Collections by Michelle Brown

Michelle Regalado Deatrick lives with her family on an 80-acre farm in southeast Michigan, where she cares for a large organic garden, an orchard and a 20-acre native prairie surrounded by stands of native trees. For the past two farming seasons, her family has been unable to plant on most of their farm.

Regalado-Deatrick is also is a poet, a community advocate, an elected official. and an activist for the environment, small farm rights, women and fair wages.

She has served as Vice-Chair of the Washtenaw County Commission. In 2016, she ran successfully as a Democrat for the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners. She was also elected to the Democratic National Committee and was subsequently elected as Midwest Representative to the DNC Women's Caucus

At the Democratic National Committee’s meeting in San Francisco in August,  the party approved establishing the Environmental and Climate Council.  This DNC Council was the culmination of months of work, garnering support from 50+ DNC co-sponsors to ensure passage of the Founding Resolution and whipping votes.

Michelle Regalado Deatrick leads the DNC Environmental and Climate Council team as its Chairwoman. The Council is here to further the Democratic Party’s commitment, articulated in the Party Platform, to tackle the climate crisis and protect our earth, air, and water.

The Council has a terrific team of Officers: Chairwoman Michelle Deatrick (DNC, Michigan), Vice-Chair David Green (DNC, Washington & Vice Chair, Washington Dem State Party), Communications Director/Secretary Devin Murphy (California) and Youth Director D Garcia (California). More will be joining the Council in leadership soon, from the scientific community and from diverse geographies and communities.

Kamora Herrington is Founder and CEO of Kamora’s Cultural Corner in Hartford, Connecticut.

She has offered cutting-edge community programs in Hartford for decades and is recognized for her groundbreaking work.

Kamora's Cultural Corner is a community space where people learn how to use their unique and shared identities to make genuine connections with others; Their work is driven by cultural humility. Cultural humility is the “ability to maintain an interpersonal stance that is other-oriented (or open to the other) in relation to aspects of cultural identity that are most important to the person.

The Cultural Corner serves, celebrates, and uplifts Hartford’s diverse families and individuals who are Black and Queer, as well as the larger community. The Cultural Corner is housed in the location of the former Kabbalah House community cultural center on Albany Avenue. Moving the Center into space with a history of welcoming marginalized communities into the larger Hartford community just made sense.

Before founding Kamora's Cultural Corner, Herrington was for 15 years the Mentoring Program Coordinator for True Colors. True Colors is a non-profit organization in Hartford that works to ensure that the needs of LGBTQ and general minority youth are recognized and served. True Colors manages Connecticut’s only LGBTQ mentoring program. 

Herrington has been able to collaborate with some of her now adult “True Colors” kids in the programming at Kamora's Cultural Corner.

It’s time for the Lupus Detroit 7th Annual Walk for Warriors. Val Harris Carter is the organization's Board Secretary and Shannon Hester is a Lupus Warrior.

Val has been involved with the organization since its beginning stepping out on faith with Founder/Executive Director Sharon Harris to start this organization to fill a gap left by the more traditional Lupus organizations. Val has lost two family members to this disease. She uses her background in communications and marketing to inform and an educate others about the disease and build support for Lupus Detroit.

Shannon is one of those Warriors who has found home, community, and family at Lupus Detroit. She was diagnosed with Lupus in 2002. The disease attacked her kidneys and she has battled it for the past 17 years.

Lupus Detroit is a community based, voluntary health organization dedicated to eliminating lupus as a major health problem through education, advocacy, and service. The organization has assembled a hard-working and dedicated group of empathetic professionals to serve Lupus Warriors but its commitment goes even further.

Lupus Detroit believes that no Lupus Warrior should have to decide between purchasing their medication and buying food for their families. The organization realizes that everyone needs assistance from time to time. They offer emergency financial assistance grants in addition to awareness and advocacy events. For Warriors its more than a handout, it’s a community. It’s a family!

The walk takes place Saturday, September 7th. Registration can be made online or the day of the event at New Center Park in Detroit.

Registration and donations can be made online or the day of at the event. No team, no problem – everyone in attendance whether a Warrior or just there to support is a member of the Lupus Detroit family. You will feel the strength, determination but most of all the love.

