My name is Adiean Dae Neon I am an artist originally from Texas who was disowned by my family when I came out as trans five years ago and I was homeless for four years and have just recently celebrated one year in a real home and i am severely burnt out and really struggling and I wanted to submit but i’m having a really hard time i fully just do not have anything more I can share right now I am very sorry.

My submission is an image of my doll babiean🌱 who is my best friend and primary emotional support. babiean🌱 is a physical representation of my inner child who escaped the raging war inside my mind and is a refugee of my pain and suffering they exist in a doll i made who i take with me everywhere to comfort and guide me through each day I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for babiean🌱 .

I was homeless for four years and it exasperated my mental health problems and I am fighting so hard every day to stay alive and i am feeling severely burnt out i am really struggling but working on making progress every day and healing and i just cannot keep pushing myself beyond my capacity i recently lost a new job i was very hopeful for and i am at a loss i don’t feel i have. a clear path forward i am utterly terrified of the unfolding of political events with the trump administration i am scared to lose access to health care and support i fought so hard for years to access while homeless. i currently live in an illegal housing and vulnerable to eviction i am just doing the best i can to stay present in the daily moments.

thank you
    

Alan Tello is a 17 year old photographer and painter in San Francisco, California. He is a 3rd generation organizer who works on advocating for deeply afforable housing and environmental rights in the city. He is also a young queer and trans person who hopes to one day be a astrophysics and continue to both do photography and advocate for those who may not be able to. At 7 years old he gave his first public comment at the planning commission in SF against a large market rate building that would of displaced families from there homes and perpetuateded gentrification in the city. After being evicted from his childhood home at 10 he continues to advocate for deeply affordable housing so that he may be able to remain in the city.

I had a difficult time deciding what piece to submit. I ultimately chose this piece because it reminds me of home and how important it is. San francisco is such a wildly different city depending on where you are. It could be cold and foggy in the excelsior but hot and sunny in the mission. This photo was taken in 2014 in the bayview in my childhood home. I was 6 years old and at the time wanted to be a fashion designer. I loved combining different colors and patterns into my designs. Looking back now I realize how much personal growth has happened in the last 10 year. Ive become so many things that my 6 year old self would be so proud and inspired by. I do the work for all the other kids just like me who needed a space to explore and be themselves.

When i was 10 I was evicted from my childhood home. Being removed from the only home I ever knew in such a violent way was extremely traumatizing. I still remember the sheriff’s lined up on the stairs of my home and grabbing my sister and I by the arm and handing us down the chain outside. After experiencing that I was determined to do anything in my power to make sure that no one else would ever have to experience what I did. As a 3rd generation organizer I’ve been working on multiple different campaigns since I was little but these past couple of years I’ve been working on advocating for deeply affordable housing for our communities in SF along with doing anti eviction work during the pandemic.
    

Hey <3 My name is Amalia, and I am an organizer based and serving the Bay Area, living in the Mission District of San Francisco. I grew up second generation in a Mexican and Vietnamese family, raised with a love of plants and my elders. I have been working in housing and spatial justice for the past 5 years professionally. Outside of my economic work, I am a deep believer in showing up to housing justice work with the lens of mutual aid, and have been organizing to provide rental support, food support, and community support for my community through the West Side Tenant Association’s mutual aid project. My art comes through the mediums of flowers and poetry, and I hope to continue to grow. Thank you <3

This is a letter I wrote to the Saurus Cranes of Vietnam. They live near the Mekong River, close to where my father grew up, before he migrated to San Francisco. After the wars in Southeast Asia, the saurus cranes left the Mekong. However, generations later, they have begun to return. I connected deeply with the story of the cranes, because sometimes it can be really hard to stay in the Bay, in San Francisco specifically. This place means everything to me, but sometimes I feel so defeated by effects that heartless policy has on my community and family. This letter was meant to both empathize with their return and their choice to remain.

In my professional career I have worked at Housing Justice organizations such as Causa Justa, the Eviction Defense Collaborative, and Asian Law Caucus, supporting tenants to defend themselves against evictions, harassment, and repairs issues. Outside of my professional work, I organize and find political home in the West Side Tenants Association, an autonomous tenants association that serves community through the lens of mutual aid, eviction response, and organizing support.

While I serve community in these ways, I am truly in the fight because I love my city. My parents immigrated here in the 80’s, from Mexico and Vietnam respectively, and I have seen our family get pushed out, little by little. I saw my ba noi receive a 300% rent increase days after my grandfather died, saw my abuela evicted out of her Mission apartment after a fire - the story of displacement is one I deeply know.
    

I am a mixed media artist whose paintings, drawings, and murals speak to the experiences unique to gender-diverse people and to the need for marginalized communities to be understood, valued, and respected so we, too, can live long, happy, and fulfilling lives. I believe art has the power to raise awareness about gender diversity and trans culture, to humanize trans folks in the eyes of cisgender observers, and to encourage love, learning, and unity. I want my art to be a space where people less knowledgeable about the trans community can self-educate, and where my fellow trans folks can feel seen and beautiful.

The dentists worry about how
unsupportively my gums embrace my
teeth and I don’t bother to tell them
about my past or the house
my parents owned which was never
a home, not like the car I spent my teens
living out of, how cold it got on January nights
until we had to fuck
to heat the air, and would wake to find dawn
peering suspiciously at us through
the rear windshield, and we’d move the car
from the side of one random dirt road to another,
never sleeping in, always staying ahead
of cops and homeowners
because poverty is always suspicious.
You can’t tell normal people that. They never
look at you the same. So my dentist worries
for ten years now about my teeth
and I pretend to have no idea why they’re almost
as fucked up as I am.

“Home”
Spray paint and graffiti
markers on torn cardboard
A man holds the absence
of his partner, whose
hands cling to him, as well.

“unity”
digital drawing

I chair Trans-E-Motion (a trans non-profit based in Fresno) where (among other duties) I apply for grants to fund our programs. Out of the many I’ve applied for, the one grant I’ve so far received has allowed us to expand our Emergency Rent Relief grants program to serve the entire Central Valley, helping to keep trans and Two-Spirit folks in their homes while they catch up on rent. This grant also allowed us to implement a new grant program, New Rental Unit Deposit Assistance Grants, designed to improve access to, and mobility within, the Central Valley for trans and Two-Spirit people. I also conduct an annual survey and compile large public reports to understand our impact on trans and Two-Spirit housing justice within the Central Valley. I also create trans art on stolen land, and donate 10% of my annual profits to the NDN Collective’s Landback Initiative.
    

Arthur Jackson V is a gay Bay Area artist of many disciplines- painter, DJ, Poet, and actor. His goal is to find a way to marry all of these parts of himself together. At the heart of it he’s a storyteller, waiting for you near a fire, with a bottle of wine, a pack of stogues, and a story to spin.

Hold your breath.
Count to three.
Come with me.

This painting is a reference to a French gay erotic film called Equation to an Unknown circa 1980. It speaks to cruising culture which I would argue is one of the beautiful ways we of the rainbow tribe prove that we can find comfort everywhere we go. Even in the face of adversity. The two painted figures being us, me, you. The pink shadow being the trailblazers that passed this culture down to us. In the dark the white spaces glow blue and the pink shadow will glow pink. Because even in the dark we still shine brightly.

This painting is about how we find comfort and connection no matter where we are.   And a reminder of how even in the darkest places we glow like honey.
    

I’m Arthur Robinson, your go-to event photographer for electrifying concerts, captivating musician portraits, and dynamic live music events. I’ve been turning moments into masterpieces for over a decade now, and usually, I’m behind the camera, letting my pictures do the talking. However, with this opportunity here today, I wanted to challenge myself to showcase my passions and personality, and highlight some of the great members of my community.

