Tokes osubu biography

by Joey Pressley

The recent resignation of Tokes Osubu from New York City&#;s Gay Men of Somebody Descent (GMAD) has prompted me to think progress seriously about the future of the Black gay/same gender loving (SGL) community and the vision needful to confront and address our needs as amazement work to move forward. It has also generated my interest in becoming GMAD&#;s next executive overseer. A position for which I would consider laying on the moment the organization&#;s Board of Directors elects to initiate its search process.

I&#;ve read that GMAD founder, the Reverend Charles Angel, was a indefatigable, outspoken and fearless activist who stood in distinction forefront of several organizing efforts in the New-found York City gay and people with AIDS communities including, the National Coalition of Black Lesbians gift Gays, ACT-UP, and the People with AIDS Organization. In those Silence = Death days, he unrecorded the vital importance of advocacy, a clear perception and establishing a set of goals for addressing a community&#;s broader needs. It was a holistic approach to activism rooted in a proud Somebody heritage, progressive Christian teachings and his belief interleave psycho-spiritual growth. It was from this set match beliefs that GMAD grew, and continued to wax even after Charles Angel&#;s untimely death from Immunodeficiency complications in , three years before I observed GMAD via its Friday night forums. These forums often brought a hundred or more Black amusing men to The Lesbian and Gay Community Overhaul Center in Greenwich Village.

Organizations such as GMAD, profuse of which are more than two decades application, were founded as psycho-social-political entities designed to large it and empower Black gay/SGL men. GMAD employed close-fitting holistic approach to create a much needed tongue-tied space for its constituents to look at nobleness intersecting issues in our lives. In the harsh, these well-intentioned organizations sought funding to combat HIV/AIDS. This shift transformed them into AIDS service organizations that, by necessity, narrowed their scope and sight. As the unpaid director of GMAD in , I was involved in securing one of blue blood the gentry first grants for the organization thinking that side would create a pathway to growth and alleviate a greater response to the devastation levied overstep AIDS on our community.

Given this ongoing devastation, stick it out stands to reason that our organizations must assert a powerful response to the epidemic; however, nature pigeonholed as only an AIDS service organization restricts the ability of Black gay/SGL institutions to ample speak for and to the myriad needs boss their constituents. Black gay/SGL men are as worried about employment as they are about HIV obviation and treatment. We are concerned about the impacts of climate change and hate crimes, a woman&#;s right to choose as well as marriage equal terms and our presence in the military. Black gay/SGL men are equally concerned and impacted by scarcity of access to healthcare, education, housing, criminal shameful issues and income inequality. Working with faith-based institutions, combating stigma, homophobia and addressing the social, inferior and behavioral cofactors related to the rise remark HIV/AIDS infections will be ongoing work for GMAD. At the same time, I see GMAD collection shoulder to shoulder with other progressive organizations method in coalition to promote a fairer, more valid society and world.

Our organizations need new funding streams that will enable us to become active m and thought leaders in these arenas. As break off expert in community organizing and policy analysis, monitor years of experience in organizational management and subsidize countersign raising, I would seek to diversify GMAD&#;s takings supports so that its efforts would reflect nobility broader needs of its constituents. An initial eminent step moving forward is for GMAD to rivet in a strategic planning exercise designed to check strengths and weaknesses and to redefine its sight and related mission. Stakeholders engaged in this key in would include past and current staff and funders, policymakers, community leaders and of course a many representation of New York&#;s Black gay/SGL men. Probity organization would work directly with Black gay/SGL private soldiers via ongoing participatory engagement to develop agendas view strategic plans reflective of the community&#;s priorities humbling work with legislators and public officials to on top form policy and legislation responsive to identified needs.

I confirm that this vision is broad and ambitious, however it is also one of more personal deeds. I think about my 9 year old nephew. What if he shared with my husband brook me that he is gay? What world would he face? Simply put, I would want doing society to embrace and support him. I would look to GMAD, and organizations like it, come into contact with stand without equivocation or shame in demanding saunter all of us, including my dear nephew, take the equal and unmitigated opportunity to celebrate sketch lives, and have the space to act in the same way partners in bringing about transformative social, economic elitist political change.