Black Pride: LaSaia Wade
LaSaia Wade
“I just want to be able to live my best life the way I want to live my best life. In all the glory of my transness…blackness…and queerness.”
Most recently, LaSaia Wade has made headlines for turning her Southside Chicago LGBTQ center into a safe haven, where protesters can get food, water and first aid. However, her center, Brave Space Alliance, was actually born out of a 2017 transgender rights protest in downtown Chicago. In fact, Wade told the Chicago Tribune that she would be out on the streets protesting if her partner weren’t at home pregnant with their first child.
“I cannot forget that BSA was born out of a march, and the people at BSA are black and brown people,” Wade told the Tribune. “Even though we’re fighting for our liberation, at the same time, we are so appreciative of people putting their bodies and their lives on the line for our bodies,” she continued.
Wade was born in the Washington Heights community, and grew up on the Southside of the city.
“ I call Sauk Village Home. I call it peaceful hood because you have black and brown people all around you,” Wade told Volcano Radio. “You have your black elders around you knocking on your door checking in if you need something or to see how you’re doing. When you see them you know their names, Joanne, Janney that lives down the street. It is loud too. And what I mean by loud is you hear music coming up and down the street all the time and different types of music of people people listen to. And it feels peaceful because we have land, breeze of wind coming through. And we can open our windows and not really pretty much worry about a lot. But we are still worried because we are still black.”
Wade continued to tell the publication that she wasn’t always open about being trans / queer, and because she kept that part of her life private, it was easier to navigate the world.
“I want to be honest, we talk about visibility is all we need. But visibility, for me, is death. Visibility for most of us is death, the more the light comes on us, the more the light shows. And when it shows, it shows the cracks, it shows where the underwear was hidden up under the bed and it shows all the different types of secrets that our community has held, and held dearly, for our survival method. Now that the light is in the closet, we have to tell our survival methods, and the people that were trying to kill us now know how we survive. And in understanding what that looks like, we have to now figure out different methods of survival. Now the world sees our death…and it’s a double edged sword because you still don’t care unless it hits home. And that’s the issue that we’re having; until it hits home, until is a cousin brother or sister, it won’t really do the damage that it needs to do for you to actually be as upset and outraged as we are.”
Having once lived a secret life in order to survive, Wade now dedicates her life’s work to the cause as an open Afro-Puerto Rican indigenous Trans Woman. She has 10+ years of experience in organizing and advocacy work with black, indigenous, trans and gender nonconforming people around the world. She is the founder of TNTJ Tennessee Trans Journey Project; a member of Chicago Trans Gender Nonconforming Collective; the Trans Liberation Collective; and Director of Brave Space Alliance.
Brave Space Alliance is the first Black-led, trans-led LGBTQ Center located on the South Side of Chicago, dedicated to creating and providing affirming, culturally competent, for-us by-us resources, programming, and services for LGBTQ individuals on the South and West sides of the city.