Presenting the 2020 Bitch 50

Pop culture is an evolving landscape that is populated by artists, entertainers, visionaries, activists, and political figures. At Bitch Media, were interested in shape-shifters who push pop culture to be more representative, inspiring, and meaningful for communities who are typically ignored by mainstream media. Were paying attention to those who say what wont be said anywhere else; those who do what needs to be done, with or without fanfare; and those who push for and measure social and cultural progress with a lens that expands the world beyond our current realities.
The Bitch 50 recognizes the most impactful creators, artists, and activists in pop culture whose imaginations extend beyond normalizing and affirming the same mainstream messages. The Bitch 50 have utilized their creative or political power to further advance visibility, equality, or access for marginal folks. We honor those who have taken risks in their work that push us closer to progressa world where more LGBTQ people of color are in leadership and decision-making positions, democracy is a practice not a hope, and racial inclusion is a basic start instead of a goal. The Bitch 50 highlights the firsts and the pioneers; the people who created a ripple or a path from the margins to the center. We looked at cultural work that generated exciting possibilities for expressing identity, power, gender, sexuality, and relationshipswork that intentionally focused on freeing others.
ABOLITION
Photo credit: 8 to Abolition
Prison-industrial complex abolitionists
Wed be hard-pressed to identify many bright spots amid the unrelenting pain, devastation, and inhumanity that has characterized 2020. But one emerging beacon is a reinvigorated abolition movement that has galvanized mainstream discussions of police brutality, state violence, and racism in the United States both past and present. The 8ToAbolition campaign has become one of the movements most crucial voices: one that demystifies the concept of abolition itself and urges us to rethink law-enforcement and criminal-justice systems that function very differently depending on where you live and what you look like. The social and racial definitions of crime and criminals are what 8ToAbolition wants to address, and the campaign lays out eight straightforward areas ripe for immediate harm-reduction impacts. These include defunding police departments, removing police officers from schools, providing safe housing for all citizens, and investing in what 8ToAbolitions organizers call Care, Not Copsnon-coercive mental-health options, neighborhood trauma centers, universal childcare, and more. Its clearer than ever that piecemeal reforms cant fix institutions built on a bedrock of racism and state control, and 8ToAbolition is breaking new ground in the name of transformative justice.   
Photo credit: Jonah Light
Law Professor and Faculty Director for the University of California, Los Angeles Prison Law and Policy Program
In March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic increasingly threatened the lives of incarcerated people, Sharon Dolovich spearheaded the COVID-19 Behind Bars Data Project. COVID-19 Behind Bars tracks confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths in prisons, jails, and youth correctional facilities across the United States. Additionally, Dolovichs project tracks court orders, legal requests, and authoritative actions to reduce correctional population densities. The information collected through the COVID-19 Behind Bars Project helps activists, lawyers, academics, and journalists do the important work of drawing attention to and challenging the dangerous and inhumane conditions incarcerated folks face.
Photo credit: Kristina K Agbebiyi/Instagram
Organizer with Survived and Punished
In the aftermath of Minneapolis police officers murdering George Floyd in May 2020, there was a sustained focus on the perniciousness of white supremacy and racial injustice in the United States. Amid an uprising that reached every corner of the country, organizer K emerged as a critical voice and source of information within an ecosystem full of disinformation and dissension. K, who organizes with the gender-based violence victims advocacy and prison-abolitionist organization Survived and Punished, has been helping organize movements aimed at educating people about prison abolition. In 2018, they organized the Building Power: Organizing Effectively Against White Supremacy conference at the University of Michigan to publicly resist a visit from Richard Spencer. In 2020, they helped cocreate 8ToAbolition.
Photo credit: Kelly Hayes
Organizer and Activist
Kelly Hayes is a lifelong activist, and her passion shines through her work, specifically in her commitment to direct action. In 2016, she was the first direct-action trainer to join youth organizers at Standing Rock, and her work there served as a foundation for other activists who joined the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline: In 2017, the first year of Donald Trumps presidency, she conducted workshops on protest tactics for more than 400 people. Hayess experience and skill allows her to join the fight wherever shes needed, and when COVID-19 hit in early 2020, she headed a list of demands from grassroots organizers alongside doctors, scientists, and nurses with regard to essential protections to help marginalized communities, including imprisoned people, survive the pandemic. She has done additional work as a writer for publications like Pacific Standard and Teen Vogue and cofounded the grassroots organization The Chicago Light Brigade and the direct-action collective Lifted Voices. Hayess work as a photographer is also notable, with photos featured in the DuSable Museum of African American Historys Freedom and Resistance exhibit. Hayes is currently the voice of Truthouts Movement Memos podcast.
Photo credit: Kisha Bari
Organizer with DecrimNY
When our movements for liberation replicate the oppressive systems that we seek to dismantle, we must call for accountability, Leila Raven wrote in a May 2020 Medium post. Raven has long organized on behalf of other marginalized population at the intersections of leftist politics, sex work, and abolition: As the former director of Collective Action for Safe Spaces, Raven has spearheaded efforts to develop non-carceral solutions to sexual harassment. As a member of NYCs Safe Bar Collective, she has helped train staff in bars and clubs to prevent and intervene in incidents of sexual harassment and violence. As a steering committee member of DecrimNY, she works to shape both policy and public opinion on decriminalizing sex work and protecting those who do it. And as part of the 8ToAbolition campaign (see above), she organizes toward an anticarceral world. But Ravens Medium article was more personal: After being raped by an editor at the now-defunct antifa publication Commune, Raven tried to engage the magazines core staff in a process of collaborative justice that, while ultimately unsuccessful, led to the dissolution of the magazinea reminder that successful revolution requires divesting from personal, not just institutional, power structures.
