Community advocacy and activism with special guest Kris Kiernan - S4 - Ep6

Community advocacy and activism with special guest Kris Kiernan - S4 - Ep6 ** "She/They; Mom, friend, community advocate, and concerned citizen." Community advocate, Mom, friend, and concerned citizen Kris Kiernan sat down with me for a delightful and engaging conversation about her involvement with a number of equality and diversity causes as well as the removal of confederate monuments and racist symbols. Tracy Rigdon: "Amongst all the things that you've got going on in community advocacy and activism as well, one of the topics I wanted to touch on first in this conversation, as we discussed right before, was your involvement in the Take Them Down Jacks movement, Northside Coalition and so forth. And those good people. regularly going down to City Hall on Fridays and waving signs and, you know, make making your voice heard, uh, the removal of Confederate monuments, not only in Jacksonville, but, you know, a lot of other cities are battling that, that nonsense too. Tell us, tell us a little bit about, uh, take them down, Jax, the movement, your reasons for being involved and why it's so important." Kris Kiernan: "Right, you know, this is such a multifaceted issue." "It's something that, we started talking about it in 2016. There was myself and six or seven different other community members sitting down at Memorial Park, actually, in Riverside. We sat together and we just were discussing how ridiculous it was that we still have Confederate monuments littered across the city on publicly maintained spaces." Kris Kiernan: "I can't tolerate people voting against women. Like I just can't. So, you know, if they hate me, then I'm pretty sure the feeling is mutual at that point, right? Like I just, yeah." Tracy Rigdon:"Tell me about your involvement with the LGBTQ community and in the particular the drag community and you have an upcoming gathering, an event that is going to be happening in Jacksonville's Five Point area at Rain Dogs. Talk to us a little bit about your involvement in that." Kris Kiernan: "Yeah, well, the organization is called Unspoken Treasures." "...It's an organization that is black trans-led. There's, oh gosh, there's a ton of leadership that's involved in this. The organization originally started in Gainesville." "... what I'm trying to do with Unspoken Treasure Society is to branch the community together with the other activist pods in our community." "...So this next panel is going to be at Rain Dogs on May 10th. It'll be from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. There's gonna be a panel and the panel will include a good amount of activism, a good amount of interfaith discussion, a good amount of discussion about the STIs and destigmatizing these issues. Also, we need to talk about, and this is a big deal, the history of Stonewall, the history of Pride, and where it truly came from, and how it's morphed into what Pride looks like today, and how honestly, and I'm gonna be very blatantly honest, the patriarchy has a lot to do with this. The men take charge, and the women, for whatever reason, get left in the dark. And what this is honestly doing during this panel, is uplifting women, uplifting black trans women into our community and integrating them into the activist spaces that they probably would have never known. So these organizations that are in Jacksonville don't do much for the community, but Unspoken Treasures actually does for the community." For a more immersive experience, visit our website at: https://www.thecontrastproject.tv/ ** Music Tracks for this Podcast by Alex Grohl on Pixabay ** Feel free to LIKE, SHARE AND COMMENT. If you are featured here and we don't have your link(s) posted, please let us know. Follow The Contrast Project online: ** http://www.thecontrastproject.tv/ ** https://www.facebook.com/TheContrastP... ** https://www.instagram.com/the_contras... ** https://twitter.com/ContrastProjTV #supportWOC