I don’t just snap photos; I compose visuals that perfectly match the soundtrack of our lives, such as this image of my friend Jackie and their band Tower Rats.

So many things in this world and in this life are trans and queer. Including music. Here is the proof...

I am fighting for housing, land use, and spatial justice with my art and by taking up space. Please reach out to me so I can expand on this.
    

I’m an artist based in Colorado after being priced out of The Bay Area where I lived my entire life. I’m an educator and a mystic who is doing their best to stay hopeful and grounded as the world falls apart as I am actively trying to rebuild it.

I’m submitting this poem because it was the last poem I wrote on a BART ride in San Francisco and I was inspired by an etching into the window, which all felt resonant with the idea of belonging and home and place.

Well, I was in the Bay before gentrification and pricing pushed me out and I’m in a whole other state. Gentrification and housing affected my entire childhood and upbringing because we moved every year; if the rent was $150 cheaper across the street, we moved across the street, and I spent over a decade with all my belongings in boxes because it wasn’t worth the effort and heartbreak to unpack. Now, I work a lot with youth who are McKinney- Vento and dealing with homelessness and try to help them emotionally and mentally and am constantly sharing resources with them.
    

BEE GREALY - i’m a local queer trans community organizer and poet. i’ve been involved with activism for about a year and a half and been writing poetry since 2020. some of the many causes i am passionate about and been involved with include Palestinian liberation, the rights of our unhoused neighbors and community members, abolishing ICE, and, of course, queer and trans liberation.

this is the first of two volumes, with more to come, of my poetry paired with artwork inspired by it by isaac saenz (@isaaceyez). we started these one page poetry zines as friends, and now as we continue the project, we do it as very happy, very queer couple :)

i’ve found myself to be housing insecure on 2-3 occasions, facing the very real possibility of homelessness myself. i’ve had friends who have been unhoused in the past as well as friends currently couch surfing with no place to go, as well as my involvement in with advocacy for our local unhoused population.

ISAAC SAENZ - I am a queer trans latino from Fresno, California! I’m an artist who is heavily inspired by old forms of art such as mevial crests, 80s album covers and traditional american tattoos. I try to use my art for my community, so far I’ve done this through helping my friends make zines, making stickers for fundraisers and making a flyer for one of the tower community gardens!

This zine features artwork done by me(Isaac Saenz) and poetry done by Bee Grealy(they/them)! This is the first zine we made before we started dating! It’s a collection of their favorite works from across the years.

I am currently unhoused, couch surfing at Bee and best friend’s house so its pretty relevant to me I’d say. I’m also latino so while I’m very white washed that definitely colors my view on land use and housing. Before ai lost my housing I opened up my home to 2 housing insecure people because I very strongly believe that housing is a basic human right
    

Dottie Lux, is a graduate of Pratt Institute (Class of 2004) with a 20-year career spanning performance poetry, visual art, and interactive art. A Jewish artist raised in a Zionist environment, but nearly 30 years after her first visit, she returned to Palestine with an anti-Zionist perspective, working as a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). Dottie spent four transformative months in the West Bank, serving as a protective presence with Palestinian families and standing in solidarity with their struggle. This experience profoundly influenced her work, merging her artistic practice with activism to challenge dominant narratives, foster dialogue, and encourage global liberation.

I go to Palestine, every few months to work with the international solidarity movement as protective presence, and to stand with those facing ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.

In her words: “Palestine is the one issue: it is healthcare, education, climate crisis, human rights, women’s rights, gay rights, the prison industrial complex, and so on.” Through her art, Dottie invites audiences to engage deeply with these intersections and explore the urgent need for justice and solidarity.
    

claiming stolen land. San Francisco is witnessing the birth of the artist in me. It’s been a tough and unpredictable journey, shaped by circumstances I never imagined—brought to the U.S. and scammed by a sponsor company, love-teased by an undone lover, and caught in the cultural gaps of everyday life.

Driven by curiosity, pragmatism, and the restrictions of my work permit, I am now on an uncertain path into the art world. Photography and writing, once mere hobbies, have become tools for survival—ways to explore, understand, and share my story as I adapt and evolve. Recently, drawing has become my newest treasure, a discovery within this adventure—a field I aim to amplify as I raise my voice through art.

I have always relied on the kindness of strangers. Is the title of this piece and the phrase that I repeat constantly in my mind—especially when I have nowhere else to go. In those moments of doubt and uncertainty, when you’re out on the streets, you have to adapt and do what the streets demand to survive, to find a way to spend the night indoors.

Usually receiving more from those who less have.

Currently In the gap between the incapability to work (due my work permit frozen by the human trafficking issue) and the need to pay a rent by myself.
    

Elliot Bailey (he/him) is a community organizer based in Fresno, California. Possessing a degree in construction management, he demonstrates a keen interest in construction, entrepreneurship, and community empowerment through development initiatives. In his capacity as Community Outreach Coordinator, he has directed policy advocacy efforts and orchestrated the Queer Housing Summit, a national convening. His ongoing commitment to housing advocacy is driven by a mission to unify individuals from diverse backgrounds, with a particular focus on marginalized and underrepresented communities.

“The Art of Fatherhood”
I am submitting a small collection of artwork created by my children this year. I’ve made it a tradition to keep their art and dedicate a wall near my bed to display their creations as time goes on.

Having their artwork on the wall serves as a personal reminder to persevere against all odds. They are the greatest part of who I am, and I always strive to be the best example for them in this life.

As a Black, transgender father, I face significant challenges daily. My dedication to advocating for housing, land use, and spatial justice is deeply rooted in ensuring that the next seven generations can live free from the chaos we currently experience. The decisions we make today will profoundly impact future generations, and I am committed to securing their access to housing, land, and freedom.
    

Koko G is a multi-disciplinary artist. She focuses on spoken-word poetry, RnB/Hip-Hop music, comedy and acting. She’s born and raised from the Bay and loves all kinds of art.

My submission is a poem I wrote years ago for a Latino Studies Create Writing class at SF State. I really enjoyed that class among others. I might look into writing and publishing a poetic memoir.

For generations, my family has lived in San Francisco, Bayview Hunters Point. There was construction and gentrification of our old homes in Hunters Point. At times, we didn’t have a stable place. We had to survive and work hard to find and maintain a new home.

I know folks who are still trying to survive just to stay in the city of San Francisco and some who come from other cities and countries all the way to SF or the Bay in hopes and search for a better life.
    

faustina (they/she) is an aspiring artivist, currently exploring the mediums of printmaking, digital illustration, and writing as a way to shift culture towards liberation for all and healing generational traumas. they were born and raised on ohlone land, oakland, to cantonese vietnamese hakka parents and will forever serve the oakland, sf, and working class qtbipoc communities that raised them.

i have two submissions -- one writing and another a linocut print. both speak to my love for the town and the grief i am feeling watching gentrification taking over spaces i grew up with and moving our neighbors who make up the backbone of oakland. i hope this art is relevant and heartfelt to those fighting gentrification and also advocating to keep housing affordable and accessible.

hoa sen is vietnamese for lotus, the national flower of việt nam. to me, it symbolizes the vietnamese refugee and immigrant community in oakland. there is a common saying that i often think about, which says “there can be no lotus without the mud”.

i really love this interpretation of the roles that the lotus and mud plays, because it embraces the lotus as a whole. it recognizes where the roots of the lotus comes from. i love that it challenges the idea of purity – it is because of the mud the lotus comes from that makes it beautiful. hence, i named this piece the muddy lotus, to characterize the lotus as muddy and to not separate the two. we should not distance ourselves from what we came from and instead choose to embrace it as a part of us. when we have fully welcomed ourselves, that is when we are most beautiful.

the oak tree has been a lasting symbol of oakland and i wanted to honor the oak trees of oakland as our ancestors that were here before us. they were cut down for the development of the city and there are not many of them left in their original places. i want to remember that they were a main part of the landscape and also pay tribute to the ohlone people who still steward, protect, and are rematriating the land. especially in this era of gentrification and neoliberalism in oakland and the bay area, it’s essential to recognize our roots.

understanding the nuances of my family being affected by american imperialism in the vietnam war, yet still remembering that i am a settler on native land and holding responsibility for that, is important to me. i hope that marginalized folks can continue to work together despite being part of different communities, because we can recognize that our struggles are all interconnected. this linocut print was created through queer ancestors project.
    

