Past Events

Many of our recent educational forums, programs and events have been recorded on video and are available for viewing online. Scroll down for information on these programs and links to video recordings where available. Click on the link in the event title to see complete details for each event. 

Panel | The Business of Care: Lesbian Economies Across Time

March 19, 2026

Speakers: Dr. Kerby Lynch (Moderator), Joan Antonuccio, Sharon De la Peña Davenport, Kin Folkz

Lesbian businesses have never been just businesses. They have been sites of creativity, survival, mutual aid, and collective imagination.

Join us for an evening of conversation exploring the lesbian businesses, networks, and mutual aid infrastructures that shaped Bay Area community life — and what their legacy means for us today.

Presented in conjunction with Directory of Dreams: Bay Area Lesbian Economies and Radical Care, 1970–1995, this panel brings together organizers, historians, and community builders to reflect on what it took to cultivate spaces of survival and self-determination — and how that work continues.

At the center of the conversation is the Brick Hut Café in Berkeley — a lesbian-owned, collectively operated restaurant that became a political home, community anchor, and lived example of feminist ethics of care in action. From hiring practices to protest closures, the Brick Hut embodied a vision of economy rooted in shared values and collective responsibility.

Today's organizers continue this work across queer media networks, open mic nights, public art, and nightlife — transferring knowledge and cultivating the know-how required to access collective queer power.

What does it take to build spaces that hold us and last?

In Their Own Words: Trans People of Color Speak from the Video Archives

February 5, 2026

Speakers: Ms. Bob Davis

Drawn from the GLBT Historical Society collections, this program was an evening of rare archival footage spotlighting Black, Latinx, Asian, and Pacific Islander trans and gender-nonconforming people speaking about their lives, identities, and activism, including excerpts from Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria (alongside extended interviews with trailblazing figures featured in the film) and candid clips capturing everyday trans and gender-nonconforming life in San Francisco and the Bay Area.

This event was presented in celebration of our featured exhibition, I Live the Life I Love Because I Love the Life I Live, co-presented with the Louise Lawrence Transgender Archive and on view through February 15, 2026. The exhibition honors trans and gender-nonconforming trailblazers of color who lived boldly and authentically despite racism, homophobia, transphobia, and class prejudice.