Collections by Michelle Brown

Standing boldly in the crosshairs of his intersectionality as an African American, queer, Muslim, man Imam Daayiee Abdullah lectures nationally and internationally on progressive Muslim concepts, intra-faith and interfaith networking, and the development of inclusive and progressive revisions of Islamic theological thought and Islamic law. 

He is one of the few openly gay imams in the world. His first act as an Imam was that he performed funeral rights for a gay Muslim who died because of AIDS.

Imam Abdullah actively promotes understanding and awareness of issues of racial, gender and sexual equality as understood in the UN Declaration of Human Rights within and beyond Muslim communities.

He is the Executive Director of MECCA Institute (Muslim Education Center for Creative Academics) a Muslim think tank and online Islamic theological school. It teaches an inclusive liberation theology and interpretation of Quran. 

IMAM ABDULLAH was born in Detroit, MI. At the young age of 15, he came out to his parents. Abdullah converted to Islam at the age of 33 when he was studying in China, later he moved to Egypt, Syria, and Jordan to study the religion. As a gay man in America, he witnessed that lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual Muslim are not treated in a good way so he decided to become an Imam to provide community support. 

His first act as an Imam was that he performed funeral rights for a gay Muslim who died because of AIDS.

The founder of the Esteem Awards, Philip Esteem, gives a behind the scenes look at the Awards Program and talk about this year's awardees.

The Esteem Awards give recognition to outstanding LGBTQ organizations and individual not only in Chicago but nationally each year. The 11th Annual Esteem Awards will take place on June 30th at Chicago’s Sidetrack Lounge located at 3349 N. Halsted from 1PM-4PM.  Seven organizations and twelve individuals are being honored at this year's Awards.

Philip Esteem founded the Esteem Awards to give recognition to outstanding LGBTQ organizations and individuals. He 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. 

He is also the administrator of Pride on Film by PrideIndex.com which profiles Filmmakers, Producers, Directors, Writers, and Actors. This includes both independent and mainstream film, video and web series that cover the African American/ African Diaspora, Latino/Other People of Color and LGBTQ, Experimental film, Documentary. PrideIndex.com is an online entertainment guide to events, bars, and parties for the African-American and LGBT communities.

Maria Hadden has lived in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood for 10 years. It was her first neighborhood in Chicago. Hadden wants to find a new way to support her beloved neighborhood by running for Alderman in the 49th Ward. If elected, Hadden would become the first queer Black woman on the Chicago City Council.  She is the recipient of the Esteem Award for Outstanding Service, Female - Chicago award.

She attended Ohio State University where her undergraduate study was in International Studies, specifically in peace and conflict studies. After finishing college, she signed up to work for the nonprofit organization AmeriCorps, which brought her to Chicago. Maria’s interests in community voice and the role of civil society were the focus of her graduate studies at DePaul University where she earned an M.S. in International Public Service Management.

Maria is a founding board member of the Participatory Budgeting Project and from 2010 - 2018 led their technical assistance work in the Midwest and the Southern United States. She serves on the board of directors for Black Youth Project 100. She is currently Executive Director of Our City, Our Voice, a nonprofit organization whose purpose is to support civic engagement processes and organizing with the goal of building community capacity to advance transformative social justice and democratic practice in the United States.

The 2oth Annual Allied Media Conference takes place in Detroit June 14-17, 2018 on the campus of Wayne State University. The Conference emerges out of 20 years of relationship-building across issues, identities, organizing practices and creative mediums. Since the first conference (then the Midwest Zine Conference) in 1999, people have been compelled by the concept of do-it-yourself media. The zine conference was rebranded as the “Underground Publishing Conference” for a couple years and then became the Allied Media Conference in 2002. The shift to Allied Media attracted more people who were interested in using participatory media as a strategy for social justice organizing.