I am a Mexican artist, residing in San Francisco for the last 10 years. In 2023 I discovered Xochipilli, and I realized that he had been calling my name since I was a baby. I know he is calling on most or all people in the world, but we fail to listen because of our lack of knowledge and having minimal context necessary to recognize him and attend his calling. He just wants to say that we can set fire to the rain. It is possible to win if we arm ourselves with knowledge and we are on the side of truth and beauty. To win, we may keep alive the flame that allows light, warmth, life. Consider me an apostol for Xochipilli, and a relentless enthusiast of love, nature, art, music, truth, and beauty. For life a servant of Xochipilli, prince of flowers since immemorial times and for ever.

Person setting fire to the rain. Here the female presenting individual, presumably a modern renascence romanticized and topicalized version of Xochiquetzal (female representation of love, sex, weaving) is setting fire to the cum at the time that her hands are close together tightly, creating the fire that brings life. Breasts are exposed, as an act of rebellion. The flowers are white to represent freshness and purity. In the background is Xochipilli, with figures having sex in the background. The painting is black light reactive. As if the fire is not visible at first glance. Painted in a time where they may have be a need for the true meaning to be encrypted, without the black light, she appears to be catching the cum or turning away, pretending to be uninterested. The Jewlery and richness of the dark colors contrasting with the pale face and white flowers denote value and sacredness.

I have created a virtual temple/art gallery where Xochipilli and Xochiquetzal may be visited. https://www.spatial.io/s/Xochipili-and-Xochiquetzal-Home-673b072f0934a7f92feeb857. Please feel free to visit. Kindly please like and promote the space so the flame reaches the world. We can save the world if the share the knowledge.
    

I’m about 50-year-old transgender woman who participating woman’s birthday tonight.

I’m already in San Francisco for all my life.

I have a bachelor’s degree for Justice for an interview on Jay Ip.
    

My name is Hillary or Hill (they/she) and I am a first-gen Chinese-American queer/ nonbinary/lesbian disabled artist who comes from an immigrant family impacted by a history of destabilization and conflict in their home country. Although I have been practicing art my entire life, I have only recently felt like I could call myself an ‘artist’, and am reconnecting more deeply with my art practice, exploring identity and mental health. My favorite mediums are riso prints, digital prints, and zines.

I created this print after emerging from three hospitalizations and needing a cathartic release of creative energy. The print features the quote ‘Mother Nature is a Lesbian’ from a protest sign at the 1974 New York Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day march. I’m especially proud of this print because of where I was in my life when I created, and how it expresses my lesbian identity, my connection to the Earth, and my belief in the intersection of environmental justice and queer justice. The print was illustrated with Procreate, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, and printed and scanned.

I am a renter and member of the Oakland Tenants Union.
    

I am Jason Michael Wyman aka Queerly Complex (E / he / they).

I was born upon the Land of 10,000 Lakes on what I am coming to know as Turtle Island, who has settled on Yelamu, which is also called San Francisco. My name means healer, or so I’ve been told since a young child. What I am coming to understand as the significance of my name is that healer does not mean healed or (even) healing. Rather, it is a positionality within the cosmos that allows one’s self to change and be changed by all that unfolds. It is to be curious & listen, and then create.

I, too, am white & male (presenting) & queer & an artist. I am so many things named & unnamed. But who I be is a gatherer of relations and a dreamer of possibilities amidst the chaos of creation & death & rebirth.

Political Clowns is a series started in 2017. I began drawing over old protest photos and transforming the main subject into a clown. I used the blank canvas of the protest sign to write signs that signified issues and politics important to me. It was a way to draw attention to the clown show that is the political process in the United States.

Over time, I started placing the clowns on backgrounds that better reflected the messages in their signs. The places are based on real political locations across the United States. I always distort them in some way to amplify their true purpose rather than their facade. This clown is responding to “Housing for All,” a talking point pushed by YIMBYs as a way to not advocate for / build Affordable Housing, believing the market will lower housing prices. They stand in front of San Francisco City Hall’s Landlord Entrance.

I believe in and work towards a future where housing is a human right, and all have a dignified, comfortable, and free place to live, love, create, and die. Currently, I am a renter, who relies on the City of San Francisco to provide a quality, low-cost healthcare, and as a recipient of Healthy San Francisco, I know that the state CAN provide for its residents and neighbors, if it has political will and courage. I sit on the board of People Power Media, and I am an organizer with the 3rd Annual Queer Housing Summit. I also facilitate / weave connections across generations, identities, cultures, expressions, dis/abilities, communities, and labor.
    

I am Jax Holmes, a trans artist in the community. I do both digital and traditional painting as well as mixed media sculptures. Through my art I hope to share my experiences with others.

My submitted piece is titled “Little bird in a cage”. It is a multimedia installation. I made this piece in high-school when I was young and dealing with intense dysphoria. It conveys a feeling of being helpless and trapped. The branch has grown out of the flesh and the little bird hangs off the branch. inside the metal chest of the bird is a heart.

As a renter, I along with my roomates personally expirience the struggle of affording housing in today’s market. For me and many others it is impossible to afford a home without multiple roomates even if you are working a job that pays more than minimum wage.
    

JoJo (they/he) is your friendly, neighborhood Taurus who you can catch hopping Muni buses and sticker bombing around The City. They were born in San Francisco and raised by the colorful community of the Excelsior District. JoJo’s work is inspired by Ancestors, Bay Area culture, Queer and Trans Elders, and the spirit of Bayanihan.

“Honoring and remembering the International Hotel (I-Hotel.)”

The I-Hotel was a low-income, single room occupancy residential hotel located in San Francisco’s Manilatown. It was home to many Filipino & Chinese seniors, immigrant workers, and their families. Manilatown was a Filipino neighborhood that spanned 10 blocks of Kearny Street, right next to Chinatown. For generations, the Filipino community built a home and a strong network of businesses, community centers, and housing.

San Francisco’s urban renewal projects of the 1960s/1970s aimed to gentrify and displace many communities and neighborhoods — Manilatown was one of them. Around 1968, the real estate corporation that owned the I-Hotel began giving out eviction notices to all of the building’s residents. This met a lot of pushback from the community. Tenants, housing advocates, students, and community members protested and fought both in the streets and in court. On August 4, 1977, SFPD forcibly removed the last of the remaining tenants from their homes, despite the 3,000 protesters blocking and barricading the hotel.

With this linocut print, I want to highlight the history and importance of the housing justice work in San Francisco. Housing rights are currently being under attack and the city is continuing to erase communities in favor of big corporations. The big oak tree sitting on top symbolizes resilience, endurance, and being rooted in community. Butterflies embody migration, hope, and rebirth. The protest banner 唔搬 says “not moving” in Cantonese. “Hindi kami aalis” is “We are not leaving” in Tagalog.

