Meet Lighthouse Foundation

During the summer of 2019, Progress Bar banned rap music, Beatnix called the police on customers who objected to them selling confederate flag vests, and the largest LGBTQ+ center in the Midwest refused to fire a security firm owned by an off-duty cop with white supremacist ties. Lighthouse Church of Chicago UCC teamed up with Affinity Community Services and the Chicago Black Gay Men’s Caucus to host a protest that garnered 150 supporters. Progress Bar revoked the ban.

In July, Jamie Frazier launched Lighthouse Foundation as a stand-alone social justice organization by hosting a Racial Justice Summit that packed the room with over 100 LGBTQ+ nonprofit staff, clergy, and community members. The event built cross-racial solidarity and initiated a vision of LGBTQ+ equity across the Chicagoland area. By August, we had worked with Antifa members to write and hand-deliver a petition to the LGBT Center signed by 150+ people from 40+ institutions demanding that they fire Walsh Security. After many meetings and a press conference, the center eventually replaced Walsh with a Black LGBTQ+-owned firm trained in de-escalation. We had won our first racial justice campaign!

In the years since, we’ve decided to focus on systemic interventions, endeavoring to transform institutions for more widespread and long-lasting change. We launched the first Black Queer Equity Index in the US in 2020, using a consensus organizing model which builds on existing partnerships to deepen relationships among LGBTQ+ institutions, center Black LGBTQ+ leadership, and engage in sustained reparative work. Through our spirituality, arts, and workforce development programming, we continue to support Black LGBTQ+ people in seizing power for themselves by creating spaces where we can connect with one another, build power, and help our community thrive.