Ep. 130: Raquel Willis is a Black queer transgender activist, writer and media maven dedicated to inspiring and elevating marginalized individuals, particularly transgender women of color. She is a National Organizer for Transgender Law Center, the largest organization in the U.S. advocating on behalf of transgender and gender nonconforming people. She is a part of Echoing Ida, a national Black women’s writing collective, and Channel Black, a media organizing and training arm of the Movement for Black Lives. Raquel is also the host of Black Girl Dangerous Media’s BGD Podcast, discussing pop culture and current events from an intersectional lens and is in the 2017 Sojourner Truth Leadership Circle through Auburn Seminary.

Raquel is a thought leader on gender, race and intersectionality who worked on behalf of the Solutions Not Punishments Coalition to end police profiling of transgender women of color and mass incarceration. She also worked with others on a campaign to implement a pre-arrest diversion program in Atlanta.

In addition, Raquel successfully led the Atlanta Trans Liberation Tuesday mobilization effort in conjunction with the larger Black Lives Matter network. Her dedication to trans advocacy opened the door to her current work at TLC in Oakland, CA.

Her writing has been featured on Autostraddle, Buzzfeed, Medium’s Cuepoint, ForHarriet, HuffPost, PRIDE, Quartz, The Root and VICE. Her overarching goal is to use her voice and talents to inspire and uplift marginalized individuals, particularly trans women of color. She’s currently working on a collection of essays about her experiences and intersectionality.

In January 2017, she was a speaker at the National Women’s March in Washington, D.C.

In May 2017, Raquel was named to ESSENCE‘s Woke 100 Women, which honored “the women who are blazing trails for equal rights and inclusion for Black people in America.”

For more on Raquel, please visit her website at: http://www.raquelwillis.com/

For more on host, Alex Barnett, please check out his website: www.alexbarnettcomic.com or visit him on Facebook (www.facebook.com/alexbarnettcomic) or on Twitter at @barnettcomic

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Intro and Outro Music is Funkorama by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons – By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

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