This week the WC honors the beautiful Laverne Cox as our #MatrixrchMonday! Laverne Cox is notable for not only being a trailblazer for the Transgender Community, but also the Black Community. As the first Trans actress to be nominated for an Emmy, win a daytime Emmy, appear on the cover of Time magazine, and have a statue at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, Cox has dedicated her life and career to amplifying the voices of the LGBTQ+ community.

Having intersecting identities that have both been statistically shown to be the most vulnerable in our society, Cox has opened several doors for both communities in the global media. The world had a much different view of the Trans Community when Cox stepped into her acting career.

As a strong believer that Trans roles should be played by Trans people, Cox rose to fame with her role as Sophia Burset on Netflix’s Orange is the New Black. She also produced two documentaries, Free CeCe and The T Word, that both bring awareness to the many hardships in the Trans Community.

We at the WC honor Laverne Cox for her strength and integrity, whilst representing two communities that are historically marginalized in Hollywood and the world. Lavererne Cox is changing norms and breaking down walls for us all – and shifting the social climate. We love and are enchanted by your brilliance @lavernecox ! ❤️

The WC honors Ericka Hart, M.Ed., D/s. for their unapologetic passion for Racial and Disability Justice, utilizing their platform to spread awareness about breast cancer and sexuality exploration to empower the Black Community and take up space.

After being diagnosed with breast cancer in May of 2014, Ericka Hart went viral for attending the Afropunk Festival topless, showing the scars of their double mastectomy. Ericka’s mother passed away from breast cancer when they were 13 years old, which along with their own diagnosis, made raising awareness for breast cancer survivors that much more important for them. Because of Hart’s mother, Ericka had been accustomed to doing self-checkups from a very young age. When Hart was diagnosed with the disease at 28 years old, they knew they were in for a very rough time, but did not let negativity overcome them. Hart was so determined to remain strong, that during their treatment they only cried once. Hart believes that “falling apart is a privilege” which has motivated them to bravely keep pushing despite all they have had to overcome.

Earning a Masters Degree in Human Sexuality and working to normalize the beautiful and strong bodies that have survived breast cancer, Hart has performed in New York City for over six years to audiences of all ages to inspire people of all backgrounds, but especially young, Black LGBTQIA+ Folks that historically face discrimination in the medical field. “I want it to be universal, accessible, anti-racist, anti-systems of oppression. Period.”

In honor of Black History Month, Ericka Hart is highlighting and amplifying Black influencers every day for the month of February through an Instagram series titled, “Black People Tell Black History.” The series from this past week has included: Captive Maternal and Black queer mothering as well as Black American Sign Language! This is in an effort to have Black Americans speak on their experiences and platforms. Check out their story and highlights everyday for a new featured person and topic to honor Black narratives this month and everyday. We love you @ihartericka, our “favorite killjoy,” and honor you as our #MatrixrchMonday. ❤️

This week’s #MatrixrchMonday features the genius of Dr. Kizzmekia (Kizzy) Corbett. An American immunologist at the National Institute of Health, Dr. Corbett led the research that resulted in the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.

Dr. Corbett focuses on acquainting information about the vaccine to underrepresented communities. There is an understandable history of mistrust: the healthcare system has failed them many times. Racial discrimination is rooted within many American institutions, perhaps the greatest impact in healthcare. Black patients tend to receive fewer and lower quality services. And Dr. Corbett realizes that the medical field has failed the Black community. Yet a long history of systemic health and social inequities has put many racial and ethnic minority groups at increased risk of getting sick and dying from COVID-19. Corbett says it will take time to rebuild trust in Black communities (who have ALSO been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic), a process that needs to be done in a “brick-by-brick fashion.”

We honor Dr. Corbett, a Matrixrch not only for all her digilent scientific leadership in developing the COVID-19 vaccine, and for raising awareness about medical racism resulting in the mistrust that many BIPOC experience in the medical system. Dr. Corbett says, “I would say to people who are vaccine-hesitant that you’ve earned the right to ask the questions that you have around these vaccines and this vaccine development process,” reminding us that we have the right to know and that we aren’t alone. @kizzyphd ❤️

As we welcome Black History Month, this week’s #MatrixrchMonday highlights a trailblazer who is actively fighting for Black Futures, Gina Clayton-Johnson.