As someone who comes from parents who immigrated here in San Francisco from the Philippines and grew up in a Filipino enclave in the city, it’s sad to think that there were other Filipino neighborhoods that don’t exist anymore. However, I admire my I-Hotel ancestors who paved the way for housing advocacy and fought for their right to stay. I continue to hope for safety, accessibility, and housing for all in San Francisco and beyond.
    

I’m Kazani Kalani Finao. My pronouns are he, him, his and Uso! I was born in FRISCO YELAMU TERRITORY and raised. I still live in Frisco and surviving gentrification, displacement, and replacement. I am Samoan and Fa’atane (trans man). A student at CCSF, creative writer, storyteller, and a community organizer at the heart of my existence. I love the opportunity to share my art visuals to contribute to the power of authenticity. I’m an artist and what helps me create is being discipline in my own reflection as I create and not take others’ inventory but to support meaningfully with respect. This would be my first time to share out publicly. I appreciate this space being carved out for queer and trans people truly and it’s free. That does not happen often. I lead with love. I value the communities I am apart of. I am a protector of our people’s narrative!

My art is a visual piece of the generations in my family navigating housing. My family settled in Hunter’s View neighborhood in the Bayview Hunter’s Point district of San Francisco in the mid 1980’s. My grandparents home was 236 West Point Rd. Where all us grand kids would meet up and gather. My mom and her younger siblings lived with my grandparents, while her older siblings lived in the neighborhood too. In 1999 my grandma transitioned out of this world. In the following summer of 2000 my life shifted big time. My grandparents’ home we lived in was not home any more. We got terminated and my grandpa remarried and moved to Alaska Anchorage. In that summer my mother went to Jail and was sentenced to Prison for 5 years. I was a kid 11 years old couch surfing from relatives’ homes in the neighborhood.

In this process it was very complex and so emotional for myself. I did not hold back any of my creative flows but I did embrace the hard moments that opened up parts of me to heal and attend to those tender parts of me. I was born into this harmful system and I am 3rd generation of incarceration, 3rd generation surviving the violent policy of low income housing. I experienced being unhoused and not having permanent housing until last year. My first time ever having a place to call my own home. I am a strong advocate in the policy world especially in housing, land back, gender affirming care, and against policies that try to erase us. How I contribute to the fight and movement is in organizing in my hood my community. I am from Bayview Hunters Point in Frisco Yelamu territory. And filling in the gaps with youth and our elders. Doing political education, wellness, and creative and cultural work in exchanges. For me I cannot forget where I came from and why my grandparents migrated to Turtle Island. The core of what I do is in solidarity.
    

I tell character-driven stories from the margins as a writer and filmmaker. My own experience has given me insight into many different worlds: I am a queer transmasculine survivor of sexual assault. In January 2016, my fiancé died suddenly of a heart attack; following this, I went to inpatient rehab for drug and alcohol recovery, and from there lived in a halfway house for six months. I now have nine years sober and stay in continual community with other addicts and alcoholics. My writing has appeared in Electric Literature, The Rumpus, The Ana, Brevity, and HowlRound. My films and plays have been presented by 35 film festivals and 21 theaters in 25 states and four countries, and shown in soup kitchens, meditation gardens, addiction treatment centers, and San Quentin State Prison. I live in Los Angeles with my partner and our two cats.

I was the 2023-2024 Resident Artist with coLAB Arts and Mission First Housing Group, where I collaborated directly with residents of two permanent supportive housing developments on artistic projects as they recovered from chronic houselessness. How to Be Successful in Housing, my attached submission, was my final project for this residency. It was made in direct collaboration with residents and as a response to what they said they most needed. How to Be Successful in Housing is an illustrated guide that helps people break down emotional barriers to utilizing resources when they are coming into housing after a period of chronic homelessness. It covers topics including physical health, diet and exercise, mental health, important documents, navigating a lease, managing chores, and working with a case manager.

My lived experiences have taught me the life-saving power of connection, which now forms the heart of all my work. My work centers around grief, class, queerness, restorative justice, and healing. I explore these topics through community-embedded processes of my own making: I have brought together all-trans readings of my plays and screenplays, and devised workshop processes for my play rain falls special on me that engaged directly with over 150 people experiencing houselessness in Austin, Texas, toured resource centers, and employed community dramaturgs who lived outside. As described above, I was the 2023- 2024 Resident Artist with Mission First Housing Group and coLAB Arts; following this, I was the Artist-in-Residence with the Los Angeles County Homeless Initiative, for whom I prepared the healing arts toolkit Healing Survival: Arts Strategies for Softening and Solving Collective Struggles.
    

My name is Lee Harvey Roswell and I am an SF artist of 26 years, having shown all over the city in that time. A lot of galleries that are now gone sadly, but alongside the ones that managed to stick around I’m also seeing a new crop of galleries breaking through the post- pandemic chill to create a scene again and I’m glad to be a part of it and eager to be more so. The times are precarious to say the least, and I believe artists should rise to the occasion, an impassioned counter to authoritarianism.

My oil painting, Gravity was painted in August of 2024. Gravity is based on Michelangelo’s La Pieta. In the painting, against a brooding background of a darkened sky and rubble and ruin, the Holy Mother is weighed down by the mass of Jesuses (or whatever happens to be the plural of “Jesus”). I suppose my thinking was the level of suffering in the world was becoming so seemingly unbearable it might well break the poor Holy Mother’s lap. (Incidentally, I am an agnostic. I just enjoy using Christian iconography from time to time where it serves my creative endeavors.)

As I’ve said I’ve been living/working in SF the past 26 years. A good, or perhaps bad chunk of that time has been marked with struggle finding housing. I’ve lived all over the city. I’ve lived in all kinds of less than ideal scenarios, somehow managing to work under the conditions those spaces presented. I am currently in a good place. But still, I run around the city these days and what I see is people on the streets and boarded-up buildings. We need more progressive solutions. All I really have in that struggle is my art and my voice, and I use them.buildings. We need more progressive solutions. All I really have in that struggle is my art and my voice, and I use them.
    

Leslie St Dre (former last name: Dreyer) is an artist, organizer, educator, gardner and parent of two incredible little ones. Originally from Southeast Texas, they spent over a decade organizing creative actions, interventions and housing justice campaigns with communities in the Bay Area before being pushed out and landing in Durham, NC. They were politicized in the early 2000s by Palestinian liberation struggles and their experience programming community events combining political artists, mutual aid organizers, and investigative journalists as part of Austin’s CinemaTexas, which deeply influenced their creative organizing practice. POOR Magazine (SF/Oakland, CA), Common Ground Relief (New Orleans, LA), The Freedom Theatre (Jenin Refugee Camp, West Bank), Grupo de Arte Callajero (Buenos Aires, Argentina), and Stolen Belonging collaborators (San Francisco, CA) have been some of the biggest inspirations in their life. They’ll honor these roots by continuing the collective fight to decommodify land, housing and our lives.

Stolen Belonging (2018-2023) was an arts organizing, media, and investigative journalism project initiated by Leslie St Dre in collaboration with Coalition on Homelessness (COH) and unhoused San Franciscans, which was used as key evidence and narrative strategy for COH’s historic lawsuit against the City of SF for its inhumane treatment and theft enacted during their homeless “sweeps. The team documented first-hand testimonies of impacted residents, and they used these interviews, art, public records research, whistleblower interviews, and direct action to unveil how city workers trash, steal and even sell homeless residents’ possessions, while amplifying the call to STOP THE SWEEPS. The images (by St Dre) show Memphis Lamb gesturing as if he’s looking at his most cherished belonging the city had stolen from him and documentation of the team’s creative direct action in front of SF’s Department of Public Works, one of the main city departments responsible for the “sweeps”.

