I was overwhelmed by the need to write you a letter and send it out right the fuck away. Was watching comedy central’s new show “I’m with Busey” which I found disturbing and hilarious which is a feeling that always makes me too nervous to continue. I was thinking about why I don’t call you or write, and I figure it must be the time zone. I always want to call but then realize it’s like whatever your time. Obviously I don’t get up all that early. I hate school, and it seems I only made it to school some days to keep up the reputation of being a student. Being asked what year you are is a bit gross all the time, but it’s doesn’t seem to be in any way an incentive! I just am so over it, and so very ready to move the fuck on to whatever. I want to be angry that I stayed so long at such a cost financially and emotionally and whatever, but I figure that I wouldn’t have been ready to go on to another place without the education I have received in the last year. I started to get more involved in school politics and organizing. I got two awards for that: women for change student leadership award and lgbt student leader award. This was the nomination form I filled out:

UCLA WOMEN for Change 2003 Student Leadership Award Nomination Form 1. Describe your leadership activities at UCLA (and beyond) for this 2002-2003 year.
This year I was co-chair of two lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) organizations on the UCLA campus; BlaQue, the student group for African American LGBT and same gender loving folk as well as the newly formed Queer Alliance an "umbrella group" for all the undergraduate LGBT organizations on campus.
As BlaQue co-chair I led the charge to get BlaQue its first official budget from student government, as well as helped plan a workshop on Christianity and the black queer experience and another on the history of African American LGBT people in the US and the world. Also I am planning a workshop for the African Student Union’s annual High School Conference on homophobia in the African American Community. BlaQue had a successful year, as we developed better bonds with the African American community at UCLA, a community that has in the past been extremely homophobic and unopen to dialogue regarding queer issues. This year BlaQue with my help also became closer to the general queer community at UCLA, a community in which African Americans have not often felt their needs are addressed. Through co-programming and joined meetings with Mahu (Asian Pacific Islander LGBT) and La Familia (Latina/o LGBT), BlaQue has successfully helped to provide a better place for LGBT people who identify culturally. With our BlaQue "Real Luv" Valentine's Day social and poetry reading, BlaQue was able to address the need for acceptance and love of LGBT African-Americans something that is not often recognized within the African-American community. With our upcoming BlaQue "Family Reunion" Barbeque, BlaQue hopes to emphasize the sense of community that our organization has created at UCLA. By having older members since graduated take part we hope that younger same gender loving blaque folk will realize their sense of history and their ongoing link to the queerness that has existed in African culture at all times.
Over the summer of 2002, I helped found the Queer Alliance with the hope that the upcoming LGBT holiday "National Coming Out Day" on October 11th would benefit from a unified approach from all the undergraduate LGBT groups on campus. As the year went on the Queer Alliance began to grow and realized the need for the loose alliance to become a full-fledged organization devoted to bringing social and political change to the UCLA and Los Angeles communities. As QA co-chair I planned this year’s LGBT student leadership retreat which was a great success teaching several new leaders the ropes of how to deal with the bureaucracy that exists at UCLA as well as educating many on the effects of being a double or triple minority within the queer community. We had workshops on women, transgender, and bisexual issues as well. As QA co-chair I also helped to found new groups and bring them into the Alliance. Two such groups were a new Women's LBT student organization and an officially recognized Transgender organization. Often times within the LGBT community there is a spotlight on the "Gay" while women get much less focus at times. Transgender and Bisexual issues are often not addressed at all, a slight of magnificent proportions. As board member for Fluid, the Bisexual organization, I helped the organization get it's first official budget so that it would better serve the "fluid" community at UCLA. So many people who identify as "non-straight" fit into the category as "in-between" or "other" (including myself) so it's so very important to provide a safe space for people who might not otherwise have one. This upcoming spring quarter I will continue to be involved in the struggle against oppression of gender and orientation, as I truly believe if ridden of sexism and homophobia, the other isms and phobias will fall flat against the goodness of open minds and equality.

2. How has your activity effected positive change for women?
As committee chair for this year's National Coming Out Day, I organized a women's music night for all lesbian, bisexual and transgender women. We had nearly 100 attendants who were treated to poetic expression of all kinds. A store donated goodies to give to the participants, which helped dramatically increase the number of women who participated. To have a space where women of the queer community could express their love and pains freely in such an artistic setting was a real bonus for the UCLA community in general. At UCLA it's been awhile since any student organization has done any targeted work towards the women on-campus who identify as non-straight so I hope that such an event will serve as a template for other student organizations.
By helping to found the organization for LBT women on this campus I hope that women who do not identify as straight will have an open place that addresses their needs as a double minority. So far the organization has been inundated with women excited to take part in it, while at the same time eliciting groans from some of the men involved in LGBT organizations on campus. Many gay men do not understand that there is a "culture" and history that pertains to women separately from the queer struggle, and some have had a hard time reconciling the fact that women have needs that cannot necessarily be provided for by the often-times male dominated queer community. The women's group hopes to educate the general queer community regarding their own struggle as women in a male dominated society, while at the same time providing support for women by women with social activities, community organizing and political action. We constantly need to recognize the effects that "privilege" has on disprivileged communities; male privilege affects the LBT woman, white privilege affects the BlaQue queer, while class privilege affects those from poor backgrounds. Recognizing this privilege can be a first step in our struggle to become proud women of color, class, or orientation.
As a recognized leader within the UCLA community I hope that I can provide an example for all women at UCLA. Getting involved has enriched my education at UCLA beyond any of my expected dreams or hopes. For many who come to UCLA there is the feeling of getting "lost" in the system, of just becoming another number. With my work within the LGBT community I have found my "family" full of parents, brothers and sisters. I would hope that other female-identified members of the UCLA community can recognize the difference they can make on-campus and off, by just having pride in their gender. Coupled with a pride in their orientation; lesbian, bisexual and transgender women will always be working on the forefront of any social or political change as their identities themselves represent the very basic idea of revolution.

