Listen now:
In this episode of Black Oxygen, Angela sits down with Tyrone Creech, Executive Director of GSafe Wisconsin for a wide-ranging, deeply honest conversation about what it means to serve LGBTQ+ youth in this political moment.
Tyrone shares the realities on the ground: the stripping of trans healthcare, the collapse of corporate and philanthropic support, the impossible moral calculus nonprofits face when funding comes with compromises, and the extraordinary courage of young people who are doing activism when they should just be kids.
But this episode isn’t just about what’s being taken away. Tyrone talks about what’s holding communities together — chosen family, consent culture, the joy and power of GSafe’s Celebration of Leadership (now in its 30th year!), and the Leadership Training Institute (LTI), a transformative camp that gives LGBTQ youth a rare space to just exist, breathe, and be fully themselves. He also offers a direct call to adults everywhere: listen to your kids. Actually listen.
In this episode:
- The current landscape for trans youth in Wisconsin and what survival looks like right now
- The moral weight of accepting grants from institutions that have abandoned the community
- What consent culture is, why it matters, and why it needs to start young
- G-Safe’s Celebration of Leadership (COL) — May 30th at the Monona Terrace — and why Angela, a self-proclaimed gala-hater, loves this one
- The Leadership Training Institute: what happens when you give LGBTQ youth a space described as “paradise”
- What gives Tyrone hope — and why his team of 10 serving 200+ GSAs across Wisconsin is one of the most powerful things he knows
