Throw a Brick, Give a Brick

Marsha threw a brick, and now we need a brick to keep the mission moving.

 

By: Chastity Bowick

 

Pride was never just about visibility. It was never just about rainbow logos, parties, or corporations learning how to say “inclusion” for 30 days out of the year. Pride was born because people fought back. Because our elders, especially BLACK TRANS people, demanded the right to survive, to exist, and to dream beyond the conditions they were handed.

 

This year, the Marsha P. Johnson Institute is launching Throw a Brick, Give a Brick, a national Pride campaign rooted in community, love, and direct investment in BLACK TRANS lives.

 

The campaign honors the revolutionary spirit of Marsha P. Johnson and the generations of TRANS people who carried each other through impossible conditions with limited resources and unwavering courage. If our elders threw the first brick for liberation, then we believe now is the time for people to “give a brick” by directly investing in the futures of BLACK TRANS communities.

 

And that investment has to mean more than visibility.

 

We are living through a moment where anti-TRANS legislation, political attacks, and cultural hostility continue to intensify across the country. Our humanity is debated in courtrooms, on social media, in classrooms, and across headlines. At the same time, many of our communities are still navigating housing instability, lack of healthcare access, economic insecurity, and violence with little meaningful support.

 

Yet even in the middle of all of that, we continue to love each other. We continue to create joy. We continue to build family.

 

That is what this Pride season means to us.

 

Throughout Pride, members of the MPJI team will travel across the country to connect with you– our community– and celebrate our family, and continue building spaces rooted in love, safety, and collective power. We want to hug our people. We want to hear directly what people need. We want to laugh together, celebrate together, and remind each other that we deserve softness and joy, too.

 

This campaign is also rooted in trust-based giving, because our people deserve resources without punishment, shame, or impossible barriers. BLACK TRANS people know what we need to survive. We know what we need to heal. We know what freedom looks like for us.

 

For years, BLACK TRANS communities have been expected to create miracles from almost nothing while simultaneously shaping culture, movements, language, art, and liberation itself. We have always been the blueprint while remaining among the most underfunded. That contradiction cannot continue.

 

So this Pride, we are asking people to move beyond performance and into action.

 

Put your money where your Pride started.

 

Support BLACK TRANS people not only when tragedy strikes, but while we are living, dreaming, building, resting, creating, and loving each other in real time. Help us continue creating spaces where our people can experience safety, affirmation, and joy.

 

Pride is not possible without BLACK TRANS people. It never was.

 

Now it’s time to PAY IT.