- Conference
- 2024 National LGBT+ Conference
- Date
- 17 July 2024
- Decision
- Carried
Conference, we need to build on UNISON’S strong foundation of self-organisation. Moving forward in planning for next year’s campaigns, we need to grow the legacies the year of Black Workers 2023 and Year of LGBT+ Workers 2024.
Within UNISON, Black LGBT+ voices have created a space that provides a focus on the organising and campaigning priorities to meet the challenges of structural prejudice and discrimination we face because of our Blackness and simultaneously our LGBT+ identities.
Young Black LGBT+ people face multiple and particular challenges because of their hyper-visibility within wider society and LGBT+ communities. To be young, Black and LGBT+ is to encounter barrier after barrier to living a safe, secure life where they can thrive, just like anyone would expect to have. This includes family tensions, which may lead to increased likelihood of homeless, struggling to meet cost of living needs for day-to-day life, poorer physical and mental health outcomes, poorer employment outcomes.
A 2021 Albert Kennedy Trust (AKT) report into LGBTQ+ homelessness, detailed the increased incidence of abuse, discrimination and suffering experienced by minoritised young Black LGBT+ people. It highlighted their relative isolation ‘no one knows your story because you’re alone.’ Both young Black LGBT+ people and their families are more likely to be unaware of the support available in the LGBT+ community, or the services they can access, specialist substance and alcohol abuse services, money advice services, mental health services, education training and jobs advice.
Conference acknowledges the lived experience of young Black trans people coping with their hypervisibility, for example, the AKT report states ‘being trans is such a taboo within housing associations, within housing units and local authorities’.
Conference acknowledges we need to do things differently to grow young Black LGBT+ activism. We need to show and ensure we are in fact a safe space for young Black LGBT+ people to become engaged in activism. We need to innovate so that we can reach out to young Black LGBT+ members and potential members and activists.
We need to embed an intersectional approach in all our actions to support Black young LGBT+ people to be fully who they are. We need to live up to the inspirational statement given by the national Black members committee to the Black LGBT+ network: ‘This is a safe space to be who you are’.
Conference calls on the national LGBT+ committee to:
1)Highlight examples of young Black LGBT+ activists in UNISON campaigns and communications and make them visible in materials produced.
2)Seek to work with community organisations as appropriate which address the needs of minoritised young Black LGBT+ people.
3)Work with all self-organised groups and the national young members forum to campaign around young Black LGBT+ issues so intersectionality is respected.
4)Work with service group executives to provide opportunities for young Black LGBT+ people to become more involved as UNISON activists.