Can We Talk for REAL

Joining CWT4R co-host Ina, Michelle and Terry will be Gay Games IX- Cleveland + Akron, staff and athletics.  Northeast Ohio, Cleveland to be exact is eager to welcome the 13,000+ artists and athletes from around the globe who are expected to participate in over 30 events. If you were in Chicago for the 2006 Gay Games you know how excited the city, athletics and the staff were to bring this major event to the Windy City. Now just think at how excited Ohio must be to have the Games back in the United States. Taken from the web-site In addition to the exciting sporting events, the Gay Games will offer cultural events like concerts, theme parties, and exhibitions, as well as a festival village where athletes, community members, families, and other visitors can enjoy time together. Ask anyone who has attended a major event in Greater Cleveland and they will tell you Cleveland knows how to throw a party and this one will be huge. As Midwesterners, they are great hosts. Whether it's the NCAA basketball tournaments, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremonies, the U.S. Figure Skating National Championships, the NFL Hall of Fame Induction Ceremonies or the Cleveland International Film Festival—Northeast Ohio always exceeds expectations! Want to buy your tickets for surprises? Want to watch and experience the Concert Band, Choral Performance, Figure Skating, Bodybuilding, DanceSport, Pink Flamingo pool show or join us for Closing Ceremony? The Games are open to all adults - regardless of sexual orientation or athletic ability. With more than 35 sports (from darts to triathlon, bowling to softball) and 2 cultural events (band and chorus), there's something for everybody.

More at http://www.gg9cle.com/

Tonight, July 2, 2014, CWT4R co-host, Ina, Michelle and Terry will welcome back Esteem Awards Founder and Publisher of PrideIndex.com, Philip Esteem. Philip started working in the community with Black Pride (Chicago in 2005) he began networking and was being introduced to people that were doing good things in the community and never really recognized as they should have been. After a short time Philip founded the Esteem Awards and some of the pass awardees included organizations such as The Lambda Literary Foundation & GLADD as well as Youth transgender Eboni Warren Watts, Lori Branch, The gay Magazine, Gay Radio.com, Wanda Sykes, Sharon Bridgforth, GBM News.com, and our very own Michelle E. Brown, just to name a few. He also publishes PrideIndex which is a new flavor of web media sharing local information and national resources for the LGBTQ.THIS YEAR AWARDEES INCLUDE: Craig Johnson, Sanford E. Gaylord, David Bridgeforth of DBQ Magazine, Trisha Lee Holloway of Howard Brown, Simone Koehlinger, Gregg Shapiro of boi Magazine, brklynboihood.com, colorlines.com, The Trevor Project, About Face Theatre, The Bayard Rustin LGBT Coalition (BRC), and Can We Talk For Real, Blog Talk Radio just to name a few. The ESTEEM AWARDS is awarding some of the LGBTQ best, Saturday at Sidetrack beginning at 2pm don’t be late. More diamonds in the LGBTQ Community, Learn  how you can nominate one you know for future awards.

Call 347-215-8985 show starts at 10:30 eastern and 9:30 central. Press 1 to SPEAK

Joining co-hosts Terry Boi, Ina and Michelle on “Can We Talk for REAL” Blog Talk Radio Wednesday, June 25th will be another Outstanding Youth Leader and Esteem Award Winner David Bridgeforth an influential voice in the LGBT community and a renaissance man. Celebrated public speaker, personal life coach, poet, television personality, Publisher and Editor-In-Chief of a national magazine, noted gay rights activist, and essayist, Mr. Bridgeforth has come a long way in a very short time since his October 15, 1987 birth, in Voorhees, New Jersey. His professional speaking career began at the age of 16, when he caught the attention of Les Brown and was invited to tour nationally with the world-renown communicator. Then at 22, Maya Angelou affirmed his status as a poet when, at her North Carolina home, he presented her with a piece specifically written by him to celebrate her 81st birthday. Since then, he’s been a much sought after poet, performing his work throughout the country. When in college David opened up publicly about his sexuality and began doing grass roots work in Indianapolis’ LGBT community, assuming the position of Entertainment and Events Chairman for the state's annual Black Pride celebration and conducting safe sex and HIV/AIDS awareness promotional campaigns for Brothers United Indianapolis. Now David Bridgeforth is the highly acclaimed and nationally distributed DBQ Magazine, for which he serves as Publisher and Editor-In-Chief won the coveted Media Award from the Indiana Minority Aids Coalition (IMAC). Mr. Bridgeforth is also the youngest individual ever inducted into the International Federation of Black Pride's "Black LGBT Hall of Fame”.

