Hackathons are all the rage.

From birthing some of the most well known startups to utilizing government data to encourage civic engagement, these time intensive marathon sessions bring together a diverse group of people (tech advantaged or not) who are interested in harnessing the power of technology to offer creative solutions to real world problems. This year alone, socially driven causes have taken the concept of the hackathon to new levels by focusing on sustainable solutions that strive to end homelessness, provide access to clean water, and offer solutions to curb domestic violence. With new social themed hackathons emerging across the world everyday, there has yet to be a cause that has shown itself to be “unhackable.”

Despite this rapidly growing use of hackathons to solve social problems, the LGBT movement hasn’t taken serious advantage of its benefits, leaving a rich source of unlimited possibility for social change untapped. With the need to advent new technologies that prioritize the queer community, it is important for LGBT advocacy organizations to stake a claim in this growing culture and embrace hackathons for several reasons:

Strengthens Tech Infrastructure
Without a doubt, LGBT advocacy organizations need the support of technology to advance their mission and extend the impact of their work. However, many lack the capacity-financially and physically-to seek out or take advantage of new technologies that can better engage constituents or streamline programmatic work.

Hosting a hackathon can leverage the specific insights and talents of community members invested in LGBT equality by generating ideas that your organization normally wouldn’t. Think of potential participants as a temporary “think tank” comprised of dedicated volunteers of the cause. It is inevitable that the amount of passion each hacker brings to the table, will produce amazing tech based projects that can help make the lives of activists and the community that we serve a little easier. Plus, the bonus of working in a collaborative environment that values the input of each team member creates a sense of collective responsibility and comfort in which the learning of new tech skills is possible.

Creates new ways to distribute LGBT data
Like the majority of non-profits, LGBT advocacy organizations rely on the production of research reports as part of their efforts to effect policy change and solicit funding. The down side of this is that much of this data circulates only within the boundaries of fellow advocacy organizations, therefore excluding the general public from accessing such important information.

A core value of hackathon culture is about bringing awareness to the values and utility of open data. Because of this, hackathons are a perfect forum to brainstorm ideas on translating research data into engaging forms that can be understood and utilized by individuals outside of the non-profit industry. Think of the potential involved in creating transparency between institutions that do the research and the community members that fill the pages of their reports.

Hackathons are fun!
Employees of LGBT organizations deal with the stresses of serving a community that consistently deals with real life trauma. This can take a heavy toll on our health and sometimes leave us feeling overwhelmed and pessimistic about the reach and impact of our work.

Throwing a hackathon can help boost the morale of employees because it provides opportunities for creative input that privileges experimentation without the worry of failure. The added benefits of meeting new people with the intention of positive collaboration, especially within a supportive environment, restores a sense of worth in ourselves and our work that many of us tend to forget about in our daily activist practices.

In short, hackathons can do a lot for LGBT advocates by moving us to think differently about the utility of technology. They also help push us beyond our usual limits of creativity and production so that we can be the innovative leaders that our movement needs.

Happy Hacking!

Dr. Ziegler is currently organizing the first hackathon for transgender advocacy, Trans*H4CK: Hacking for Transgender Empowerment. Visit transhack.org to find out more about the event and how you can support.

Ten years ago my mother committed murder.

She was 44 years old and living in a severely underfunded halfway house for mentally ill adults. I was 22 and like the rest of my family, unaware and completely disinterested in her whereabouts. Two decades of aggressive outbursts, hallucinations, long-term psych ward stays, court dates, and endless lists of medications we couldn’t name, wearied all of us and made it that much easier to pretend that my mother didn’t exist.

She was out of sight, out of mind, out of heart.

The resentment I held towards my mother started as a young child. A diagnosed schizophrenic, I spent most of my childhood watching her talk to people I couldn’t see, or cowering in corners hiding from monsters she believed wanted her dead. When she wasn’t sick at home, she was a patient in various hospitals across southern California, which I loathed visiting her in. Seeing her surrounded by adults who needed supervision was embarrassing and instilled a fear in me that I will end up just like her. I eventually stopped visiting.

As I matured her illness worsened. Completely naive of the subpar treatments she received as a patient, my family remained hopeful of a medical miracle. We grappled to understand why she failed to get better and found any excuse to blame her for her condition. Her sporadic use of drugs and alcohol, her failed marriage, even the fact that she was exceptionally brilliant–perhaps too brilliant–symbolized to us a weakness that could be fixed if only she had cooperated. Year after year, we thought of new excuses of why she remained ill and when there were no more to be made, we simply gave up.

Let her handle her own self, we said. 

The last time I saw my mother before her arrest was on my 18th birthday. She had stopped by the house for the usual routine of bickering with my grandmother over money for cigarettes. When she caught sight of me, she seemed genuinely happy but I wasn’t happy to see her. She looked disheveled in clothes that were too big for her small body and her face looked much older than I had remembered. After I sheepishly hugged her, she pulled a wrinkled birthday card out of the plastic bag she had always carried with her. I opened the card to a looped recording of her high-pitched voice singing the chorus from Stevie Wonder’s version of Happy Birthday–the song she always sang to me on birthdays she wasn’t hospitalized. I forced myself to say thank you as she smiled adoringly at her youngest child in my first day of adulthood. Never feeling a sense of closeness to my mother, her stare always felt like that of a stranger. As her eyes scanned my face I snapped and yelled, “stop looking at me!” Later that day, I threw the card in the trash.

