Community is Everything

My free time is spent working with Safe Redlands School (co-founder), Redlands Free Market (founder) and serving one the board of Inland Empire Harm Reduction. As a parent to a trans teen, the surviving sister of an unhoused trans femme, and as an educator who works with young adults (undergraduate students), I’ve seen first had the devastating impacts that inequity and stigma can have on vulnerable groups.

Additionally, I work with friends as a community response team to hateful banners that have started to appear on Inland Empire Freeways by the Southern Poverty Law center designated hate group, The Proud Boys.

I’m also the proud parent of a trans teen, Milo. Who unafraid to confront hatred. Below is profiled by the LA times in the link below.

An estimated 100 people attended a downtown event organized by The Neighborhood Gays and Safe Redlands Schools to honor Nex Benedict, a non-binary student who was fatally beaten at school. 

Safe Redlands Schools

Born during the summer of 2021 as school board meetings across the country began to experience coordinated disruptions from groups pushing extreme right wing views Redlands experienced it's own local uptick in efforts to defund public education. Safe Redlands Schools formed in response to this uptick. SRS has created a community of parents, caregivers, educators and allies who seek to promote physical and emotional safety for the K-12 students of Redlands.

Safe Redlands Schools has worked to identify, monitor and educate the community on local factions of extreme political groups and hate groups who have an interest in disrupting the public education system. In order to ensure our community feels safe while speaking to our elected officials about the importance of fair and equitable public education, SRS has worked to create and execute safety plans for attending and participating in public meetings.

Redlands Free Market

Sylvan Park, Redlands CA

Redlands free Market is bi-monthly mutual aid project that directly meets the survival needs of our local un-housed community and their pets.

I created this market after the death of my un-housed little sister Amy. RFM is the manifestation of what was originally a mobile distribution, formed as a response to caring for Amy.

After a childhood of neglect, Amy aged out of the foster system an illiterate trans femme with no resources, who often engaged in survival sex work. After years of failed attempts to house Amy, I eventually took on the role of caretaker by regularly delivering essential goods to Amy to meet her immediate survival needs.
These recurring trips lead to familiarity with the local unhoused community and I would attempt to meet their needs as well.

Social media fundraising efforts to help cover the cost of these growing deliveries proved successful. Locals who were unable to provide essentials to our unhoused neighbors were happy to support someone who was. Inland Empire Harm Reduction reached out to me and a relationship formed that became the foundation of RFM's adoption of Harm Reduction principles.

Amy Williams

Oct 25 1990 - July 5 2020

It is in her memory that we commit to engaging with Black, Brown, and Indigenous thought that teaches us the traditions of not hesitating to precisely name oppression when we see it and refusing to shy away in exchange for unilateral comfort so that we can put into practice a world we want to live in, a world Amy would have thrived in.

Inlands Empire Harm Reduction

I currently serve on the board forInland Empire Harm Reduction (IEHR).
IEHR is a community-based public health organization working to improve the health and wellbeing of people affected by drug use in the Inland Empire region of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, also known as the unceded communal lands of the Cahuilla, Luiseño, Tongva and Serrano peoples.