Rethink Resources

This work is difficult enough to do. When you find allies and friends along the way; you hold onto them fiercely. I’m so very sad to say here that a friend of mine, Lisa Tonna, passed away yesterday morning in Chicago.

She was a well known trainer and facilitator on anti-violence work in queer communities. She led the Anti-Violence Project at Center on Halsted, a LGBT community center in Chicago. Lisa had a private practice counseling individuals and assisting grassroots projects through consulting as well. Most recently, she had been the interim director of the Lesbian Community Care Project (formerly the Lesbian Community Cancer Project), until she herself was diagnosed with lung cancer.

Lisa was a wellspring of kindness and had a warm smile for everyone. Her thoughtful calmness helped me in so many ways and I know I’m far from alone in this.

Lisa took being an ally seriously. She helped me and the Young Women’s Empowerment Project at a time when we may not have made it without her. For many really good reasons I, and many who do this work, don’t easily trust people who haven’t been immersed in working with people in the sex trade or who haven’t lived it. Lisa was one of those few people who really understood what it meant to be an ally to our project. She stepped inside our project and became a part of us.

When I moved on from the Young Women’s Empowerment Project, one of the youth staff had this amazing idea for our last staff retreat together to think of our favorite inspirational quotes and paint them onto posters to put up around the space. I took this idea very seriously and I decided on a quote that was more aimed at people who would later come to YWEP, wanting to be of some assistance to our project, to communicate the intention I wanted them to remember.

If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.

This quote is often credited to Lila Watson, an Aboriginal community leader and activist in Australia. Although it turns out that it was actually the result of a collective process of Aboriginal activists. Check out Northland Poster’s blog for more info.

Anyway, this is how Lisa led her life. She saw her liberation as bound up with everyone else. I’ll miss her in ways I can’t begin to describe.