milking the snake

if you want to be venomous
i have a beautiful gold leaf life for you.
i spend at least half of my day
taking care of the snakes. most people
would not know that i have
several hundred of them living
right here in my house. i used
to name them but eventually 
it just got to be too much. i catch men
to feed to the snakes. did i say men?
i meant mice. aren't mice a lot
like men though? aren't i a lot like men?
aren't i a lot like a mouse? i run 
from shadow to shadow. i eat 
with my hands. i skirt along the wall.
first thing in the morning i milk 
the snakes as if they were cows. 
save the venom. drink some 
in the hopes of becoming a fire escape.
i have had my hair catch fire
during this process. the fangs 
plunged into the cup. i squeeze 
gently behind the head. all my snakes 
would bite if given the chance. they all
do not want to be my snakes. 
i try to be kind to them. they traveled
all the way here from a manic island
just to keep me company. once, a lover
found me holding a snake. he said,
"i thought you loved me."
i said, "i do" but he had already
talked to the snake telepathically.
he had already decided i had lied to him.
in the end, i had. i told him
that the snakes were just a religion.
he didn't know they were there
living in the walls & the ceiling. 
waiting for me to extract the ancient
from their skulls. it is hard to store
this much venom. that is why i drink it.
slowly so as to not cause a jupiter. 
a little off the top. like a sleeping cream.
my blood strings up christmas lights.
"what are you doing?" my mother asks
& it is the first time someone has
ever seen me with a snake. i am in
my childhood bedroom. i eat
the whole thing. snake skeleton 
& all. i say, "nothing at all." 

plastic dinner

we eat the perfect turkey leg.
the perfect corn & perfect brownie.
everything is the size of a starvation.
kneeling in the kitchen. i used to 
taste everything. bit the neck
of an ice cream cone & drank out
the innards. now the popcorn tells us
we are supposed to chew neatly. we need
to maintain calm. hunger is a place
where we lay down our faces. where
we all turn into chickens. where we run
wild & chaos-ridden. i open a cupboard
& see a television there. a commercial for
the one & only plastic dinner. it's what
we ate last night & the night before.
it arrives on a tray delivered by 
a pig. it is up for debate whether or not
the pig is plastic. he always says,"i'm sorry."
when i used to eat animals i would 
apologize too. i would say, "in the next life
please feast on me." chewing is
the hardest part. gnashing plastic.
chunks stuck between teeth. the commercial says
"you can save the world with what
you buy." there is only one thing to buy. 
this makes salvation the easiest it's ever been
in all of history. i do not need 
an escort. i do not need a grandmother.
i need a fork & knife. i need a pig 
full of hard candy. tell me, when was
the last time you felt full. i went out
into the static yard. found my secret
patch of dirt & swallowed as much soil
as i could manage. a potato grew inside me.
i told no one. could not bring myself
to remove it. my own private child.
my little root. any day i could remove it
& we could roast it over a burning television.
add a little taste to make our skulls ring.

pet snake

would you like to see my pet snake?
he has so many concert tickets 
& so many flashy hard drives. a perfume
meant to mimic the scent of maria antonieta.
a handbag made of his own skin.
would you like to talk to my pet snake?
he speaks only in bitcoin. he has a gramophone 
where he plays records of past gods
as they talk about gold. when i say i have
a pet snake you know what i mean. i mean 
i have something dangerous. i mean i have
something that will eat the softness 
from the soles of your feet. i mean i have
an apple salesperson. i mean there is a ceiling
without a ceiling in my house. a collection
of pigeons looking down & waiting
for the right moment where the coast is clear
& it is safe to watch a children's tv show
without any shame. what was the last joy
you partook in without any shame?
mine was eating a bowl of whipped cream
in the kitchen. my pet snake watched
but at least it was delicious. at least there wasn't
anyone to blame but myself.
i take my pet snake to the abandoned
blockbuster on hamilton street. he wants
to talk to the carpet. would you like
to pray to my snake? he only requires 
an offering of 15.99 a month. if you sign up now
though you'll get the first month 
of prayer free. i used to ask for snow
but now i ask for a waterfall. something
to fall over. something to deliver me
where there are no more answers.
the questions come like mice. urgent
& hungry. i feed them to my pet snake.
to each he says, "soon." "soon." "soon." 