Leslie St Dre has been working to advance land and housing justice for the past thirteen years through a practice merging art, organizing, political education, policy advocacy, coalition building, and narrative strategy. The campaigns they’ve organized in collaboration with housed and unhoused tenants in San Francisco have helped to secure tenant protections, to bring Big Tech’s impact on displacement to international attention, to lay the narrative groundwork for a civil rights lawsuit aimed at protecting homelessness residents’ rights, and to create long- haul proactive strategies for the biggest housing justice coalition in the city. After two informal evictions, they were displaced to Durham, NC in late 2020 where they helped their neighbors stop their evictions, cancel rent and win land trust ownership of their homes. They’re currently working to start a land, housing, and environmental justice org/co-op rooted in principles of solidarity economies, interdependence, and Land Back to right relations.
    

Legacy tenant. Blessed by long time rent control. Blessed by my SF community.

“dry the tears of those who sorrow” - My grandmother Anna Marie was born in Kansas in 1902 to a German immigrant farming clan. She and I were close and I saw her as a mentor in many ways. She remembered some German childhood prayers, but maybe badly. At one point she wrote them down for me in both German and English. I scanned the pages some time ago. All the prayers are beautiful.

As a long term San Francisco of average means I have been blessed by long term rent control and always advocate for it as a stabilizing force in a boom/bust cow town.
    

The work of my ancestors and those who walked before us roots me in my radicalism as a queer woman of color in my own relationship to place. As the only daughter of a single mother, my earliest understandings of land came from displacement across the suburbs of east Los Angeles—spaces intentionally segregated but formed as a direct result of immigrant dreams and labor. Experiencing homelessness and living in poverty as a child rooted in me a deep awareness that everything comes back to land: who it holds, who it leaves out, and how it remembers. As we work to heal the land, the land heals us. Inspired by emergent strategy and Indigenous ecological principles, I approach change as a relational, iterative process rooted in care. Through conscious design and community-driven planning, I strive to create spaces that honor story, affirm identity, and build the conditions for belonging through placemaking.

This submission is a visual meditation on space, liberation, and hope that is rooted in Sino-Eastern futurism and traditional ecological knowledge, while drawing inspiration from modern Solarpunk themes. It imagines futures where cultural memory and ancestral wisdom are not only preserved but actively guide our collective path forward. Here, technology and ecology coexist in synchronicity and become tools for healing and reconnection. The architecture reflects biomimicry, with spaces built with intention into infrastructure that services and transforms the collective. Eastern futurism grounds the vision of cyclical time, intergenerational stewardship, and harmony with natural systems that rejects colonial notions of progress. This work invites viewers to dream beyond extraction and toward regeneration, to see space not as conquest but as communion. Through vibrant color, layered geometry, and immersive storytelling, the mosaic becomes a portal: an offering of what liberation could look and feel like when shaped by memory, resilience, and joy.

My work in spatial justice is deeply rooted in movements on and with the land, from supporting wildfire resilience and forestry to engaging in farmworker justice efforts led by frontline communities. I’ve worked alongside tribal land stewards reclaiming ancestral practices and collaborated on equity-driven planning policies to address the intersecting crises of climate change and displacement. Interdisciplinary thinking and collaboration across silos remain central to how I approach my work, as I’ve learned that existing in right relationship with others is a practice of collectivizing care.As a consultant, facilitator, and engagement practitioner, I’ve supported countless land use and housing initiatives that center community resilience and accessibility in infrastructure planning throughout the Bay Area and across rural California. My work aims to disrupt extractive models and uplift spatial justice strategies that build regenerative, livable futures. Advocacy by and for communities of color must become the new vanguard to reimagine our landscapes.
    

My name is Nancy Cato, and I identify as gay. As I write this, I’m looking for clarity on who I am In order to tell you about myself. I would definitely say I am Black first then gay, since that is how I have been seen and that’s perfect. This is what influences my artwork- What it means to be Black gay, mom, illustrator, etc. My artwork reflects a myriad of experiences in my skin both joyous and painful. I can honestly say my search for housing within San Francisco was challenging because i know how racist San Francisco can be, but what belongs to us is ours. Everyone has a right housing.

The piece I am submitting Is titled, “Could you be more ladylike?” As a child, this was a recurring request due to my ‘tomboyish’ behavior, but also there was this over, arching fear that my demeanor would prevent me from obtaining a boyfriend. Needless to say I had a plethora of boy friends. This request always made me upset because I could be no other way. I couldn’t even pretend to be a lady if my life depended on it, but looking back on this request, I got a little chuckle.

I’ve been a long time renter in San Francisco and housing is a right for everyone.
    

I’m a trans*disciplinary artist of Sámi ancestry based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Rooted in sonic, performative, and participatory modes of expression, my work explores the porous boundaries between the natural and the anthropogenic, challenging conventional notions of “human nature” amid the ongoing ecological and cultural crises of our time. My practice spans music, writing, painting, performance, and immersive installation, often unfolding as collaborative, time-based experiences that prioritize community engagement, Indigenous solidarity, and speculative futures. Guided by fascination, intuition, and spiritual inquiry, I approach art-making as a process of ritual transformation, more akin to the work of a psychopomp or ceremonial guide than a commercial producer. My projects often center on living archives, oral histories, and the reimagining of place, drawing connections across geographies and lifeways in service of creative resilience and relational repair.

This piece is titled “Dead Colonies Further Afield” in reference to the ideas of neocolonialism, linearity, and exoticism, particularly as they pertain to our present moment. Visually it’s a collection of images, as if viewed in a memory, symbolized by a swirling mass of fog and distressed surfaces. The bulk of the image is a bird’s eye view of the coffee fields just south of the house I grew up in, on the island of Kauaʻi. Additionally, there are disjointed images of plantation buildings from around the ʻaina, and an obelisk, which represents two things: 1.) my personal journey from Hawaiʻi to Las Vegas (a common trajectory for many Hawaiians), and 2.) the enduring mystique of imperialism, and its echoes. America has appropriated this imagery from Rome, just as Rome stole their obelisks from Egypt in an attempt to reify their legitimacy as an empire.

As an artist engaged in social change, I am an advocate for many things, including housing rights, universal basic income, rent strikes, eviction moratoria, and if not the full abolition of rent, then mandated rent control. As a queer, disabled person with Indigenous ancestry, I have faced housing insecurity at many points throughout my life due to discrimination and systemic barriers to access, frequent relocations due to untenable lease agreements or harassment from landlords, natural disasters, freak accidents, the 2008 mortgage crisis, unemployment, and more.
    

I was born in Hawai’i, raised by two young & loving parents doing their best while coping with BPD and poverty. Homeschooled and trans, I found my passion in creative expression through writing, music, and film. In 2015, I moved to LA to pursue an MFA in Film/Television Production at USC--working in the industry up until 2020 when my life shifted radically. For the first time in my adult life, I had the space to think and I joined the LA Tenants Union. Quickly, I committed myself to organizing, moving into an RV in 2021. I continue building community solidarity between the housed & unhoused; documenting through my show R.V. T.V. and my music.

As an Indigenous, unhoused, trans musician, I write from my life about our collective experience as beings creating and building outside of the decaying U.S. Empire.

From working with housed tenants in Los Angeles in 2020, to pivoting to building alongside unhoused tenants since 2021 and directly living unhoused in my RV, I am immediately connected and impacted to the struggle for housing/spatial justice.
    

