Cameron Avisa Patel (NYU College of Arts and Sciences) | Sylvia Rivera Law Project | New York, USA
This past month, I attended a community meeting at SRLP and got to know some of the members. A lot of my day-to-day role involves helping people fill out forms, sign up for events, and navigate questions about health insurance. I also get to learn from members who witnessed and/or participated in the early Gay Liberation Movement. If I have time, I want to collect the oral histories of interested members.
June is a very busy time because of Pride, and SRLP has been hard at work organizing for upcoming events. We will be participating in the Queer Liberation March, which is a protest against corporate and state co-opting of Pride. Next month, SRLP is honoring key leaders in the Gay Liberation Movement by celebrating Sylvia and Marsha Day.
Alongside supporting SRLP’s existing event planning, I am also working on a Know Your Rights guide on involuntary inpatient psychiatric admission. Once I am done with the content, SRLP will run it by an attorney, and then I will help format it into a pamphlet. That has been most of my work this month since I had some time off for surgery.