Gender JUST protests US Social Forum in Detroit

A group of 15 young people from the Chicago-based group Gender JUST set the tone for the US Social Forum that took place June 22-26 in Detroit, Mich. When the group saw that the forum was not going to live up to the promise of gender-neutral bathrooms to support their mission of inclusion and equality, the youths decided to take action. “We just started pulling people out of the crowd and telling them we were going to march to the registration area and tell them that they need to enforce having gender-neutral bathroom signs at every bathroom,” Adrian Birrueta, a youth member of Gender JUST since February, told Windy City Times.

“In five minutes we used all our organizational tactics,” said Birrueta, “and we rounded up like about 50 people.” The group marched to registration and shouted, “What do we want? Gender-neutral bathrooms. When do we want them? Now.” By the time they got there, the signs were being made and Gender JUST proceeded to hang them up at all the bathrooms.

Gender JUST is a “multi-racial, multi-ethnic and multi-generational grassroots organization of Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender, Queer and Allied (LGBTQA) young people, LGBTQA people of color and LGBTQA grassroots folks developing leadership and building power through organizing,” according to its mission statement at www.genderjust.org. The U.S. Social Forum (USSF) is a “space to come up with peoples’ solutions to the economic and ecological crisis” and is the “next most important step in our struggle to build a powerful multi-racial, multi-sectoral, inter-generational, diverse, inclusive, internationalist movement that transforms this country and changes history,” according to www.ussf2010.org.

Another activity Gender JUST participated in was an AIDS-awareness die-in in Cobo Hall, where the USSF was held. “Basically a die-in is where you go and pretend to die somewhere and just lay on the floor and take up a lot of space and there’s people passing out information about why we’re doing what we’re doing,” said Birrueta. “It was pretty cool because we got a lot of information out about HIV/AIDS to everybody around there because even though it was supposed to be a social justice space there was still a lot of discrimination going on.” Birrueta said that he felt uncomfortable when he held hands with his boyfriend at the forum because people would give them dirty looks and gesture at them. “I thought the social forum was going to be a space where I could express myself,” said Birrueta, “because there were people who shared my passion for equality.”

Gender JUST’s visibility was apparent early because of the bathroom situation, and so the group ended up participating in more than it anticipated, according to Birrueta. By the end of the trip, Gender JUST was part of approximately 10 rallies and five different actions, said Birrueta.