Joining co-hosts Terry Boi, Ina and Michelle on “Can We Talk for REAL” Blog Talk Radio Wednesday, June 18th will be Outstanding Youth Leader Rhiannon Chester. Rhiannon attended the Creating Change Conference and stood out as one of the Outstanding Youth destined to lead. Let’s talk about the next generation and their dream, hopes and aspirations as well as their involvement in Social Justice. Hear about the issues that are most important to them. Listen in and find out how you or your organization can join this Youth Movement of Leaders.

Rhiannon at the tender age of 16 was already making her move into the civil and social rights movement. She began at the Collation to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality by Any Means necessary (BAMN). Naturally this young lady attended college and there blossomed into a leader when introduced to KICK  (LGBT Agency) and its Learn Educate Advocate and Drive (LEAD) Academy.Co-facilitator of Woman 2 Woman,  a program for lesbian, bi, and queer woman of color to promote sisterhood and start the engagement of woman to want to start healing, Rhiannon will talk about how it was formed, what was the dream for the organization and what are future plans? Listen in as this young lady tells us of her journey to leadership with the challenges and accomplishment. Listen as she talks about her passion for the arts and woman. She will tell us what fueled the drive she has to succeed and what keeps her going being a young woman in the movement? Maybe this busy activist will tell us what is on the horizon for her in the near future?

Joining co-hosts Terry Boi, Ina and Michelle on “Can We Talk for REAL” Blog Talk Radio tomorrow night Wednesday, June 4th will be Mona Noriega let’s talk about if you have been discriminated and did not know where to go. Every city has a Human Relations Department. Join us as we talk to Mona about the department that handles the complaints, steps you need to take to file claims, and how to recognize you have been discriminated against.

Mona Noriega, appointed by Mayor Emanuel in 2011, serves as the Chairman and Commissioner of the Chicago Commission on Human Relations (CCHR). The CCHR works to address prejudice and discrimination, supports victims of hate crimes, and enforces the City of Chicago’s anti-discrimination laws. Currently she is a member of the LGBTQ Coalition for Immigrant Rights and annually serves as an Honorary Co-Chair of Chicago Build the Peace Committee and is working on a Hate Crimes Summit to be held at UIC on October 20, 2014. Mona’s initial community organizing work began with lesbian mothers, creating safe space and opportunities to celebrate family. From there she began to produce chapbooks for friends who were poets and Lesbians of Color (LOC) cultural productions at Mountain Moving Coffee House, and then as a member of Latina Lesbianas en Nuestro Ambiente (LLENA) helped organized performance art and the International Women’s Day Dances in the 1990s.

Part Two of the series on Black LGBT Believers airs Wednesday, May 28, 2014 when CAN WE TALK FOR REAL co-hosts Ina, Terry Boi and Michelle are joined by Rev. Roland Stringfellow, Rev. Darlene C. A. Franklin and Rev. Anthony W. Sullivan Jr. continuing the conversation started by Bishop Allyson Nelson Abrams.

They’ve come this far by faith and draw upon that faith to minister and heal members of the LGBTQ community.  Finding solace and strength in religion, Black LGBTQ Believers often find themselves at odds with the very faith communities they were born and raised in. Besides sharing their personal story, they will talk about the safe harbor LGBTQ churches provide, how to build more inclusive and supportive communities of faith outside the LGBTQ community, and how to remain strong/be agents of change in the face of attacks against the LGBTQ community often led a by Black ministers.