1 in 4 womxn, and nearly 1 in 2 Black Womxn have family members in prison. Knowing that they often struggled to support their incarcerated loved ones while themselves feeling lonely and isolated, Gina began working to change this by founding the Essie Justice Group to harness the collective power of womxn with incarcerated loved ones to build a womxn-led movement to end mass incarceration and empower womxn. The name ‘Essie’ honors Gina’s great-grandmother, who was a sharecropper and moved her family west in hopes for a better life. The Essie Justice Group strives to bring awareness to the intersecting systems of oppression which uphold mass incarceration, and to also create a community, a sisterhood, to support and remind each other they are not alone.

After graduating from Harvard Law School, Gina moved to New York where she joined the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem. As a housing attorney, she implemented and designed housing defense practices to represent womxn facing eviction resulting from a criminal matter. This was her source of inspiration to get involved with working with families and womxn affected by mass incarceration. Gina realized at a young age that incarceration not only comes with having a loved one locked away, but also comes with isolation of the family as a result of entanglement in the system. Gina’s work covers breaking isolation because the impacts are not only political, but can be devastating to physical and mental health.

We honor Gina Clayton-Johnson as our #MM for her tireless and compassionate work to bring change to the criminal justice system and prison industrial complex, as well as for building a powerful collective of womxn that affirm each other as they educate about the need to end mass incarceration which disproportionately harms Black, Indigenous and People of Color. Gina says “If we put the right people in the driver’s seat, they will drive us into a liberated and healthier future and reality, one that is free of the toxic culture of patriarchy and racism.”

Amanda Gorman, an American poet and activist became at age 22 the youngest inaugural poet in the United States. Amanda Gorman was nominated by none other than Dr. Jill Biden. Gorman’s activism and art focuses on feminism, race, marginalization, and the African diaspora. She has gone to say, “The passion comes from my heritage. It comes from this place where like, I must write. I must speak up because there have been too many people who’ve been kept from that opportunity.”

Born in Los Angeles, California in 1998 along with her twin sister. Gorman and her siblings were raised by their single mother, Joan Wicks, a middle school teacher.

Amanda Gorman has expressed her writing as being a safe space for her feelings and thoughts. Growing up, Gorman had a speech impediment and attended speech therapy, she has also dealt with an auditory processing disorder. She discovered her passion for reading and writing when she was in the third grade, in which she found strength in while dealing with her medical conditions – and as such Gorman sees poetry as an artwork where problems are highlighted and are given solutions within this art form.

Gorman’s activism began in 2013, soon after she had watched a video of Malala Yousafzai giving her speech after receiving her Nobel Peace prize. In 2014 Amanda Gorman was chosen as the youth poet laureate of Los Angeles. She then began to publish her own books in 2015. She then launched a nonprofit organization in 2016, One Pen One Page, a youth writing and leadership program. Amanda earned the Milken Family Foundation college scholarship and went on to further her education in Harvard University. While a student at Harvard she went on to become the nation’s first youth poet laureate in 2017. In 2020 Amanda graduated from Harvard with her degree in sociology. She served as a host for a PBS Kids special about racism in October, 2020.

The WC honors Amanda Gorman as our #MatrixrchMonday not only because she embraces her disability, speaks truth to power, supports literacy and is a fierce feminist – but because she’s showed this country about the power of radical unlearning and TRUTH. We love and are inspired by you @amandascgorman ❤️

This week’s #MatrixrchMonday was slated to be on this Inauguration Wednesday to honor Claudette Colvin who helped paved the way to seat our first Black and Asian Woman Vice President of the United States. Because Colvin refused to give up her seat. Before the incredible and honorable Rosa Parks did so. But unfortunately Colvin’s activism was overshadowed by Parks, in large part due to respectability politics which uphold ageist misogynoir. Nine months before Rosa Parks protested segregation by not giving her seat up on a bus, 15 year old Claudette Colvin did just that. On March 2, 1955 Claudette Colvin was riding the city bus from school when a white passenger came on; she was told by the bus driver to give up her seat. She refused to give up her seat saying, “It’s my constitutional right to sit here as much as that lady. I paid my fare, it’s my constitutional right.” Colvin was arrested for not giving her seat and charged for violating the city’s laws of segregation. She was in jail for several hours, alone and afraid until her minister came to pay her bail.

