Chicago community organization offering queer history paid internship program

“Rising up in Gage Park, for a few years I felt like I used to be the one queer particular person in my neighborhood, which is simply merely not true,” Santos mentioned.

Now, he runs the Queer Riot Internship program with the GPLXC, a grassroots group that gives neighborhood sources and programming for Gage Park residents.

To supply the internship program, the council partnered with Queer Riot, a Chicago-based academic group that gives workshops on the historical past of LGBTQIA+ folks.

“There are only a few areas for LGBTQIA+ youth on the South and West sides of Chicago for specific folks of coloration,” Santos mentioned. “And I do know that these areas are necessary with a purpose to construct neighborhood.”

Interns have the chance to study LGBTQIA+ historical past and activism by way of the views of queer, trans, Black, Indigenous and other people of coloration whereas organizing alongside GPLXC members.

“The title Queer Riot was very intentional,” Santos mentioned. “We knew each of these phrases might be divisive however LGBTQIA+ historical past has all the time been divisive. There are individuals who consider younger folks should not be studying about homosexual historical past.”

Queer Riot is a paid internship open to highschool college students. The primary cohort started in April and can wrap up in June.

“Queer historical past altogether has been erased and stored out of the general public sphere. However the few accounts that we do get are usually centered round whiteness so it was actually necessary for us to de-center that,” Santos mentioned.

The GPLXC flies the Satisfaction flag all yr lengthy. Santos mentioned he desires to empower younger folks to take pleasure in who they’re and to make use of their voices to make a distinction of their communities.

“We consider in altering folks’s minds and hearts with our actions and never essentially about debating folks about our proper to exist,” he mentioned.

GPLXC is presently accepting purposes for its subsequent cohort, which begins in August.