To mark Black History Month, we’re spotlighting the history and contribution of members of the Black community in The Bronx who are positively impacting the lives of others.

 

In the early 1980s, Sean Ebony Coleman didn’t see much empathy for a community that was being ravaged by AIDS. “A lot of my friends were victims of the HIV-AIDS epidemic, so we were watching a bunch of our friends die [and we were] trying to figure out what we could do better,” Coleman said in an interview with Norwood News. Over time, the epidemic hit very close to home.  “My mom also was a victim of the virus,” Coleman said. “So, it caught me from both angles, and it got me really interested in figuring out ways to better organize Black and brown people around health disparities.”

 

With this first-hand experience of what the LGBTQ+ community needed most, Coleman, now 55, eventually founded Destination Tomorrow in 2009 to expand services beyond just health care. Located in the South Bronx, it serves the community through educational, financial, housing, health, and personal support.  He is also its executive director. “I identify with this community because I’m a Black Trans man who was also formerly incarcerated, formerly homeless, formerly in need of services,” he said. “So, I created that which was missing for me.”

 

In an interview with CBS News during The Bronx Pride Fest in June 2022, Coleman reiterated the importance of having a safe space where the younger generation of LGBTQ+ could find support and most importantly, a sense of being understood. He told the reporter, “I wanted to create a space where there were LGBTQ adults that could help those young people navigate spaces and navigate life, and navigate some of those questions that they would ultimately have about their sexual orientation or gender identity.”

 

Destination Tomorrow has now grown to offer more than medical and mental health care referrals. Anyone walking through its doors has access to emergency housing with a food pantry, job training, financial education, GED resources, and group counseling. It has also extended its reach with some smaller offices in other parts of the borough.

 

In 2021, Cornell University published a research brief reviewing multiple studies on the effects of discrimination. It found that LGBTQ+ people experience the ill effects of exclusion more profoundly, “including grossly disproportionate rates of: experiencing discrimination over the past year, poorer mental and physical health, greater economic insecurity, and attempts to die by suicide.”

 

When asked what the most pressing issue he sees affecting members of the LGBTQ+ community in The Bronx, Coleman expressed a very relatable worry for most New Yorkers: housing. “The primary issue is housing,” he said. “As we get older…trans people in particular…many don’t have the support of their family. A lot don’t have children, so that “growing old alone” becomes an issue.”  Another issue he sees often is food insecurity. It is no doubt daunting to face issues around poverty in a borough found to have 24.4 percent of its residents living in poverty, according to data from the 2020 U.S. Census Bureau.

 

The approach at Destination Tomorrow in facing these multiple obstacles is to instill a can-do attitude in its clients as they prepare to compete in the job market. Hopelessness is not an option at the organization. “With regards to job readiness [and] professional development, those are things that our older community members also access, because it’s never too late to freshen up your resume and try to get back out there and see if you can get a better paying job,” Coleman said. “[We’re] making sure folks have the skill set that they need in order to be competitive.”

Mimi Shelton, director of Trans’ Initiatives at Destination Tomorrow, spoke at an event in April 2022 designated National Transgender HIV Testing Day, which was covered by Norwood News at the time. She recalled growing up in the South and learning that society there considered gay and trans people to be “diseased” and “unworthy.” She now works to advance the organization’s mission.

 

“We’re worthy of proper care, access to intervention and prevention services for HIV,” she said. “And we’re also worthy of people’s, not just tolerance, but people’s acceptance, people’s concern, people’s trust.” It is precisely a space of acceptance, concern, and trust that Coleman has sought to foster at Destination Tomorrow.

 

Asked what lessons can be learned by looking broadly at what is happening across the nation with the rights of LGBTQ+ in the crosshairs of conservative leaders, he reacts bluntly. “Voting rights are under attack, criminal justice, criminal reform is under attack, a woman’s right to choose is under attack. All of these things are interconnected,” he said. “The trans rights are under attack.  Yet we stay at each other’s throat. We don’t figure out the commonalities, being unemployed, being underemployed, food insecurity, safe, affordable housing especially living in New York.”

 

Though the list of social and economic problems appears to grow and intensify in some cases, Coleman remains optimistic because he has a plan and is confident it will work. “As an organizer, my first thought is to remove that whole ‘trans’ thing from it and speak to other organizers who may be Black or Asian or Latinx or whatever, and recognize those commonalities in all of us,” he said. “[We] recognize that together we’re stronger and if we take all those issues that they keep trying to use to divide us, and remove them and just work for common causes, we’d be a lot better off.”