On today's final episode of Season 1 of Cool Queers Doing Cool Shit, guest host Iman Alsaden helps with a switcheroo and interviews Kelsey. Kelsey shares more about what it's been like to make a show so full of queerness, reflects on her sobriety, talks about whiteness, participates in rapid-fire-trivia-show-questioning, and takes a spin through her favorite moments from all the Season 1 episodes. Cool Queers Doing Cool Shit isn't over forever! Kelsey is looking for more queers committed to community care to feature on future seasons of the podcast! If you have a suggestion, drop her a line at coolqueersdoingcoolshit@gmail.com Show Notes I reference Tema Okun's White Supremacy Culture and encourage you to read this updated version (and you can never read it too many times if it's been a while). You can follow Kelsey's Disco on Substack, connect with Kelsey for freelance writing, and follow her on social media on Twitter, Instagram, and Threads.
On today's episode of Cool Queers Doing Cool Shit, Kelsey sits down with Saria Omer! Saria Omer is many things! A former child, an aspiring adult, and a chronically sleepy person. They are a community organizer, writer, designer, curator, and creative consultant dedicated to the liberation of Black queer people across the Black and African diaspora. Their work often takes the complex and nebulous experiences of marginalized peoples and turns them into accessible opportunities for healing and culturally informed initiatives. We dig into so many meaningful topics, stories, and memories of Saria's childhood as they grew up queer and Muslim and how they are committed to cultivating spaces that celebrate and hold the many experiences of Black queer Muslims today. Kelsey is always looking for more queers committed to community care to feature on the podcast! If you have a suggestion, drop her a line at coolqueersdoingcoolshit@gmail.com Don't forget to also send Kelsey your questions for the season finale! Show Notes Saria would love for you to support and follow them on Instagram @sorryuhh_ You can follow Kelsey's Disco on Substack, connect with Kelsey for freelance writing, and follow her on social media on Twitter, Instagram, and Threads.
On today's episode of Cool Queers Doing Cool Shit, Kelsey sits down with Dr. Iman Alsaden, an abortion provider in Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, a queer media aficionado, passionate poker player, and perhaps queerest of all, Kelsey's partner. This conversation winds through Iman's identities as a queer, Arab, abortion provider, digs into Iman's many varied gay hobbies, explores where Iman found community and solace as a young queer, and gives a brief look into Kelsey and Iman's relationship, including where Iman looks to for motivation to keep going, in spite of the troubling times in our world. Kelsey is always looking for more queers committed to community care to feature on the podcast! If you have a suggestion, drop her a line at coolqueersdoingcoolshit@gmail.com Show Notes Iman doesn't have social media (blessings to them!) but you can support people accessing abortions at their clinic in Kansas by donating to Planned Parenthood Great Plains and the Kansas Abortion Fund. And if you're really trying to reach them, I happen to know a guy who can pass along a message to Iman (spoiler alert, I'm the guy). You can follow Kelsey's Disco on Substack, connect with Kelsey for freelance writing, and follow her on social media on Twitter, Instagram, and Threads.
On today's episode of Cool Queers Doing Cool Shit, Kelsey sits down with Ash Williams, a Black trans abortion doula, public intellectual, and abolitionist community organizer from Fayetteville, North Carolina. Ash shares what he's learned through a lifetime of organizing, starting by advocating for resources for military families, continuing in advocating for trans folks to be able to safely use bathrooms on college campuses, showing up for families who are grieving in the face of police violence, to the work he does today funding people's abortions and bailing people out of jail. We talk about how easy it is to fund these aid efforts, how easy and necessary it is to provide material resources for people in our communities, and how we must do this work at the same time to get closer to a world where we can live autonomous lives. If you're wanting to learn about abortion funding, how to destigmatize abortion, how to show up for people who are incarcerated... then this episode is for you! Kelsey is always looking for more queers committed to community care to feature on the podcast! If you have a suggestion, drop her a line at coolqueersdoingcoolshit@gmail.com Show Notes Learn more about Ash's work and opportunities to fund abortions and bail outs by following him on Twitter, following Charlotte Uprising on Instagram, and by following MAADCo Abortion Doulas on Instagram or learning more at their website. You can follow Kelsey's Disco on Substack, connect with Kelsey for freelance writing, and follow her on social media on Twitter, Instagram, and Threads.
On today's episode of Cool Queers Doing Cool Shit, Kelsey sits down with Scout DeSimio, a queer social worker who has been supporting Kansas City social services for over 10 years. Scout shares what they've learned being in collaboration with queer youth facing houselessness through their work at Pride Haven, an overnight shelter for LGBTQ+ youth, reflects on how she's disrupting nonprofit norms, and myth busts around young queers navigating housing insecurity. It's a conversation rooted in the power of trusting people to be the experts in their own lives, offering the support and resources people ask for, and the power in knowing and believing we're all worthy of housing, safety, and care. Kelsey is always looking for more queers committed to community care to feature on the podcast! If you have a suggestion, drop her a line at coolqueersdoingcoolshit@gmail.com Show Notes Learn more about Scout's work at Pride Haven by following Scout on Instagram or following Pride Haven on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. Show solidarity with the young people who seek services at Pride Haven every day by buying items from their Amazon Wishlist or making a donation! You can follow Kelsey's Disco on Substack, connect with Kelsey for freelance writing, and follow her on social media on Twitter and Instagram.
