FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 29, 2024
CONTACT: Sam Martinez
they/them
612.454.0175
star.natl.us@gmail.com
Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, an organization founded by Marsha P. Johnson & Sylvia Rivera during the Queer & Trans Liberation Movement of the 60’s/70/s to be refounded in response to anti-trans/ queer/ non-binary sentiment growing across the U.S.
In response to rising tide of anti-trans/queer/non-binary sentiment in the U.S. Minneapolis, MN organizer Sam Martinez announces the refounding of STAR on the eve of the 2024 International Transgender Day of Visibility & the 2024 elections in the United States.
Martinez, lead organizer of STAR National and Star Minneapolis, declared, “We are told that Marsha & Syliva are dead, and that we should settle for what we got. However, with the refounding of STAR we as BIPOC Trans, Non-Binary, and queer people declare, ‘OUT OF THE CLOSETS AND INTO THE STREETS! TRANS, NON-BINARY, AND QUEER LIBERATION NOW!’ We; specifically BIPOC Trans, Non-binary, queer people, cannot wait for someone else to save us, we have the power! People power, Trans, Non-Binary, Queer power! Black, Brown, Red, Yellow power to unite our peoples! To liberate our peoples! We must come out of the shadows of the people’s movements! Along with the National Liberation, labor, and many other movements we shall overcome all obstacles to our liberation and freedom!”
STAR is to be founded as a Trans/Non-Binary/Queer, working-class, multi-National AKA BIPOC, (Black Indigenous People of Color) organization which will water the roots of the past with the spirit of the present to refound and rejuvenate the U.S. Trans/Queer liberation movement. Currently, the National organization shall handle larger matters. While the first local chapter in Minneapolis, Minnesota shall handle local organizing.
Donations can be directed to: paypal.me/starnatl or $starnatl
To find out more, community can contact STAR National via https://forms.gle/YBaMQ59SctjixgnT7
To find out more, community can contact STAR Minnesota/Minneaolis via https://forms.gle/LvKDPVN6k9tfMaE6A
Sam Martinez is a Chicano@ non-binary, trans person who uses they/them pronouns. Martinez started as a student organizer/president of a local Chican@/Latin@ student organization. In November of 2015, while being a local-leader in their AFSCME union Martinez joined the highway protest to demand Justice for Jamar Clark who was killed by Minneapolis Police Department officers Ringgenberg & Schwarze. After joining and becoming a lead organizer of the Twin Cities Coalition for Justice for Jamar and Minneapolis for Community Control of the police, they became a National leader in the struggle against police terror when they were pivotal in defeating Mike Freeman, the sitting Hennepin County Attorney. They won the “No More Grand Juries” policy, witnessed Freeman’s trivialization of police murder in comparison to Justine Damond, and his ultimate defeat: retirement after trivializing the murder of George Floyd.
Martinez worked on many of the cases of police shootings in Minnesota and Nationally such as Marcus Golden, Phil Quinn, Thruman Blevins, Hardel Sherell, Cordale Handy, Terrance Franklin, Sarah Lee Circle Bear, Paul Castaway, Philando Castile, Adam Toledo, Vanessa Marquez, Jesse Romero, Andres Guardado, Antonio Zambrano-Montes, Korryn Gaines, Sandra Bland, Breanna Taylor and too many others.
Martinez took time to breath and reflect on the lessons of the local, national, and international uprising in the struggle for justice for George Floyd. Now they are taking their knowledge of leading the Labor and National Liberation movements and applying it to the struggle for Trans, Non-Binary, and Queer liberation and freedom by refounding STAR!