doll house fire

o miniature catastrophe.
let's save the dog. let's save the dog.
let's save the plastic cake & the plastic
lemonade. i had a matchstick voice
& i always tried to keep it under control.
so much can burn & then you zoom back
& there is a soup commercial. there is
a pine nut. there is a boy punching
another boy over grape flavor.
i watch on my iphone as a genocide 
becomes an ad for flip flops & 
then the capitalism angels know
my eyes like to feast on blood. tell me
"here is a product that will save
the world." i put my teeth in a shadow box.
point to it when guests arrive & say,
"once i had a mouth." once i was a bull horn
or a bugle or a budding broken plate.
dear god does anyone have a cloud?
i just want to put out the ashes. i just want
to put the rocking horse to sleep.
there are memories inside my memories.
there are ghosts that dress in doll clothes.
a paper moon that we have
to be so careful with. who is your
fragile keeper? i have a mammoth who visits
at the back door of the house.
he opens his mouth. i place my eyes 
into that wet darkness. i tell him,
"run as far away as you can." the doll house
is as big as it feels. sometimes just
a scorch on the rug. sometimes i am walking
in the rubble. dear human, i am sorry.
dear human where am i & where are you? 
why were we not holding each other
in the rocking chair by the plastic fireplace? 

safe search

i took my eel for a walk & that was the end.
all i could see were horror windows
& adds for single men 100ft away.
the internet has a plastic mouth. i put 
training wheels on my eyes. tried to watch
my same monster videos & they were
blocked, replaced with video 
of everyday disaster like froot loops.
the eel died from lack of water & i used 
his body as an ethernet cable. refreshing my life.
a loading ball is the holy spirit 
or else my hunger. i wanted a way 
to scratch the itch of being human
without touching fork to outlet.
i see a video of a woman with no eyes.
instead of eyes she has turn signals.
stop sign without legs. the eel is not really dead
he is just dormant. loading. leaking.
i wrap the cord around my wrist
so i can't lose the desktop. the whole family
uses this oracle so we get mixed messages.
leave the guts alone. fire a cannon
into the ceiling. pray to your pasta.
i used to believe in safety. i used to 
put caution tape around my playground.
the eel says, "don't try to be dangerous
& you will not be dangerous."
he is a victim blamer, but aren't we all
on a tuesday? now i know that safety 
is something taken but never given.
here is the safe search. here are only
the vanilla ice cream felonies. 
aren't they soft? aren't they sweet?
security footage of the ocean. the eel told me,
"i have seen enough." he pulled the plug.
went back to being a worm. 
dug himself deep into the fresh earth. 

butter handcuffs 

they tell you that you can walk out of 
the sea of bottle caps & teeth
any time you want. then, there is 
the loaf of bread your mother baked
& expects you to eat. then there is 
the threat of turning into a pie crust.
butter stains on lips. a melted moon.
bone broth. broken rib. 
a shackle is a nexus of decisions.
it is wrong though to think those decisions
are of those wearing them. instead 
i become a site of other people's choices.
i can hear their thoughts aloud:
do i want to be a god? do i want to be
a gender? am i hungry to make a spoonful
of this little skeleton? what a lovely sculpture
or else a knife rest stop. sometimes a light bulb
will turn on so yellow that we all
taste like the butter around our wrists.
softness can be mistaken for mercy.
mercy can be mistaken for divinity.
we eat the bread like good girls. remove
our ribs. rooting the adam out of the body
will take more than this gesture.
"will you help let me free?" i ask what i think
is a person but become a bus stop. 
why is it so hard to conspire?
i thought we were supposed to be
the most mutinous species. 

see through

i went outside to get punched
by my own sense of urgency.
we're going to be late to the funeral. we're going
to forget to be a cardinal.
all the flowers i plant grow see through.
little ghosts. i hand out pots with dirt
& i am promising you that there is
an african violet present. sometimes
on my worst nights my whole body
turns see through. there's nothing left
for me to hide behind. everyone can see
the television there. static. cirucs.
a pair of his muddy shoes. steal toe boots.
have you ever asked the cards 
for help & got the fool over & over.
that is me with my arms stretched out
to the wingspan of a fallen goose.
one i bit an egg & it turned out to be an apple.
the truth is too though that i want
people to see my guts. here is exactly
what it feels like to go on my rollercoaster.
here is where i keep my teeth when they fall out. here is
a chariot made of snakes. it's the only way
i can ride back to my head when i'm in my body.
disposal cameras are on every surface
of my house. i tell guests. "can you please
take a picture of me." i haven't developed
any of them but one day i will bring
a whole garbage bag. i will sit there
are the photo technician works 
& then i will have hundreds of photos 
of my funhouse. my fragments.
finally, everything tangible. glorious evidence. 

