Riding the Waves @ Queer Thinking (part of Syd Mardi Gras)

This program is supported by ACON and the Australian GLBTIQ Multicultural Council (AGMC).

“Riding the Waves” is an account of critical anti-racist, immigrant, and community empowerment movement; holding central a dialogue on global justice and informed through the lens of feminist and multicultural historiography. Via an exploration of inter-community empowerment and movement towards better health, justice and human rights, this program posits our unique role in the remaking of a just world, addressing current challenges of stigma, homophobia and heterosexism.

When: Sat 21st Feb, 11am
Where: Seymour Centre www.seymourcentre.com
Cost: $16 – $20, whole day entry

The program is divided into two sessions

Session 1: Three Waves

Writer, community activist and artist, Shinen Wong, will present a ‘3 Waves’ framework: a discussion of feminist and queer historiography, Asian Australian immigration history, gay men’s community development, and intersectional community solidarity movements. The ‘3 waves’, inspired by feminist historiography and developed through ongoing consultations with broader LGBT communities and Asian gay men locally and internationally, will seek to pose questions and deconstruct notions of identity, power and privilege through an historiographic account of Asian gay men’s community development. This session will conclude with a Q&A.

Session 2: Riding the Waves

Building on the ‘Three Waves’ framework, a discussion panel of community-identified speakers will explore further the implications of this framework in mobilising social justice work:

Benjamin Oh, educator and public health practitioner, will discuss support and solidarity with marginalised communities both internationally and locally through aid development, and especially with refugees, asylum seekers and religious gay people in Australia.

Min Fuh Teh, Health Promotion Officer at ACON, will present an exploration of Asian gay men’s community development in Sydney and the challenges of HIV prevention and messaging. The A-MEN project, an ACON arts- and culture-based health promotion and community development initiative for Asian gay men, will be discussed as an application of the ‘Three Waves’ model.

Krystyna Posunkina is a LGBT human rights activist and refugee. She is committed to the plight of asylum seekers and refugees both personally and professionally. She comes with extensive experience in the non-for-profit sector and human rights activism. She is working on her PhD research about LGBTI asylum seekers from Ex-Soviet Union Countries.

Timothy Mansfield, strategy consultant and futurist will trace and critically appraise the thread of evolutionary and historiographical perspectives on global justice movements for LGBT people.

For more information on Queer Thinking, visit www.mardigras.org.au/events/queer-thinking

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