The NAACP considered using Colvin’s case to challenge segregation laws, but in the end decided not to because of her young age and her image since Colvin became pregnant, raising concern that she would bring negative attention to an already harrowing public legal battle. Colvin pleaded not guilty to oppose the segregation law, but the court ruled against her and put her on probation. This sentence created many hardships for Colvin: she was deemed a ‘troubled child’ by society and had to drop out of college; it was nearly impossible for her to find a job.

Despite everything, Colvin was one of the plaintiffs for the 1956 Browder v. Gayle case that ruled the segregated bus system in Montgomery as unconstitutional. #MM was created to highlight the MANY incredible Matrixrchs who have paved the way for our liberation but may not be as publicly recognized due to systems of oppression.

The WC honors Claudette Colvin, and the young, marginalized, frontline and outsider voices that continue to inspire us to take action. One never has to be “respectable” enough to raise their voice and demand racial justice. ❤️

This week’s #MatrixrchMonday is UnapologeticallyBrown Series Creator, @johannareign, Johanna Toruño.

Johanna Toruño is a 29-year old Queer Public Artist and Activist. Johanna uses her art in order to create space and representation for Black and Brown Womxn and Girls. She has accumulated over 180,000 followers on Instagram, @theunapologeticstreetseries.

During her childhood, there was a massive war taking place in many areas in El Salvador. While witnessing the unpredictability of a war, Toruño remembers that street art was something that the war left and quickly understood that art gave people a voice and that was very impactful to her art today.

When Johanna Toruno was 15, she was incarcerated and then on probation for three years. She did not let this stop her from making art. Her radical work displays resistance towards the oppressive systems and allows people to feel empowered despite their past.

Toruño wants us all to get involved: “There is a shortage of Queers in writing rooms, in board rooms, in the White House, in powered positions that sanctioned the livelihood of all of us.my vision of a Queer culture where we not only celebrate Queerness but acknowledge Queer Folks for being inherently cultural makers doesn’t seem so distant anymore.”

When reflecting on her influences as an artist she notes that, “I am led by the community, my ancestors, and the elders before me who have paved the way for me to do the work that I do. The Black Women & Femmes who have created culture – the Queer POC who continually pave the way for all of us. I do this work as my place in this revolution of self-taught game changers. I am led and inspired by the abolitionist Black Womxn that have created the blueprint since the beginning of time.” @johannareign, you inspire us at the UO Women’s Center to take up our own space as well! ❤️

Please follow Queer Independent Artist Johanna on Instagram @theunapologeticstreetseries and check out her goods at https://www.theunapologeticstreetseries.com/store.

This week’s #MatrixrchMonday is singer-songwriter Diné and Tsétsêhéstâhese activist, Lyla June. 

Lyla June has become widely recognized for her musical career as a singer, rapper, and spoken word artist, and has exploded in recent months after the popularization of her 2016 song “All Nations Rise” on TikTok.

Apart from her prolific music career, June uses her platform advocates for environmental, gender and racial justice. She graduated with distinction from Stanford University’s department of Environmental Anthropology as well as a master’s degree from the University of New Mexico in Native American Pedagogy.

