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Loss and resilience - Caribbean IRN Update- November, December 2020

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Loss

The LGBTIQ++ community in Trinidad & Tobago mourned the loss of Anthony Medina who as CAISO noted "made indelible contributions to LGBTI community and dress-up culture in T&T,"


Launch of the Digital Archive of the Jamaica Gaily News 

The Jamaica Gaily News (JGN) was the publication of the first gay activist organization in the anglophone Caribbean, the Gay Freedom Movement (GFM) in Jamaica.   The Caribbean IRN is pleased to have added the JGN collection of the 82 issues to the GFM archive on the Digital Library of the Caribbean. 

The Launch event was held virtually on Friday 20 November, 2020 and featured a panel reflecting on this moment in Jamaica’s history.  The panelists were :-

  • Vidyaratha Kisson – Coordinator, Caribbean International Resource Network
  • Larry Chang – Co-Founder of GFM and JGN Editor
  • Donna Smith – GFM member and JGN columnist
  • Glen McDaniel – GFM member and JGN columnist
  • Jennifer Ffrench-Parker – Jamaican journalist
  • Moderator
  • Matthew Chin, Assistant Professor Women, Gender & Sexuality, University of Virginia

The video of the launch event is available on Youtube.


Resilience

In Guadelope, Voix Arc en Ciel launches its report about homophobia. 

In Guyana , SASOD meets with the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs to talk amendments to the legislation. SASOD also researched the impact of COVID-19 on LGBTQ+ and started research on the impact of Covid-19 on access by LGBTQ+ Guyanese to  HIV services

In Trinidad & Tobago, the Alliance for Justice and Diversity launched "Towards a Sexual Culture of Justice: Documenting the Experiences and Needs of Working-Class LGBTIQ+ people living in Trinidad and Tobago" .  The video of the launch event is available on the Facebook page of the Institute of Gender and Development Studies, St Augustine, UWI

A Cuban LGBTQ story is shared by exiled Diosbel Alvarez and h , Yasmany Sánchez Pérez who were part of the protest march for  IDAHOBIT 2019 and who were persecuted as a result.


Justice

Intimate Conviction 2 was held from Nov 25 to 27, 2020. The presentations are all online and the 76 crimes blog has the summaries of each day with the links to the videos of the presentations.

The comments made by Roman Catholic Bishop Francis Alleyne are reported in Stabroek News in Guyana. Stabroek News publishes an editorial"Bishop Alleyne and the anti-sodomy laws" commending the 'progressive position' of the Bishop.

Anika Gray, Criminal Law Lecturer at UWI Mona analyses the judgement of TVJ vs Tomlinson

The Virgin Islands Consortium reports on Maurice Tomlinson's intention to go all the way up to the Privy Council. 

Meanwhile the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Censured Jamaica for Violating the Rights of LGBTI Citizens and  Jamaica accepts the recommendations made at the Universal Periodic Review on sexual orientation, gender identity and expression.

OutSummit 2020 included Ifáṣínà Efunyemi from Belize, Alexa D V. Hoffmann from Barbados , Kenita Placide from ECADE, Neish McLean from Jamaica and other persons of Caribbean origins. The videos are available of the presentations

Angelique V Nixon presents The Elements of Decolonial Healing Justice at TedX Port of Spain



Poetry

Poets House Presents  Rosamond S King reading her poetry


Please support Guyanese Trans activist, Candacy McEwan who lost her home in a fire.

Featured Image by Chandan Chaurasia on Unsplash

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