Creating better outcomes for Black transgender And gender diverse people in Austin.Black Trans Leadership Austin
Welcome to Black Trans Leadership Austin (BTLA) – your grassroots beacon of hope and transformation in Austin, Texas. We're passionately committed to uplifting Black transgender and gender-expansive individuals through targeted grant opportunities, comprehensive professional development, and vibrant community-building activities. Join us in our mission to empower, connect, and celebrate our community, forging pathways to a brighter, more inclusive future.
Our Call to action.
In This is What We Need, we discuss what secure housing, stable income, and policy advocacy would look like for us without discrimination, transphobia, and racism.
Our Mission
Black Trans Leadership of Austin was formed by local queer black activists who identified issues directly affecting us that other LGBTQIA2+ organizations had yet to address. From our lived experience and direct connection to black trans people, we have intimate knowledge of the problems our community faces and powerful insights into the solutions. We have experienced and lived through the effects of the intersectional issues of racism, state violence, transphobia, misogyny, and homophobia. We seek to de-commodify human needs such as food, shelter, and healthcare services as well as provide a bridge to the finer things in life in for a community that is often forced live on the margins of society and miss out on living our fullest lives. Black Trans Leadership of Austin lives by the principle that we uplift our community through a grassroots approach to building solidarity and power. BTLA exists to help our community to thrive, not just survive.
“This is not something that we just wake up in the morning and make the decision to be trans or not. This is who we are. It’s our lived experience, and our lived experience is starting to look more and more like death and that is not fair.”
-Dee Dee Waters, 2017, Black Transwomen Inc.,