NADINE MARSHALL (pronouns They/Them) is a queer black poet from Detroit who has appeared at TED x U of M (2016), The Rustbelt Regional Poetry Slam in Columbus, OH (2016), and The National Poetry Slam Competition in Oakland, CA (2015). They are the content coordinator for the Allied Media Conference. She joined the team in 2017 and specializes in strategic planning, community engagement, and program development. Nadine graduated from Wayne State University with an MSW in 2017 and hopes to continuously engage her passion to uplift, bridge, and empower minority communities through creative platforms.

In 2015 the Conference surpassed 2,500 attendees and now includes. “AMC @ Night,” a five-day music festival during the AMC, showcasing local and national musical talent.

Born and raised in the South Bronx of New York City Roache decided to visit a friend who had just moved to Seattle. After seeing all the murals and the waterfront he decided to stay.

Roache attended Alfred University, a small, comprehensive university in Western New York where besides art he also took up equestrian studies. His love of horses took him to Canada and Michigan where he honed his "Cowboy" skills and picked up the love of harmonica playing but art remained his first love.

Roache has collaborated with artists in London and Australia in addition to teaching classes at some of Seattle's most elite visual art institutions including the Gage Academy of the Arts and Seattle Art Museum. His work has also been showcased in New York’s Robert C. Tanner Galery, The Factory in Seattle, Base Experimental Arts Space and has been published in the Stranger Magazine and City Arts.

He believes public art is in the ideal art form because there is no elitism; its purpose is to bring communities together and encourage creativity. Roache is personally extremely interested in the development of rotating walls (short lived murals) that would be ever-changing, allowing there to be a conversation within the community based on the politics, weather, science, and other social constructs that can be tackled by local artist and even visiting artists.

Roache recently brought his talents to the set of Dani Tirrelll's Black Bois, creating ephemeral murals to contribute to the dance piece

Dr. Remolia Simpson is a six-year Army veteran who served as a company supply sergeant from 1982 until 1988. Working in medical and military police units, she was stationed in such locales as South Korea and Germany. She is a passionate veterans’ advocate.

In the spring of 2016, she founded “My Brothers House” a nonprofit organization with a mission to provide safe, supportive housing for LGBTQ veterans and their families.

Nationwide in scope, My Brothers House seeks to vigorously address the problem of veteran homelessness through its services and facilities. These multibed residences will meet the shelter and short-term crisis counseling needs of returning, disabled and elderly veterans.

In 2018 she was recognized as one of DBQ Magazines Loud 100 LGBTQ People of Color. The list recognizes outstanding individuals whose accomplishments have encouraged and inspired.

Dr. Simpson firmly believes that those who kept us living without fear on the battlefields and oceans of the world should be free from fear when they return to civilian life.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) estimates that 39,471 veterans are homeless on any given night.  LGBT veterans suffer from a host of service connected mental health issues yet continue to endure discrimination and often struggle with the reintegration process after service.

Dr. Simpson has an extensive educational background with an undergraduate degree in Management Studies, a master’s degree in human services and a Doctorate in Biblical Counseling. She has directed a day program serving mental health and special needs clients in the Washington DC area and managed a homeless shelter in Long Island, NY.

Originally from Birmingham, AL, Lawayne Orlando Childrey has also lived in Mississippi and now calls Nashville, TN home. Every day, millions of people lose sight of their dreams when life's curveballs knock them off their feet and out of the game

Childrey endured some of the most horrific trauma imaginable, including childhood sexual abuse, depression, violent and tragic deaths, a crack cocaine addiction, and an HIV diagnosis but beat the odds returning to college at the age of 40 and becoming a respected news journalist. He won the national Edward R. Murrow award given by the Radio Television Digital News Association honoring outstanding achievements in electronic journalism. 

.Author Lawayne Childrey's book “Peeling Back The Layers: A Story of Trauma, Grace and Triumph” was selected as one of the top six autobiographies of 2015 by the Colorado Independent Publishers Association. It has also received critical acclaim from Hollywood to South Africa. A movie script is currently being developed. He is not only a survivor and acclaimed author but he is also a journalist, motivational speaker, and HIV/AIDS activist.