First and foremost, I want to say I don’t want people read this as an inditement of one person or even several people. I want people to read this and follow me on a path towards solutions for what our community needs and how systems have failed us. I think often people can read essays about organizations and get really riled up against said organization and fail to push further to ask, how does this happen and what do we do?

This post is about my experience working at Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center. It is a meditation on grief and distrust in the non-profit system to do what our communities need.

“Something feels off,” I said to my friend when asked how my interview at the center went. I was interviewed by the founder of the center and another soon-to-be colleague. I wish I could tell you now, exactly what felt off but overall the tone felt colder than my other interviews. I was interviewing at a few organizations in the valley. And despite the gut feeling, when the executive director called me to offer me the job I felt compelled to accept it right away. I had been driving to a partner’s house and on the side of the highway I cried with joy.

For years I had dreamed of working at an LGBT center. After college, I applied at William Way and the Mazzoni Center but had never gotten offered a job or made it far in the interview process. I told the executive director on the phone, “This is what I’ve always wanted.” I can tell you now today, it is only what I thought I wanted. From that moment forward, I put my whole self into this organization.

I was over-joyed to start at the center and so I didn’t know how to feel when, on my first day on the job there was an over-two-hour long pride festival debrief meeting in which employees expressed frustration, hurt, and pain about how they were treated on the day of that year’s Pride festival. Apologies were made by leadership and so I convinced myself “they’re going to do better” and “this is a one-time thing.”

Quickly, I learned that wasn’t true. Slowly, in the coming months, my co-workers started to share more of their experiences with what they felt was sexism, racism, bullying, ableism, transphobia, and an overall toxic work environment stemming from multiple directions. I learned more and more information I found troubling about the center and the power it holds in the community.

Throughout this essay I will at many times not be as specific as I want to be because our community is small and giving too many details people would very easily be able to tell who and what I’m talking about. I know this is frustrating because vague claims can feel untrue. In the end, these are my perceptions. I’m sure there are a wide variety of perspectives on everything I talk about. It’s also less about one action than it is about the sum of them.

Besides internally, I struggled externally as someone who was a key point of contact with community members in my former role as Supportive Services Coordinator. I had community members call me when they were homeless. When they couldn’t afford meals. When they were scared and lonely. To those asks, I tried my best to respond but found little resources I could give folks. The Lehigh Valley does not have enough resources. The few organizations who do this work are overworked and underpaid and furthermore, under resourced. Then, the center had really very little material things to offer. People in charge of me at the center would tell me “There’s nothing we can do” and to keep “sharing resources.”

It just feels incredibly insulting to a person who’s unhoused and trans to send them the numbers of some shelters, knowing full well that those shelters don’t have openings and most of the shelters won’t be safe for a trans person. On my own, I tried to work harder. I tried to learn best practices for 211 calls and how to help people articulate the gravity of their situations.

I am someone who has been homeless. I have lived out of a car and in parks. I cannot imagine in that situation, someone working for a million-dollar organization telling me that organization had nothing to give me, especially an organization claiming to represent my identity.

As queer folks we know full well our community is suffering. We need our rent paid. We need food. We need help with medical care. We need money. We need economic justice. Instead, organizations like the center meet that need with programs that either give people hoops to jump through to get a small amount of money or do not pay them at all. I think there is definitely value to what is organized by the center, but I don’t think it addresses the biggest issues impacting our community.

It’s even more complicated because this is what the nonprofit industrial complex calls on us to do. Donors don’t want to give people money (which is absurd to me???). Donors want flashy rooms they can put their names on. They want “innovative programs.” All of this without addressing the root cause of inequalities usually being the fact that people have lots of money because they’ve extracted value from our communities through our labor and our land. Then, the same people who hurt us get to decide how a meager amount of that money comes back to us? Can you see how terrible and sad that is? This is the system organizations like the center are navigating.

