TLGBQIA+ Neighbor Speed Meet
Dreaming of queer community?
Feel like your social skills have gotten rusty after 2+ years on zoom? Join QCRU for an evening of connection - speed meet your queer + trans neighbors, find new friends, chat up some cuties, and build a more interconnected Baltimore, one five-minute conversation at a time!
Kids, pups, and polycule friendly! Snacks and non-alcoholic beverages will be available for purchase.
To make this space more accessible for our disabled, chronically ill, and immunocompromised neighbors and as we are very much still in a surge of COVID cases, we are requiring masks for this event when not eating or drinking. Please do not attend if you are symptomatic or have had a recent exposure. Thank you for doing your part to keep our community safe.
This event is for trans, nonbinary, lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, intersex, asexual, 2spirit+ Baltimore City community members. Allies invested in trans liberation are welcome to donate and join us.
Suggested donation: $5-30. All proceeds from ticket sales will fund future community safety training series.
Register at: bit.ly/qcruspeedmeet
June Queer Joy Meeting
Longing for affirming sources of joy, connection, and support? Feeling left out of inaccessible, in-person pride month events? Wanna get more involved with QCRU? This month’s queer joy meeting will take place over zoom tomorrow, 6:30-7:30 pm. We’ll be checking in, brainstorming future queer joy meet ups, and sharing updates about next month’s TLGBQIA+ Neighbor Speed Meet! Join us on zoom: bit.ly/qj716
Community Grief Circle
QCRU invites all TLGBQIA+ community members and allies to join our Community Grief Circle on May 29th from 4-7 pm at the Y-Not lot. We will gather the YNOT Lot to grieve, breathe, and be in community with one another as we co-create a Community Grief Circle. Join us to honor loved ones in community with one another, foster deeper connections with neighbors, and learn from each other ways to feel into our grief and loss. Materials will be available to create your own portable altar, but we encourage bringing pictures or other items of personal significance. We will cry, laugh, dance, learn new skills and admire art from local artists. Snacks and non-alcoholic refreshments will be available. As this is an in-person event, masks and social distancing are encouraged.
Somatic Self-Care + Grief Work
Join Haylin and Jamee for our final session on Somatic Self-Care and Releasing Grief.
Haylin will discuss somatic self-care and ways to care for ourselves and nervous systems, touching on boundaries, pleasure, and coming home to ourselves. Their workshop will end with a group guided self bodywork session focusing on acupressure techniques to release tension from the face and neck.
Then Jamee will lead us through a workshop on Qi Gong for Grief and Energetic Balance. Qi gong, cultivation of vital energy, is a low-impact movement practice that originates from China and draws on martial arts forms. There are a wide range of benefits one can experience including calming the nervous system, reducing pain, increasing energy, and improving mood. In this workshop we will be learning qi gong movements and Chinese medicine theory to help process grief, balance our vital energy (qi), and deepen our connections to ourselves and our communities. The movements can be done seated, standing, and with various modifications.
Please join us for this session in comfortable clothing, with somewhere to sit, water, a snack, a journal, and anything else you might want to feel held.
Haylin Belay (she/her) is a trauma-informed bodyworker, sexual health educator, and pleasure witch whose work is focused in teaching people of all ages practical skills for a healthier, more pleasurable life. In addition to over a decade of experience in developing research-based health education programming and providing professional development for clinicians, educators, and activists, she offers workshops, trainings, and one-on-one coaching from an integrated mind-body-spirit perspective.
Jamee Pineda (he/him) is a hilot binabaylan, acupuncturist, and Chinese medicine practitioner. His practice is informed by his identity as a queer, trans, non binary, Tagalog person living in the U.S. With the combination of his lived experience and training, his goal is to help individuals and communities live their fullest lives by offering a decolonizing approach to medicine rooted in traditional and ancestral practices.
