LGBTQIA+Allies in Glendale, California
glendaleOUT is a grass-roots organization dedicated to building, evolving, and moving forward queer voice in the narrative that is Glendale.
PROJECT:PRO+ECT is a joint community effort to engage in actions that convey to queer and questioning GUSD students they live in a city that sees them, accepts them, respects their journey, and will fight for their place at the table in Glendale and La Crescenta.
Glendale City Council, state candidates, every neighborhood has demonstrated anti-LGBTQIA+ messaging online and at board of education and city meetings. Our kids are listening. But love also exists in Glendale. This is what our events and actions endeavor to amplify.
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*click on the image to view our initial PROJECT designed to let queer and questioning students in Glendale know there were people in their community who were thinking about them, cared about them, who were working on their behalf.
*click on the image to view our second PROJECT, Glendale Queer Glam Slam. This was in response to a student requesting safe space to try on different kinds of clothes.
Our first PROJECT was to make initial contact with the Gender Sexuality Alliances in the Glendale Unified School District. There are eight variations of GSA's in GUSD, from middle school to high school. Four responded, with around 20 students/per response. glendaleOUT and local allies/parents wrote hand-made cards to each student and added then to care packages dropped of at each of the schools. The kids had enough fun and ridiculous SWAG to share with their friends and a few strangers.
Our first PROJECT was to make initial contact with the Gender Sexuality Alliances in the Glendale Unified School District. There are eight variations of GSA's in GUSD, from middle school to high school. Four responded, with around 20 students/per response. glendaleOUT and local allies/parents wrote hand-made cards to each student and added then to care packages dropped of at each of the schools. The kids had enough fun and ridiculous SWAG to share with their friends and a few strangers.
Our second project was in response to questionnaires we circulated to the GSA's about what they needed or wanted to do for fun. One student responded they wanted a safe space to try on different clothes. So we did that. The generosity of the donation response was OVERWHELMING. Volunteers from Free Mom Hugs saves us. Junior High Los Angeles is a safe space in Glendale, and GUSD Parents for Public Schools remain our active, supportive, ever-allies. And the kids want to do it again!
Our second project was in response to questionnaires we circulated to the GSA's about what they needed or wanted to do for fun. One student responded they wanted a safe space to try on different clothes. So we did that. The generosity of the donation response was OVERWHELMING. Volunteers from Free Mom Hugs saves us. Junior High Los Angeles is a safe space in Glendale, and GUSD Parents for Public Schools remain our active, supportive, ever-allies. And the kids want to do it again!
Help us keep it going!
Please help us do the work of PROJECT:PRO+ECT. Volunteer your time, your resources, or your support.
Adriana was a trans woman murdered in her apartment which was then set on fire in Yerevan, Armenia.
Lauri Carleton was an ally murdered for displaying a Pride flag at her store in Lake Arrowhead, California
Communities are being whipped into an anti-queer frenzy by people who use the rhetoric of hate for gain and profit. glendaleOUT and GUSD Parents for Public Schools have distributed over 70 of the hundred flags we are offering for FREE to any community member, organization, or business that would like to display it in memory of these women, and in support of healthy, inclusive, tolerant communities for all. glendaleOUT@gmail.com
We will always be here, we will always be queer. Get used to it.
Improving Allyship For Armenian LGBTQIA+ Communities
On Thursday, March 24th at 6:00 p.m. Pacific, Vahan Bournazian (Human Rights Professor), Mamikon Hovsepyan (Pink Armenia), Lilit Martirosyan (RighT Side), Perch Melikyan (Charachchi), and Erik Adamian (ONE Archives Foundation, GALAS and Charachchi) had a panel presentation on improving allyship for LGBTQIA+ communities. Panelists' relayed observations on human rights violations of LGBTQIA+ community members in Armenia, as depicted in the documentary Listen to Me: Untold Stories Beyond Hatred (2016). Panelists also highlighted responses from youth and advocates and presented a call to action to improve allyship for LGBTQIA+ youth and adults in Armenia and Glendale, CA, and beyond. This event is hosted by YWCA Glendale and Pasadena, glendaleOUT and GUSD Social Science Teacher Patrick Davarhanian.