We lovingly envision a just, equitable St. Louis where people of all genders and sexualities live with love, safety, and abundance.
We strengthen the St. Louis queer community by building our collective skills for peer support, active listening, and navigating conflict / harm.
We increase queer St. Louisans’ access to resources by increasing resource transparency and accountability.
We amplify queer, radical values within local systems through research justice, storytelling, and advocacy.
We mobilize community partners towards a shared vision for queer liberation through building trust and long-term relationships.
Our ultimate goal is to challenge oppressive systems by building collective power and facilitating transformative healing – by and for the St. Louis queer/LGBTQIA+ community.
SQSH Announcements
As a grassroots organization, we rely deeply on community support & relationships to achieve our mission! Looking to support SQSH but not sure where to start? Check out our BOLO (“Be On the Look Out”) card for ideas, action items, and tips on how to support SQSH!
What do recent anti-trans laws mean for trans youth and families in Missouri? And where should impacted trans Missourians look for resources and gender-affirming healthcare?
Read our long-form newsletter to learn about SB 49 & SB 39 and their effects.
By the St. Louis Queer/LGBTQIA+ community
Our mission is to support and empower the queer/LGBTQIA+ community in the St. Louis MO-IL Metro Area and beyond—by facilitating healing spaces and building our community’s capacity for peer support, education, advocacy, storytelling, shared leadership, transformative justice, and systems change. We aim to create alternative models, strategies, and practices that move our community closer to prison/police abolition and collective liberation.
For the St. Louis Queer/LGBTQIA+ community
We center the St. Louis queer/LGBTQIA+ community’s self-determination and access to an array of resources. We practice, explore, and learn from a variety of strategies to interrupt, prevent, and transform harm – including peer support, resource connections, political education, storytelling, conflict mediation, and expansive avenues to collective healing.
We invest in community care, long-term relationship-building, power-sharing, youth empowerment, and non-punitive accountability.
Meet Our Collective
Our SQSH community is made up of a dedicated group of queer & trans St. Louisans. As marginalized people with various identities and lived experiences but who share a queer politic, we situate ourselves within a community-based movement that aims to end violence without reliance on the police industrial complex (PIC), medical industrial complex (MIC), or other harmful institutions.
Support our work by becoming a
SQSH Star Monthly Donor!
Our monthly donors are a vital part of SQSH, just like stars are a vital part of our galaxy. As a SQSH Star, you are not only supporting SQSH’s transformative programs, but joining a powerful movement of people committed to queer liberation.
Love Letter To Our Black Queer Siblings & Comrades
Black queer St. Louisans have been strong leaders, healers, and peacekeepers in our communities for years. The existence and resilience of Black queer joy makes our spaces beautiful, tender, and loving. We need to support and love on the leadership of Black queer organizers in St. Louis.
Black, queer, and collective liberation are intertwined – we know that queer folks cannot be free until our Black, brown, femme, disabled, migrant, poor, working-class, sex worker, and other oppressed comrades are free.
We see the ways in which anti-Black racism has worn down our Black queer friends in St. Louis. We witness queer spaces in St. Louis being historically dominated by White queer voices, needs, and interests – contributing to the displacement and erasure of Black and brown queer lives, narratives, and experiences. This needs to change.
Our team at SQSH aims to center Black and brown queer St. Louisans in our mission and programs. We are imperfect in the implementation of our values – but we aim for intention, connection, sustained commitment, and accountable use of our organizational resources and power.
We see that Black queer St. Louisans are often much further along in your political journey. We know that building mutual investment, trust, and respect through cross-racial partnerships, among people who have been failed by broken systems, is a slow process. We ask that folks who love us and our work call us in and hold us accountable, so we can live up to our values.
If you are intrigued and interested in being a part of a multi-racial collective that values long-term relationships, complex identities and experiences, and space for reflection and connection – we’d love for you to join us.
– SQSH’s Staff Team: Luka, Amanda, Avi
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Our multi-racial team is committed to:
Prioritizing relationship-building with Black queer/trans St. Louisans
Implementing trainings on Black trans issues for our staff and leadership
Having honest conversations with Black trans folks among our volunteers, partners, and community base
Collaborating with Black queer community leaders and organizers to host events that cultivate and hold sacred space for Black queer joy
Piloting a Community Advisory Board with majority seats reserved for Black trans St. Louisans
Following up on Community Agreements made at the STL Trans Town Hall in June 2023
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We see that superficial DEI plans often fall flat. We believe that a commitment to Black liberation needs to be grounded in radical values, personal relationships, lived experience, and ongoing practice. We try to do so by:
Inviting our White and White-passing members to engaging in ongoing (un)learning to disrupt their relationship to White privilege and hold each other accountable to ending White supremacy in their lives.
Regularly discussing and interrogating the ways in which racism and White Supremacy impact our team’s culture and shape the nonprofit industrial complex that we operate in.
Fundraising and investing resources (financial, social, emotional) into the well-being and thriving of our Black queer members
Celebrating the brilliance, wisdom, and resilience of Black queer St. Louisans – and honoring their energy and trust when they reach out to SQSH
Centering Black queer St. Louisans’ voices and perspectives during community dialogues and internal conversations
Engaging in ongoing political education with racial justice as a priority topic for our monthly Book Club
We invite you to support the following Black Liberationist organizations:
