Mixed-Race and Rootless

Reflections on the 2023 Creating Change Conference, part one

Pax at age 10 (summer of 1980), with their hair in two braids and wearing a Bassett Wild Animal Farm T-shirt, sitting in the grass and being happily nibbled on by baby goats.

This post is part one of a series of reflections on the 2023 Creating Change Conference. For part two, see “Accessibility, Ableism, and Accommodations”. For part three, see “Trans Athletes and Fairness to Women”. For part four, see Trans Takeover at Creating Change.

Last month, I attended the annual Creating Change Conference, hosted by the National LGBTQ Task Force. I decided to attend as it was being held in San Francisco’s Union Square, less than a mile from my apartment, and thought it would motivate me to get out and network with fellow queer and trans folks. I’ll be writing my reflections on this multi-day event in a series of blog entries, as there are several discrete topics I want to cover.

The first conference session I attended was the Caucus for Mixed BIPOC LGBTQIA+ Folx. The facilitator was JR “Nexus” Ross, who is queer, nonbinary, Black, and Filipino. The session attracted dozens of attendees, more than expected, which was to be a recurring theme throughout the conference. We started with going around the room, introducing ourselves and our racial and ethnic identities. As we only had an hour, Ross dismissed with the formal presentation he had planned so we had time to go around the room a second time, expounding further on what it was…