Tonight is Bridges Open Mic!

The program starts at 7:00pm at (SCENE) Metrospace, 110 Charles St., East Lansing, Michigan! The cover is only $3, which goes to (SCENE), a gallery and performance space funded by the City of East Lansing. The venue is a valuable resource for Greater Lansing. Thanks, Director Tim Lane, for making the space available to grassroots programs!

There’s good news, Michigan State University students, faculty, and staff: the first 50 guests hailing from Spartan country with an ID gain free admission! This offer is made possible by a generous donation from the MSU LBGT Resource Center, an event partner. Thanks, LBGTRC, for the donation!

More thanks to Shari Murgittroyd, Program Coordinator of the MSU Sexual Assault Program, another Bridges partner. She connected co-emcee Jeffrey Franckowiak (read more below) and I, which strengthened the program in many ways. Also the office printed our beautiful posters and flyers!

Bridges features lesbian poet Bobbi Byrd, who’s traveling from her home in Osseo, Michigan, for the event. Thanks again, Peace Education Center, for providing her gas funds! And Bobbi’s in good company with these stellar guests and contributors:

Co-emcee Jeffrey Franckowiak, a community organizer and advocate whose work creates safe and supportive space for the LBGTQ community of Greater Lansing, especially for trans gender identified persons.

Poet-activist Jan de la Torre, who just moved back to the area from Kalamazoo, where they were the lead organizer of Pulse, an LGBT people of color arts group at Fire Historical and Cultural Arts Collaborative. Last April, Jan also opened for Cheryl Clarke, Willie Perdomo, and Stacyann Chin at an Arcus Center for Social Justice event.

Drew Prosch-Jensen, who lives in Flowerville, Michigan, believes everything in life is an art-form, and that there aren’t any boundaries between life and art.

Max D, a transmasculine youth poet, hails from the eastern reaches of Greater Lansing.  As a local queer kid, he is excited to step up to the mic.

A representative from the 2012 MSU Vagina Monologues, who delivers “They Beat The Girl Out Of My Boy… Or So They Tried.”

Lauren Spencer, Program Coordinator of the MSU LBGT Resource Center, reading “It Doesn’t Get Better” by MC Lane.

Lee Sayles, a Lansing-based wordsmith whose performances include the Women in the Arts Festival and the collective Two Butches and a Broad.

See you soon!

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