Reverend Roland Stringfellow Senior Pastor of Metropolitan Community Church in Ferndale, Michigan (a suburb of Detroit). Reverend Anthony W. Sullivan, Jr. is a justice advocate committed to the liberation of persons and groups who suffer from all forms of oppression. Reverend Darlene C. A. Franklin is originally from East Orange, New Jersey. She is a veteran of the United States Air Force. Coming back next week Bishop Abrams to join this conversation.

Joining CWT4R is Bishop Allyson D. N. Abrams.A past pastor of Zion Progress Baptist Church in Detroit, she made the decision to step down rather than divide the church after disclosing she had married her wife in Iowa where same sex marriage is legal. Before her marriage and before the Defense of Marriage Act was overturned by the Supreme Court , allowing same-sex marriages to be recognized by the federal government, Abrams wrote a blog post for People for the American Way, arguing that it was time to "dump DOMA" and allow every person the opportunity to marry. Her wife is bishop emeritus of the Imani Temple of the African-American Catholic Congregation in Washington, D.C. is her best friend and a support system. Abrams, who has a masters in divinity and a doctorate in ministry from the United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, will share how she reached the understanding that same-sex marriage is aligned with Christian teachings.

Do you want to know how to help your body heal itself utilizing all natural products and supplements?  How to use your life force energy to grow stronger and healthier?  How to have a healthier immune system and live longer?  How to have a young healthy brain all of your life? Then you don't want to miss CAN WE TALK FOR REAL as co-hosts TerryBoi, Ina and Michelle are joined by L. Ojetta Brown, the Director of the Center for Peace and Holistic Healing.

Ojetta's experiences as a clinician and as a patient following a closed-head injury in 2003,  revealed to her the need for a radical change in how medical and mental health services are provided in this country.  She came to the conclusion that we do not not have a health care system, but a sick care system. 

Her private practice integrates the best of the medical professions’ science and techniques with natural alternative treatments. She will be sharing tips on how we can live  healthier and offering alternatives for your medicine cabinet. 

Call in Wednesday night at 10:30 eastern, 9:30 central, 8:30 mountain and 7:30 pacific times into 347-215-8985. Press 1 to speak.

This is the year of HEALTH!

The Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice is the only philanthropic organization working exclusively to advance LGBTQI human rights around the globe. The Foundation supports brilliant and brave grantee partners in the U.S. and internationally who challenge oppression and seed change. Astraea works for racial, economic, social, and gender justice, because we all deserve to live our lives freely, without fear, and with dignity.

On May 16, 2014 the Astraea Foundation will present the 2014 Fueling the Frontlines Awards.  The  recognizes activists and organizations whose brave and brilliant work on the cutting edge of LGBTQI Fueling the Frontlines Award  issues inspires movements and generates significant advances for our communities.

This year’s Awards will celebrate the life and legacy of pioneering Chicago LGBT activist Vernita Gray. The evening will also honor Tracy Baim, Publisher and executive editor of Windy City Media Group. & co-founder of Windy City Times and Julio Rodriguez, president of the Association of Latinos/as Motivating Action both for their lifetime of activism.

Dr Kofi wants to have some REAL TALK about butches, studs, AGs, doms, and Masculine-Identified Lesbians who also identify as Black in America. Let’s all talk about these identities in depth and spread some understanding about the perspectives and life experiences of Black lesbians whose gender variance is on the masculine-of-center side of the spectrum. Seems that whenever same gender loving women get together in the Black community, the topic of studs and femmes come up. So this time, it’s going to be a different conversation, a new discussion. It’ll be somewhat informational but it should be fun too.

It will be to your advantage to have a visual aid as you’re listening to the show. It’s easy to download off the internet. Go to itspronouncedmeterosexual.com and find the diagram called The Genderbread Person. Do it now so you can have a copy of it during our discussion.

Do your homework because show day is Wednesday, April 30th and time is 10:30 eastern, 9:30 central, 8:30 mountain, and 7:30 pacific times. The call in number is 347-215-8985 and Press 1 to TALK.