Preference, Feb 9th: with Pauline Park, Red, and Evan Greer.

We’ll be talking with Pauline Park about ‘pinkwashing,’ Pauline is chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA) (transgenderrights.org), a statewide transgender advocacy organization that she co-founded in 1998, and president of the board of directors as well as acting executive director of Queens Pride House (queenspridehouse.org), which she co-founded in 1997. Park also co-founded Iban/Queer Koreans of New York in 1997 and served as its coordinator from 1997 to 1999, as well as the Out People of Color Political Action Club, the first political club by and for LGBT people of color in New York City. Pauline is also a painist and a Korean adoptee.
 
Pnkwatching Israel says: “”The disingenuous invocation of “LGBT rights” by Israel and its supporters to divert attention away from its atrocities against the Palestinians is increasingly becoming part of the public debate around Israel and Palestine. By falsely juxtaposing ‘oppressed gay Palestinians’ with ‘berated gay Israelis’, and by flattening out relations of power and the political realities of occupation and the Apartheid wall, pinkwashers aim to harness the global LGBT movement into supporting Israel at the expense of the Palestinians.”
 
Efforts to halt the use of queer folks as props for Israel to limit calls for change to the apartheid state Israelis have created, came to the forefront at The National LGBTQ Task Force’s annual Creating Change Conference in January. Pro-Palestinian, anti-colonial violence activists came out to protest the inclusion of the Israel advocacy organization, A Wider Bridge, at the conference. Since the protest, anti-pinkwashing visibility has risen as queer activists debate what needs to change in how queers tackle oppression and solidarity, and where and when it needs to happen. Pauline joins us to help us sort of some of this complex tangle of solidarity and pressure.
 
 
We’ll also spend time with Red, a Portlander who creates the public health and rights focused zine Working It. Red is founder and director of STROLL, the Sex Traders' Radical Outreach and Liberation Lobby, a grassroots harm reduction, outreach, education, and community organisation by sex workers, for sex workers. Also representative for SWOP-PDX [Sex Workers Outreach Project], her writing can be found on Tits and Sass.
 
Red will be talking with us about the dangers of Oregon bill 4082, which just passed the state House of Representatives and is on its way to the state Senate. From swopusa.org: “HB 4082 in Oregon is a bill that seeks to expand crime of promoting prostitution (ORS 167.012) to include receiving goods, services or other things of value derived from prostitution activity in certain circumstances. Oregon’s HB 4082 would expand the definition of sex trafficking with overly broad, vague language, putting consensual, adult sex workers and those who help them or do any business at all with them at risk of prosecution and jail time. This would have a hugely negative impact on sex workers and their communities.”
 
Finally, we’ll talk with Evan Greer, who is returning to Portland to do an ‘anti-heteropatriarchal Valentine’s Day’ show at Annares, with Brenna Sahatjian and The Ragshakers.
 
Evan Greer is a trans/genderqueer activist musician, parent, speaker, and organizer based in Boston. She writes and performs high-energy acoustic songs that inspire hope, build community, and incite resistance. Evan tours internationally as a musician and speaker, and facilitates interactive workshops to support movements for justice and liberation. Late great historian Howard Zinn praised Greer as “an eloquent and energetic writer,” while Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello calls her “a heck of a guitar player.”