Photo of Saint-Osei McClendon
On this Juneteenth, the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) wants to highlight one of our 2025 REV UP (Register, Educate, Vote, Use your Power) grantees, Saint-Osei McClendon. The REV UP Movement Grants fund one-time projects and are designed to support grassroots leaders and local work that focuses on reaching underrepresented and historically excluded communities. Saint-Osei is part of BLAC–SWPA (Black Liberation Autonomous Collective of Southwestern PA), the first youth-led nonprofit in the region founded by and for Black trans youth. They used their 2025 REV UP grant to run a series of civic healing gatherings for Black trans disabled youth that combined voter education, movement, creative expression, and peer support.
In this blog, Saint-Osei writes about the importance of civic engagement and community care. These two methods of activism are intertwined and deeply important in the fight for liberation and empowerment of disabled people of all backgrounds.
Binders, Bus Routes, and Ballots
For Black and Brown trans+ disabled people, civic engagement isn’t just about attending a meeting; it’s a survival strategy when every election and bill introduced puts us even more at risk on top of daily obstacles. We face inaccessible clinics, hostile ERs, negligent healthcare, police who see our bodies as threats, and governments that debate our existence like it’s a matter of opinion.
Our community has been ignored for decades, and now, with undeniable visibility, we have individuals in government positions spreading dangerous rhetoric. 215 million dollars worth of rhetoric during the last presidential campaign, to be exact. This rhetoric translates, and has done so in many states, to harmful policies and legislation that endanger our communities..
Locally, the former President of our County Council, Democrat Pat Catena, recently sent out mailers to residents, including myself as one of his constituents. These mailers attacked trans youth on top of other below-the-belt tactics in an attempt to win a seat in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives representing District 45. He also sent $500 donations to local TLGB+ organizations, despite having no meaningful conversation with the people harmed by his campaign messaging. He had no conversation with the people he demonized and used as a scapegoat, and faced no accountability.
Local transgender, nonbinary, intersex residents, parents of trans kids, and our accomplices showed up as a unit and packed the County Council meeting. The following week, he lost the election, and half of the County Council members were in agreement to have him removed as President. Instead, he resigned.
The County Council has power. The County Council votes on snow removal routes. Snow routes determine if your wheelchair can get to the bus stop. The bus stop determines if you reach the clinic. The clinic determines if you get your hormones on time. That’s civics. We deserve to have a say in every single link in that chain because we have power too.
Civic engagement isn’t just about showing up at the polls or at the County Council, it also includes community care, and harnessing our power also includes the freedom to be fully ourselves.
The Bawdy Remedies Initiative started because there was nowhere in southwestern Pennsylvania to get free gender-affirming necessities without strings attached anymore. I was a recipient of a kit from a collective that used to exist here, and the joy I experienced is an understatement of what I felt when I received a binder from them. It was relief, it was recognition. I started looking around. Where had that care gone? That collective dissolved and nothing replaced it.
Gender-affirming necessities are not cheap. A single binder can run from $40 to $80. Packing briefs (underwear designed to give a male appearance), tucking kits and gaffs (underwear designed to give a female appearance), bras that fit affirmed bodies–none of that is affordable on top of rent, utilities, and food. Add in that so many transgender, nonbinary, and intersex folks still face employment discrimination, housing instability, and economic hardship just for existing.
When it came to the possibility of the contents of the Bawdy Remedies Initiative mutual aid kits, it was community-led input. Despite us being disabled Black trans and nonbinary folks, we invited the community in because this community care is about all of us. What do we need? It’s not just a tuck kit, it’s not just a pair of packing briefs. It’s also toothbrushes and toothpaste, deodorant, menstrual products, PPE, body wash with washcloths.
During the Queermas celebration that we partnered with TransYOUniting on, I watched local trans and nonbinary folks hesitate before taking binders, bras, tucking kits, and packing briefs from our mutual aid program. This was not because they didn’t need it. It was because they’d never been offered care that didn’t come with conditions or strings attached. No proof of poverty, no legal documents with dead names requested, no required paperwork.
That hesitation is data in itself. That hesitation tells you everything about what Black and Brown trans+ people, including those with added intersectionality such as our disabled siblings, have learned to endure. It shows that care almost never arrives freely.
Community care is not a backup plan. It is the plan.
Liberation for Black and Brown transgender, intersex, and nonbinary disabled people looks like waking up and not having to elaborate on why you deserve to exist before you can get a binder, a meal, or a ride to a doctor’s appointment. Our mutual aid kits are not charity. They are reparations and care we pay each other because the government won’t.
Liberation is not a moment. It is the built-up weight of a thousand little yeses. This looks like a binder that fits. A bus pass that works. A neighbor who says “I’ve got you” and actually follows through. That is the world we are building.
Saint-Osei R. McClendon (he/they) is a 26-year-old agender individual from southwestern Pennsylvania. Saint-Osei founded the Bawdy Remedies Initiative in 2021, being the first Black transmasculine person to found a mutual aid, trans-focused collective/organization in SWPA. Saint-Osei has been recognized for his efforts from the PA House of Representatives to local institutions. Saint-Osei has passed the torch and is teaching other local trans youth how to fight back, and has founded Haus of Osei, where fashion and liberation are intertwined.