My work at the center continued. In just my first month I saw the impact specifically people’s experiences with feeling the center was racist towards them had on the community. So much pain and injustice has occurred at that nexus. I know I’m speaking about the past but harm like this doesn’t just evaporate. It’s harm with roots in broader systems of oppression, especially white supremacy.

Then, personally, I experienced what I feel was transphobia and ableism both from community members and from co-workers. I worked hard to navigate complicated conversations with folks and was still often met with unkindness. My heart broke over and over and over and over. I had a romanticized idea of “community.” Now, I see “community” as vital and crucial and also deeply and necessarily messy. At the time though I didn’t have the emotional skills to cope with that.

Fast forward to our founder leaving in March of 2021 and I had come to a point where I was trying to make more changes at the organization. I started a committee to talk about accessibility issues. We had begun some new groups and I was encouraged by what I’d seen growing. Overall, I think I did great work but what caused the growth wasn’t me, but more and more community members feeling welcomed to lead and build the community at the center. These people, not just me, were what made these program successful in my opinion.

The best way to describe my relationship with the center is through the abuse cycle. There are always these honeymoon periods where you are infused with hope. “This is going to be better” and “We can make this better” and then somehow it always still falls apart.

We entered a period at the center of having an interim director. I saw similar patterns under that leadership.

Starting that December 2021, just about one person left or was let go from the center at least every month up until the present. I admired and cherished many many people who have left the center. Some left or opportunities but many others in painful and heartbreaking ways.

There is so much I want to share that will not fit in this essay but these cycles of pain and then promise repeated.

In the summer of 2022 there was an incident that I personally feel was racist that happened at the center when a staff member threatened to call the police on a black staff member who was being fired. I was then in a role managing community programs and working with a co-worker to create community programming. The incident caused a ripple effect of hurt and injustices not only to the person it was directed towards but then outwardly to the community. The way leadership talked about rightfully concerned and hurt black and brown members of our community sickens me to this day.

Trying to mediate this situation, I went to all leadership, begging them to take the pain the community felt seriously. I talked to my supervisor. I talked to the executive director. I feel I got little to no response and so I took this issue to the board, hoping they would hear me and move us towards a larger discussion about the issue. Instead, I was met with a response that me reaching out was inappropriate and not a matter to be discussed. This will become a theme throughout my time here and is something I think people need to know. Organizations have a way of depersonalizing very personal interactions. For example, firing someone can become a procedure and not an interaction between humans. This is something I’ve learned from reading about abolition and transformative justice practices. So much harm in our world doesn’t rise to the level of something we consider is worth taking action on. This leaves so many people unserved.

This is something I will never understand as an autistic person. I feel people at this organization have always treated me like I’m trying to play some kind of game when I criticize our actions when really I have just been deeply invested in this organization. At the center I feel conflict is discouraged. There feels like a tone of fear of open conflict. I didn’t reach out to try to go over someone’s head, I reached out because I hoped those people would hear me and lead us into a deeply needed conversation around racism at the center.

This incident also sparked a unionization effort at the center.

Staff started a group chat to talk about the feelings of unrest and I felt a deepened sense of connection to my co-workers. We presented a document to request recognition of the union to leadership, with only one member choosing to identify himself in the process. From that moment, I feel like I saw the mask come off of this organization.

The board voted to not recognize the union. Overwhelmingly, I feel that leadership took the effort to unionize personally, including a meeting where I felt like we talked to as if we were unruly children and not a group of thoughtful adults who were trying to organize a better future for the center. Ultimately, the promise of a new executive director and changes in staff roles I think ultimately are why efforts to unionize unraveled.

I think unionization is an important action an organization can take. Unions solidify the power we have in numbers. Why wouldn’t an organization founded on social justice principals want to endorse that? I will tell you why. It’s because most organizations don’t actually want collective power. Again, this isn’t just the center. This is most nonprofits and it isn’t even always because of who is in the driver’s seat. The landscape of nonprofits breeds this behavior and encourages it.

In the coming months, I watched how everyone heavily involved with the union effort left. From my viewpoint, I felt many were pushed out. The reality is probably a complicated mix of factors, but it’s something I thought about often. I feel like multiple people were pushed out as our new executive director moved into her role.

I witnessed what I consider bullying towards the employee who identified himself in the unionization effort. Day after day this hurt me. He had taken a risk to try to make a better center and was met with what I consider cruelty.

