Keynote Speakers
Butch Voices is completely ecstatic to announce three amazing voices as our Keynote speakers at the 2009 Butch Voices conference this August 20-23, 2009 in Oakland. We are fortunate to present Jeanne Córdova on Friday, August 21st, S. Bear Bergman on Saturday August 22nd, and Malkia “Mac” Cyril on Sunday August 23rd.
Keynote - Friday August 21st
Jeanne Córdova, Feminist Butch - Activist, Publisher & Author – has devoted her life to activism on behalf of the LGBTQ community. She began 39 years ago as L.A. President of the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), opening the first lesbian center in L.A. in 1971. She founded The Lesbian Tide - the national newsmagazine recognized as “the paper of record for lesbian feminist decade (1971-1980).
Córdova was a key organizer of the first National Lesbian Conference (at UCLA, 1973) and also worked in the campaign to defeat the anti-gay Briggs initiative (Prop. 6, 1977-1978), which would have purged LGBT teachers from public schools. Córdova went on to become president of the Stonewall Democratic Club, and served as Media Director for STOP 64, the campaign that defeated the statewide AIDS quarantine ballot measure.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Córdova continued publishing as a form of activism by founding the Community Yellow Pages (CYP), which was the nation’s largest LGBT business directory in the USA.
She is now co-founder of LEX – The Lesbian Exploratorium – a cultural guerilla group, which created the 2009 L.A. art exhibit, “GenderPlay in Lesbian Culture.” Her extensive journalism and writings appear in many anthologies including the Lambda Literary Award winning Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader, and the trail-blazing anthology, Dagger: on Butch Women. Córdova is currently completing her third book, Rebel Dyke: Love & Revolution in the 70’s.
Keynote - Saturday August 22nd
S. Bear Bergman (www.sbearbergman.com) is an author, a theater artist, an instigator, a gender-jammer, and a good example of what happens when you overeducate a contrarian. Ze is also the author of Butch Is a Noun (Suspect Thoughts Press, 2006) and the forthcoming The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You (Arsenal Pulp, October 2009), three award-winning solo performances, and is a frequent contributor to anthologies on all manner of topics from the sacred to the extremely profane. A longtime activist on behalf of anyone who wants to learn and be different at the same time (particularly queer/trans youth and students), Bear continues to work at the points of intersection between and among gender, sexuality, and culture, and spends a lot of time keeping people from installing traffic signals there.
Author and activist S. Bear Bergman reads from Butch Is a Noun at University of Connecticut - this is the performance single of the book, called ‘I Know What Butch Is.’
Keynote - Sunday August 23rd
Malkia “Mac” Amala Cyril is the founder and Executive Director of the Center for Media Justice in Oakland, CA.- a national media strategy and action center building a powerful grassroots movement for racial and economic justice through media change. Key projects include the Media Justice Movement-Building Initiative, the Justice Communications Initiative, as well as training and tools to help grassroots organizers and leaders become better strategic storytellers and media activists.
Malkia’s history as a media and movement strategist is informed by h/er organizing and communications work at We Interrupt This Message and the Applied Research Center, the Community Organizing Team, Youth Together, and the Youth Force Coalition in the SF Bay Area.
As a queer, working class African-Am/Caribbean born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Malkia’s belief in media change as a core strategy for social justice is based in her experience as the daughter of a black panther mom. “I watched how media bias helped destroy a movement, and I believe in the power of strategic stories to help raise it again.”
Malkia is author of numerous articles on movement-building, political organizing, strategic communications, and media policy change, and creative works in anthologies such as Aloud, Afrekete, and In the Tradition. As an artist, organizer, and communications strategist- Malkia hopes h/er leadership and commitment to struggle speaks beautifully and humbly for itself.
Comments made by Malkia Cyril on what media justice means. Presentation at Funding Exchange’s Media Justice Fund Awards June 6, 2008 at NCMR2008 in Minneapolis, MN
