With the calls for racial justice and equality for black transgender people, three campaigns to raise money to fund housing and safe spaces for trans people in Atlanta are getting uplifted – to the tune of millions of dollars.

The Homeless Black Trans Women Fund is nearing $2.8 million. Help Fund A Black Queer Owned Community Space! is approaching $75,000. And the Trans Housing Atlanta Program wants is reaching for $150,000.

What’s feeding the success of these campaigns and what will they do with the money?

We’ll explore those issues and more on Friday in the next episode of Q Conversations, our live virtual Q&A series. Our conversation is with the trans people organizing and working on those campaigns – Jesse Pratt López, Taylor Alxndr and Justine Ingram.

We’ll discuss how they started, what the efforts will fund, why they are needed, transgender inclusion and visibility in the ongoing racial justice protests and whether LGB Atlanta is listening to its T brothers and sisters. We’ll also answer your questions.

Register for the July 17 episode of Q Conversations. (The event is free but registration is required.)

Can’t make the event on Friday? Register and we’ll share a recording of the conversation that you can replay later.

Host Matt Hennie is the founder of Project Q Atlanta and has worked in local journalism for more than 25 years.

Alxndr (photo center) is a DIY musician, drag performer and community organizer based in Atlanta. Alxndr is the co-founder and current executive director of Southern Fried Queer Pride, an Atlanta-based non-profit empowering Black queer and QTPOC centered communities in the South through the arts. They’re also the founding mother of the House of ALXNDR, a drag family and events hub bringing inventive, inclusive and drag-infused events to the city.

Ingram (photo left) is the capacity-building assistance specialist at Southern AIDS Coalition as well as an executive board member and program manager for Trans Housing Atlanta Program. She has a strong resume providing intersectional advocacy, training and other services to organizations across metro Atlanta. In her previous role as the first-ever Transgender Coordinator for the Fulton County Board of Health, she planned, organized and promoted public health education programs and curriculum. She has trained more than 300 medical and social service providers on culturally sensitive care. Ingram has built a career dedicated to bringing awareness to housing injustices and accommodations, the specific sexual health needs and concerns of vulnerable communities and the inclusion of transgender and gender non-conforming people in the public and private sector.

López (photo right) is a trans Latinx organizer, activist and photographer with work published in places including the Guardian, the Atlantic, and PBS NewsHour. She uses her artwork and platform to visualize trans folks, people of color, undocumented folks, HIV+ folks – and others whose existence is criminalized or erased. Jesse has exhibited work in places such as the Center for Civil and Human Rights and Mason Fine Art in Atlanta. She has organized and curated exhibitions including a show with Southern Fried Queer Pride aimed at destigmatizing and highlighting sex work as both work and an art form.

This event is supported through a grant from Facebook Journalism Project’s COVID-19 Local News Relief Fund.