Through all of these changes I had the cycle continue for myself. I would get heartbroken and then something would give me hope and I would think “things are going to be different.” I don’t know if they have been truly different. I have seen positive changes made. I have seen negative changes made. I have seen important strides in some areas and harmful ones in others.

Through my whole time at the center I’ve struggled as a trans and disabled person. If you look at who leaves this organization, it’s most often folks of color, disabled people, and trans people. Over and over I would wrack my brain, wondering, “what can I do to make this place safe.”

I left because I have no idea. I won’t pretend like I have firm solutions for what the center needs.

I fully believe there is personal responsibility at play in this and that is something that I’m not here to work out. What I am here to point towards is the systems that perpetuate this cycle.

When I first started at the center, I felt confused why so many LGBTQ+ people loathe Bradbury-Sullivan Center. I saw this in Facebook comments and heard it in conversations at other organizations. Leaving, I completely understand.

The center symbolically and sometimes directly positions itself as the voice of LGBTQ+ people in this region and sometimes nationally. This is something done without the community’s consent which I acknowledge is a nebulous concept but one I think is worth exploring. Often the center will say things like “this is the only safe space LGBTQ+ people have.” We often perpetuate this idea center exists in a desert of spaces for queer folks. This is just blatantly not true and flies in the face of so many smaller less-funded groups building affirming and celebratory spaces for community to thrive in the valley.

This is just one example of harm I feel the center creates through our messaging. I believe we talk the talk but we don’t walk the walk. I think we keep our community at arms length for the majority of the work the center does.

In our new mission and vision statement the team drafted we say we want to “center our most marginalized” and I don’t think that is something the center has ever done in it’s history. I don’t think we know what that means outside of vague notions of identity politics. To do so would be to shift the whole structure of the organization.

To name some examples of efforts I’ve tried to make towards this am, I have not received support when I brought up needing to more directly tie our work to abolition in a concrete and tangible way. We have incarcerated and formerly incarcerated siblings who don’t just need our metaphorical support but direct actions to fight against the police state bent on making people disposable. I have tried multiple times while working at the center to get supports up and going for folks with substance use disorders.

It would feel great if I could say, “I’ve always fought for these things and the center just sucks” but the reality is that the nonprofit system works in a way that wears you down. I do not think I’ve been as radical in my work as I’d like to be. I regret not pushing harder. I regret not being louder and more vocal but the pressure to keep going and juggle an exorbitant amount of roles and tasks at the center makes it very easy to enter a survival mindset and not one focused on a future.

I’m now going to move forward more to talk about my experience since entering executive leadership at the center which happened March of 2023. I want to note that I was the only trans member of executive leadership and the only autistic person.

I entered in a rocky place as Director of the Education Institute. The person in the role before me, Liz Bradbury had moved on from the center, in a way that disturbs me but that I don’t know the details of. That situation itself is a microcosm for the ways institutions swallow the details of interpersonal interactions and collapses nuance. I think it’s an example of how people are made disposable.

There were months we didn’t follow-up with training contacts, and I spent my first weeks scrambling to complete a grant and trying to rebuild relationships with community.

It felt like the same cycle over again. Me working hard to re-earn trust in the name of the center. And I did. I built great connections and got to do work that was deeply full-filling to me. It became clear to me though that I wasn’t able to bring in as much money as leadership had hoped I would in my position. I often would do trainings for much less than they are typically worth because this education is crucial and life-saving.

I just don’t think there’s any point in a non profit offering education only if the organization has to pay for it. I think getting paid for our labor is definitely important but the center is a million dollar nonprofit. We must be able to offer free training. And, often we do. We have some grant funding, just not enough.

In May and June and July of 2023 I brought my struggles with funding to leadership. I laid out the work I was doing and ideas I had for solutions. I proposed potentially seeking more grants. I asked for help developing this and I feel I did not receive that help. I explained I was struggling to balance all my roles and have time to be a human in my job and I was told to take more time off and relax more. This was what was always told to me when I expressed being overwhelmed. Ultimately, this feels like gaslighting to me because nothing was removed from my plate and not help to develop solutions was provided.

I was lucky at the center to have a lot of time off under current leadership. What I want to say though is that having vacation days is not useful if there’s so much work you can’t meaningfully take them. I don’t think there’s ever been a vacation day I’ve used at the center that I didn’t respond to something. True, this has something to do with the ways work you care deeply about consumes you and speaks to my own struggles with boundaries but I will say there’s also something in the culture of an organization that promotes this. I also don’t know of any colleagues who truly don’t look at work when they’re not at work.