Derrick Clifton is a Chicago-based freelance journalist and writer whose work focuses on the intersections of identity, culture and social issues. Clifton’s reporting and opinion writing have appeared at NBC News, Vox, The Root, Windy City Times, Out, Chicago Reader and various other news outlets.

He holds two degrees from Northwestern University, including an MSJ from the Medill School of Journalism. He is an avid volunteer and has served on boards for scholarship organizations, education nonprofits and causes serving LGBTQ people. He also is a speaker and commentator on various cultural, wellness and social justice issues. 

Clifton, who is queer and gender-fluid, is working on a memoir aimed at help readers understand the uniquely beautiful yet turbulent coming-of-age experiences for queer and gender-variant people of color. He believes "It takes all kinds to elevate awareness of intersectionality in media and mainstream culture, and it's been the blessing of his life to help advance a Black, queer and feminist perspective,"

In 2018 at the age of 29, he received the Esteem Award for Future Leaders – The Outstanding Millennial Award. Upon receiving the award Clifton said, "This award touches me not only because of the affirmation but because it's coming from my community."

Allison Van Kuiken is the Executive Director of Trans Can Work (TCW), a leading Workplace Education and Workforce Development organization advancing transgender inclusion in the workplace. 

Born, raised, and educated in Michigan, Allison now spends their time between Washington DC and Southern California.

Prior to joining Trans Can Work, Allison spent 20 years in leadership positions within the private sector, higher education, the political realm, state government, and LGBTQ Advocacy spaces, including the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and Equality California (EQCA)-work that has been defined by innovative programming, successful political, legislative, and marketing campaigns, and development of hundreds of leaders working in political, nonprofit, public, and private spaces. 

Since joining Trans Can Work in 2018, Allison and their team’s collective vision have led to new and innovative approaches to workplace education, the expansion of the organization’s jobs program, which connects hundreds of inclusive workplaces to one of the nation’s largest transgender talent pools, and the development of a workforce development network that provides education and training to people of transgender experience in scores of high demand professions.

Along the way, Allison met and married their spouse and together are raising their beautiful and very curious toddler. One of her great joys these days is watching Sesame Street with their daughter each morning before taking her to school.

Like so many adults, Angela Denise Davis took piano lessons for many years as a child and was involved in middle school chorus but discontinued her music instruction after high school. She had a profound loss of vision in 2003 and became legally blind, which caused her to rethink how she could engage music. Angela ultimately discovered the ukulele in 2015, and it changed her life.

In January of 2019, she started teaching ukulele classes and formed The Ukulele Griot Collective.  The Collective focuses on awakening musical skills in adults in order to increase social engagement and foster joy in making music. Davis assists students in laying a foundation that will provide a framework for independent learning beyond group instruction. She believes that almost anyone can learn to play the ukulele and reap a wealth of benefits from music instruction.

Her work as a minister focuses on how the fusion of art and spirituality can enlarge the ground beneath our feet and enrich the ways we move in personal and social spaces. She is a graduate of Clark Atlanta University where she earned a B.A. in Art. She also holds a Master of Divinity from Vanderbilt University Divinity School and a Master of Science in rehabilitation counseling from Georgia State University. 

Davis is also the creator, host, and producer of the ZAMI NOBLA Podcast. This podcast is for black lesbians over 40 who have always wanted a sound source that gets them. The show centers their lives with conversations about health and wellness, love and relationships, and current events.

She has been a performance artist, poet, and writer. She has also been known as a playwright, a curator, a visual artist, a spoken word artist performer, and public speaker. She was also the Trans Oral Historian for the Tretter Collection at the  University of Minnesota interviewing and collecting the oral history of over 150 members of the transgender community.  In 2017 she’s added a new position to her impressive resume – Councilwoman representing Minneapolis’s 8th ward and Vice President of Minneapolis City Council.

Minneapolis is the largest city in Minnesota and the 46th largest city in the United States. With its smaller neighbor St. Paul,  Minneapolis makes up the Twin Cities, the 16th largest metropolitan area in the country. In this historic election she became the first transgender woman of color elected to a major city council in the country. She serves with Phillippe Cunningham, a transgender man elected at the same time to represent to the city’s 4th Ward.  