On today's episode of Cool Queers Doing Cool Shit, Kelsey sits down with DJ Needelman, a nonbinary, genderqueer admirer of the Earth. DJ offers knowledge and reflections on ways they are disrupting capitalistic systems of food through seed sharing, what we can all learn from seeds and plant life, and how their queer and trans identities relate to the resilient and eternal existence of what the Earth offers us. Kelsey is always looking for more queers committed to community care to feature on the podcast! If you have a suggestion, drop her a line at coolqueersdoingcoolshit@gmail.com Show Notes Learn more about DJ at their website and check out their art on their Instagram! If you want to learn more about seed sharing or donate to the Cooperative Gardens Commission, head over to their website or Instagram! You can follow Kelsey's Disco on Substack, connect with Kelsey for freelance writing, and follow her on social media on Twitter and Instagram.
On today's episode of Cool Queers Doing Cool Shit, Kelsey sits down with Jasmine Burnett, a social justice architect and engineer and is the principal and founder of Blkfeminst Advisors. We talk about the importance of finding fun, of asking ourselves what we love, and what we need. We dig into the power and opportunities for identity centered communities like feminism and lesbianism, about the failures of the binary, and about what's possible when we remember that we truly need all of us to find a future centered in liberation. And, like every space that Jasmine occupies, we take time in our conversation to prioritize laughter and lusciousness. Kelsey is always looking for more queers committed to community care to feature on the podcast! If you have a suggestion, drop her a line at coolqueersdoingcoolshit@gmail.com Show Notes Learn more about Jasmine's work at Blkfeminst Advisors Instagram and find her writing in The Echoing Ida Collection and Sweeter Voices Still: An LGBTQ Anthology From Middle America. You can follow Kelsey's Disco on Substack, connect with Kelsey for freelance writing, and follow her on social media on Twitter and Instagram.
On today's episode of Cool Queers Doing Cool Shit, Kelsey sits down with Britney Daniels, RN, MSN, nurse, author, educator, and advocate. We dig into Britney's debut book, Journal of a Black Queer Nurse, a collection of personal stories highlighting the way race, inequality, and a profit-driven healthcare system make the hospital a place where systemic racism is lived. We talk about community care, trauma as a tool, and how white supremacy is the antithesis of wellness. Kelsey is always looking for more queers committed to community care to feature on the podcast! If you have a suggestion, drop her a line at coolqueersdoingcoolshit@gmail.com Show Notes Pre-order Journal of a Black Queer Nurse! Follow Britney on Instagram! You can follow Kelsey's Disco on Substack, connect with Kelsey for freelance writing, and follow her on social media on Twitter and Instagram.
Content Warning/Trigger Warning: Today's episode discusses suicide. If you are a trans person looking for crisis support, you can get safe support without nonconsensual intervention from law enforcement at Trans Lifeline by calling 877-565-8680 or by visiting https://translifeline.org/ On today's episode of Cool Queers Doing Cool Shit, Kelsey sits down with Dr. Devon Ojeda, Senior National Organizer at the National Center for Transgender Equality, to talk about the power in trusting transgender and nonbinary kids, the lies and fiction that power, white supremacy, and capitalism try to convince us are true, the what the fuck about the gender binary, the fact that attacks on trans people impact everybody, inevitable grief, and a whole lot more. Kelsey is always looking for more queers committed to community care to feature on the podcast! If you have a suggestion, drop her a line at coolqueersdoingcoolshit@gmail.com Show Notes You can follow Kelsey's Disco on Substack by visiting https://kelseyrhodes.substack.com/ You can connect with Kelsey for freelance writing at https://kelseyrhodes.com/ and follow her on social media at https://twitter.com/KelseyDotOrg and https://www.instagram.com/kelsey_dot_org/ Want to learn more about Dr. Devon Ojeda and support his work? Follow him on Twitter https://twitter.com/DrDOjeda and visit the National Transgender Center for Equality https://transequality.org/
In this first episode of Cool Queers Doing Cool Shit, Kelsey sits down with Candice Ammori to talk about the hope that still exists in the work for climate justice, on creating space for differences of opinions in collaborative work, the power of feeling with ease with people and community when we can take time to intentionally feel our feelings, and the superpower of learning how to grieve. In 2018, Candice Ammori saw the IPCC report on the state of climate change and she realized that it was time to take her research in environmental policy, biostats, and ethical AI and her passion for collaborative community spaces and mesh them into one. Today, Candice leads Climate Vine, the interdisciplinary action-lab dedicated to making a space where people could come together from policy, investment, non-profit, tech, science, and art fields to have conversations about the climate work we need to do, together. Want to know what Candice is queering? “The sense of certainty. Why was I so certain? Why did I not know that things could change all the time? I surprise myself all the time. And so I think that’s one way that I’m queering it. Living a little bit more comfortably in the ‘I don’t know what I’m certain about’ space.” Listen to the full episode to learn more. Kelsey is looking for more cool queers doing cool shit to care for their communities. Have a suggestion of who she should sit down with next? Send your suggestion to coolqueersdoingcoolshit@gmail.com Show Notes You can follow Kelsey's Disco on Substack by visiting https://kelseyrhodes.substack.com/ You can connect with Kelsey for freelance writing at https://kelseyrhodes.com/ and follow her on social media at https://twitter.com/KelseyDotOrg and https://www.instagram.com/kelsey_dot_org/ Want to learn more about Candice and Climate Vine? Check it out by visiting https://www.climatevine.co/ Correction from the show: Hu was bought by Mondelez, not Nestle. Both are enormous business conglomerates that aren't doing much for climate justice, FWIW.