Along with my own burn out, I witnessed co-workers’ burn out. I tried to help advocate for fellow directors and senior managers in meetings with leadership to be met with the same advice over and over again, to just “do less.”

Simultaneously, I saw the center spending what I consider an astronomical amount of money that I never witnessed us spending before and not on items or expenses I feel serve the broader community. This worried me. In leadership I often advocated for us to cut down costs where it might not be necessary but I was told as well as other directors were told to keep spending.

Because roles had moved around so much, the budgets we entered the year with were not usable. That’s to no fault in their creation but if an organization changes that drastically, I guess this is what happens. Still, I received one message that we had to stick to those budgets and another message to just buy whatever I needed and wanted to do.

Overall, in leadership, what I witnessed was timelines that were constantly shifting, a lack of clarity for the direction of the organization, and a lack of willingness to slow down or take critical feedback into account. I felt like I was wanted when someone needed a disabled trans person to speak on something but then when that feedback wasn’t what was desired, I felt discarded.

I also feel leadership failed to address an instance of domestic violence happening to an employee at the center.

Even before announcing my departure, I saw how leadership treated a new director different than me, looping her into conversations that I was not included in despite the fact that I’d been at the center longer than anyone else on executive leadership. She is brilliant and deserves recognition, but it added to this consistent feeling that I wasn’t taken seriously. I often blamed myself. “Am I too angry?” “Too disabled?” “Too neurodivergent?” I think there is clear favoritism at the organization.

Likewise in leadership I also found myself advocating for staff who didn’t feel safe to speak up about their concerns. Primarily the staff who voiced concerns about their treatment or the way the organization functioned were disabled staff or folks of color.

There is the phrase “kill the cop in your head” and what I want is “kill the cop inside the nonprofit system.” Kill is not referring to violence but to destroying the parts of yourself who want to respond from a carceral and punitive mindset. Despite the ways the center has begun to strive to be radical, I still see that “cop” showing up in our policies and hierarchical structure. Very few people make all important decision that impact the team. We speak radical politics in meetings and then draft internal documents rife with legalese and language that is disproportionally weaponized against folks of color and disabled folks.

In a recent code of ethics document it’s even stated we’re not to speak of disagreements. I ask who does this policy serve?

All of this takes us up to this summer and the pride festival. This pride festival was a truly beautiful day. I felt connected to community. I felt the festival was well-organized. It was a very long day but not entirely unreasonable for any one staff member. Even amidst struggles in an organization I think we should pause to recognize moments of joy like this.

That being said, I think the spending at the pride festival was extravagant at times. We did everything to the highest degree possible which is beautiful but also, I feel, might not have always been the best use of our funds which we have to use to serve folks all year round.

Leading up to pride, I had fed myself the narrative “once we get through this, things will be so much easier.” It was what I held onto to keep going.

In the first senior leadership meeting after pride we were going full force into a Dorney Pride Night with about a month to plan. I remember thinking, “Does it ever stop?”

I think I felt most upset about the urgency and lack of planning that characterized events like this. There is always something else we need to push for and that we end up spending a lot money on with little to no money coming back to us. I voiced concerns like this.

A sharp turn happened though when during one leadership meeting in September I was told we were laying off our youth department.

Here is where I feel disappointed in myself. When presented with this information. I said that I could understand the center’s reasoning. We do not have a large grant supporting youth programs and we needed sustained funding to continue. I should have pushed more. I should have asked more questions. I should have advocated harder.

That is the thing about being part of a hierarchically structured org. I was making the best money I made in my life which was 65,000. It’s an amount of money I couldn’t have fathomed like a year ago. I just wanted to do anything to keep things going. I didn’t want to think too deeply about the situation. Of course, I hurt about it. I hurt for my co-workers I loved who got laid off and I hurt for the community that we shut our efforts to serve youth.

Even after that, we continued to spend as an organization. Every time I asked, “Can we afford this?” I was told “Yes yes yes.”