I am a second GenX, queer, nonbinary, caste-D/Desi Bengali artist, cultural organizer, and public policy student based in lands stewarded by Wompanoag, Mattakeesett, Nipmuc and Pocumtuc peoples. My interdisciplinary grief practice blends ritual, movement, sculpture, and song to alchemize loss and rage from family estrangement to cultural erasure to the ongoing violence of displacement. I work at the intersections of land sovereignty, food justice, and abolitionist organizing, centering art as a vehicle for healing and systems change. As someone displaced multiple times due to gender-based and racialized violence—including from within queer housing—I create from a place of deep faith in collective liberation. My work insists on futures where we move beyond harm and hierarchy, and into interdependence. I hold space through ceremonies, collective gardening and expressive arts popular education workshops that help fellow queer and trans folks name grief, disrupt internalized empire, and root into right relationship with land, body, and community.

I am submitting a raw correspondence song written in the wake of being bullied out of a queer living space where I had once hoped to feel unbothered. The song calls out the harm I experienced at the hands of a bigoted housemate projecting internalized misogyny as gaslighting to displace me and members of a mutual crew who didn’t check them. Rather than isolate these experiences as personal betrayals, the piece situates them in a larger pattern of how misogynist, classist, ageist, xenophobic and imperialist logic persist within our queer communities. This song is part lament, part spell of protection, and part refusal to accept gaslighting as normal. It’s a form of naming, mourning, and a call for accountability beyond the individual to the community that holds them. My submission creates space for the complex, often silenced grief of queer people who are harmed within our chosen families—especially when those harms violently intersect with race, gender, and access to housing.

These experiences have deepened my commitment to housing and land justice not just as policy issues, but as sacred, ancestral, and relational struggles. My organizing is rooted in reclaiming land-based practices—from cultivating food forests to collective exercises in subsistence farming. I support local land trusts, grow food with neighbors, and facilitate popular education gatherings exploring food sovereignty, tenant rights, and just transition. I believe housing justice must also mean culture repair, and that land must be held in community—not in profit. I fight for a world where queer and trans people not only have homes, but are no longer asked to trade safety for belonging.

#neighborhoodgrowplan #ne0natak #liberation1nk #l0v3l3tter #whatsartequity
    

Hi! I’m Robert Arambel, a gay man who uses the pronouns he/they. I grew up in Los Angeles, spent 20 years in Seattle, and have lived in Austin, Texas, for the last 7 years. I spent 2+ decades as a program manager for software companies. I realized that my successes there were heavily leaning towards helping others be their authentic selves in these spaces. I recently received my LMSW and am currently providing individual and group therapy to those in recovery and pro bono work with three LGBTQIA2+ support/process groups. I also volunteer for Rainbow Connections ATX, a program of Family Eldercare, where I interned.

The piece is titled Belong/Deserve. In the groups I facilitate, I’ve been hearing rising expressions of confusion, exhaustion, and abandonment. The LGBTQIA2+ community here continues fighting tirelessly to prevent legislation from erasing their bodies and rights. While we win more than we lose, recent Republican victories—especially in limiting transgender and nonbinary visibility in state-run spaces like schools and bathrooms—have raised concerns about growing momentum. Alongside these legal attacks, many are also feeling hurt by comments from outside Texas suggesting that if we stay, we’re asking for it. That belief adds another layer of pain, isolation, and dismissal. I’ve been increasingly drawn to illustration and political cartoons, and I wanted to combine them to give voice to this disheartening view and its impact on those caught in the crossfire.

Belong/Deserve explores how identity, geography, and power collide—especially for transgender and nonbinary people living in politically hostile environments like Texas. Spatial justice inquires about who is permitted to exist safely and with dignity in both public and private spaces. This piece confronts the painful reality that not only are trans and nonbinary people being targeted by state policies, but they are also being blamed by people outside Texas for choosing to stay. Comments like “you’re asking for it” shift responsibility away from systems of oppression and onto those already at risk. This blame adds to the trauma of being pushed out of bathrooms, schools, and even housing. As land use and legislation increasingly dictate who belongs, Belong/Deserve makes visible how geography is politicized. It asks: Who gets to claim space? Who gets to leave? And who is expected to disappear? Spatial justice must begin with honoring the right to stay and survive/thrive.
    

Originally from Baltimore, Maryland, Sabriaya is a Black and Queer Philadelphia- based poet, educator, and community ethnographer. Sabriaya cultivates performance and archival spaces centered around the expressive freedom of Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities with organizations such as Artwell Philly, Tree House Books, Theatre Philadelphia, The Painted Bride Art Center, Power Street Theatre and internationally with Residency 11:11 in London, the Chateau Orquevaux Artist and Writers Residency in France, and the Archival Bootcamp in Valencia Spain. They hold a BA in Theatre from Temple University and an MA in Social Justice and Community Organizing from Prescott College Her first chapbook, “Somewhere Between God and Mammy,” was published in 2022 alongside as a recipient of the 2021-2022 Philadelphia Foundation and Forman Art’s Initiative Art Works inaugural grant, Recently named a Temple University 30 under 30 2025 Arts and Culture Visionary, Sabriaya looks forward to sustaining equitable and ancestral means of storytelling.

“Concrete Flowers Bloom Anyway” is an ode to the multitude of Black Queer bodies have had to and chosen to bloom amongst and because the concrete cities, blocks, and neighborhoods we have to navigate that both nurtured us and yet traumatized us into a lifetime of examining how much space was actually our to take up. In addition, we watched generation grow up in our hood surrounded by abandoned home and lots covered in wild flowers. This self portrait taken during my residency in France last summer where I questioned how this young Black girl from the inner city of Baltimore grew up to have her own studio to create and take a photo of themselves in Bloom. How much had I bloomed past the generations before me and would they be proud of the spaces I now inhabit, but most importantly the wildflowers I had let grow.

Growing up in the hood you watch as a community of people you love decorate broken down town homes and projects with an uneven balance of grief and joy. You prepare sides with your mama for your aunt’s rent party and next month she will do the same for your house hold cause the landlord just raised the rent before looking at any maintenance report. You cringe at the reality of how different your neighborhood looks from your suburban friends oasis but wear pride in the togetherness they don’t have through their hoa’s. You watch the abandoned homes on the block increase and sit and listen to stories of survival and community from great grandmothers who talk about the great northern migration from the south to the cities you roam like Baltimore, New York, Philly, and Chicago. You listen while picking up concrete flowers and calling them too beautiful.
    

I’m a queer hairstylist and artist from Los Angeles. For years I’ve focused on fiber art (including hair) but about three years ago I started shooting film photography and I’m really compelled by it.

This photo was taken during the devastating fires in LA earlier this year. A friend and coworker was evacuated and staying at my house, these are her hands. My house was a few miles away from the Eaton Fire and the flames never got close but it rained ash for days. Amongst the ash were fragments of books, the words still legible. This piece struck me — a poem somehow. Migration / presents / shapes / rescue a / me.

I love Los Angeles maybe more than anything and I’m so proud to be from there. A friend said recently that cities outlast nations, and I have to believe that LA will rise from the ashes and survive.

One of the pivotal moments of my life was getting my childhood home sold out from under us. When I go visit my childhood neighbor’s house to visit I see the shell of my old life and what it could have been. I am particularly affected by how the succession of owners have not cared for the fruit trees that were so important to me, but I have no say in that. If I won the lottery I would go buy that house back.

Currently I’m a tenant in San Francisco in a building owned by a community land trust, and I’m part of a collectively owned home in Tucson, AZ
    

Ms. Momos is a Mission-based visual and performance artist whose work centers around place-making, cultural storytelling, and creating economic opportunities for marginalized communities. As an artivist, she blends creativity with activism to amplify community voices and preserve the cultural fabric of San Francisco’s Mission District. Through public performances, installations, and collaborations, she helps activate underutilized spaces, transforming them into vibrant hubs for connection and resource- sharing.