In 2020 Lyla June ran for New Mexico House of Representatives, spearheading with the Seven Generations New Deal, a progressive Indigenous-centric ecological and economic plan to address climate change through the seven the tenants of democracy, Indigenous science, green economy, ecological restoration, equity, climate education and systemic change. As we move into a week celebrating violent colonization and widespread untruths, we at the Women’s Center are so THANKFUL for your art, wisdom and tireless work to remind folks that Native American People are still surviving, still thriving and still here – on their land. We love you @lylajune! ❤️#NativeAmericanHeritageMonth

Content Warning: Transphobia, Homophobia, Suicide, Attempted Murder

For this week’s #MatrixrchMonday as we begin Transgender Week of Remembrance 2020, we highlight the incredible Sylvia Rivera and her passion and fierceness as a life-long activist, fighting for her own rights and the rights of others. Unbowed, unbought, and virtually indigestible by a Gay Movement she helped birth, Sylvia was the embodiment of an activist. Sylvia threw coins and bottles at police at the age of 17 at the revolutionary riot at the Stonewall Inn on June 28, 1969, the turning point of the Gay Rights Movement.

She climbed the walls of City Hall in a dress and high heels to crash a closed-door meeting on a Gay Rights bill, she fought back with her words in her “Y’all better Quiet Down” speech, calling out the Gay Activists Alliance for not including “Transvestite” (terminology used at the time, now considered derogatory) and Drag Queens in their Gay Rights Agenda. “Hell hath no fury like a drag queen scorned,” Sylvia warned later. Sylvia sheltered, supported and empowered Gay, Transgender Fluid Youth with Marsha P. Johnson through Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR). She was a Survivor. When she was three, her mother killed herself with poison, and tried to kill Sylvia along with her. Sylvia was Poor, Trans, a Drag Queen, a Person of Color, a former Sex Worker, and someone who went experienced drug addictions, alcoholism, homelessness and incarceration.

She not only fought for Gay Rights but also for racial justice, economic justice, and criminal justice. Today the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP) is named in her honor, providing FREE legal services for Transgender, Intersex, and Gender Non-Conforming low-income People of Color. In 2021, a monument to Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson is slated to be unveiled in NYC on Christopher Street where the Gay Rights moment took off as part of the city’s effort to fix a glaring gender gap in public art. Sylvia, the WC loves you and thanks you for showing us what fierce activism looks like! We will honor you in our work and fight like hell for the rights and dignity of your siblings and children each day as we move forward. ❤️

This week’s #MatrixrchMonday is profound Georgia leader, Stacey Abrams. As the child of two ministers and four siblings, Abrams was raised to serve and uplift those within her community in need. Those basic tenants led her to her profound, ongoing career in public service.

Upon graduating from Yale Law School, Abrams began her career in politics and social justice in which she served as the first womxn to lead the Georgia General Assembly in the State’s House of Representatives. During her time in the House, she fought for criminal justice and prison reform as well as expanding access to public transportation.

Abrams founded the New Georgia Project, which led to the voter registration of 200,000 People of Color in the state of Georgia between 2014-2016.

In 2018, Stacey Abrams ran for governor in the State of Georgia with endorsements from Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama. After issues with mass voter suppression from her opponent, Brian Kemp, Abrams lost the bid for governor. Her loss only further fueled her mission to expand voter registration for Georgians across the state, prompting her to found the Fair Fight Organization.

The record-breaking voter turnout in the 2020 election couldn’t have been possible without the tireless efforts of Stacey Abrams, and her work continues to inspire us all at the Women’s Center. We love you and thank you for everything you do, @StaceyAbrams. ❤️

We encourage you all to check out Stacey’s new book, Our Time Is Now! #MatrixrchMonday #CelebrateBlackWomen #HonorBlackWomen #AmplifyBlackWomen #PayBlackWomen #BlackWomenLead

This week’s #MatrixrchMonday is Kim Coco Iwamoto. She is running this 2020 election as the Democratic Representative for the 26th District in the State of Hawai’i. She has previously worked as a commissioner on the Hawai’i Civil Rights Commission, as well as two terms on the Hawai’i Board of Education. During her time on the board she was recognized by Barack Obama as Champion of Change in 2013.

After graduating from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, Kim Coco discovered her passion working with LGBTQ youth facing houselessness, and later went on to become a therapeutic foster parent for LGBTQ teens back home in Hawai’i.

