Beyond Identity was formed inside the Politics of Sexual Violence Initiative in 2015 when identity politics, as it was lived out in political lives online began to reproduce the oppressive tactics of the state: to categorize and control. There were signs of fracture, between girls and women of color, at a moment when deep solidarity was urgently needed.
For deeply marginalized youth, political consciousness begins with the rupture of violence – a moment that reveals the conditions of your mind’s captivity. The mission of Beyond Identity is to incubate a conscious resistance amongst a group of young scholar-activists. Beyond Identity Scholar-Activists build on their experiences as youth and gender non-conforming students of color, from both immigrant and U.S.-based minority communities,
Beyond Identity fellows engage in identity-driven research, political writing, and movement-building. We found that preliminary identity-driven research has pushed the students to go deep enough into their own identities to find the political through-lines with other struggles.
We take an inter-generational approach to girl-led work by centering the political projects, emotional support needs, and family histories of our students in our work as we engage them through our own lived experiences of violence, as scholar-activists, offering a reflective surface through which to grapple with their own pain. We are, physically and politically, a radical survival hub in Harlem where young folks can dismantle dominance from the structures of the academy to the cultural constraints on their lives.
The mission of Beyond Identity is to incubate a conscious resistance amongst a group of young scholar-activists. Beyond Identity scholar-activists build on their experiences of violence youth and gender non-conforming students of color, from both immigrant and U.S.-based minority communities, Beyond Identity fellows engage in identity-driven research, political writing, and movement-building, going deep enough into their own identities to find the political through-lines with other struggles – creating a deeper, more sustained, organizing community.
The predominant issues faced by our cohort are economic insecurity (many are working to support their parents, some are living in temporary housing), internal community conservatism (grappling with queer identities) and external racism (several have been arrested or faced direct police or homeland security violence), mental health issues (very few have access to any medical care), and food insecurity. Across these areas sexual and gender-based violence remains a central issue for all of our students and one that we address as a pain to be held inside their political work.
We see the impact of our work, as a continuous political project emanating outwards, building political strength through organizers in marginalized communities, below, as they take their political work and organizing to the next generation of young activists, and above as our fellows enter into spaces of power.
Visiting from Oaxaca, Mixe activist Yasnaya Aguilar reminds us that sometimes the language of “solidarity” serves the state more than the women they oppress – and asks us to learn from indigenous models of “deep reciprocity” where power is constantly disconnected from the self and generational knowledge anchor’s identity more intimately than the narrow scope of gender.
