a difference immediately!
About the event
With new legislative sessions in full swing and a whirlwind beginning to the Trump presidency, many of us are feeling frightened and angry. Deep down, whether consciously or subconsciously, we are clinging to a belief that at some point if things get truly bad enough someone will step in, right?
This is not the case. No one is coming to save us. This is both terrifying and empowering: We are the heroes we have been waiting for. We keep us safe.
Advocacy can feel daunting to get started with, and many of us have a very singular view of advocacy as marching down the street, fist raised, or testifying at the state capital. While these are critical pieces of movement work, they aren’t the whole path.
This session will be highly actionable, giving you lots of ideas for how to use the skills you already have—be it conversational, organizational, educational, or something else—to build a world worth living in for yourself and those you love.
We’ll walk through a “Future Dreaming” exercise, in which we ground ourselves in the world we want to build, to prevent our advocacy from coming from a place of fear, pity, or anger. To close out the session, we’ll also talk through a number of critical self-care and community-care strategies for advocates to ensure that we can avoid burnout as much as possible.
About Ben Greene
Ben Greene is a transgender advocate, author and public speaker who has spoken internationally on topics surrounding transgender inclusion. After coming out at 15 in a small
town, he has devoted his career to spreading empathy, education, and storytelling around the
trans experience, and has spoken for companies, hospitals, schools, religious organizations,
and government entities sharing what it means to be transgender and how to show up as an ally.
Green is also a political organizer and community advocate in St. Louis, Missouri, working
tirelessly to defend transgender youth and their families from attacks at the Missouri state
capitol. He is the author of the book, “My Child is Trans, Now What? A Joy Centered Approach
to Support”.
For more information on Ben Greene, including examples of prior speaking engagements and
his newsletter, visit his website at https://www.bgtranstalks.com/.