“No one of us can be free until everybody is free.”
- Maya Angelou

Pride is a time of celebration, but it is also a time to reflect and learn. Bring your notebooks, your questions, and your curiosity for a talk from Dr. Eli Coston on how LGBTQ rights are a necessary building block of a healthy democratic society! The Q&A session afterwards will be facilitated by Dr. Liz Canfield, a longtime Richmonder and proud abolitionist.

Eli Coston, Ph.D., is an activist-scholar who received their doctorate in sociology from Stony Brook University, specializing in criminology, gender and sexuality and race and ethnicity. Their research examines how the intersections of race, class and gender create differing experiences of marginalization and oppression for people who are LGBTQ. Coston's involvement in this and other social justice work informs their research agenda by putting them in direct contact with those most impacted by the systems of oppression they research.

Liz Canfield, Ph.D., is a sound artist, zine maker, teacher and community organizer. She is an associate professor and associate chair at Virginia Commonwealth University in the Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, where she teaches introductory courses in gender/sexuality studies, upper-level courses in feminist literary theory, queer theory and cinema, and service learning courses that engage the prison system in Virginia.