Upon facing workplace discrimination in the fashion industry in New York as a Trans Womxn, Iwamoto returned to school to study law in New Mexico. Upon obtaining her degree, she returned to Hawai’i and began a career in civil service and worked to change laws regarding workplace discrimination.

In 2018, as a primary Democratic candidate for the Lieutenant Governor of Hawai’i, Iwamoto was named by Newsweek as one of 50 Need-to-Know Pioneers for LGBTQ rights.

While Kim Coco is proud of her identity as a Transgender Japanese American Womxn, she seeks to build her platform as a politician based on her achievements towards civil rights of Hawaiian people, rather than the axes of her marginalized identities.

In her bid for Democratic Representative for the 26th District in the State of Hawai’i, Kim Coco Iwamoto bases her campaign on the issues of affordable housing, climate reform, the advancement of working families and universal access to education, healthcare and childcare. @VoteKimCoco, we at the Women’s Center commend the amazing work you continue to do for the people of Hawai’i and ultimately our entire community. #MatrixrchMonday #VOTEifyouareable

*Content Warning: Racist and Transphobic Violence, Murder.*

Week Five’s #MatrixrchMonday is Marsha P. Johnson! An activist, performer, Sex Worker, and loved by many, Marsha “Pay It No Mind” Johnson become a legendary name in the LGBTQIA+ Community. Marsha was among the first to fight back against the racist and homophobic police at the Stonewall Inn. She helped form STAR: Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. Marsha was a Sex Worker and organized with other people in the Sex Work Industry in New York City’s Times Square and West Village. She galvanized people from inside jails and prisons, and created homes for them at STAR House in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Johnson was an incredible performer, touring with the performance group Hot Peaches. As an HIV-positive person, she organized AIDS vigils, navigated mental illness, and was a mother to a generation of Trans and Gender Non-Conforming people in New York City. Horrifically, she was also one of many Black Trans people to be found dead, in her case, in the Hudson River after Gay Pride in 1992. Marsha P. Johnson’s story forces us to confront the transphobic, misogynistic and racist physical violence that has historically and systemically kept many Trans Women from ever becoming elders. Her legacy and advocacy lives on today. We love you, honor you and thank you for all you gave Marsha P. Johnson! #MatrixrchMonday #PayItNoMind

Content Warning: Sexual Violence, Murder, Femicide.* As we prepare to launch the Red Zone Sexual Violence Awareness Campaign this week, Week Four’s #MatrixrchMonday is María Salguero.

Salguero is a researcher and human rights activist for the womxn effected by the femicide epidemic of México. The United Nations classifies femicide as “the deliberate killing of a womxn or girl because of their gender.” Although femicides take place in numerous countries in Central and South America and around the globe, the issue has exploded in México in recent years. It’s reported that on average 10-12 womxn and girls are killed in México every day, that’s 1 person every 2 hours, with a large proportion of these murders being committed by someone the womxn knew. Salguero, with a background in geophysical engineering, began mapping out every place where these gender-based killings take place to create an accurate database to compensate for where government officials have lacked in addressing the issue. She believes her database, el Mapa de Feminicidos en México, will provide those interested in the problem with a necessary resource to better understand where and why these femicides are happening.

She believes that recognizing the role machismo plays in the systems of oppression that exist in Mexico, and correcting it, is the key to ending these senseless killings. Salguero has mapped over 6,000 femicides between 2011 and 2018 and has discovered that this epidemic is disproportionately effecting Transgender, Disabled and Indigenous Womxn, and these cases often go underreported. Salguero highlights the importance of naming those lost to femicide, to recognize those who have gone missing or been murdered as human lives, rather than just a number or statistic. This year María Salguero was named on Forbes’ list of 100 Powerful Womxn who change the course of México, Mujeres Ponderosas de México 2020. @Maria_Salguer, we love you and commend you for the tireless work you do to advocate for the end of the femicides of the womxn and girls of México. #MatrixrchMonday #Femicide