EDUCATION
Photo credit: Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Professor and Cofounder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles
In August 2020, California made academic history on two fronts: It became the first state to mandate courses in ethnic studies as a graduation requirement for its state university system. One of those state-university campuses, Cal State Los Angeles, became the nations second university to establish an autonomous College of Ethnic Studies. Its fair to say that neither victory would have been possible without the tenacity of Melina Abdullah. A Cal State L.A. professor and former dean of Pan-African Studies as well as a cofounder of the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter, Abdullahs work in decentering whiteness on campus and in the streets has made her all the right enemies. And they are enemies: Abdullahs efforts to secure justice for the families of Black citizens murdered by the Los Angeles Police Department, for instance, has led to trumped-up arrests and at least one SWATing attack. At Cal State L.A., some colleagues believe she was passed over for the position of inaugural dean of the college due to past criticism of university leadership. Not that this slows her down: In discussing another ongoing fightabolishing police officers on K-12 and college campusesshe told a student reporter [I]f you dont sacrifice something, then your struggle wasnt really a struggle.
Photo credit: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Associate Professor in University of North Carolina Chapel Hills School of Information and Library Science
Tressie McMillan Cottom, PhD, is a certified geniusand thats not hyperbole. In 2020, the MacArthur Foundation awarded her one of its storied genius grants for shaping discourse on highly topical issues at the confluence of race, gender, education, and digital technology for broad audiences. Its a well-deserved honor that signals how influential her work has become over the last decade. In 2017, McMillan Cottoms book Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy, helped us all better understand the predatory nature of for-profit colleges. In 2019, her National Book Award-nominated essay collection, THICK: And Other Essays, brought her relatable approach to sociological inquiry to an even broader audiencesomething we should all recognize for the unique gift that it is. McMillan Cottom, who joined UNC Chapel Hills School of Information and Library Science in 2020, is an invaluable asset to academia and to all those lucky enough to access and read her work.
Photo credit: Texis Isaiah
Director and Producer
Sam Feder is the director of several award-winning LGBTQ documentaries, including Boy I Am (2006) and Kate Bornstein is a Queer and Pleasant Danger (2014), the latter of which was named one of The Advocates Best LGBT Documentaries of 2014. Released through Netflix during Pride Month, Feders latest film, Disclosure, has also received significant acclaim, with good reason. The documentary chronicles and critically analyzes the representation of transgender people onscreen, spanning from the 1914 silent comedy A Florida Enchantment to the FX series Pose, which premiered in 2018 and is currently in production on its third season. Disclosure is notable not only because of its expansive look at the history of trans narratives, but also for the impressive range of exclusively trans figures who provide commentary and insight, including Laverne Cox (who is also the films executive producer), Lilly Wachowski, Yance Ford, Susan Stryker, Mj Rodriguez, and many more. Feders work interrogates the politics of visibility and challenges media to reflect the diversity of trans experiences.
Journalist
In 2019, the New York Times launched the 1619 Project. The brainchild of investigative reporter and New York Times magazine staff writer Nikole Hannah-Jones, the project examines the legacy of slavery in the United States and its impact on the experiences of Black Americans today. Hannah-Jones is a leading voice in covering racial inequality in America: In 2016, she cofounded the University of North Carolina Chapel Hills Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, a training and mentorship organization dedicated to increasing the ranks of investigative reporters of color. In 2017, she was awarded a MacArthur Foundation genius grant, and in 2020, Hannah-Jones was honored with the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for the 1619 Projects lead essay. This year, she was also named to The Root 100, The Roots annual list of the most influential African Americans, for the sixth time. The 1619 Project will be released as a series of books beginning in 2021, and is currently adapting her audio series The Problem We All Live Withwhich explores school integration and Black America’s centuries-long struggle to obtain quality educationinto a book.
Photo credit: UTLA Elections/YouTube
President of United Teachers Los Angeles
Education in America is inherently political, so when Cecily Myart-Cruz campaigned to be the new president of the Los Angeles Unified School Districts teachers union, her activist background was a selling point. United Teachers Los Angeles is the nations second-largest teachers union, and Myart-Cruz, a former elementary and middle-school teacher and advocate for racial and social equity in education, is the first woman of color to lead it (and only the third woman in UTLAs 50-year history to do so.) Myart-Cruz has played key organizing and consulting roles in teacher strikes, a yearlong standardized-test boycott, and efforts to curb the encroachment of charter schools that can divert state funding away from public education. Stepping into this new role in 2020 is an extraordinary challenge, but Myart-Cruz told L.A. Progressive, Cornel West said, If you dont love the people, you cant lead the people.
Photo credit: Scott Rosenthal
Associate Curator of Native American Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
White men have long dominated the field of museum curation, but curators from marginalized communities are beginning to make essential inroads. In September, the Metropolitan Museum of Art hired Patricia Marroquin Norby as its inaugural Native American art curator. Shes the first full-time curator overseeing the museums Indigenous art program and is tasked with strengthening the relationship between the museum and Indigenous communities. Prior to joining the Met, Norby was the assistant director of New Yorks National Museum of the American Indian, so shes one of the best people to step into this role and help museums in New York and throughout the United States work more effectively and ethically with Indigenous communities.
