The Queer and Trans Resilience Coalition

Our Guiding Principles

The Queer and Trans Resilience Coalition (QTRC) is an activist coalition that formed out of necessity in January of 2025, when marginalized people within the urban community of St. John’s, Ktaqmkuk, identified an increasingly dangerous political and social climate. So as not to reenact the systems of power and oppression the QTRC aims to combat, a set of guidelines, as outlined below, will be the guiding principles leading this coalition. 

1. While the QTRC will follow a decentralized organizational structure, a group of “Senior Organizers” will serve as the core group of the coalition. While most decisions will be made by the coalition as a collective, Senior Organizers will be tasked with the following unique responsibilities:
   1. Interviewing potential members, and thereby deciding who may join the coalition;
   2. Managing decisions around removal of members from the coalition;
   3. Managing the coalition’s email and social media accounts.
2. All other decisions not outlined by the responsibilities of the Senior Organizers will hereby be the collective responsibility of the whole QTRC. When decisions are being made, deliberation must happen in a common space (virtual or physical) that all have access to and awareness of. Final consensus will not be declared until 24 hours have passed since the beginning of the discussion, unless otherwise stated (i.e.: if the decision is urgent, less discussion time may be considered; if the decision must be thoroughly examined, more time may be considered). 
3. The QTRC will be led by the following guiding principles, which must be considered by all members in matters of decision-making within the coalition:
   1. The QTRC’s mission is to end queerphobia and transphobia, while understanding that these forms of oppression disproportionately affect queer and trans people with intersecting marginalized identities, and that the hegemonic narratives being pushed against them are historic repetitions, repurposed dominantly from anti-BIPOC policies.
   2. As such, the QTRC is a BIPOC-centered coalition; BIPOC voices must be uplifted and centered in all conversations within the coalition. 
   3. The QTRC is anti-oppression. This means that the QTRC is anti-racist, anti-colonial, and anti-capitalist, and stands against all other forms of oppression that serve to subjugate, suppress, or dominate marginalized people.

The QTRC Manifesto

The rights of Queer and Trans people – our right to education, our free and safe participation in society, our dignity, and even our right to exist – is being challenged and threatened by the ruling class; that is, politicians, and those with wealth who fund and control them. This ruling class seeks to divide and distract working class people, and through the weaponization of bigotry, they have done just that. The ruling class are manipulating the pain and suffering that working class people have experienced for decades under neoliberalism; the same neoliberalism that has lined the pockets of the merchant class with the wealth created by the working class. Every member of society has felt the effects of these policies in every area of daily life, from nefarious inconveniences, to major boil orders that last for decades, all spawned by corporate greed that refuses to spend on public goods. All are tactics that aim to overwhelm and discourage collective organizing. But, instead of isolating us, we have and will continue to seek community support while speaking up for each other. The unprecedented wealth held by the top 1% in Canada today is due to decades of stagnant wages, and has created innumerable crises; the affordability crisis, the housing crisis, the opioid crisis, the climate crisis, to name a few – all while the ruling class prospers, rather than suffers.

To quell an uprising of the working class, it is recognized that the majority must be just comfortable enough. This is easily maintained by the ruling class by scapegoating the very groups and classes that suffer under their systems of power, rather than taking responsibility for the division sown. This is the basis of racism, and indeed, all forms of oppression. Queer and Trans people have been a profoundly useful scapegoat for the ruling class throughout history, and today, we find ourselves in their crosshairs once again. They are using our lives as political fodder in their pursuit to maximize profits, and to maintain power. While Conservative politicians are overtly targeting Queer and Trans lives, Liberal politicians are covertly enabling this hate, as they refuse to address the aforementioned crises, prioritizing the interests of their millionaire and billionaire donors. 

Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour have always been at the forefront of fighting for Queer and Trans liberation for many reasons, not the least of which being that BIPOC communities are the most economically disenfranchised in our white supremacist society. This is always the case of liberation fighters – those with the least have the most to gain from changing the system, whereas those who are relatively comfortable are afraid to lose the relative comforts they have. This strengthens the illusion of freedom – as those who fight are seen as “noble”, and as those who do not fight are assumed “safe”, the reality is that this fight is necessary. Similarly, Anti-Queer and Anti-Trans rhetoric is directly tied to anti-Black racism, and the fabricated pseudoscience of racial superiority. Both rooted in exploitation under capitalism, much of the rhetoric is interlocking, and even recycled. In our fight for Queer and Trans liberation, in our resistance against the political class that seeks to divide the working class, then we must centre BIPOC in our efforts. 

Tied to this exploitation of BIPOC is the scapegoating of migrant workers, who are currently being blamed by the dominant rhetoric for the housing crisis and opioid crisis. Often, this is accompanied by cultural discrimination, a key factor of racism, and the joining thread that ties racism and anti-migrant rhetoric together. Again, the blame is shifted from the ruling class, the true perpetrators of the political unrest facing the working class. Everyone has the desire to improve economic conditions for themselves or their families, and everyone has the right to do so. Punishing and targeting migrant workers for seeking the same satisfaction that every human has sought is yet another trick to distract the working class from the real target of liberation. 

Behind this facade lies an inherent truth that no being is illegal on stolen land. As the ruling class inches closer to making being marginalized entirely “illegal”, we realize that the borders they operate under are manufactured concepts of imperialism and, in so-called Canada, colonization. The ruling class knows this, and are feverish to protect these imaginary lines as a result. Turtle Island, or as they call it, “North America”, was stolen from Indigenous peoples, who were then subjugated, oppressed, and subsequently victims to a horrific genocide, all at the hands of the time’s ruling class, which is the basis on which the modern ruling class operates. Some peoples, like the Beothuk of Ktaqmkuk, were entirely eradicated. We are currently seeing another horrific genocide take place against Palestinians, with all of the same methods of othering involved there that are taking place here. Because of this, we recognize that our struggles are connected globally, and not just across Turtle Island.

That is to say, then, that our liberation is interlocking, as well. There can be no liberation for some of us without all of us. Queer and Trans people cannot – and will not – truly be free until we see the complete dismantling and abolition of all systems of oppression, justice and reparations for BIPOC, freedom for migrants, and a Free Palestine.  There is no “left versus right”, “gender versus gender”, “sexuality versus sexuality”, or “migrant versus citizen”. There is only those who have versus those who have not. The “Culture Wars” are an elaborate illusion by the ruling class to distract from their subjugation of the human race, and so-called “identity politics” are a weaponized farce. We fight for liberation from all systems of oppression while we fight the accelerating attack on Queer and Trans people. We celebrate Queer and Trans people now, and the joy of Queer and Trans futures, and the futures of all oppressed peoples propels our work.

Without liberation for all there is no true liberation of anyone.

Past Events