You'll want to add “Peeling Back The Layers: A Story of Trauma, Grace and Triumph” to your summer reading list!!!

Sisi Reid and Cozine Welch Jr. have worked together at the University of Michigan’s Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP). The Project encompasses both academic and volunteer-based programs at the University of Michigan. PCAP is a member of Humanize the Numbers, an ongoing project that utilizes collaborative art practices, public installations, and cross-disciplinary workshops to connect incarcerated men and women in Michigan prisons with hundreds of students, artists, researchers, and activists in Southeast Michigan.

Sisi is a theatre artist, spoken word performer, youth worker, and activist fueled by connection and community.  As a storyteller, she uses theatre to activate awareness of social injustices, build community, and encourage myself and others to bring out their internal power. She’s originally from Maryland and she studied theater at the University of Maryland College Park. Although she has been residing in Ann Arbor, MI she will soon be returning to Maryland 

Cozine was incarcerated at the age of 17. He attained his degree in Business Administration and since reentering the community he has continued his education currently pursuing an MFA degree. He is an accomplished poet and guitarist. A regular contributor to The Michigan Review of Prisoner Creative Writing, Cozine has been featured in six of the seven volumes and penned the introduction to Volume 4.

They will talk about the path that brought them together and will forever link them as friends and creatively.

Dance artist, performer, choreographer and dance educator Dani Tirrell's work focuses on the queer, gender non-conforming and black experiences.  His latest work "Black Bois" premiered recently in Seattle for a limited engagement. Black Bois is a movement and theater piece, created with original music by Benjamin Hunter and written word by J Mase III, is a ceremony to the ancestors, and a thanksgiving to the past, present, and future. It explores how black men/bois grieve, show rage, express joy, and cry.

Originally from Detroit, dance artist, performer, choreographer and dance educator, Tirrell danced with Jazz and Spirit Dance Theater of Detroit, Monroe Ballet Company, Detroit-Windsor Dance Company and Full Circle Dance Company. He was the Founder/Artistic Director of Natural Locz Dance Company based in Detroit MI. He is also a part-time lecturer in the dance department at the University of Washington.

He has performed at Seattle International Festival of Dance, Gay City Arts, Bumpershoot: Velocity Dance Center Showcase, Showing Out: Black Contemporary Choreographers, Northwest New Works Festival: On The Boards, Seattle Art Museum, Erased (Color Lines Dance Ensemble) and as part of Nights at the Neptune at the Neptune Theater. He has also performed in Portland, in San Francisco, in Los Angeles and traveled to Austria.

Poet, and scholar Alexis Pauline Gumbs Ph.D. is a queer black troublemaker, a black feminist love evangelist, and a prayer poet priestess. She has a Ph.D. in English, African and African-American Studies, and Women and Gender Studies from Duke University. She is a widely published public intellectual and essayist whose work has appeared in publications like Make/Shift, Left Turn, The Crisis, Ms. Magazine, The Feminist Wire, and Obsidian. We'll be celebrating poetry and talking about her books "Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity" and "M Archive After the End of the World."

She was the first scholar to research the Audre Lorde Papers at Spelman College, the June Jordan Papers at Harvard University, and the Lucille Clifton Papers at Emory University during her dissertation research.

At the age of nineteen, she founded Broken Beautiful Press, a grassroots publishing initiative inspired by Kitchen Table Press and Redbone Press. She is a widely published public intellectual and essayist.

Her work appears in publications like Make/Shift, Left Turn, The Crisis, Ms. Magazine, The Feminist Wire, Obsidian and she in many academic and activist books including The Revolution Starts at Home, The Black Imagination, Abolition Now!, Does Your Mama Know and Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions.

Dr. Gumbs is also a visual mixed-media artist. Her current series is Black Feminist Breathing Collages. She recently completed successful western hemisphere tours with her interactive oracle project “The Lorde Concordance,”