Photo credit: Noname
Rapper, Poet, and Record Producer
Fatimah Nyeema Warner, known professionally as Noname, first made waves as a slam poet and rapper in 2010, eventually gaining wider recognition for her feature on Chance the Rappers 2013 mixtape Acid Rap. Over the years, Noname continued to amass success with several releases, and as a musical powerhouse in her own right, Noname deserves recognition. However, wed be remiss if we didnt shine a light on Noname Book Club, an online and IRL community she created in 2019 to uplift the voices of writers of color and encourage members to support libraries and local bookstores rather than exploitative megacorporations like Amazon. This year, Nonames Book Club raised enough funds to launch its prison program, which delivers monthly book picks to incarcerated people across the United States. According to Noname Book Clubs bio, We believe reading is a critical part of liberation and developing solidarity.
ACTIVISM
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Nightlife Mogul
At 17, Venus Cuffs entered the BDSM lifestyle in Los Angeles before moving to New York City, where she would become the host of one of the most accessible and inclusive BDSM dungeons around. While fighting legislation like FOSTA-SESTA, Venus is an advocate for people who shes found are typically pushed out of so-called inclusive spaces. Many years ago, she hosted exclusive parties for sex workers, queer people, and people of color, and has used her skills to help promote other spaces and parties that are specifically focused on marginalized people. When COVID-19 hit, Venus organized a fundraiser for sex workers of color to help chip away at the massive lack of federal relief and unemployment, noting that priority went to Black workers who were based in New York. The mutual aid fund was a success and raised more than $100,000. 
Photo credit: Close the Workhouse
Activist Collective
The St. Louis, Missouri, medium-security prison known as the Workhouse was built in 1966, but took its unofficial name from a 19th-century city ordinance mandating that prisoners unable to pay the fines for their release could work them off in a nearby quarry. As a modern institution where low-level offenders unable to pay cash bail await trial, it has embodied the gratuitous cruelty of a cash-bail system that leaves poor, majority-Black detainees subject to inhumane and dangerous living conditions, including insufficient heating and cooling. Two years ago, a coalition of St. Louis activists, lawyers, and incarcerated people launched #CloseTheWorkhouse, a campaign calling for an end to wealth based pretrial detention, and the reinvestment of the money used to cage poor people and Black people into rebuilding the most impacted neighborhoods in this region. In July 2020, the citys Board of Aldermen voted unanimously to pass a bill that will permanently close the institution and redirect its funding into communities that have long been the targets of criminal injustice.
Photo credit: Riccardo Emilien
Reproductive Justice and Sexual Health Program Manager at Women with a Vision
In March 2020, conservative legislators in Louisiana sent a restrictive abortion law to the U.S. Supreme Court with the hope of closing the states three remaining abortion clinics. The Supreme Court struck down the law in question in June for myriad reasons, including the fact that it was identical to a law theyd previously struck down and because of the ongoing advocacy of people like Lakeesha Harris. Harris is the reproductive justice and sexual health program manager for for Women with a Vision, a community-based nonprofit in New Orleans that focuses on sex-worker rights, drug policy reform, HIV positive womens advocacy, and reproductive justice outreach. Harris became essential in the battle to overcome the states legal challenges to abortion access, writing in a 2019 op-ed for the Advocate, WWAV is pushing to close the gaps in access to prenatal care to help people have healthy pregnancies, and we are promoting strategies to deal with the growing maternal mortality crisis in our country.
Photo credit: Coffee at Large/Facebook
Cocreators of Coffee at Large
In July 2019, Emily Harman, Rachel Hopke, Felix Tran, and three other employees staged a walkout at Slate Coffee Roasters in Seattle to protest the companys poor working conditions. On the same day, Harman, Hopke, and Tran created Coffee at Large, an Instagram account highlighting the widespread problem of workplace injustice in the specialty-coffee industry. The accounts first posts featured photos of the former employees affected and resignation letters posted to the windows of Slate on the day of the walkout; within three days, Coffee at Large had amassed more than 5,000 followers. Since then, the three baristas have continued to amplify other stories of workplace misconduct, provide resources about labor rights, and host community organizing events. In 2020, the group created the Washington Emergency Barista Relief Fund, raising more than $30,000 for baristas in the state who were laid off or lost income during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Photo credit: Jesse Pratt Lopez
Activist
Photographer, activist, and community organizer Jesse Pratt López is a trans Latina who uses her artwork to visibilize marginalized communities, including people of color, undocumented people, people living with HIV, and many others. Lópezs work has appeared in the Atlantic, the Guardian, and PBS NewsHour; it has also been exhibited at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights and Mason Fine Art. In December 2019, López founded the Trans Housing Coalition, a project that began as a photography-based crowdfunding campaign aimed at alleviating chronic homelessness in Atlantas trans- and gender-nonconforming community. The funding campaign has raised nearly $3 million and has been able to house about 40 trans and nonbinary residentsa success thats a welcome shock to López. Trans women are not a novel concept, or new, but society has never been set up for girls like us, she told Project Q Atlanta in June. But with the recent resurgence of mutual aid and abolition movements, hopefully we can begin to live the fulfilling lives we deserve.
Photo credit: Disability Visibility Project
Disability Justice Activist
The disability-justice movement lost both a powerful voice and a beloved comrade when Stacey Park Milbern died in May 2020, on her 33rd birthday. Born in South Korea, raised in North Carolina, and living in the San Francisco Bay Area, Milberns life and activism were intertwined in her intersectional approach to organizing: She advocated for those marginalized by a fundamentally ableist world while also pointing out the disability communitys own erasure of the queer and BIPOC people within it. As a cofounder of Oaklands Disability Justice Culture Club, Milbern helped ensure that disabled California residents werent imperiled when Pacific Gas & Electric mandated rolling power cutoffs to curb the spread of wildfires in 2019; at the time of her death, DJCC was distributing DIY COVID-protection kits to unhoused Bay Area residents. My ancestors are disabled people who lived looking out of institution windows wanting so much more for themselves, Milbern wrote in a 2019 essay for the Disability Visibility Project. Its because of them that I know that, in reflecting on what is a good life, an opportunity to contribute is as important as receiving [the] supports one needs.
