The following is a great op-ed on the limits of participation in the boys’ club of city hall by community organizer Asa Reyes. This is her first piece for Worcester Sucks but hopefully not the last! Please consider a subscription or tip so I can continue to cultivate, edit and promote necessary community perspectives like that which you are about to read! —Bill
Worcester Queers Must Organize
By Asa Reyes
“The people who are trying to do something for all of us and not men and women that belong to a white, middle-class, white club” — Sylvia Rivera
On Trans Day Of Visibility, the IOF, continuing its genocidal campaign, killed six more Palestinians in Gaza, including a father and son. It was March 31. The same night in so-called Worcester Massachusetts, a city which failed to pass even a symbolic ceasefire resolution in 2024, the City Council continued its facade of LGBT* allyship by highlighting the same white trans women already approved by the white club. One of whom held an event earlier in the year to end the “trans military ban” with Seth Moulton (just in time for the draft!). Moulton is a senatorial candidate who after Kamala lost her presidential bid made headlines blaming the loss on democrats’ support of trans people, not their support of the genocide.
“The queer liberation struggle cannot be disentangled from the anti-imperialist struggle. They are fundamentally connected.” — Sa’ed Atshan
Early last year the city blocked an investigation into transphobia in the administration, quietly shelved the DOJ report detailing racist brutality and rape in the WPD, and voted against a ceasefire resolution for Gaza. The Mayor does what he usually does in giving away keys to the city to chosen “leaders” of a group and hoping it all blows over. And since 2025 (and much, much longer), it has. He and the council got away with it because we are not organized. Taking a step back, many queer people are part of projects doing good work like WooFridges, Solidarity Outreach Survival, Food Not Bombs, LUCE and others. This shouldn’t change: trans and queerphobia can’t be eradicated until we first combat the hate against “addicts,” “prostitutes,” and “criminals.” As queer and trans people many of us are struggling with addiction, homelessness and doing sex work to survive. Many of us know in larger leftist organizations, trans people are an afterthought, especially trans people of color and transfeminine people. We are supporting other movements as we should, and leading ones we are also members of, but only we can lead our own liberation. We don’t need protection but the political and material capability to do so ourselves.
“’It’s not my pride, it’s their pride. It’s your pride, not mine. You haven’t given me mine yet.’ I have nothing to be proud of except that I’ve helped liberate gays around the world. I have so many children and I’m still sitting on the back of the bus, still struggling to get kids into proper housing, and to get them education, to get them off drugs” — Sylvia Rivera
Seemingly the only ones organized among us are careerists who are going for positions for themselves, more interested in their personal branding or consulting company than building that capability.
In September 2025 after the city fumbled in even its symbolic performance of allyship, including raising the wrong flag, the local Pride coalition chose to step away from the city’s usual flag raising ceremony. This followed the Juneteenth Festival Committee decision earlier in the year after the city previously took the flag down before the 19th. Instead of solidarity with other queer, trans and Black organizers among us, some of the same opportunists we see again and again became the LGBT symbol for the city administration. Holding a separate Pride flag raising with the same city council that refused accountability, refused to support police victims or take even a symbolic stand against the genocide. The same queer leader who ran for mayor in ‘23 by joining the centrist “white, middle-class, white club” establishment including the very councilor who was dehumanizing trans people last year (and surely before), requiring the investigation in the first place.
In early 2025 back to the calls for the investigation we saw more of this queer “leadership.” After a Vietnamese non binary councilor revealed they were called “it” by another councilor, not in the cool nonbinary way, the city scrambled to respond. Mayor Petty, doing the only thing he knows, gave a key to the city to the same white trans woman, again. She would then go on to make a public statement with her consultant company letterhead calling out the only local online queer exchange group for being “unwilling to allow different opinions” while queers organized around transphobic attacks. One wonders how these same queer “leaders” would have responded to Sylvia Rivera at Liberation Day 1973 where she fought for her right to speak against a heavily white, cis and upper class audience.
On the night of the vote the same white woman called in as the only trans person in opposition to the investigation and the sanctuary resolution, proclaiming Joe Petty as “one of the good ones”, someone who has always shown up for our community (for photo shoots sure). During this Joe Petty deadnamed and misgendered her in his thanks for her comment. After weeks of meetings packed with hundreds of queers, the city council led by Joe Petty fawned their support for the LGBT but refused the substantive investigation into their own behavior, opting instead to only pass the symbolic resolution.