At its 110th annual convention, the NAACP passed three resolutions regarding the civil rights of the LGBTQ community. On the transgender community, the organization resolved to work with all its Units to work to support equal protection for transgender individuals so that all members of our community can live free of violence, shame, and discrimination. So far in 2019 twelve transgender women have been killed in the United States. 

As a Transgender activist Andrea Jenkins not only speaks about protection for members of transgender women and men but more representation and inclusion in all areas including politics.

Jacquise Purifoy is an attorney, community and business developer, an HIV counselor and a Facilitator and Entrepreneur in Residence at the Build Institute.

She was sworn into the State Bar of Michigan in 2010. Prior to private practice, she was hired by former U.S. House of Representative Hansen Clarke as his Chief Correspondent. Later as Clarke’s Community Grants Coordinator she worked directly with key federal and state business and civic leaders to identify small business and economic development initiatives in Southeastern Michigan.

She joined the Build Institute in 2019, as the lead for Citywide Detroit Soup. The Build Institute helps people turn their business ideas into reality by providing them with the necessary tools, resources, and support network in Detroit. Detroit Soup is a micro granting dinner celebrating creative projects in Detroit.

She was profiled in Dbusiness Magazine’s 2014 Top Lawyers Edition, featured in Legal News’ Motion Magazine and recognized in B.L.A.C. Magazine as a local Hometown Hero.

 

A mother at age 13. Purifoy says that the birth of her daughter made her more determined to achieve the goals her mother set for her. She uses her life’s lessons to counsel young women on pregnancy prevention and reproductive health.

 

Jacquise is an avid advocate for people in her community. Her most memorable professional moment is having the opportunity to visit the White House on behalf of the citizens of Detroit and to personally meet President Barack Obama twice!

The name “Jim Toy” is synonymous with the queer movement in the state of Michigan. 

The first publicly “out” man in Michigan, Jim was a founding member of the Ann Arbor Gay Liberation Front.  In 1971 he established the first campus center in history devoted to the support of sexual minority group members. 

The Human Sexuality Office (HSO) at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor was later renamed The Spectrum Center Jim served as its Co-Coordinator, and Gay Male advocate at the Spectrum Center, from 1971 until 1994.

His status as a TBLG icon is based on over 40 years of tireless efforts to create safety and equality for people of all sexual and gender preferences through his speaking, teaching, writing, administrating, organizing and protesting.

The Washtenaw Rainbow Action Project an Ann Arbor resource center that existed to provide information, education, social events, and advocacy by and for the Queer and Ally community in the Washtenaw County area was renamed the Jim Toy Community Center in 2010 to honor this gay activist legend.

Travis Radina currently serves as the President of the Board of Directors at the Jim Toy Community Center. He  was appointed to serve as the LGBTQ liaison to the mayor’s office in the City of Ann Arbor Michigan.

He is also a senior global engagement manager at the Alumni Association of the University of Michigan, supporting the engagement efforts of alumni association chapters on the East Coast and in western and northern Michigan, and, working with several global affiliate groups, including the U-M LGBTQ Alumni and U-M Black Alumni.

Originally from Nashville, Reverend Keron R. Sadler now calls the Baltimore, Maryland area home. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Religion/Theology from the American Baptist Theological College. She is a graduate of Hood Theological Seminary with a master’s in divinity. For three years she studied at Pfeiffer University pursuing a second masters in Marriage & Family Therapy. During her internship at the Pfeiffer Institute, she provided intensive therapy to individuals, couples and families.

She has worked in Corporate-America for over twenty years; and is recognized for her organizational, leadership, verbal and written communication skills.

Presently, she serves as the national Manager of Health Programs for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Headquarters. She is responsible for maintaining and strengthening the NAACP’s commitment to HIV/AIDS as a high priority and high-profile issue. In her tenure there she managed the development and co-authored The Black Church and HIV: The Social Justice Imperative.

A dynamic and diverse speaker in her own right, she has been called upon to speak and teach to a variety of audiences. Reverend Keron’s passion remains being committed to fulfilling her divine purpose to serve all people of God’s Kingdom, by meeting the needs of pastors, pastor’s spouses, church leaders, lay people and the community-at-large, regardless of denomination, race, sex or class through the Ministry of Counseling.

The 110th NAACP Convention comes to Detroit, Michigan July 20-24th at Cobo Center, The NAACP is the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization. The theme for this year’s conference is “When we Fight, we win!”