Photo credit: Brook Anderson/Moms 4 Housing/Facebook
Housing Activists
California is in the throes of a housing crisis that disproportionately impacts people who are already marginalized, including LGBTQ people; Black, Indigenous, and other people of color; and working-class people without safety nets. Moms 4 Housing, a collective of homeless and marginally housed mothers in Oakland, raised awareness about the states crisis in 2019 when they began occupying a home that had been vacant for years. After engaging in an extended standoff with the city of Oakland and the houses owner, corporate real-estate group Wedgewood, the nonprofit Oakland Community Land Trust (OCLT) acquired the building for more than $500,000 and turned it into a transitional home and training center for single mothers in the area. And that wasnt the groups  only victory: Oaklands Mayor Libby Schaff is now requiring Wedgewood to first offer any property for sale to the City of Oakland, the OCLT, or another affordable-housing organization before putting it on the market. Wedgewood has since offered to sell more than 100 homes to the OCLT.
Photo credit: Jan Hromadko
Director and Cofounder of Konsent
After reading an Amnesty International study that showed 63 percent of citizens in the Czech Republic believe that rape survivors are partly to blame for their sexual assaults, 28-year-old Johanna Nejedlová was rightfully furious. She wrote a post on Facebook that demanded an end to victim blaming that quickly went viral. After receiving messages from strangers asking how they could get involved in anti-rape activism, Nejedlová decided to team up with them to cofound Konsent, a nonprofit that works to prevent sexual violence and create safer environments for women. Konsent offers workshops that educate children and adults alike on how to practice consent and debunk myths about sexual violence, as well as trainings for bartenders and other nightlife staff in recognizing and responding to sexual harassment in clubs. In December 2019, Nejedlová won Women in Europes Woman in Youth Activism award.
Photo credit: The Okra Project
Trans-focused Activist Collective
In 2018, actress and activist Ianne Fields Stewart teamed up with chef Meliq Zaddy August and Nyla Sampson, the founder of the Black Trans Solidarity Fund, to launch The Okra Project, a New York-based organization that brings Black trans chefs to the homes of food-insecure Black trans people to provide them with meals. The groups initial fundraiser swiftly grew into a movement, and in 2019 Stewart and Sampson launched a cooking workshop called the Okra Academy and began hosting health and wellness events. COVID-19 forced the suspension of the projects home visits, but the team has remained hard at work: In May, the project announced two mental-health fundsnamed for Nina Pop and Tony McDade, two of the Black trans people murdered in 2020that provide Black trans people with one-time free therapy; and in August, it launched a monthlong collaboration with UberEats that provided 1,500 free meal vouchers to Black trans people. No matter what the format, The Okra Project remains committed to supporting Black trans people.
Activist
Like most people born with bodies that dont fit into anatomical or hormonal categories of male or female, Pidgeon Pagonis spent their young life profoundly alienated from a body designated female but markedly different from those of their female peers. Once Pagonis found out all that they didnt know about their history, they were determined to change the medical protocol that has long recommended surgeries, hormone replacement, and secrecy to parents of intersex children in the name of ensuring a normal life. After cofounding the Intersex Justice Project in 2017, Pagonis focused their attention on Lurie Childrens Hospital in Chicago with a public pressure campaign that garnered support from intersex and trans activists, local legislators, hospital employees, and luminaries like Poses Indya Moore and Angelica Ross. In July 2020, Lurie pledged to no longer perform medically unnecessary genital surgeries, and issued a public apology. Pagonis called Luries decision a tipping pointa victory, but just one step in an ongoing, long-overdue movement for justice.
Photo credit: Ally Almore
Founder and Executive Director of Brave Space Alliance LGBTQ
When protests erupted across the United States in the wake of George Floyds murder, LaSaia Wade knew exactly how she could contribute to the cause. As the founder of Brave Space Alliance, the first Black- and trans-led LGBTQ Center on Chicagos South Side, Wade had organized marches in the past and knew that her community center could function as a literal safe space for protestors. Over the summer of 2020, BSAs volunteer network began providing food, water, spare clothes, and first aid to protestors who were being met with police violence and tear gas in the citys streets. And this wasnt the first time in 2020 that BSA lived up to its name: In March, Wade helped the center orchestrate a crisis food pantry that has been delivering more than 200 bags of food weekly to food-insecure Chicagoans since the pandemic began.
POLITICS
Photo credit: Jahi Chikwendiu/Getty Images
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California and Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus
Karen Bass began her work in civil rights as a community organizer in the late 1980s, after hearing the Reverend Cecil Williams speak about the racist impact of the crack epidemic in South Los Angeles. Along with other local organizers, Bass founded Community Coalition, a social-justice nonprofit that for 30 years has worked to address the areas social and economic conditions. In 2004, Bass was elected to the California State Assembly, and four years later became the assemblys 67th speakerand the first Black woman in the nation to hold that position. In 2018, Bass was named Public Official of the Year by the Los Angeles chapter of the Stonewall Democrats, the nations oldest LGBTQ caucus. In 2020, she was on the short list of potential running mates for Joe Biden. In the wake of George Floyds death, Bass coauthored the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020 with Senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris and House Judiciary Committee leader Jerry Nadler. The bill bans the use of chokeholds, no-knock warrants, and excessive force and, if signed into law, would mandate the creation of a National Police Misconduct Registry. 
