Today’s Pride Month interview is with activist Brianna Dee:
Hi, Brianna! I hope you’re staying safe and healthy during the current events. What are you doing to stay creatively motivated in these unusual times?
I find that artful creative expression comes in waves for me. Some of my most powerful musical improvisations, prose, and comedy development manifests during periods of high stress as cathartic release. When I channel pain into storytelling, I find comfort in the reactions of those that share how it impacted them.
Since June is Pride Month, I have to ask: how has being queer and transgender influenced or informed your career path?
When I was contracted as a Senior Risk Advisory Consultant for an international consulting firm, I showed up at work one day with new stud earrings. I had gotten them to celebrate taking my first dose of estrogen. My boss’s boss’s boss was a stereotypical Texas sales jock in his mid-50s and he pulled me into the hall and asked me not to wear them in the workplace. Long story short, my plans to ease into transition were disintegrated and I came out leading to being “released from contract” a couple months later.
I eventually was able to get my dream job working for a social justice non-profit in Detroit as their Accountant. During the interview, they asked me how I worked with people that are different than I am. I responded “As a queer transgender woman, almost everyone is different than me. I focus on what we have in common and celebrate what makes us different.” My career was cut short due to physical injury and compounding mental health complications. Now, I spend my time being vocal and involved in efforts for racial equity, social justice, and direct action.
You were Pentecostal and now you’re Muslim. I would love to hear about that journey from one belief system to another.
Muslims really aren’t all that different than Christians. They don’t accept me either. Joking aside, Islam is more similar to Christianity than it is different. Like Christianity, there are an infinite number of interpretations, segmentations, and differentiations in the way it is practiced. What I found when I decided to learn about Islam directly from Muslims instead of through third-parties was that we shared so many familiar traditions and practices. The progressive Muslimahs I met accepted me as their sister despite being queer and transgender. I began to study the religion I had always heard of but never investigated for myself. I found peace, hope, and inspiration from the Quran and made the decision to convert to a progressive, inclusive, merciful practice of Islam, which I believe, in its purest form, it is. Hardly a zealot, my spiritual practice is personal and meaningful.
I’m also interested in the intersectionality of being queer, transgender, and Muslim. In America, that’s pretty much a trifecta of targets for bigots and hate.
I recently had a social worker tell me that I am a walking taboo. I’m just a masochist. Being queer and transgender wasn’t enough. I decided to add another layer to the onion.
You play piano and percussion, and were a Pentecostal musician and vocalist. You told me your proudest paid performance was playing call and response gospel style piano at Affirmations LGBTQ community center fundraiser that brought in 60k. in one night. Tell us about that experience.
Your activism is not radical if it doesn’t include the poor and differently abled. Affirmations hosts a popular fundraiser where the price of admission is two bottles of wine; one to share and one to go into the prize raffle that each attendee gets a ticket for. This is contrast to the annual gala with a ticket price that is out of reach for many. I frequent the community center often because it has a computer lab, support groups, and two pianos in its art gallery.
As I was playing one day, the executive director asked if I would be interested in playing for the upcoming event. I was thrilled and accepted. He insisted that I would be paid even though I offered to donate my talent.
We didn’t plan too much. I was told I would play for an hour or so. I arrived early and helped where I could. The executive director eventually asked me to play behind him quietly as he gave his official address to the attendees and made “the ask” for support. I totally improvised and tapped into my formative youth playing in a Pentecostal church band and filled in the “pockets” aka the quiet spaces in between talking, with arpeggios, riffs, and melodies. The crowd ate it up especially since the executive director was caught off guard and got a kick out of it. When it was all said and done, after corporate sponsorships and donations from those in attendance, they raised $60,000 in one night with a total expense around $1000, including the market-rate stipend they insisted on giving me.
My favorite part of the night was looking out into the crowd and seeing friends I know survive on fixed incomes rub shoulders with those that enjoy the best material things in life. That’s how you do activism.
What inspires you now? What are you passionate about?
I’m passionate about authenticity and queer visibility. It’s my daily goal to send positive ripples of change into the world. In my closeted days, I always noticed those that lived openly and authentically and looked up to them, hoping one day I would be able to live with such confidence. I purposefully share my lived experiences, the good, the bad, and the ugly, so that those who want to be allies can learn firsthand. Perhaps it will prevent future harm because they got to learn from my journey.
And finally, where can people find you and your work online?
https://www.facebook.com/GADESFERNDALE/?modal=admin_todo_tour
https://www.facebook.com/dee.kingsley.94
Brianna Dee Kingsley is the founder of Grassroots Activism Direct Emergency Support – GADES, a project she started in the autumn of 2019. In June, 2020, GADES was awarded $2500 in seed money from The Trans Justice Funding Project.
Stirred to action when she heard the 2016 presidential election results, she got up off the couch and joined the Metro Detroit Political-Action Committee, eventually serving a period as the LGBTQ liaison, helping organize, promote, and coordinate a half dozen protests and rallies cresting a cumulative 1,000 attendees.
She took the lead on a collaborative effort to protest conversion therapy being offered at Metro City Church in Riverview, MI resulting in local, state, and international news coverage of the event that saw greater than 300 people braving 20 degree weather, snowfall with an impending blizzard, and a foot of snow on the ground to protest the trauma-inducing $200 service and reinforce the idea that we are born perfect.
A disabled Finance and Accounting professional of ten years, she has leveraged her Bachelor of Business Administration degree and progressive experience that she developed working in the finance departments of Hewlett-Packard, Fiat-Chrysler, and AAA Life Insurance Company to support non-profit operations as an employee for humanitarian and social justice organizations like Habitat for Humanity, Equality Michigan, and Allied Media Projects. She is currently volunteering her time with GADES.