Where did that energy go? There aren’t more organized queers to come out of it. After another electoral cycle of queer people and allies devoting their time to democrat campaigns we still got a more conservative council, and the same school committee. Campaign messaging sells the idea that if they just replace their opponent they can make things right. Too much focus is put on the player who said a slur, instead of the system that allows dehumanization across the board. Later on when the DOJ report broke detailing abuse and rape of sex workers from the WPD, where were the same queers? Black and brown trans people especially are pushed into sex work, yet this does not impact all queer people the same; solidarity with sex workers is not a priority in our movement. What’s more, some of our feminist movements harbor sex worker exclusionary sentiments, which inevitably harms trans and gender non conforming people as our movements are inextricably linked.
“I’ve been trying to get up here all day, for your gay brothers and your gay sisters in jail! They’re writing me every motherfuckin’ week and ask for your help, and you all don’t do a god damn thing for them.” — Sylvia Rivera
Backlash through co-optation to the countercultural Black, queer and feminist liberation movements became obvious in the 1980’s. By the 2000’s the non-profit industrial complex and its lawyers were able to frame marriage as the goal, instead of a target. Marriage became something queers aspired to, instead of seeing it as an avenue for colonial control. Institutional monogamy found another way to quell the threat we are to the capitalist patriarchy. Assimilation became the foundation of the LGBT rights movement.
“We can no longer let people like the Empire State Pride Agenda, the HRC in Washington, speak for us” — Sylvia Rivera
From our origins of Black drag kings and queens, Black transsexual sex workers throwing bricks at pigs, our movement has been co-opted. Identity politics, Rainbow Capitalism, Bioessentialism, Pinkwashing, white respectability and disposability politics, and the non profit industrial complex have disarmed us. Many even in close affinity still can’t deal with their own white supremacy and transmisogyny, Black and brown transsexual women are pushed out of the very movements we helped create.
These idealized communities require disposability to maintain the illusion—violence and ostracism against the black/brown/trans/trash bodies that serve as safety valves for the inevitable anxiety and disillusionment of those who wish “total identification”. —Porpentine, Hot Allostatic Load
The state of our movement is in shambles. Queers are wrapped up in non profits, candidates that don’t care about them, or organizations more interested in using us as political tools to win their campaigns or increase membership. “Protect the dolls” has become a catchy phrase for social media bios or t-shirts while queer, especially Black and brown, trans youth are still struggling with high rates of homelessness, addiction and HIV. With little options, many of us pushed into sex work to live. While HIV research is being cut, trans people are being forced to detransition in prison, trans women are being v-coded, trans people are being attacked in every state in the country, and in most countries across the world.
“The degree to which any movement is progressive or revolutionary is measured by its independence from the rulers of the society it seeks to change” — Leslie Feinberg
We don’t claim to have all the answers, but we know this isn’t working. Queers can not simply attend more city council meetings, vote more or get trans faces in high places. Queer people, especially trans people of color, need to organize together, look at and address our movement problems, and seriously work on developing a revolutionary strategy. “Just do something” has not been enough and won’t be. When our so-called leaders don’t depend on the strategy working, it doesn’t have to. If metrics for funding are the goal and not revolution, and our humanity is used for campaigning, we will always be struggling for basic rights through piecemeal reforms, and struggling to survive.
“You can’t build a revolution with no education” — Fred Hampton
The urgency put on us is what requires us to seriously reflect, study, and strategize. The situation is not too urgent to study, the situation is too urgent for us to continue wasting our time making the same mistakes that our movement has made over and over again. Mistakes that we can avoid if we learn from the revolutionaries before us. Studying past movements needs to be seen as a serious way to develop strategy and win, not a distraction or chore.
Without education, people will accept anything. Without education, what you’ll have is neo-colonialism instead of colonialism like you have now. Without education, people don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing, you know what I mean? You might get people caught up in an emotionalist movement, might get them because they’re poor and they want something and then if they’re not educated, they’ll want more and before you know it, they’ll be capitalists and we’ll have Negro imperialism. — Fred Hampton
If any of this speaks to you and you are interested in organizing for protection and power of queer people in Worcester, join us, a collection of angry queers that want to destroy the club, not join it.
To get involved, reach out us at WooTRAN@protonmail.com. Ally looking to support? Here’s two incarcerated trans women you can support now: https://catracha.noblogs.org/jaia-and-gia/
Asa Reyes is a Worcester based anti-zionist and transfeminist organizer, currently a hotline operator for LUCE, leading Zero Fare WRTA and organizing trans prisoner support. Last year managed multiple city council and school committee campaigns, and part of organizing the trans sanctuary city resolution. She is the founder of the transfeminist blog Catracha.