Photo credit: coribush.org
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Missouri
A nurse, single mother, and pastor, Cori Bush entered the activism space in 2014 after Michael Brown was murdered by police in Ferguson, Missouri. Having led protests and organizing in the wake of Browns death, she pivoted to politics with a focus on Medicare For All, universal basic income, and the Green New Dealwhich Bush calls a racial justice issueas well as highlighting the years of difficult, painful work by Black women who have long supported progressive moments. Bush ran for Senate in 2016 and lost and lost again when she challenged Representative William Lacy Clay for his House seat in 2018. The third time was the charm, however: In August, Bush unseated 10-term incumbent Clay in the states primary; in November, she soundly defeated Republican opponent Anthony Rogers and became the first Black woman to represent Missouri in Congress. Bush was backed by Bernie Sanders, the Democratic Socialists of America, the Justice Democrats, and Sunrise Movement, along with other progressive leaders; she now has the chance not only to have made history, but to continue to do so.
Photo credit: senate.ca.gov
California State Senator for District 2
California Senator Holly Mitchell knows that sometimes justice starts at the topliterally. Witnessing a rise in national reports of Black-hair discrimination that used coded words like unprofessional, messy, or inappropriate to penalize students and employees, Mitchell introduced the CROWN (Creating a Respectful and Open Workplace for Natural Hair) Act in January 2019. The act was signed into law the following July, making California the first state to make discrimination based on Black hairstyles like locs, braids, and twists illegaland sparking seven other states to pass similar action. And in September 2020, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the bill at the federal level, noting that it will explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of natural hair as a form of race or national origin discrimination. It now waits on senate and presidential approval to become federal law.
Activist
Teressa Raiford has been a fixture in Portland, Oregons activist scene for many years, founding the police accountability group Dont Shoot Portland in 2014. Thats one of the reasons she was considered a serious contender when she ran to be Portlands next mayor, coming in third behind incumbent Mayor Ted Wheeler and challenger Sarah Iannarone in the primary. It seemed that her political hopes were dashedand then George Floyd died, leading to the creation of the Write in Teressa Raiford campaign to add her to the mayoral ballot. Though Wheeler won a second term with 46 percent of the vote, 13 percent of ballots were cast for a write-in candidate, presumed to be Raiford. Her long-shot candidacy was a testament to the power of people-driven movementsa sentiment that will last long after this election cycle is over.
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
Member of the California State Assembly for the 79th District
Prior to her election to the California State Assembly in 2012, Shirley Weber was a professor at San Diego State University for 40 years. During her time at the university, Weber helped establish the Department of Africana Studies and served as the department chair. She also served as the president of the San Diego Board of Education. In 2020, Weber authored AB 1460, the first legislation passed at the state level requiring ethnic studies as a university graduation requirement. Starting in the 20202021 school year, all California State Universities will be required to offer at least one ethnic studies course at each of its campuses, and all incoming freshmen must pass an ethnic studies course in order to graduate.
ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
Photo credit: Nadav Benjamin
Creative Director of Joop Joop Creative
Chicago-born Fran Bittakis has worked in social advocacy and justice since the late 1990s. Bittakis moved to Portland, Oregon, for culinary school in 2004, but began noticing friends and fellow creatives leaving Portland as the city became more expensive and they struggled to make ends meet. Following the 2016 election, Bittakis created the collaborative agency NXT LVL, which brought together musicians, activists, and small-business owners to throw parties and events with queer, trans, and POC performers at their centers. And in 2018, Bittakis founded Joop Joop, a radical creative agency that represents a diverse slate of creative talent and produces everything everything from music videos for local rappers and a tampon drive for local Portland charities to an afterparty at the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art’s 2018 Met Gala. Joop Joop works to carve out spaces where marginalized creatives feel supportedand to make sure they have the talent management, training, and legal and financial support they need to thrive.
Photo credit: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
Actor
When the news of Chadwick Bosemans death broke, the collective grief over his loss was overwhelming. As an actor who portrayed iconic Black figures like Thurgood Marshall, Jackie Robinson, James Brown, and TChalla, it is difficult to understate the impact that Boseman has had on Black communities across the world. In 2018, Boseman became Marvels first Black superhero, playing the titular role in Black Panther. His portrayal of TChalla was historic in terms of representation, but even more so as the film became an instant global phenomenon. Black Panther didnt simply feature a predominantly Black cast and crewit celebrated Blackness and highlighted Black excellence in a way that is rare for major blockbusters, let alone superhero films. Through his embodiment of Black Panther, Boseman taught us how to build bridges within communities, lead with integrity, and be better than those that came before us. Rest in peace, Chadwick Boseman. Wakanda Forever.
Photo credit: Dignidad Literaria
Publishing Collective
Publishers often talk a good game when it comes to diversity and inclusion, but nonwhite authors know all too well that walking the walk is a different story. In the wake of the January 2020 release of Jeanine Cumminss novel American Dirta public relations disaster that would have been offensive even without the barbed-wire centerpieces at the books launch partya group of Latinx writers organized to confront an industry where white authors, editors, and executives are still the overwhelming arbiters of whose voices are elevated and compensated. Dignidad Literaria founders David Bowles, Myriam Gurba, and Roberto Lovato moved quickly to galvanize support and action both online and off; by the first week of February, the group had met with Macmillan Publishers (the parent company of American Dirts publisher, Flatiron Books) to devise an action plan for increasing both Latinx authors and staff, and publicly called on New York Governor Andrew Cuomos office to initiate an industry-wide investigation of racial discrimination in big publishings hiring and contracting practices.
