Welcoming Our New Co-Executive Director
At GSA Network, our collective pride is a labor of love and liberation rooted in the brilliance and resistance of trans, queer, Two-Spirit youth. Intergenerational wisdom guides our steps as we trust the leadership and legacies of TQ2S+ Black and brown women and femmes. In this spirit, we proudly announce our newest Co-Executive Director, Maya LaFlamme Washington, who joins Gia Loving in forging a network of abundant possibilities and transformative change.
Maya LaFlamme is a Black, southern, ciswoman living in Detroit, Michigan. To this work, she brings liberatory logistics, an administrative praxis that balances experimentation, equity, and beauty.
Below, Maya and Gia close out Pride month with a note on the role of abundance in the year forward and beyond.
Read more about our Co-Directors below!
Devising Freedom & Queer Abundance
By Gia Loving and Maya LaFlamme
As we embark on this journey of co-leadership, within the immediacy of this political and economic landscape, we confront the diverse anxieties & needs of GSA clubs, TQ2S+ youth of color, and those that support them. The ever-growing list of urgent initiatives, calls to action, gathering, grieving, and caretaking looks all too familiar. It leads us to wonder, are we doing enough? Do we have enough? What more can we do? What more do we need?
Our culture sells us the un-truths of capitalism that we can never feel adequately resourced, safe, or abundant without more. Ads across the algorithm bet on us believing these lies.
However, our goal is not merely for more. We follow a different tradition that leads us toward true abundance; deep, distributive, diverse, and self-determined.
The possibilities are all around us! We experience our unique lives in a biodiverse ecosystem, collectively enriching and sharing resources. Plug into it. At GSA Network, our role is to co-create and steward the opportunities for those resources to permeate our network in the interest of regeneration. By leaning into our interconnected strength & prosperity, we remain committed to the small, adaptive, and relational pathways for TQ2S+ youth leadership and transformative change.
Through liberatory logistics, we devise internal infrastructural systems with the understanding that oppression is operationalized and so must be our liberation. The Youth Freedom Fund redistributes funds to GSA clubs across the nation, supporting youth-led initiatives and ensuring their longevity. Our emerging platform, STAR School, a virtual GSA club, serves as a hub extending infrastructure support, national and regional curriculum, and political education beyond the physical confines of school environments to meet the current and future needs of TQ2S+ youth organizing.
We map these connecting points through our GSA Registry, using data from self-reported clubs nationwide to create and expand resources needed for longevity and designated GSA Days, taking coordinated action for social justice. Our support extends from our California Youth Organizing team to our partners throughout the National Association of GSA Networks, building a coalition of GSA advisors and youth leaders dedicated to our collective rights and resistance. Shared initiatives like Gender Justice Leadership Programs– our TGNC youth-led media and storytelling programs, and Two-Spirit Initiative– Indigenous-led programming meant to imbue cultural practice into youth organizing, support our organization’s efforts to decolonize our curricula.
We braid together more than half a century of our people (Homecoming), our histories (Truthtelling), our strategies (Spiritsustaining), and our dreams (Stargayzing) to cultivate a culture that nourishes our futures. This braiding is an act of resistance and creation.
This is how we Devise Freedom.
In Solidarity and Service,
Gia Loving & Maya LaFlamme
GSA Network
Co-Executive Directors