Ok, anyways. It seems that my education from UCLA is not going to be the book kind or event he class discussion, but the ideas of functions and my place in them. As a student leader I came up with so many battles this year, man it sucked some times. A girl who’d been coming to BlaQue decided to run for student government president, but of course she wanted to pretend like LGBT issues didn’t matter or that she would work behind the scenes for us at the same time pretending not to know “us” like “that”. SO of course the Queer Alliance (the umbrella group) couldn’t support her, and as both co-chair of BlaQue and QA she of course hated me. We supported the white guy who had a bi sister and felt comfortable talking about the issues. It sucked and still sucks because she won, but it puts BlaQue in a unique position of having the ear of the president even tho she’s hating on us, she really can’t hate too much because she knows we know, and we know she knows and there’s not much hate she can throw us w/o losing out on some pussy. LOL.
Had a lot of fighting with white gay men this past year too. So many of them loved me when they first met me, they’d flip their hands and say GIRL! And we’d giggle together affectionately. Then I realized as time went by that they weren’t really seeing me as a black queer woman but rather as mammy who would suckle them or something. I swear I never got so felt up in my whole life, and even ended up parlaying a few games of truth or dare into something more (more on that later). But in the end I had say hey what the fuck I am not your fucking mammy yo, I am a woman and a queer and why don’t you help me find a man/woman? Why am I hooking you up? HOOK ME THE FUCK UP. Anyways, didn’t happen so I had to let a lot of those boys have it, when they snapped their fingers in a circle going girl! I’d be like yo honey, please. It’s a very interesting thing, because a lot of gay male culture is not fixated but very interested in the black woman experience and fierceness. I think it comes from noticing an underprivileged and oppressed minority that found a way to have a voice, but it’s hard to tell sometimes where the line of you having your culture, and my having my mine and we having ours blurs. Because when it comes to black queer issues so many white queers are SO out of it, and when it comes to gay men understanding women issues forget it. I swear.
When UCLA’s queer women’s group wanted to start, you know have a place to chill, sponsor trips to lesbian conferences and so forth a whole bunch of guys protested. They were like why can’t the lesbians just come to our things, why do they need to separate. Even when I took it step by step for them: ok, so lesbians are like you because they are queer, but they are different because they are women. And women are one of the most oppressed minorities on the planet (not owning our bodies, making 64 cents on every dollar a man makes in the SAME job, etc. etc.)…so therefore you cannot adequately understand or help with all lesbian issues (like less healthcare than gay men, higher rates of breast cancer, highest rate of domestic violence, higher rates of alcohol abuse). They couldn’t get it and it was so sad, because all the lesbians or bisexual women on campus I knew pretty much abhorred gay men. Starting the women’s organization at least ensures that women can have a piece of the funding that the men always get as part of student organizations (which they usually spend on dances that only guys go to, not that I’m generalizing) while at the same time taking steps to try and understand men and maybe vice versa.
I have SO many friends now it insane, and I hang out with a lot of black people. For some reason I feel guilty about it sometimes. I feel that for so long I was the lone black kid and now I’m not, and too boot their black queer folk so it’s like having a home for the first time. Some sort of family something, being tied more directly to my cultural roots. Wearing do-rags and head wraps, saying yo…LOL. Just kidding mostly. My dad and mom came to the awards ceremony for one of my awards and my mom said she couldn’t believe how many black friends I had. But anyways YES my dad and mom came to the awards ceremony and it was the 3rd time they’d been in the same room my whole life. But it was the first time they were there for something for me, and it was SO weird. It was like when you have a word on the tip of your tongue but can’t remember it? That’s what it felt like, a memory that almost was my family.
I have so much more to write and I will…but stargate sg-1 is coming on!
Bi the way I said something the other day (re: 9/11 and you being across the street) that I think kinda upset you, I wasn’t aware or conscious that it was so close to your heart. Because usually our irreverence is on the same page, but I realized that really it would be bordering on sociopathic to become any more irreverent so I apologize for being so FUCKING insensitive. Hopefully you can forgive my dumbass, because I didn’t mean that you are always around bad things. I meant that you are and will always be near earth shattering planet changing things, because you have “it”. Sometimes those bad things will be the worst that can ever be, but I suspect mostly they will be the things you have always hoped for and desired.

Love and the best kind of wishes for my sister superstar
Faith

MIKE SO WHAT HAPPENS IN 20010? FAITH Unexpectedly, all the metrosexuals will come out of the closet, dismaying millions of straight but stupid women.

Regarding Brokeback Mountain
Oprah:
No matter what you think of gay people, whether or not you think it's controversial , did you think this having a marriage and family, and a gay relationship that was conflicting right, if not controversial?
Heath Ledger:
Um, i think it could be. But i find it personally disappointing that people go out of their way to their disgust or opinions against how two people choose to love each other.