Photo credit: Bea Helman/generationziwe.com
Comedian
Ziwe Fumudoh is a provocateur. As a writer on Showtimes late-night blockbuster Desus & Mero, shes helped two of our cultures most indelible figures ask the kinds of questions of celebrities and other public figures that go viral and become memes. Once the COVID pandemic hit TV production, however, Fumudoh emerged as a star in her own right with the Instagram Live show Baited With Ziwe. Each episode finds Fumudoh engaging mostly whiteand generally controversialinfluencers, authors, and celebrities with the kind of direct questions about race theyd prefer to avoid. Why do you hate Asian women? she asked Alison Roman, mere weeks after Roman came under fire for making offensive statements about Chrissy Teigen and Marie Kondo. (She followed up with the query Do you consider yourself the Christopher Columbus of food influencing?) Asking Alyssa Milano how many Black friends she has and querying Caroline Calloway about whether her family owned slaves creates the kind of comedy that no one couldve expected, so its no surprise that Showtime tapped Fumudoh for her own forthcoming variety series.
Photo credit: Laura Hanifin
Science Fiction and Fantasy Author
N.K. Jemisin is truly one of the greatest sci-fi writers of our time. Her novels explore themes of oppression, sexuality, climate change, and self-acceptance. Despite its dystopian nature, her work feels like an odd comfort during these similarly chaotic times. In 2016, Jemison won the Hugo Award for Best Novel for her book The Fifth Season, becoming the first Black person to ever win the award. Her two follow ups in the Broken Earth series also won Hugos, making her the first author to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel three consecutive years and for all three books in a trilogy. In October 2020, Jemisin was awarded a MacArthur genius grant.
Photo credit: Shane Mccauley
Musician
Were continually impressed by singer-songwriter Thao Nguyen, leader of the band Thao & the Get Down Stay Down. A glance at Nguyens social media illustrates the causes that motivate them: the prison-industrial complex, incarcerated women, and the criminalization of survivors. This anti-carceral mindset is reflected in their music: 2013s We the Common was inspired by a trip to a California womens prison and the conversations the artist had there. 2020s All This and More, a song written during the COVID-19 pandemic, highlights a time of political unrest, catastrophic wildfires, and the U.S. governments failure to protect its citizens from the deadly virus. Since moving to San Francisco in 2009, Nguyen has been an active member of the citys activist community, volunteering with organizations like the California Coalition for Women Prisoners.
Photo credit: Jovanka Novakovic
Romance Novelist
It was hardly a meet-cute, but romance novels and rabble-rousing paired up for an explosive plotline in December 2019 after Romance Writers of America, the genres largest trade organization, suspended author Courtney Milan. Milan is a prolific author of historical romances, a former RWA board member, and a prominent advocate for racial diversity in romance writing. Her willingness to speak out on social media about persistent issues of racism, cultural insensitivity, and institutional gatekeeping in the romance-writing industry, however, havent always been welcome in a genre thats both wildly lucrative and perennially undervalued. Milans suspension set off an avalanche within the organization that included revelations of complaints filed and ignored, accusations of discrimination against authors by editors, backchannel scheming and ethical breaches among leadership, and more. But fomenting a long-overdue industry reckoning didnt slow Milan down creatively: Her latest novel, The Duke Who Didnt, was published in September 2020and promptly became a USA Today bestseller.
Photo credit: Rick Fury/Getty Images
Musician
Megan Thee Stallion is on an absolute roll: In March 2020, she released a nine-track EP, Suga, which featured the viral TikTok song Savage. When Beyoncé hopped on a remix of Savage in April, it became the first Billboard chart-topping song of Megans career. In November, Cardi Bs WAP, on which Megan was featured, debuted at the top of the Billboard 100, with an instantly iconic video. GQ named Megan its Rapper of the Year, for good reason: Shes been nominated for a slew of awards, wrote a powerful New York Times op-ed about the ongoing need to protect Black women, and released her debut studio album, Good News. Tragedy has also characterized the rappers year: Besides a public battle with her record label, Megan was shot by a fellow artist and then both scrutinized and harassed in the aftermath. But through it all, her feel-good music reasserts the confidence that will continue to drive her career to new heights.
President of the Music Business Association
A trailblazer in the Pacific Northwest music scene, Portia Sabin began her career playing drums in several punk bands and later transitioned into running an independent record label. From 2006 to 2019, Sabin served as president of Kill Rock Stars, a Portland- and Olympia-based label that became home base for the feminist-punk movement in the 1990s, with marquee bands including Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, and Bratmobile. Today, KRS describes itself as queer-positive, feminist, anti-racist, and artist-friendly. In 2014, Sabin launched The Future of What, a podcast that serves as an educational resource for artists learning how to navigate the music industry. In August 2019, Sabin was named the new president of the Music Business Association,  where she will continue to champion diverse voices in the industry.