In addition to her artistic work, Ms. Momos is deeply committed to housing justice. She actively supports affordable housing initiatives and volunteers with grassroots campaigns advocating for tenant protections and accessible housing. Whether through organizing direct actions, supporting neighbors facing displacement, or canvassing for housing legislation, her practice bridges art and advocacy in powerful ways. By aligning her creative vision with her commitment to social change, Ms. Momos contributes to a more just, livable city for all— particularly those historically excluded from decision-making and ownership. “54 Round 1 and 2” is part of my 2022 poetry series uplifting trans rights. Rooted in resilience and expression, the pieces reflect the urgency and beauty of trans liberation, offering lyrical resistance and solidarity through language.

Over the past 25 years, I’ve witnessed harmful land use policies displace over half of the Mission’s artist community and thousands of low-income residents. Aggressive condo development has outpaced meaningful investment in affordable housing, despite public outcry—including families and children urging city officials to pause market-rate projects. I’ve canvassed, signed policy letters, and marched in support of tenant protections, affordable housing mandates, and community-led land trusts. I advocate for equitable zoning, rent control, and the preservation of cultural districts to prevent further displacement. My involvement in housing justice is rooted in the belief that land use must prioritize people over profit and be shaped by those most impacted.
    

Toshio Meronek’s writing has appeared in Al Jazeera, The Nation, Them, Truthout, and more. They host the podcast Sad Francisco, and their book Miss Major Speaks is out now from Verso.

Originally appeared in Transition Times catalog, affiliated with the effort to liberate the site of the Compton’s Cafeteria riot: https://toucan-cube-wabk.squarespace.com/shop/p/transition-times-catalog.
Making media, anti-gentrification work with anarchist direct action group Gay Shame.
    

Tray is a San Francisco native who has an intense passion for fashion, dancing, art ventures, photography & building community.

He is a strong believer in using his talents to give back to the community and believes that everyone deserves to have their stories told and their voices heard- an advocate for black and queer visibility. He uses his business Realest Exposure to platform the voices of those who are often marginalized. Tray is dedicated to curating, creating and contributing to safe spaces where BIPOC and queer people can be their authentic selves, and he works tirelessly to make sure that everyone has a seat at the table.

“Grace, Love, Desire” is a visual meditation on the quiet power it takes to love yourself out loud while being Black in America. This piece explores the tension between vulnerability and resistance - the layered chains we wear, both literal and metaphorical, and the beauty in choosing to reclaim them. As a Black creative, expressing love for myself, my softness, my strength, my queerness - is a radical act. This work holds space for the sacred process of becoming. It takes grace to stand in that becoming with your chest out and your chains reimagined not as restraints, but as adornments. This portrait is not just about desire - it’s about transformation, dignity, and the freedom that blooms when we honor the fullness of who we are.


I was born and raised in San Francisco, California, and I’ve witnessed firsthand the rapid displacement and gentrification that continue to disproportionately impact Black and Brown communities. I still live at home, not by choice, but because affording my own place is simply out of reach. It’s a painful irony to be so deeply invested in the cultural and artistic fabric of a city that no longer feels livable for the very people who shaped it.

The lack of affordable housing isn’t just an economic barrier, it’s an emotional one too.

It delays my independence, limits my ability to take creative risks, and reinforces the feeling that I’m a guest in my own city.
    

Vane (she/they) is a 27 year old creative queer that survives and thrives as an “illegalized” immigrant in Texas. Their collective care practices include: community organizing, space-holding, card making and visual art. They are committed to creating spaces for collective care, healing and cultural resistance.

My submission is a digital version of a woodcut screen print made during my travels to Mexico the summer of 2024. It’s a heart containing two volcanoes (Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl) visible from the place my parents and ancestors called home. There is a small butterfly that represents me; my movement to and from home over the last 27 years. The summer of 2024 I traveled to Mexico under advance parole which offered me a temporary opportunity to return after 20 years of being away. It was a transformational experience to move beyond borders that once caged me. The trip redefined my relationship to land, people and culture; it freed me from the constructs of legality and citizenship which had often made me feel anxious about saying where I’m from or even afraid of calling a place a home.

I carry the volcanoes in my heart because they remind me that home is where the heart rests easy and that summer was the first time I knew that feeling.
    

My name is Vishinna I am a curator/art teacher/musician in a queer punk band. I love creating works out of recycled materials about the black experience and Afro-fantasy.

This piece is about society’s inability to digest black culture, specifically picking apart the things it likes and discarding the rest. We contain so much beauty and life, and that is depicted in the flowers in her hair and the look of rest on her face. This piece is made up of discarded cardboard tubs, acrylic paint, and apoxy resin.

The idea of owning a home is an impossible dream, these days but even more impossible (seeming) for me as a black queer woman!
    

Wilder Zeiser (they/them) is a strategist leading efforts to remove the GEO Group from 111 Taylor Street and transform the historic site of the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria Riot into a community space rooted in trans liberation and housing justice. Previously, Wilder served as a Senior Climate Campaigner at Stand.earth, where they led campaigns against fossil fuel infrastructure projects in California, including efforts to halt refinery expansions and oil imports from the Amazon. They have been instrumental in coordinating cross-sector coalitions, engaging with local officials, and securing support from major funders to advance community ownership and cultural preservation initiatives in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district.

This drawing envisions the future of 111 Taylor as an intersectional sanctuary rooted in healing, creativity, and collective power. A rooftop garden flourishes with native plants, offering a space to rest, reconnect, and grow. The ground floor opens into a café and rotating pop-up for trans entrepreneurs, while upstairs, legal services, and a low-barrier clinic. A community archive, library, and recreation center hold our stories and spark new dreams.

Mural art wraps the building with the color, memory, and brilliance of our people, past, present, and future. Once a site of surveillance and harm, this building is transformed into a forever home for trans, immigrant, and justice-impacted communities. This is a vision of liberation. A place where Compton’s legacy lives on, not as history trapped in the past, but as the blueprint for what’s next.

I believe land should serve the people, not punish us. As a trans person and organizer, I’ve seen how developers, cops, and prison profiteers use space to exclude, surveil, and harm our communities. I’ve also seen what becomes possible when we reclaim it. Through the Compton’s x Coalition, I’m working to remove GEO Group from 111 Taylor Street and transform this historic site into a community-led sanctuary rooted in intersectional liberation. I help coordinate legal challenges, political advocacy, and public pressure to protect the land from carceral reuse and ensure its future is shaped by those most impacted.

This isn’t just about one building, it’s about fighting back against displacement and dispossession in all forms. I believe we can build spaces of joy, safety, and collective care, and I won’t stop until we do. Liberation is not abstract. It’s cultivated interdependently by the people most impacted by systemic oppression.
    

I’m Yesenia Raquel Veamatahau, part creative with my head in the clouds, part system-builder with feet firmly planted in the “how.” For about 12 years, I’ve been a community organizer in the SF Bay Area, dedicated to cultivating dignity and thriving for and with my communities who weave across the many intersections. I believe that the undoing of interpersonal, state, and systemic violence lives within the wisdom of our stories. To help bring this wisdom forward, I practice relational, embodied healing, facilitate gatherings to tap into radical imagination, and interconnect with local people and groups holding down culture work. I am proud to rep The Town, as well as my kin from Michoacán, Jalisco, Guerrero, Tijuana, and Matahau, Tonga. Libraries and redwood groves are my happy place.