Basic First Aid + Crisis Care
Join Lex and Marian, members of the Baltimore Street Medics Collective, for an introduction to first aid and crisis triage. This training will cover assessing scene safety, basic first aid, opioid overdose reversal, how to determine when to escalate care, how to communicate with medical professionals, and ways to advocate and reduce harm for people in crisis when interacting with emergency medical services. Content warning: frank discussion of bodily injury, life threats, bleeding, discussion of opioid overdose & reversal.
Lex (they/them) is a healthcare provider and public health researcher with specialties in reproductive justice, gender-affirming hormone therapy, midwifery, and HIV awareness, prevention, and treatment among highly- affected populations. They live in Baltimore with one of their children, several cats, and lots of plants.
Marian (they/them) is a community educator and street medic certified in basic first aid, Community Emergency Response and Wilderness First Aid. They have lived in Baltimore since 2011 and have organized and taught protest health and safety and 20 hour street medic trainings in several states. Marian loves to travel and makes it a point to research and find rocks and minerals wherever they go.
Grounding Through Crisis
Join Jesse Gold for a deep dive into grounding practices to stay cool in a crisis, find your center, and remain present and able to help others as they navigate crisis situations. They’ll discuss trigger mapping, somatic self-awareness, share an overview of different DBT skills, the bodymind connection, and close with a group breathwork exercise. This training will feature the use of small break out rooms to role play and practice grounding skills together. Small break out rooms will not be recorded.
Jesse Gold (they/them) is Clinical Mental Health Counseling Intern (soon to be licensed therapist!) at Inner-Evolution Holistic Psychotherapy and Coaching, specializing in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and Polyvagal Theory. They are also a trauma-informed body positive yoga instructor who works to facilitate nervous system regulation through gentle restorative movement and breath. They live in Baltimore with their partner and cat, and spend a lot of time gardening, foraging, making herbal medicine, and making music.
Upstander Intervention and TGNC Self-Defense
Join Rej from Secure the Bag Safety for an interactive training on Upstander Intervention and Self-Defense for TLGBQIA+ folks. We'll cover ways to intervene when witnessing harassment on the street or at the club and how to keep ourselves and our communities safer in the face of transphobic violence. Participants will be expected to join us with their cameras on for the self-defense portion of the training so facilitators can give notes on posture and form. We strongly encourage attending with a partner to practice with and request that if possible, you log on from one shared device, to ensure more participants are able to attend. Due to capacity limits, participants will be capped at 75 for this training. Content warning: this training will feature discussion of physical violence and transphobia.
Rej (he/him) is a co-founder and a lead trainer of STB (Secure the Bag) Safety, which is an organization that centers its work around protecting the lives of our BIPOC T/GNC/NB siblings by equipping them with safety kits and currently offering monthly T/GNC/NB self defense + safety virtual class. Rej has been a practitioner of martial arts (hapkido, TKD, BJJ, muay thai, Kumite Jiujitsu) for over 16 years (and holds black belts in hapkido and TKD). He has been facilitating Upstander intervention, de-escalation, and self defense + personal safety classes from trauma informed lens for the last five years. STB Safety offers a free monthly self-defense and safety class for TGNC folks over zoom. Learn more at: https://stbsafety.org and https://www.instagram.com/stbsafety
April Queer Joy Neighbor Meet Up
Join us for snacks, bracelet making and a discussion about rest as a practice for resistance and liberation. 4.20 | wyman park dell | 5-7 PM
Violence De-Escalation Team Meeting
A monthly virtual meeting space for QCRU members to practice and explore non-violent interventions in instances of interpersonal violence and support one another as we put restorative and transformative techniques into practice.
Queer Joy Team Meeting
a virtual meeting space for artists, healers, makers, and neighbors to share their holistic, supportive, creative skills, techniques, and practices to nourish our spirits + sustain this work!
Become a QCRU member
Sign up to join our network of TLGBQIA+ neighbors and attend trainings to develop your ability to provide mental health crisis response, peer support, and post-crisis care to neighbors in need.