Schedule
Friday, June 21, 2019 Bar Esperanto and The Space (adjacent meeting room) at Hotel Ylem, 8080 Main St., Houston, Texas 77025
6:30 a.m. to 09:30 a.m. Free continental breakfast for hotel guests
10:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. Arrival and networking
10:30 a.m. to 11:10 a.m. Opening session
Host welcome: Angelique Geehan and Lori Post
Land acknowledgment: Jay Walker
Intergenerational welcome: Perri McCary
11:15 a.m. to 01:30 p.m. All-share
Who are you and your communities?
Where do you live and where have you lived?
What do you need?
What are you working on?
Small group breakouts with share-backs
1:30 p.m. to 02:00 p.m. Break
2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. Food: Carmen Jules of NuWaters Co-op
Small group breakouts with share-backs
3:30 p.m. to 05:00 p.m. Water: Crysbel “Mariposa” Tejada
Small group breakouts with share-backs
5:00 p.m. to 06:30 p.m. Day 1 processing and decompression @ The Space
5:00 p.m. to midnight Bar Esperanto open to the public (outside food welcome)
Chef On The Run halal food truck on site
Day 2
Saturday, June 22, 2019 Bar Esperanto and The Space (adjacent meeting room) at Hotel Ylem, 8080 Main St., Houston, Texas 77025
6:30 a.m. to 09:30 a.m. Free continental breakfast for hotel guests
10:00 a.m. to noon Shelter: Ola Osaze of the Black LGBTQ+ Migrant Project
Small group breakouts with share-backs
Noon to 12:30 p.m. Catered lunch (to continue during next session)
12:30 p.m. to 02:00 p.m. Health care (speaker TBA)
Small group breakouts with share-backs
2:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. Break
2:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. – Healing justice: Yucca of Curamos Juntx & Somos Mápás
Small group breakouts with share-backs
4:00 p.m. to 04:45 p.m. All-share
What do you have to offer?
What’s next, both short and long term?
4:45 p.m. to 05:00 p.m. Closing and thanks: Angelique and Lori
5:00 p.m. to 06:30 p.m. Day 2 processing and decompression @ The Space
5:00 p.m. to midnight Bar Esperanto open to the public (outside food welcome)
Chef On The Run halal food truck on site
Post-retreat
Sunday, June 23, 2019 8 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. [breakfast social @ Bar Esperanto]
Our focus is on single track (all participants in one room) and creating space for connecting, conversations, and brainstorming together.
Speakers & Facilitators
Lori Post & Angelique Geehan, with support from Austin Babywearing, are excited to present Southern Region Leaders Retreat 2019!
Jay Walker
These days, many people come to babywearing after seeing celebrities donning this or that SSC, or by being gifted the ubiquitous stretchy wrap. Not Jay Walker.
Jay’s beloved mentor in life — the late Seni Sise — showed a teenage Jay how women in her native Gambia wore their own babies. The impact of Seni imparting that knowledge to Jay was subtly profound and has shaped much of Jay’s activism in the babywearing community.
As a thirty-something queer, black parent of two, Jay’s parenting journey is not that of the typical babywearing personality. Life as a multi-marginalized parent and domestic violence victim made babywearing a literal tool of survival when Jay initially wrapped their first born onto their body back in 2012. Now, as a survivor, Jay shares this life-saving and life-changing tool with others through World on My Shoulders — a national non-profit serving domestic violence victims and low-income caregivers.
P. K. McCary,
P.K. McCary, Houston artist, educator and social activist works tirelessly to cultivate relationships across racial, gender and cultural aisles. She is the author of 9 books, starting with the Black Bible Chronicles series. Her current books out this year are Sam and Henry, A Love Story, and The More, The Source of Better. Mama PK, as she is affectionately called, is the founder of Think Peace International, a communications media network for peace activists. She is world traveler and believes that when we “PRACTICE” to do better, we GET BETTER.
Ola Osifo Osaze
Ola Osifo Osaze is a trans masculine queer of Edo and Yoruba descent, who was born in Nigeria and now resides just outside of Houston, Texas. Ola is the Project Director for the Black LGBTQ+ Migrant Project, a national movement building initiative centering trans and queer Black migrants. Ola has been a community organizer for many years, working to build the power and leadership of LGBTQ people of color, Black and migrant communities with Transgender Law Center, the Audre Lorde Project, Uhuru Wazobia (one of the first LGBT groups for African immigrants in the US), Queers for Economic Justice and Sylvia Rivera Law Project. As a writer, Ola is a 2015 Voices of Our Nation Arts workshop (VONA) fellow, and has writings published in Apogee, Qzine, Saraba Magazine, Black Looks, and the anthology Queer Africa II.
yucca
yucca is a queer, non-binary person who grew up on the borderlands of so called south texas (carrizo comecrudo territory). they are a full spectrum doula/companerx, community health worker/promotorx, facilitator, and have worked as a patient navigator for trans and gender non-conforming populations at a local community clinic. currently, they are dreaming with Curamos Juntxs, a healing justice collective in htx and Somos Mapas, a forthcoming birth justice collective centering queer and trans populations. they are drawn to this work out of deep, deep desire for us to feel free in our bodies and to be free in our communities. yucca enjoys putting their face in wildflowers, belting out in weirdo opera, and writing poetry.
Crysbel “Mariposa” Tejada
Crysbel “Mariposa” Tejada is an Afro-Dominican/Caribbean queer born and raised on occupied territories of the Lenape nation, living and loving in Texas since 2012. She is a poet, land/water defender, and gardener who believes in the importance of cultivating relationships to food and medicine as a means to reconnect to our ancestors.