I felt sorry for her.
Really, I felt sorry for me.

I learned of my mother’s crime less than one month after she was arrested. A random Google search of her name during a late night study session, revealed a police report detailing how she fatally assaulted an employee. I immediately felt an overwhelming sense of guilt that I didn’t know my heart could feel and all I could do was lay on the floor and sob. I cried for her safety as a patient of a flawed healthcare system and feared for her life in the hands of doctors who believe that rehabilitation comes in the form of a pill. I cried because her mother died just a month before, robbing my grandmother of the chance to see any possibility of her youngest child being able to heal. I cried because I thought of the family of the 56 year old woman whose life she took and if she had children, I wondered how they felt about losing their mother, too. 

I cried all night for her.

My mother was found not guilty by reason of insanity and will spend the rest of her days in a psychiatric hospital. Sometimes I think that if I had gotten over my resentment and instead learned to love all of her, including the sickness, I could have saved her. But like any situation in life, we cannot change the past and can only change our present selves. Learning this in my journey as an adult has allowed me to begin to love my mother completely.

Within African American culture, there is a history of silence and shame that prohibits frank discussions of mental illness. I share my story as a challenge to this and to encourage others to share theirs. I believe that when we do, we create a new black history–one that is built on having compassion and understanding towards those of our community that struggle with the disease so that we can all begin to heal.

Ten years ago my mother committed murder. At 32 years old, I am now ready to forgive her.

Early on in my medical transition, I experienced an incredible spike in my level of confidence. After my first dose of testosterone, I anxiously awaited the physical changes my body would experience and as it did change, my level of self-esteem changed with it. Every new follicle of facial hair or drop in the tone of my voice, fueled my ego and reminded me of the powerful joy of living my life as I had always imagined it to be.

As the months passed by and my body further masculinized, my confidence was slowly displaced by strong feelings of anger. My sense of pride became muddied by the societal expectations of black masculinity. Specifically, the racist assumption that black men are full of rage and prone to violence. This became extremely evident in the new ways my body was policed by others. Whenever I spoke up, asserted myself, or failed to make those around me feel safe through complacency, I became the physically threatening angry black male. This realization intensified my anger but I quickly learned to contain my rage in ways that I never had to before, lest I became the dangerous stereotype in which I knew that I wasn’t.

Beyond the unexpected racist assumptions of my identity from acquaintances and strangers, my personal relationships experienced their own type of transition. I remember when a friendly debate about politics with a friend turned into a tense disagreement. As prideful intellectuals, we both vehemently defended our beliefs but our differing views quickly turned ugly as I was taken aback with my friend’s reminder “that testosterone is really making you angry.” Although I wanted to inform my friend of the fallacy of her statement, the conversation ended quickly thereafter but not before I profusely apologized and shamefully agreed that perhaps my anger was displaced and unnecessary.

While I had already learned that as a black male I had little room to express anger in fear of the potentially harmful repercussions, what became even more clear to me is that as a black transgender male, I have even less room to be angry. Simply put, because black transmen have to deal with the unfortunate disposition of carrying the racist baggage of an assumed brute masculinity and the damaging myth of aggression as a result of synthetic hormone use, our expressions of anger and frustration are sometimes interpreted by others as inauthentic. In effect, preventing potentially healthy and constructive uses of anger in our on-going process of self-fashioning.

In order for black transmen to move past the limitations of this binary, it is important for us to recognize that our anger is indeed real and is possible to manage within a society that breeds hostility towards our existence. The angry black male that we are perceived to be, should not disavow the reality that is our personhood and humanity and we must seek out healthy ways to reject this distorted image of our identity. This means being aware of our feelings of frustration, rage and resentment and understanding the situations that can provoke those emotions. In other words, use your anger to discover yourself.

I am now almost three years into my medical transition and am still learning to navigate the boundaries of my anger with the process of self discovery. I found out that with exercise, a strong focus on my writing and the use of therapy, I can manage my anger even though it is not always easy. Unfortunately, my recent inability to find solid employment has catapulted me into a depression that is fed with emotional rage, where I sometimes lash out at my loved ones or rely on self-destructive vices to provide a false sense of calm. However, I always try to remain conscious of the root of my anger. This practice helps to direct future expressions of anger appropriately and away from the most vulnerable people in my life to prevent irreparable damage.

Everyday that I am gifted life, I continue to walk the tightrope of anger management. I tiptoe between intense moments of justifiable rage that attempt to spiritually debilitate me, while at the same time offer powerful revelations of emotional strength in the face of adversity. I have come to understand that whether or not one uses hormones, for black transmen, the mismanagement of our anger can impede on what could be a positive experience of self-enlightenment. The stress of racism coupled with the stigma of transition, can either be used as reasons for self-destruction or as powerful tools of self-actualization, with the latter being our most valuable option.