Baltimore Butterfly Sessions – Trans Equity Anniversary
Baltimore Center Stage
Center Stage
January 26 - 7:00pm

Inspired by Citizen University’s Civic Saturdays, The Baltimore Butterfly Sessions combine music, poetry, literary excerpts, and thought-provoking keynote addresses to catalyze conversation and build awareness around today’s most pressing issues. 

Each session for our 2023/24 season is themed around proposed and enacted legislation in our home state of Maryland, including The Equity in Transportation Bill, Trans Health Equity Act, and Community Reinvestment Ordinance, establishing Baltimore City Council’s Reparations Commission, and more. 

Through the Baltimore Butterfly Sessions, BCS aims to create a space for civic dialogue & fellowship across differences by convening artists, activists, organizers, thinkers, and community members to unpack these resonant topics. 

Come for the community, stay for the conversation, and leave with a deeper civic connection to Charm City. 

PANELISTS 

Ms. Iya Dammons

Ms. Iya Dammons is the Founding Executive Director of Baltimore Safe Haven and visionary activist for the TLGBQIA+ community.

As a proud trans woman of color, Ms. Dammons suffered the direct impacts of race- and gender-based discrimination through her experiences of homelessness, substance use, violence, and survival sex work in the very streets where she now works to provide help to TLGBQIA+ folks living in survival mode. In 2018, she founded Baltimore Safe Haven, a nonprofit organization based on the civil rights model of “each one, teach one”, and “for us, by us.” Today, BSH provides dedicated TLGBQIA+ housing, workforce development, HIV testing, healthcare, legal services, and more – all from the perspective of oneness and solidarity with the community. In her passion for investing in emerging trans leaders, BSH is now the largest employer of TLGBQIA+ lived-experience staff in the state and the only trans-led nonprofit in Baltimore City.

Ms. Dammons is a nationally recognized activist who centers trans rights in our nation’s dialogue. She organized the Black Trans Lives Matter March featured on the cover of Time Magazine in 2020, commissioned the Black Trans Lives Matter mural which stretches across 2 full city blocks in Baltimore known as “The Stroll” among sex workers, and debuted the first Trans Pride event in Baltimore history.

For her exceptional service to the community in terms of scale and impact, Ms. Dammons was named 40 Under 40 TLGBQ Leader in 2021 by BEQ, was honored by the AIDS Health Foundation on World AIDS day, is a member of the AIDS United Transgender Leadership Initiative class of 2022, has been featured frequently in publications such as POZ and the Washington Blade, and is a regular guest speaker at TLGBQIA+ advocacy events around the country

 

Mx Lee Blinder 

Mx. Lee Blinder (they/them) is the founding executive director of Trans Maryland, and a co-founder of the Maryland Trans Resilience Conference. Lee is the chair-elect for the Maryland Commission on LGBTQIA+ Affairs, and they sit on LGBTQIA+ advisory boards around the state. In service to our trans and queer youth, Lee is the state policy fellow for GLSEN National, and a co-chair of the Coalition for Inclusive Schools & Communities. They are an openly nonbinary transgender and queer Marylander. They facilitate gender affirming workplace training, and LGBTQIA+ training for government, medical organizations, and private companies, in addition to leading Trans Maryland’s peer to peer name and gender marker change program. Mx. Blinder is also a member of the Maryland Judiciary’s LGBTQ+ workgroup. They have worked in service to their community for 27 years, helping launch the GSA at Montgomery Blair High School in 1996. They enjoy spending time with their adopted animal companions, their cat Basil Pasta Marinara and their dog Cupcake. 

 
 

Camila Reynolds-Dominguez

Camila Reynolds-Dominguez is FreeState Justice’s new Policy Advocate and Legal Impact Coordinator. She is currently completing her law degree at the University of Maryland, concentrating in Environmental Law after graduating cum laude from Cornell University. Before law school, she worked for the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund as their inaugural social media intern, and she has extensive prior experience as a communicator for nonprofit arts organizations. This year, she assisted various organizers working to pass the Trans Health Equity Act to expand Maryland’s Medicaid program to cover all gender affirming care, and more recently she worked to secure an executive order making Maryland a sanctuary state for trans+ patients and their healthcare providers. Camila looks forward to building an effective, organized, and transparent policy advocacy and impact litigation practice at FreeState rooted in intersectionality— and specifically class consciousness. She will never turn down an offer to collaborate and get good work done, so please reach out to her at creynolds-dominguez@freestate-justice.org if you’d like to partner with her! Outside of work, you can find her making music, gardening, or hiking a trail far away from the I-95 corridor.
 

Musical Guest 

Kotic Couture

If your brain mixed elements of Club Music, Hip Hop, Techno, Ballroom culture and House into a blender you’d be given a unique sound that can only be described as Kotic Couture. As The Queen of the Underground and the “Most lit on the mic” Couture has become a staple in the Baltimore Underground scene for years. As a DJ, Event host and Musician, Couture expands the culture of  hip hop and defies boundaries while doing so. Opening for artists such as Rina Sawayama, Azealia Banks, Cupcakke and BBYMutha, Couture has straddled the blurred lines of genre and eluded the linear path to success. Kotic has performed at Kennedy Center, featured at Baltimore, Charlotte, Sacramento and Capitol Pride as well as being the 2022 Main Stage DJ for Baltimore Pride’s Finale in the park. Kotic has been featured in the Washington Post, Baltimore Beat and Netflix. Most recently Kotic was named the Best Local Artist in 2023 by Baltimore Magazine 
 

Artistic Feature 

RADI

Author of ChapBook, One Name, All Caps: RADI is an artist and award-winning writer specializing in spoken word & slam poetry. Her work covers topics such as Civil rights, body positivity, sex positivity, colorism, sexism and more, all while reflecting her real life experiences as a proud Black Fat Lesbian.  
 
She reigns as the 4x Poetry Slam Champion & now Coach of one of the top ranked Poetry Slam Team in the Nation; New Jeru Slam Team. She is the ONLY Stonewall International Poetry Slam Champion, making her the #1 Queer Poet in the World. She is the 2x Black Arts Matter Slam Champion, Baltimore & D.C. Pride Slam Champion, A Nuyorican Slam Champion, and was a member of the 2019 Brooklyn International Slam team with whom she featured at the 2019 Carnival Slam in the beautiful island of Antigua. In 2022, RADI was crowned the Woman of the World Slam Champion, but her most proud accomplishment was being an educator for 10 years! 
 
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