New Oakland 'Living Room' Offers Healing, Community

A new queer and transgender people of color-centered multi-use space called the Living Room Project officially opened its doors in West Oakland this month as a designated place where healing, transformation, and community building can take place.

Founded by Boston native Micah Hobbes Frazier, 38, who identifies as a queer mixed-gendered person of color, the project exists as a beacon of hope for QTPOC who feel unwelcome and unsafe accessing certain spaces and services that most people take for granted.

"Looking at the levels of trauma in the QTPOC community and the limited access to safe spaces, health care and wellness," Frazier said, "the need for a community space to access those and other basic needs is clear."

Healing trauma is paramount to the Living Room Project's existence, a concept that Frazier understands well. Oppression, sexual assault and abuse, and bathroom safety are just a few ways trauma manifests within the QTPOC community, he said.

"I've been assaulted and accosted in bathrooms. I know a lot of queer and transfolk who have chronic bladder and urinary tract infections. They hold it so much because they can't find a safe bathroom. There are so many ways that trauma can happen," Frazier said.

After opening on June 2, three professionals have already set up shop at the Living Room Project to offer their services. Licensed massage therapist Ana Maria Aguero Jahannes, 26, provides affordable massage therapy to QTPOC under the company name Wild Seed Wellness.

As a queer woman of color, Jahannes knows the fear of judgment that kept her from accessing massage therapy before attending massage school. That and the experiences of others in the QTPOC community inspired her to found her company.

"I was always concerned about who I was going to go see," Jahannes said. "But I have friends, particularly trans and gender non-conforming people of color, who experience so much day-to-day trauma, for me to be worried about my hairy legs was just so minimal in comparison. This is an opportunity for people to have a safe space to adjust issues they re having in their mind, body and spirit."

Mia McKenzie, a 36-year-old queer woman of color, facilitates a prose writing workshop for queer, trans, and gender non-conforming people of color called the Black Girl Dangerous Writing Workshop. Operating in one-day and four-week durations, the workshop serves as a safe space to share and critique writing. Like Jahannes, McKenzie's own experiences motivated her to provide a specialized service to the QTPOC community.

"Workshops are already scary because you're bringing your work there," McKenzie said. "Add to that racism, homophobia, and privilege and it can become unbearable. This is a way I can help writers get things finished and out there, and a way to support and nurture each other."

Frazier also offers somatic healing services at the Living Room Project, a mind/body approach to healing that integrates bodywork and movement practices. In addition, he provides natural birthing consultations as a practicing doula at Blue Monkey Healing and Birthing.

Plans for yoga and dance classes, life coaching, cooking, and nutrition workshops and a monthly "wellness" day offering acupuncture, massage, somatics, coaching, yoga and meditation are currently being integrated into the Living Room Project's calendar. Also in the works, Frazier emphasized, is a regularly scheduled dance party to include more than just a repetitive Top 40 set.

Practitioners can access the Living Room Project through sliding scale rent rates, barter and trade, or other methods of payment.

"There's no set price," Frazier said. "Contributing to the space is one of the principles but how one does that can be very flexible."

Long journey
Frazier's journey toward creating the Living Room Project has been long. After coming out, he was disowned for a period of time and had limited contact with his family. Finding himself in Oakland in 1998, he began to respond to conversations within the QTPOC community around the lack of consistent, safe and sustainable space to build community.

"Not everyone wants to be at the club, not everyone wants to go out and party," Frazier said. "People are really hungering for other ways to meet each other and build relationships."

In 2002, Frazier took a backpacking trip through Europe. In Germany, he witnessed the ways in which some people were reclaiming space by occupying abandoned buildings and transforming them into community collectives.

"That really inspired me around the fact that we don't have to wait for things to be given to us, we can create our own out of things that have been 'forgotten.'"

Returning to Oakland, Frazier moved into an artist warehouse and started an informal community gathering he called the Living Room, which promoted community building by holding a monthly party where "queers, freaks, and divas" could "decompress" and "dance it out," he explained.

The warehouse was eventually bought by a land trust agency that had a different idea for what a community artist space should look like, solidifying Frazier's drive to realize his own vision. Last October, after being homeless for three months in an effort to save enough money to secure a space, Frazier looked on Craigslist one day and found an opening at 1919 Market Street in West Oakland.

"As soon as I saw it I knew this was the one," Frazier said. "This has been a very intense process for me, a growth process of asking for help, putting my vision out there and receiving support. One of the biggest challenges is that it matters so much and I don't want to [mess] it up."

Receiving support from the community has allowed Frazier to give back, a responsibility the humble social justice advocate is ready for.

"One of my biggest hopes," Frazier said, "is that spaces like this help people understand that even though they've experienced trauma - they are not broken. Wholeness is possible and it looks a lot of different ways. This is a place where people can access healing and learn more about the impacts of trauma so they can have more compassion for themselves and understand their own experiences in a different way."

Frazier intends to eventually own an entire building that offers additional QTPOC-specific spaces and services. In the meantime, he'll continue to live a life of purpose inspired in large part by the QTPOC community.

"Every day that my folks and I get up in the morning and do what we want in the world, is an act of liberation and resistance," he said.

For information about how to donate, access or offer services to the Living Room Project, visit http://www.thelivingroomproject.tumblr.com, http://www.facebook.com/TheLivingRoomProjectCollective, or call (510) 290-0919. Donations are also welcome by mail addressed to 1919 Market, Oakland, CA 94607.

For information about Wild Seed Wellness, visit http://www.wildseedwellness.com. For information about Black Girl Dangerous Writing Workshop, visit http://blackgirldangerous.tumblr.com/workshop or email [email protected].