Nonprofits never “have any money” but there is a difference between not having much extra funds and having zero funds. Zero funds is where we landed. I don’t know or understand where all the money the org had went. I know that we had money in our reserves when we started the year. I know that in my time at the org, this had never happened before. I was told this two days before it was shared with all staff. As executive leadership, I feel it is deeply not transparent to not inform the directors of your organization where finances are in a tangible way. I was told we were cutting hourly staff to 32 hours and closing the center one day a week. Leadership took pay cuts. We laid off three more staff and cut another staff’s hours down even more. From my perspective, the organization has, for this whole year, never had a solid plan for fundraising. I can see how this has caught up to the organization.

As explanation for this leadership has said this financial situation occurred because we approved a deficit budget. When we were presented with the deficit budget we were told the only thing putting us over budget was legal fees we’d incurre in the event staff went through with a unionization effort.

At the end of this meeting, there was a point made to say that my work in the education institute would be able to help bring in some of the funding we need.

I’ve done LGBTQ+ trainings for about ten years now. I’ve seen the “market” grow and change. I can tell you that right now there’s a market saturation for these trainings and as we are living in a recession and time of overall economic crisis, organizations don’t have a lot of flexible funding to spend on these trainings. I spent every day at my job reaching out to organizations and cultivating connections to businesses and other non profits across the valley. I still found myself coming up short of the mark. Plus, a lot of lgbtq+ orgs give trainings for free.

I was asked how I planned to close a 40,000$ gap in my department’s budget which was mostly because we went from a part time trainer to full-time trainer. My salary in the institute was 65,000$. Again, it’s the most money I ever made in my life. I feel guilt for that salary because so many of my queer siblings don’t make enough to get by. In my role, I was just trying to make enough to cover myself at the organization. As a side note, ALWAYS always always talk about your salary with your peers. It’s important for understand the interworking of an organization and for helping peers and yourself make sure you’re getting paid fairly.

I couldn’t do it anymore. This is when I said enough is enough is enough. I couldn’t make peace with being asked to work more when I already worked so hard and on top of that, I didn’t feel like I was making the impact I wanted to.

All of this leads me to the point that I feel shakiest about telling you. I don’t think you should donate to the center if you want the most impact for your money getting into the community. I love the people who work at the center. They are my friends and former colleagues. The work they’ve done is often astounding and brilliant and kind. All of that is true and I also think the systems we have to work within prevent us from making the deepest impact.

Recently staff was told we were going to resume full time (40) hours in January because of a 500,000 donation from someone’s will. Places like the center will always receive donations like this. I think about how much good that 500,000 could do in the community and I feel again like the system is broken. That could be groceries and rent and medical bills.

Give money to your friends. Give money to mutual aid networks. Give money without having to see a program outcome or fancy professionalized pitches. These systems are what keep our families unfed and fighting to survive. Give without getting a tax write off. This is the kind of redistribution of resources that will lead us to a place where we don’t have to rely on these restricting funding sources and organizations that have to present themselves as palatable to the gaze of a select few rich folks.

This work will not be easy. It will be messy and scary if we devest from the nonprofit system. It’s not something can or should happen overnight. I also think there are nonprofit organizations that are more ethical than others.

I wish I could offer you some kind of closure to these meditations. Instead, though, I’ll offer you some of my favorite moments from working at the center.

My former co-worker Gabby Hochfeld and I had the opportunity to put on some really beautiful events. One night we got to welcome Alvaro Duran, an activist from El Salvador to speak on queer rights and justice in his work in the faith community. It was moving to hear him. I loved and cherished how he spoke of how even the acronym “LGBTQ+” assumes a very western lens. He talked about words from his indigenous ancestry that he connects to most in terms of identity. We gathered after and talked to so many wonderful community members.

Gabby and I also helped curate our art galleries. One of my favorite shows was by Grayson Colbert, a trans artist. So many community members came and the reception was an evening of pure queer joy.

One spring we also organized a foraging event with Rain Black, also a former employee of the center and my partner. People of all ages came and we picked mushrooms and learned about native plants. It was such a beautiful afternoon.

Rain Black and Kiir Rutabaga’s art gallery show Vile Beauty was also a really amazing reception. Both of their work played wonderfully off each other and I really believe Rain is one of the most innovative and visceral artists I know. I felt heartbroken for him and all survivors when the center decided to censor one of his pieces from the show because it discussed the direct words used by his abuser. The center directly allowed his abuser to remove the pieces from the show. Out of an interest of confidentially and respectability, I find that often organizations can act as shields for abusers. I believe I have seen the center operate in this way multiple times.

