To all our Queer Visionaries,
The World Is Yours, Period.
A world built on the legacies of our ancestors—a colorful and rebellious legacy that proves you can start a gay revolution with the pitch of a brick, or support a whole civil rights movement with the power of your politics.
Facts: You can mold the world as you will— it will only come into being as a result of your molding activity—and this is the one true privilege that we possess in this world.
So, it’s okay to be restless and unsatisfied with the world as it is. We’re here to help you confront it, and to wander its magic and its mechanics together through the:
︎ HEAD ︎HANDS
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︎ HEART ︎SPIRIT
High School says “go to college,” and scholarships and financial aid lead us in.
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College says “get a job,” which leads to an adulthood of barely deviating career choices.
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Adulthood says “you’re a professional,” which leads us in a single direction to a POV that we know it all, and the world will reward these decisions with awards and accolades and use terms like “success.”
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But, color outside these supporting structures and see, there is little support for, as Bayard Rustin so powerfully said, “a community of angelic troublemakers.”
Enter 10A.
A School of Thought and Space For Play for YOU.
INSTRUCTIONS
10A’s “Higher Learning Program” is an easy-to-assemble, lightweight program that feels and flies great!
If you follow the directions and work carefully, you’ll be building a better sense of self and direction to the stars.
To do this program we’ll need to:
STEP 1:
Know who you are. Full tea — the words gay or lesbian or transgender or queer or an acronym for a mix of our otherness do not exist in our Ancient Cultures. You may hear throughout the African diaspora of gatekeepers, or our Indigienous brothers and sisters using the term two spirits. This means, quite simply: We live life at the edge between the worlds. And what was once the world of the village and the world of spirit, in our modern world means we have no boundaries. We are at the edge of sublime beauty and hard equations, the essence of ancient philosophy mingled with exquisite artistic imagination, great debaters of human rights and a transcendent spirituality, and with our heels on the neck of the cultural conditioning of the mainstream.
This is our superpower. We are all spirits and this means you can become any intelligence quickly and efficiently. And this is the value of knowing who you are. The ancient village respected us because without gatekeepers, there was no access to other worlds. Our contemporary culture must respect us too, because without us, there is no Black and Brown excellence, nor liberation.
STEP 2:
Step away from the box. As we make life decisions, we’re typically doing so within supporting racial, patriarchal, economic, and cultural structures. So when making a life choice (ex. what should I do with my life? How can I turn my passion into a future) it’s possible that the direction we’re taking is more a reflection of these structures than it is a reflection of ourselves. When making a fight choice (ex. Where do I focus my attention and energy to make change), it’s probable that there are no simple “decolonize the institutions girl,” kind of answers. Rather, a million small ones and they require a lot of work.
[JUST DO IT]
10A is a new space for learning where we can play with our passions and pump forward with sincerity and power. Where we can step outside the supporting structures of race and class and gender for as long as possible, where “higher learning” doesn’t see our Blackness or queerness as conditional, but the source of a special power.
STEP 3:
Learn together. We’ve built 10A for you. And we’ve gathered the best and brightest Black and Brown Queer thinkers, makers and doers from around the world to create a learning experience that will expose you and expand your mind to new theories and practices across a myriad of disciplines. This community will also become a resource for you on your journey. We want you to win, and we want you to have confidence and control in doing so. The world says: You aren’t special—No one is coming to save you—No one cares what you’ve been through, but this is lies.
We are here to make you feel safe and aware of your contributions to history. 10A is a space where we value skills and relationships over careers and money, where we know better than to trust institutions or politicians, and where we're passionate about building and creating things in a self-motivated and self-directed way.
The only limiting factor in life is ideas. When we encounter new ideas, let’s strive to understand, interpret, and then implement them. And then let’s trade them with others. Ideas take things that were useless before and turn them into resources. At 10A we believe we are all each other’s greatest resource.
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It’s taken years for us at The Tenth to understand why we wanted to build 10A and who we’re building it for. That person is you.
Welcome to 10A.