About Us
As a Black and Brown immigrant-led human rights organization, inclusivity and intersectionality are the foundation of the Caribbean Equality Project.
Founded in 2015 by Mohamed Q. Amin in response to anti-LGBTQ+ hate in Richmond Hill, Queens, NY, the Caribbean Equality Project (CEP) is a community-based organization that empowers, advocates for, and represents Afro and Indo-Caribbean, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, gender non-conforming, and queer Caribbean immigrants in New York City. Through public education, community organizing, civic engagement, storytelling, and cultural and social programming, the organization's work focuses on advocacy for LGBTQ+ and immigrant rights, gender equity, racial justice, immigration, and mental health services, and ending hate violence in the Caribbean diaspora.
To date, CEP is the only educational-based agency serving the Caribbean-American LGBTQ+ community in New York City, with a dedicated aim to cultivating supportive and progressive Caribbean neighborhoods free of violence, oppression, and discrimination. CEP's organizing fosters solidarity, community partnerships, and greater family acceptance. The organization's liberation movement educates, inspires, uplifts, and celebrates the Black and Brown, queer and trans non-religious, Muslim, Hindu and Christian, documented and undocumented members of the Caribbean diaspora of all generations, all categories of ability, and all HIV statuses.
Additionally, the organization acts as a liaison to government agencies and elected officials with the collective vision of an equitable society based on justice, inclusivity, and equal opportunity, regardless of an individual's sexual orientation or gender identity within the Caribbean diaspora. Since the official launch of the Caribbean Equality Project on June 26, 2015, the same day the U.S. Supreme Court legalized marriage equality in all fifty states in the case Obergefell v. Hodges, the organization has made significant strides toward advancing and uplifting Caribbean LGBTQ+ immigrant voices in NYC and Caribbean diaspora.
Year-round, the Caribbean Equality Project conducts street outreach and hosts educational workshops and programming that provides an authentic, intergenerational safe space for shared experiences by building support networks through various pioneering programs and services. The CEP programs, services, and initiatives are intersectional, with an emphasis on, but not limited to, family acceptance, awareness, HIV/AIDS prevention and care, education, cultural performing arts, visibility at citywide LGBTQ+ pride parades and cultural festivals, all aiming to promote acceptance and reducing stigma and eliminate all forms of discrimination in NYC.
Land Acknowledgement
On behalf of the Caribbean Equality Project, we wish to acknowledge the land we are situated on, which includes but are not limited to, sites we now call New York City, Toronto, Guyana, Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago (among others). For thousands of years, it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, the Mississaugas of the Credit River, the Lenape, Rockaway, and Canarsie communities, as well as the Kalinago, Taino, Lokono, Akawaio, Arecuna, Macusi, Warrau, Wapisiana, Wai Wai, Patamona, and Kalina peoples.
Since time immemorial, these Indigenous communities have lived on these lands and survived genocide and forced relocation by imperial powers. The Caribbean Equality Project acknowledges that it was founded upon the death, exclusion, and erasure of many Indigenous peoples, including those on whose land we occupy and organize on, respectively. This acknowledgment demonstrates a commitment to beginning the process of working to dismantle the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism.
As we are positioned in a time of ongoing pandemics and precarity, and largely continue to gather as non-Indigenous and settler communities, it is essential to be reminded of our commitment to solidarity, coalition, and decolonization efforts in support of Indigenous communities across Turtle Island [now also called North America].
Written by Ryan Persadie and Mohamed Q. Amin