With Liz Keiser and Braden Hudak I had the opportunity to film so many fun snippets for the center’s social media. They are brilliant, kind, and professional people. The center would not be what it is without their communications expertise. I loved filming new quick queer history snippets with Tiersa Curry, who is a brilliant steward of local history.

Being part of the CORE fellowship has been extremely meaningful to me. It’s pushed me to think deeply about white supremacy and how it functions as the center of so many forms of oppression. I’ve been honored to work alongside other local organizations trying to make a most equitable and just Lehigh Valley.

I’m also grateful that being part of the center helped give me the tools to start Prism a neurodivergent community group. I’ve never felt more seen and celebrated than when I’m in a room with fellow neurodivergent queer folks. The group is a space of healing and love and I’m rejoiced every meeting. I’m glad I’ll continue to run that group under a new name “Radiant” outside of the center under a new name since the center has decided to keep the name. (Please email me if you want to join!)

And lastly, I’m happy for all the relationships the center led me to with coworkers and community members I will always hold dear. Please, email me or message me. I hope to continue the connections built in this phase of my life.

The advice I would leave you with is to get your hands dirty. Sit with one another. Witness each other’s pain and joy and love. Write poetry. Paint your emotions. Sing in the streets. Engage each other in difficult conversations around justice in our world and take action. Don’t be satisfied with the sliver we’re afforded. Always ask for more. If you are a nonprofit worker, don’t let your dedication to a cause justify an organization undervaluing your labor and coercing you into compliance. Organize with your co-workers.

Also… are you interested in starting a Lehigh Valley queer and trans mutual aid collective? I am but I don’t know how and what our focus would be but if you want to… email me. Let’s talk. Let’s dream together. My email is robinfgow@gmail.com. I have an interest survey too here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdjXdWN2X4guMZ__DKZhs-5o9kGW3iJI1ZgeUIzqdKplvoMtg/viewform

grave garden

in the dirt the ghosts grow carrots.
harvest them from beneath the soil
& have root parties where
they pull the marionette legs 
of trees to make them sway. i go there
with my corpse face on to try & join.
i have never been exactly a living person.
i remember a whole year of middle school
where i wouldn't show up in pictures.
i had to run to avoid discovery.
in the mirror i would smear concealer
all over my face to prove i was even there.
the ghosts sometimes accept me & sometimes don't.
to be a child of barricades is always to know
how to jump them. i think of the turnstiles 
in new york city & how they are
a favorite spot for ghosts there. 
when i do get to go to a grave garden party 
i feel another part of my wholeness.
it's like becoming a bouncy ball
in the pocket of a boyfriend. the ghosts
never remember their own names
which is a relief because neither do i.
before we are done something always slips though.
i will breathe & they will not. i will cough
& they will not & the distance will become
a kind of water. floating to the surface
& finding myself again among headstones.
going door to door & asking.
"please let me back in." the path is gone though
& i walk home following a trail
of last-worn shoes. i always try
to bring one root home though. this night
it is a turnip. i put the whole thing
in my mouth at once. chew hungrily, eagerly.
tears streaming down my face,
i unzip the dead from me. become 
a peach tree all over again.  

gill cutter

youngest angels 
spend their days cutting 
gills into fish.
tally marks. they laugh in the water.
ocean. lake. grotto. 
one says to another,
"what if we were humans."
the others look dreamily 
at the blood forest & all
the dripping electricity. the video games
they could use for worship.
angels are older than gods.
they were the first beings to look
at a stone & think, "that could breathe."
fires lit beneath the fresh mozzarella moon.
so, together, they pretend
to be us. to be people.
one is a mother & one is a father.
one is a daughter who brushes
her long hair. another is a boy
shaving his head for war. 
these games delight the angels.
fish wriggle & dart between their legs.
"if we were humans we would 
get married right now," one says
to another. killing a fish
with their bare hands 
they fasten a ring from bone. 
in a circle they invent human promises.
"i will mow your lawn." 
"i will eat your chicken." "i will
garden your golden."
laughing they kiss one another
with every mouth they have.  
the pocket mouth & the silver mouth
& the eden mouth. the fish
waiting to be fish get impatient
writhing as smooth stones.
"fine, fine," an angel says,
calling their games to a close
& drawing their knife again
to continue the work of conjuring 
fresh spirits for the water.