The others profiled this month also include:

• Kevin Liles, an author, a philanthropist and a former Def Jam Music Group president;
• Marvelyn Brown, an author and AIDS activist;
• and Beverly Bond, the founder of Black Girls Rock! Inc.

They will also be posting a longer interview with Kenyon on the BET.com website.

Also earlier today, the Huffington Post published my statement for QEJ on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Tune in tonight if you can, and read the Huffington Post piece.

I missed you. I really do. Life has been really busy. The kind of busy that’s unsustainable. Anyhoo, I will be getting back to the blog real soon, but in the meantime, here’s a couple radio interviews I’ve done this past week.

WBAI’s Out FM: I was discussing the new report that shows that men on the down low is not a term people use uniformly, and that they practise as much safe sex as out gay men (non-DL identified). On top of that, they have less HIV prevalence than out Black & Latino gay men. LISTEN UP!

This Show is So Gay! This show, I talk politics and the personal–there’s some stuff on here I’ve never talked about publicly, so if you wanna hear the dish, LISTEN UP! This show is definitely worth getting the podcast on iTunes!

Excerpt below. Go to Bilerico to get the full text:

First and foremost, the time where we can pretend that there is no viable, credible or visible Black (or other POC) queer leadership is over. While we certainly need to be developing leaders, leadership per se, is not the problem. We have lost of leaders, but leaders with no base that they’re accountable to. Because what little Black LGBT infrastructure that exists, is largely due to HIV/AIDS service delivery, we are able to reach lots of people in our organizations as “clients”, but are rarely engaged as potential leaders, organizers or members of our organizations. We need the investment of both progressive philanthropy and LGBT funders to help build the capacity and infrastructure of organizations to move from strict service delivery to doing community organizing, leadership development, and base-building.

Lastly, as long as the White-led mainstream LGBT movement is invested in seeing itself as the only credible leadership or it’s organizations the only ones doing “the real work” or having “real impact” we will continue to invisibilize the work that Black and other POC organizations are doing on the ground, in spite of real material obstacles. So every time the gay news media and organizations promote ideas of the gay community vs. the Black community, Black queers will continue to remain invisible, and assumes that Black queer people are not engaging in a battle against homophobia and transphobia in the Black community.

Here’s the last 3 minutes of the speech on Youtube:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8lpegOTLrg]

2007 was a really difficult year for me personally, and for the first time in more than a year I feel rejuvenated, refocused, and ready to get to work!

With that in mind, I thought I’d update you what you can expect in 2008:

NEW BLOG FOCUS: I am re-inventing this blog. I got bored with it, but I think I have figured out my niche: The other black queer bloggers have entertainment/pop culture on lock. I can’t keep up with the Jenkins’. But we have fewer folks profiling arts and culture, politics/policy and community organizing–book/music/theater reviews, and profiling people and organizations and artists work that is a little off the radar. I am also interested in talking to folks who can help break down complex issues of the day. I know all these smart and talented people doing work all over the country, and nobody ever asks them shit!

AUDIO/PODCAST: I am going to try to include with at least one blog a week, an audio recording related to the prose I post. For instance, if I review a book, why not post an interview with the author? I was going to have one for this week, but their are some sound problems with the Skype recorded interview. If I can fix it, I’ll post the audio , otherwise I’ll transcribe.

SO…Look for an accompanying podcast of interviews with folks in 2008!!! I want to be a radio show host, but since no one’s knocking down my door just yet, I’ll make my own damn radio! So if you are out there, and got something happening in your community, or have a book, CD, or something else you want to talk about, hit me up. Let me know what it is, and maybe we can do something with it.

OTHER WORK: In addition to working on this blog, I am continuing to work with Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project, and my work as board co-chair with Queers for Economic Justice. I am also working on another anthology called A New Queer Agenda, with Lisa Duggan, Richard Kim, and Joseph Defilippis, which should be in bookstores by the end of the year. I will be quietly working away on some fiction too, which is new territory for me, but here goes nothin!

Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality
New York University
presents

GENDER, RACE, AND THE 2008 ELECTION

“Are Americans ready to elect a woman or a black man as president?”

A panel discussion with:

Kenyon Farrow, co-editor of Letters from Young Activists: Today’s Rebels Speak Out

Richard Kim, Associate Editor, The Nation

Marianna Torgovnick, English, Duke University

Moderated by Tavia Nyong’o, Performance Studies, NYU

October 16, Tuesday
6 to 7:30 PM

19 University Place, Great Room, 1st Floor
between 8th Street and Waverly Place

This event is free and open to the public.

Venue is wheelchair accessible. If you need sign language interpretation services or other accommodations, please let us know by Monday, October 8, if possible.

For more information or to contact us, call 212-992-9540, email gender.sexuality@nyu.edu, or visit us online at www.nyu.edu/csgs .