Photo credit: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images
Showrunner and Executive Producer
For years, Noelle Stevenson has been central to queer representation in animation and comics. In 2012, she began creating the webcomic Nimona, which was published as a graphic novel by HarperCollins in 2015 and is slated to be adapted as an animated feature film in 2022. In 2014, alongside cowriters Shannon Watters, Grace Ellis, and Brooklyn A. Allen, Stevenson brought Lumberjanes to life; the series had a six-year run that was beloved by both critics and fans. (Both Nimona and Lumberjanes won Eisner Awards for their impact on American comic books.) Most recently, Stevenson served as showrunner and executive producer of the Netflix reboot of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, which quickly became a cult favorite and was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Kids & Family Programming. [I]ts never an easy trail to blaze, but its an important one, Stevenson said of LGBTQ representation in a 2018 interview with The Verge. And every step we take, it just gets us all a little bit closer. Were grateful to Stevenson for helping to make that blaze a little brighter.
Photo credit: Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images
TV Creator
Historically, the visionaries of childrens television have been those at the helm of live-action series: Jim Henson, Fred Rogers, Bill Nye. But Rebecca Sugar easily earned her place in that pantheon with Steven Universe, the animated series that drew both critical praise and ardent fandom for its thoughtful, creative, spirited, and thoroughly queer take on the heros journey. Sugar, Steven Universes creator and showrunner, built a world whose gender inclusivity and representation of connection, confusion, family trauma, and intimacy never required throat-clearing or hand-wringing; they were simply intrinsic to the stories Sugar wanted to tell, and resonant for viewers of all ages. 2020s epilogue miniseries marked the end of Stevens universe, but Sugar didnt leave longtime fans empty-handed: Steven Universe: End of an Era, published in October, is a behind-the-scenes companion book that bursts with concept art and storyboards, as well as interviews with Sugar and a forward by award-winning fantasy author N.K. Jemison. Its the perfect, joyous farewell as we wait to see what Sugar does next.
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SPORTS
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Professional Skateboarder
Leo Baker is one of the best skateboarders in the world: After becoming one of the youngest skateboarders to medal at the X Games, theyve now earned seven X Games medals. However, Baker was long classified as a skateboarder in womens categories, a distinction that didnt sit well with them because theyre nonbinary in a sport that has only recently begun recognizing and celebrating women competitors. In July 2019, Baker publicly revealed that theyre nonbinary via Miley Cyruss Mothers Daughter video, and since then has been intentional about making more room in the sport of other marginalized skateboarders. In 2020, they joined forces with Nike for both a clothing line and an incredible series of ads celebrating LGBTQ people. Theres no limit to what Bakers going to doboth inside and outside of skateboarding.
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
WNBA Player and Activist
As a professional basketball player for the Minnesota Lynx, Maya Moore is used to making assists on the court; off the court, shes also known for assisting victims of the criminal-justice system. A month before Colin Kaepernick made headlines for peacefully protesting police brutality, Moore and her teammates wore Black Lives Matter shirts to honor Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, two of the men murdered by police in 2016. In 2019, Moore announced that she would take a hiatus from the WNBA in order to help free Jonathan Irons, a Missouri man wrongly convicted of burglary and assault and serving a 50-year prison sentence. Moore founded Win with Justice, an organization that works to overturn wrongful convictions and elect officials who intend to challenge the racialized system of criminal prosecution in the United States. More than 20 years after he was wrongfully imprisoned, Irons walked free on July 1, 2020; he and Moore married in September.
Photo credit: De’Ja-Lashay Goode/Proper Gnar/Facebook
Creator of Proper Gnar
In 2013, Latosha Stone founded the Ohio-based skateboard company Proper Gnar with the goal of pushing the limits of design and creating boards unlike any other. In doing so, she became the first Black womanowned skateboard company in an industry long dominated by and marketed to young white men. Proper Gnars reach expanded in 2020 when Beyoncé featured the brand in a directory of Black-owned businesses; Stones boards were also featured in Betty, an HBO series about a diverse group of teen girls who skate the streets of New York City. Both collaborations feel true to Stones work: Like Beyoncé, shes a trailblazer; like Bettys impressive cast of real-life skateboarders, shes breaking boundaries for young women. It’s such a neat sisterhood to get into, she told Elle in July. Dont let other people discourage you because youll always have guys that want to say sexist things to you. Its worth it in the end.
Photo credit: Julio Aguilar/Getty Images
Professional Sports League
Since its inception 24 years ago, the Womens National Basketball Association has faced uphill battles with grace, confidence, and commitment. In 2020, the league was nothing short of extraordinary. Its 22-game seasonabbreviated because of the COVID pandemic and played in a quarantined bubblewould have been impressive based on gameplay alone. But using its platform to counter the shut up and dribble rhetoric of the Trump administration turned out to be just as winning: The league dedicated the 2020 season to Breonna Taylor and the Say Her Name movement, announced a newly created Social Justice Council to foreground dialogue and activism around systemic racism, and told Georgia senator and Atlanta Dream co-owner Kelly Loeffler to fuck around and find out after Loeffler introduced a bill meant to ban transgender girls and women from playing publicly funded sports. As Amira Rose Davis wrote in a September piece for Bitch, Womens sports, by their very existence, have always been political, but every time the WNBA takes the court, theyre refusing to cede the powerful platform theyve built.
SCIENCE, TECH, AND INNOVATION
Photo credit: Pariss Athena
Founder of Black Tech Pipeline
After losing her first job as a tech developer, Pariss Athena looked to Twitter to find other Black developers and quickly noticed that, despite a large Black tech community online, she rarely saw people who looked like her IRL. So she posed a question to her followers, asking What does Black Twitter in Tech look like? and encouraging folks to share pictures of themselves. Athenas tweet promptly blew up, garnering more than 11,000 likes and 2,000 replies and popularizing the hashtag #BlackTechTwitter. Practically overnight, a movement was born, and Athena began using the hashtag to help businesses recruit Black technologists. A year and a half later, she founded Black Tech Pipeline to continue recruiting Black professionals in tech and to further address inclusivity and retention problems endemic to many tech companies. Through Black Tech Pipeline, Athena created a model to create better workplace cultures, consult with Black technologists after they are hired, and provide transparent feedback to employers so they can move beyond the bare minimum of diversity and inclusion.
