The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division and The LGBT Community Center host a virtual book launch for United Queerdom: From the Legends of the Gay Liberation Front to the Queers of Tomorrow on Thursday, June 25th, at 6 PM NYC time. Join us for a special event celebrating the radical roots of Pride and our ongoing journey for ‘Absolute Freedom for All’ an evening of discussion, readings, agitations, and celebrations on the current and future movements for queer liberation.

Dan Glass will be joined by Stuart Feather, Sunitha Dwarakanath, Sarah Schulman, and Jason Lamar Walker.

This event is free, but we encourage attendees to make donations that we will collect on behalf of Black Lives Matter.

Pre-order United Queerdom (Zed Books, July 15, 2020, paperback, $22.95) from the Bureau! Write to us at contact@bgsqd.comwith your

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Dan Glass is a sex-positive, queer, healthcare and human rights award-winning activist, performer, presenter and writer. Reforming ‘Aids Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) London chapter in 2013 has catalysed healthcare and sex-positive programmes including campaigning for PREP, protecting the National Health Service through presenting “Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Great NHS Sell-Off” which won “Award of Excellence” at the DOCS Without Borders Film Festival, producing ‘HIV / HEP Blind Date’ a theatre dating- show for people living with HIV / HEP to share the realities of life, love and struggle as well as enabling ‘HIV anti-stigma classes as part of the anti-fascist ‘Beyond UKIP Cabaret’ in Nigel Farage’s boozer. Dan has won Attitude Magazine’s campaigning role models for LGBTQI youth + a Guardian ‘UK youth climate leader’, 2017 ‘Activist of the Year’ with the ‘Sexual Freedom Awards’ and was announced a ‘BBC Greater Londoner’ in 2019 for founding ‘Queer Tours of London – A Mince Through Time’ and is part of the global In Place of War artist movement. An agitator from the Training for Transformation educational programme born out of the Anti-Apartheid movement, the core of dan’s work is the development of critical consciousness and creativity to spur people ‘to read their reality and write their own history’. Dans recent programmes involve catalysing ‘Queer Night Pride’ and ‘Bender Defenders’ to confront rising LGBT+ hate crime, facilitating the Gay Liberation Front 50th anniversary Pride celebrations and presenting ‘Never Again – Fighting the Polish far-right’ and ‘Weaponising Anti-semitism’. During the COVID-19 epidemic dan was part of the Coronavirus cabaret: the online show combating social isolation’. Contact dan at www.theglassishalffull.co.uk and at alright@theglassishalffull.co.uk – Twitter #danglassisfull

Stuart Feather is a GLF activist and took part in the first public demonstration of homosexuals in the UK in 1970. His political autobiography Blowing the Lid: Gay Liberation, Sexual Revolution and Radical Queens was published in 2016. Feather was also a member 1977 – 1993 of the gay theatre group Bloolips, winners of a New York OBIE award in 1981. See Stuarts TED Talks here:

TEDxHultLondon – The LGBTQ+ and the Gay Liberation Front

Neil Bartlett: “Blowing the Lid: Gay Liberation, Sexual Revolution and Radical Queens is invaluable as well as entertaining first hand radical testimony from the period, essential for anyone who wants to understand how this country has changed and who wants to think about how it could be changed more.”

Sunitha Dwarakanath is a Queer South Asian from London, UK. Sunitha organises with the QTIPOC and LGBTQIA+ black and people of colour bloc with ‘Queer Night Pride’ – a movement challenging the recent rise in LGBT+ hate crime. Sunitha grew up around her mum’s family where politics about Sri Lanka were constantly being discussed and was recently prompted to campaign for Labour in the last election because of her difficult experiences as an Asian person in queer spaces and wider society. Sunitha is also part of the ‘Riposte’ nightclub collective – one of London’s leading queer techno art movements.

Sarah Schulman’s work as a novelist, nonfiction writer, playwright, screenwriter and AIDS historian is devoted to social change and to the making of more liveable-socially, economically, politically-lives. Her most famous works include ‘The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination’ and ‘Israel/Palestine and the Queer International’, both of which foreground the relevance of gender/sexual politics in understanding- and challenging- violent socio-political systems; the former through a history of AIDS and gentrification in New York, the latter through an exploration of the role of ‘pinkwashing’ and ‘homonationalism’ in the continued occupation of Palestinian Territories.

Schulman is and has always been a passionate activist and campaigner. Member of the international direct action group ACT-UP, founder of the ACT UP Oral History Project, and co-founder of the Lesbian Avengers, she blends her intellectual and political endeavours in a way which provides as much space for an interrogation of multiple systems of oppression as it does for their ultimate destitution.

Jason Lamar Walker is a nationally recognized activist, organizing within the center of Black Queer Liberation. Formerly from VOCAL New York, Jason gained his notoriety by bringing together thousands of New Yorkers living with HIV to pass city and state laws and to influence federal policies. In 2015, he helped win an eight-year battle ensuring that formerly homeless New Yorkers living with HIV could maintain their housing by passage of the 30% Rent Cap. Thanks to this work, more than 11,000 members of his community have been able to remain in their homes. In 2016, Jason helped to score a second major victory that expanded those policies and lifesaving benefits to all New York City residents living with HIV in a campaign that is commonly referred to as “HASA for All”.

Jason’s devotion to social justice work extends prior to joining VOCAL’s team. He began organizing as a student at the University of Louisville serving as President of the NAACP, Co-Chair of the Student National Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Co-founder of BlkOut – the first LGBTQ recognized student organization for People of Color in the state of Kentucky. In 2012, following the murder of Trayvon Martin, Jason was leading organizer in a citywide solidarity rally, which lead to the creation of #Louisville4Trayvon, now the Louisville Chapter of Black Lives Matter.

Having his roots in organizing as a youth, Jason supported the growth and development of Queerocracy, a youth organizing and leadership development program. Queerocracy works with homeless and street involved queer youth to develop and execute policy advocacy strategies and direct actions to ensure Black and Brown LGBTQ youth have access to equality and equity.

Jason has served on New York State’s Ending the Epidemic advisory groups for Black Men who have Sex with Men and Young Adults to assist in the development of specific implementation strategies to optimize the Blueprint to End the HIV/AIDS Epidemic’s impact on Black men and young adults.

He has been recognized by POZ Magazine’s 2014 Top 100 List, the National Black Justice Coalition as a Black LGBTQ/SGL Emerging Leaders to Watch, is 2016 recipient of the People for the American Way Foundation’s Norman Lear Award and the NYC Black Gay Pride’s Joseph Jefferson Award, and was acknowledged by City & State New York in 2018 as one of the 10 LGBT Leaders on the Rise list. Most recently, Jason became the 2019 recipient of the Ali Forney Centers Luminary Award and Jason has been featured on Capital Tonight, MSNBC’s All in with Chris Hayes, and NY1’s Inside City Hall.