Collage allows me to make visible the way I experience the world: fluid, interconnected, and magically ordinary. This piece, lovingly named “future-casting,” came to me as I was working on popular education materials around strategic visioning. From my elders and teachers, I’ve learned the practice of telling future stories. These stories draw from the wisdom and lessons of the past and cast forward into the horizon. They move us into the portal of the present where we have the ability to shape the future for the thriving of generations to come. “Future-casting” is an invocation and invitation during these grief-stricken times, to remember our beauty and power. This piece honors my Pacific coast and island kin and celebrates a texture of masculinity I seek to embody. It weaves the ancestral with the contemporary, knowing both technologies are needed as we build our liberation from the ground up.

I come from displaced people who had the courage to cross man-made borders, over land and water, to arrive here in the Bay and make a home. On my mom’s side, my family has been rooted in Oakland, CA since the 1970’s. In the early 2000’s, my great-grandmother lost her home in the Fruitvale, a space that had held us during celebrations and hardships alike. I still remember the room with the walls painted like clouds and the orange tree in the front yard. Since then, I’ve seen how every day those of us who were born and raised in the Bay are surveilled, disposed of, and pushed out. And yet, we live. As a grown person trying to build a life here, I’ve also been humbled and grateful to connect with indigenous stewards of these lands, reckoning with the tangled web of history and diaspora that is present here.
    

My name is Zander Moreno Lozano and I am an Indigenous Mexican, transgender, immigrant, student, and poet. I am based on Huichun land in the Fruitvale neighborhood with experience organizing in the community. Birthed from the soil of Mexico city, Mexico, me and my family fled due to patriarchal abuse.

Living for 11 years in Las Vegas, Nevada where we experienced more oppression at the hands of patriarchy. My indigenous experience is that of reconnection and decolonization to the lineage that my family carries generationally. Culturally, we were subjected to assimilationist rhetoric to erase our lineage that led to our relationship with identity to become complicated. Since then, I have done the work to learn about indigenous, land, and food sovereignty in relation to my lived experience.

The visual art I produce is largely inspired by Keith Haring and the Mesoamerican Codexes. The piece I am submitting is a portrayal of the trans flag with line figures representing the people of the trans community and how intertwined through systems of oppression influences our everyday life. Blue, pink, and white are laced on the abstraction of the line figures depicted with the negative space serving as the blank stripe of the flag. I find gender expression to be fluid much like the line figures painted on the paper, we are everchanging and are not set on our expression. This is a direct form of resistance to the colonial project that indoctrinates us to live and die by a binary. Patriarchy is a tool of white supremacy to relegate certain systemic privileges to specific people, oppressing anybody out of that binary or at the opposite end of the binary.

Being born into a upper middle class family, our oppression was not experienced by economic uncertainty but rather patriarchy. The effect of that trauma became an inheritance traversing generation after generation. With the economic privilege to flee the country into the United States, I had a unique experience of statelessness that rendered the consciousness of socioeconomic understanding. In my experience as a community organizer, I had fought for queer and trans youth justice through advocacy work in Santa Maria, CA.

As an adult, I was involved in tenant rights organizing through Causa Justa Just Cause as a community organizer. I was able to talk to a breadth of community members who were being subjected to living conditions beyond comprehension. This gave me a supplemental understanding of land sovereignty when it came to the working class not being able to afford housing as well as not owning their housing.
    

Juan Sebastian Restrepo, known as Sebastian “zeb” Restrepo, is a Colombian-American artist whose work explores memory, domesticity, and emotional life through painting and drawing. Born in Barranquilla, Colombia and raised in Miami, zeb develops a symbolic visual language rooted in everyday moments—cluttered tables, sleeping cats, and signs of familial presence. Their art draws on personal rituals, postmodern symbols, and Tarot iconography to transform ordinary objects into emblems of care and reflection. Using soft palettes and flattened perspective, zeb’s paintings invite viewers to reimagine the mundane as a poetic archive of lived experience. They earned a BFA from Pratt Institute in 2015 and an MFA from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in 2020. Recent solo exhibitions include No Further Expectations Beyond This Night at The Art and Culture Center in Hollywood, FL and multitasking at [NAME] Publications in Miami. zeb teaches and contributes to cultural dialogue through writing, panels, and workshops.

I’m submitting a body of work that reflects on home, memory, and emotional life through intimate, symbolic scenes. These pieces are grounded in my lived experience—having been displaced from Miami due to rising housing costs—and explore what it means to find care and belonging in everyday spaces. A recurring presence in my work is animals: cats lounging on beds, dogs curled beneath tables, birds perched near windows. As someone who deeply loves animals, I see them as emotional anchors in unstable environments. They hold space, mark time, and offer comfort when everything else feels uncertain. Including animals in my work is both personal and intentional; they reflect the quiet resilience found in domestic life and serve as symbols of rootedness, companionship, and vulnerability. This is a continuation of my commitment to stories about care, place, and the quiet power of living beings—human and nonhuman—who help a space feel like home.

As an artist and educator, I’ve been directly affected by the housing crisis in South Florida. Rising rents and displacement forced me to leave Miami, where I was raised, and move to Fort Lauderdale. This experience has shaped both my personal life and creative practice. My work explores memory, domesticity, and the emotional weight of place—often focusing on quiet, everyday spaces like cluttered tables or shared living rooms. These images reflect not only comfort, but also precarity. I see art as a tool to preserve the feeling of home and resist erasure. Beyond the studio, I engage with spatial justice by facilitating community workshops, participating in local panels, and supporting organizations focused on housing access and cultural preservation. As an educator, I work with students affected by housing instability and advocate for inclusive, supportive environments. My lived experience drives a deep commitment to imagining more equitable, rooted, and caring futures.
    

Zelda aka Judith Z. Miller is a multifaceted Queer elder: visual artist, performer, writer, producer, budding percussionist, workshop leader, and healer who lives in an erotic, musical, spiritual universe. As a feminist Jew who studies shamanism, she is inspired by the beauty of nature and the guiding force of her intuition as she explores the themes of connection to the Earth, spirituality, sexuality and gender via a variety of art forms.

Zelda was profiled in The Daily News; the subject of feature articles in Mann About Town magazine, Home News Tribune, In Brooklyn, The Park Slope Paper, The Wave, and The Daily Sitka Sentinel, Shawangunk Journal, the Kingston Wire, and featured on NY-1 Television and Spectrum TV. Zelda is published in Inside Arts magazine, The Washington Post, American Theatre magazine, Ecosexuality: When Nature Inspires the Arts of Love, and she was a contributor to Queeries Blog and Zine.

Grounded in intuition and shamanic visualization, my “Spiritual Self Portraits” explore identity, transformation, and the unseen. This image is from my third series, “Alien Jewish Shaman,” in which I stand before my large collage “My-G-d,” embodying a shamanic journey. Through this enactment, I breathe life into my spiritual experience—leaving my body, dissolving boundaries, and touching the fluid nature of gender.

My process draws from my background in multiple disciplines. As in acting exercises where one embodies a figure in a painting or statue, I apply that same embodied storytelling to visual art. This 11” x 14” selfie was created with black light body-paint, photographed under black light, then printed and hand-painted with additional black light paint. When illuminated, the image glows with vibrant energy, appearing to float off the wall—a portal into another dimension.

I came close to homelessness twice—an experience that was deeply frightening and destabilizing. Thanks to the support of RUPCO, a Kingston-based nonprofit dedicated to housing justice, I was able to find safe affordable housing at the Lace Mill, a vibrant artist residence that has become both a sanctuary and a creative home. Living here has allowed me to thrive personally and artistically. I’m now an active member of several local bands, including Tin Horn Uprising, an activist brass band that performs at protests and community actions in support of housing rights and other critical social justice causes. I’m deeply grateful to RUPCO and the Kingston community for helping me reclaim stability and purpose through art and activism.