Photo credit: Makeda Sanford
Founder of Somewhere Good
In 2020, theres been a reckoning within coworking spaces that prioritized whiteness and classism at the expense of people from marginalized communities. Naj Austin has risen from the ashes of that reckoning with Somewhere Good, a forthcoming social platform designed for people of color to connect around the things we love. It started with Ethels Club, a subscription-based physical and digital community, that aims to support and celebrate people of color. Austin opened the physical doors of Ethels Clubnamed after her late grandmotherin 2019 and expanded to a digital membership to accommodate the pandemic. Ethels Club has become a safe space for its members where self-care and wellness are prioritized above all else. As a member of Ethels Club, you are directly entering a funnel that gives money and opportunity to other people of colorevery touchpoint was influenced, created or sourced by someone who believes in the same credofor us, by us, Austin told Jopwell. What a mantra to steel ourselves with against a world that is as deadly as it has ever been.
Photo credit: Tommye Austin
Nurse
Like many healthcare workers, Tommye Austin was alarmed by the speed with which the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the United Statesand by the evidence that the nations hospitals werent prepared for it. Austin, the senior vice president and chief nurse executive of University Health System in San Antonio, Texas, knew by April 2020 that reserves of N95 respirator masks in her hospital and others would soon be depleted, and worked quickly to design an alternative. Austin used a material readily available at hardware storesair-conditioning filtersto create a mask with a 99.5 percent rate of filtration efficiency, and that, unlike the N95, could be worn comfortably for long periods of time. The pattern was disseminated on hospital websites across the country, and Austins innovation landed her on Modern Healthcares 2020 list of the countrys 50 most influential clinical executives.
Photo credit: Karen Hernandez
CEO of Loom
The United States is in the throes of a maternal mortality crisis that has disproportionately impacted Black parents. Doula Erica Chidi became passionate about helping people become their own health advocatesboth before and during pregnancywhen she worked with incarcerated pregnant people in San Francisco. In 2016, she cofounded Loom, a series of in-person classes in Los Angeles that educates women and nonbinary people about their sexual and reproductive health while deepening their self-care habits. Loom offers everything from classes about menstrual cycles to pregnancy to abortion; in 2020, after raising $3 million through an initial seed round, the company is expanding into a digital platform thats accessible to all. Chidi is one of the first Black women to raise more than $1 million in venture capital, and its for a great cause. We hold trauma in our reproductive organs and abdominal area, Chidi told Refinery29. Becoming closer to understanding how it workswhether it’s around your period or as it relates to birth control, fertility, or sexis an extension to our power.
Photo credit: University of Rochester
Neuroscientist
In July 2020, Jamaican-born Monique Mendes made history as the first Black woman to earn a PhD in neuroscience at the University of Rochester. At universities across the United States, Black students are severely underrepresented in STEM fields, comprising only 5.4 percent of science doctorates, according to the National Science Foundation. As an undergraduate, Mendes was named a McNair Scholar at the University of Florida. During her time in the highly ranked neuroscience program at Rochester, Mendes conducted valuable research on brain disease and injury. She was selected as a Neuroscience Scholars Program Fellow and awarded the National Institutes of Health Diversity Fellowship. The 27-year-old Mendes recently began her post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford University where she will spend the next five years conducting research that expands our scientific understanding of brain development.
Photo credit: Step
Creator of Cute Little Fuckers
Nothing against anatomically detailed Fleshlights or porn performerbranded dildos, but its fine to put some respect on sex toys as, well, toys. Cute Little Fuckers (CLF) does just that with its offerings: colorful silicone monsters that feature five vibration speeds and are USB rechargeable rather than battery-operated. CLF founder Step Tranovich, who identifies as gender-fluid, wanted to create queer- and trans-friendly toys that didnt announce themselves as for women or for men, and conceived of the Cute Little Fuckers as characters in themselves (they even have their own webcomic). But personality doesnt come at the expense of design qualityTranovich consulted with people of all genders and sexualities to inform the designs, resulting in toys that are ergonomic and can be used both internally and externally. CLF also stands out as one of a small handful of sex-tech projects to be approved for a Kickstarter campaign: The project launched in September 2019 with a funding goal of $13,500 raised more than $16,000 within a day and began shipping in February 2020. For Tranovich, the support from Kickstarter is crucial in bringing sex toys to the mainstream in a way thats accessible, transparent, and, yes, playful.
Photo credit: Black Resilience Fund/Facebook
Philanthropists
Since the pandemic began, local communities have stepped into the gap to care for their neighbors in ways state and federal governments have mostly failed to. In June, Salomé Chimuku and Cameron Whitten created the Black Resilience Fund on GoFundMe with the goal of distributing $300 to Portland, Oregon residents in need. Chimuku and Whitten (who is the former director of Portlands Q Center) set a goal of $5,000but ended up raising more than $1 million, which theyve used to help Black people in hard-hit areas of Oregon and Washington meet their basic needs, including buying food and paying rent. Our systems are so broken, Whitten told Willamette Week in June. How do we even begin fixing them? To me, the answer is clear. We start by taking care of our neighbors. Indeed.
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