A Love Letter.

Dear Family & Beloved Community,

        We write to y’all on this Mother’s Day to share our love and to respect and reflect back on what we see when we look at our queer and trans kinfolk and chosen family- to the butches, the house mothers, the caregivers, the queens, and masculine folk: we see you and we see our collective history of resistance against violence.  We see the ways you’re smashing gender roles and building what we all need to survive– brick by brick, town by town, city by city.

We come to this work knowing that we are in need of healing from historical trauma. Our people are growing, grieving and trying to make sense of current circumstances in our communities. Many of us are still coming out and we are still trying to figure out what liberation and safety looks and feels like. We also know that we all have a right to cultivate self determined spaces. And though we have held many conversations about safety and security to understand what that means in our community, we know fundamentally it is about love, and shared survival.

The concept of Tiger’s Eye Collective formed in the wake of the Pulse Massacre - where we lost 49 people from our LGBTQ community in Orlando, FL. Many of whom were Latinx, Black and largely Puerto Rican, due to a massive act of violence and possibly even self-hate.  Here we are, almost a year later, getting into formation, working towards growing and seeding our work in the queer and trans South and throughout the country.

We seek to provide a direct response to the escalating gender based violence, physical and political attacks that are often detrimental to our safety and livelihood. We know that it is folks like us who risk everything to keep our communities together and thriving. Often times we are chosen family, self-determining and creating spaces for ourselves in ways that the mainstream heteronormative society often ignores. Tiger’s Eye Collective wants you to know that we SEE YOU.  

We see the necessity of our vision, to transform our relationships to each other and our communities especially in the Global South and throughout the World where all people can live in dignity and self-determination. If you want to aid in us reaching this vision, join Tiger’s Eye Collective for our launch date, June 12th, to help us seed this collective work over the next year, honor those who have lost their lives at Pulse, countless other instances of violence, and those who are surviving and intervening on violence everyday.

With deep gratitude and best wishes from,

Tigerseyecollective.org

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