BYP100

The Black grassroots organization extends its cultural work into narrative film.

The nine-month lab is led by founding national director Dr. Charlene Carruthers and built around one question:
What Happens When We Win?

Fourteen organizers walked into a room and began building a world. Meet the first cohort of the Black Queer Feminist (BQF) Film Lab, a nine-month program powered by BYP100 and @1863.productions . Produced by @charlenecarruthers , the BQF Film Lab continues BYP100’s narrative intervention work by confronting anti-Blackness, patriarchal violence, and capitalism through Black feminist storytelling and transformative leadership development. It opened with an in-person retreat in July and runs through winter 2027.

Mission

BYP100 is National, member-based organization of Black 18-35 year old activists and organizers, dedicated to creating justice and freedom for all Black people. We do this through building a network focused on transformative leadership development, direct action organizing, advocacy, and political education using a Black queer feminist lens.

Vision

BYP100 envisions a world where all Black people have economic, social, political, and educational freedom.

Core Values

We have five main core values to ensure effective operations and engagement of the members of our organization:

1. We are committed to engaging in meaningful action to fulfill our mission and realize our collective vision through a democratic, consensus driven process.
2. We challenge each other and promote each other’s growth within the collective.
3. We honor multiple truths and understand that we are experts of our own experience, so we strive to be reflective of Black youth without inaccurately claiming to represent every story. We build spaces for other young Black activists to engage and share their own perspectives.
4. We stress holistic energy and intentionally bring our entire selves to work.
5. We are committed to the radical and purposeful inclusion of all Black people, including but not limited to a diversity of: sex, gender, class, citizenship status, sexuality, physical ability, education experiences, and faith.

What Is Black Queer Feminism

The Black Queer Feminist (BQF) is a political theory and practice developed out of Black feminist and LGBTQ movements for liberation. Together, this praxis (thought + action) is like putting on a pair of glasses in order to understand the conditions of Black people and what we must transform in order to liberate all oppressed people. Lenses, of any kind, impact how we see the world. They magnify, protect, and clarify.

The BQF gives a more holistic understanding of our conditions and connectedness as Black people. As a result, we understand that liberation for all Black people can only be realized by lifting up the voices, experiences and prioritizing the issues of historically silenced and vulnerable groups within Black communities – specifically, queer, trans and GNC, femme, poor, disabled, poor, working and undocumented people. Simply put, it means that as organizers we have to take Fannie Lou Hamer’s words seriously: “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.