About Michelle
March, 2008
Deadletters is a collection of writing I did between 2001 and 2004 while living in Philadelphia, with a couple of older pieces. My name is Michelle Esther O'Brien. I've spent the last six years organizing with for racial, economic and gender justice with communities impacted by HIV and AIDS. I've worked with low-income trans people seeking human dignity and survival services, homeless people living with HIV demanding housing, and drug users fighting criminalization and incarceration. I'm a 29-year old kinky, poly and queer transwoman living in Brooklyn.
I'm currently pursuing a Masters of Social Work at Hunter College. I'm there studying Administration, and thinking a great deal about the role of service and advocacy nonprofits in maintaining capitalism. I'm interested in how we could transform the structure and forms of nonprofits to become accountable to the communities we claim to serve, while shifting control away from the ruling class. I've been drawing heavily from the discussion emerging from INCITE's recent book The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex. I highly recommend it.
As far as organizing, at the moment I'm mostly focusing on money politics. I'm serving on the board of directors of Third Wave. Third Wave is a progressive, feminist, and movement-led foundation supporting grassroots organizing by young women and trans youth. We particularly support innovative organizing that links reproductive justice, racial and economic justice, and gender liberation. Check them out.
I'm also on the core planning committee of Making Money Make Change, an annual national conference of progressive young people with wealth. MMMC, a we call it, is a coalition of Resource Generation, a network of progressive young people with wealth, and three progressive foundations, including Third Wave. Through Resource Generation and MMMC, young wealthy people are thinking critically about class privilege, capitalism, and social change philanthropy. It's good work.
Unfortunately, I've had a pretty serious writing block the last few years, and haven't written anything new to share. Hopefully that will change soon. Even this update is years in coming.
I also welcomes critical feedback on my writing. Everything here is evolving as I struggles to develop my political awareness. I welcome people to or just share some thoughts by emailing me at . Please forgive me if it takes me a while to write back.
Everything on this site is copyrighted. You are welcome to link to the site, tell people about it and read what you'd like. Please ask my permission before distributing the writing in another fashion. Peace.