Join your guest hosts, Kendra R. Johnson and Rolynné Anderson, on the Porch with Southerners on New Ground.
This is the inaugural edition of the Porch, a new podcast hosted by Southerners on New Ground. At Creating Change 2025, we sat down with trans elder and lifelong activist Miss Major Griffin-Gracy and Shelby Chestnut, Executive Director of the Transgender Law Center. The two discuss the unfolding hellscape in the United States since 48 took office and offer insights into the legal landscape, the fight ahead and how we win. The discussion highlights what we all know: while this moment of rising authoritarianism is different, we’ve been here before as a community and we got us.
Find out more about Miss Major, Shelby, and their organizations below:
Miss Major is a Black, transgender activist who has fought for over fifty years for her trans/gender nonconforming community. She is a veteran of the infamous Stonewall Riots, a former sex worker, and a survivor of Dannemora Prison and Bellevue Hospital’s “queen tank.” Her global legacy of activism is rooted in her own experiences, and she continues her work to uplift transgender women of color, particularly those who have survived incarceration and police brutality.
Miss Major’s fierce commitment and intersectional approach to justice brought her to care directly for people with HIV/AIDS in New York in the early 1980s, and later to drive San Francisco’s first mobile needle exchange. As director of the TGI Justice Project, she’d return to prisons as a mentor to her ‘gurls’ inside. She now runs House of GG-TILIFI, a retreat center for trans and gender nonconforming leaders from the Southern U.S., in Little Rock, Arkansas. Her recent creative projects include executive producing the series Trans in Trumpland (now streaming everywhere), and Miss Major Speaks, a book on her life’s activism co-authored with Toshio Meronek (host of the podcast Sad Francisco), is out now from Verso Books.
To learn about the House of GGs and donate click here.
Check out Major!, the movie, a documentary about her life here.
Major references a scene in the 1962 movie Gypsy, starring Natalie Wood.
Shelby Chestnut (they/he) is the executive director of Transgender Law Center, the largest national trans-led organization advocating for a world in which all people are free to define themselves and their futures. Chestnut has over 20 years of community organizing, policy advocacy, and leadership experience in the LGBTQ and anti-violence movements. They previously served for five years as TLC’s Director of Policy and Programs.
Chestnut has spearheaded leadership development and social change within and for Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities throughout their career. While Director of Community Organizing and Public Advocacy at the New York City Anti-Violence Project (AVP) Chestnut was a part of steering committees and coalitions working on the passage and implementation of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and landmark New York City police reform legislation, the Right to Know Act (RTKA).They are a graduate of Antioch College and currently the chair of the Board of Trustees.
Chestnut is the first Native trans executive director of TLC and one of the first Native trans leaders to head a national LGBT organization.
To learn more about the Transgender Law Center, click here.
The Trans Agenda for Liberation is here:
transgenderlawcenter.org/trans-agenda…-liberation/
