Midwest-Southern Fat Organizing Convening: Oct. 24-25, 2020

Amanda Pretlow Lamm

Amanda Pretlow Lamm is a fat Black queer reproductive and racial justice organizer, educator, and facilitator based in Indianapolis, IN. She has been doing abortion access work for the last 4 years, first managing the All-Options Hoosier Abortion Fund. She currently works as the Leadership Development Coordinator at the National Network of Abortion Funds, supporting abortion fund leaders, members, and callers in developing organizing skills and leadership competencies. Born and raised in Hampton Roads, VA, she began organizing to fight against Targeted Restrictions on Abortion Providers (TRAP laws) in Virginia alongside various reproductive health and rights organizations and supporting the campaigns of progressive politicians running for local office. Her current organizing and political education centers racial, reproductive, and economic justice through a lens of Black liberation and fat liberation. Amanda also writes about the intersections of abortion access, mental health, Blackness, queerness, and pleasure. When she’s not organizing or educating for liberation, you can find Amanda on local hiking trails with her dog, Millie, or tending to her numerous houseplants.

Jessica Joneson

Jessica Joneson is a Fat, Queer, neurodivergent leftist organizer based out of Lafayette, IN. Raised in San Bernardino, CA, she moved to Indiana to pursue a PhD in interdisciplinary biomedical sciences shortly before coming out, dropping out, and taking up the Fight in the form of local community organizing. She is currently the Director of Mobilization for the Younger Women’s Task Force of Greater Lafayette, and a core organizing member of Fat Rose. Jessica believes strongly in transformative justice & community care, and is deeply invested in local mutual aid & legal defense fund efforts. Her work, and pleasure, involves envisioning a future beyond the gender binary, with liberation for all bodies and an end to white supremacy.

Ulyssa Hester

Born and raised near Atlanta, Georgia, Ulyssa is a queer Midwestern community organizer with Southern roots. Ulyssa does their core organizing work with the Younger Womxn’s Taskforce of Greater Lafayette, Indiana (YWTF-GL) where they sit on the Circle of Directors as the Director of Basebuilding, and Director of The Collective- a caucus of nonbinary folks and womxn of color within YWTF-GL. Their community work is centered on transformative justice, developing non-carceral responses to crisis and harm, and strengthening the culture of community care in Greater Lafayette. When asked what they are looking forward to at MSFOC 2020, they said, “I’m hoping to talk about the embodiment of liberation specifically in regards to inhabiting a fat, Black, nonbinary body. What could it mean for my organizing spaces? My community — locally and elsewhere? My day to day interactions with myself or others? What can shift now for me to experience some semblance of liberation in my body?”   

Melissa (mel) Gruver

Melissa Gruver (she, her, hers) is a Midwest-Based educator & organizer from the South and the founding Chapter Organizing Director of the Younger Women’s Task Force of Greater Lafayette. She stumbled into state-wide coalition building fighting for reproductive justice, labor solidarity & against judicial nominees.  Melissa is involved in anti-racist and intersectional feminist community organizing at a local, state and national level through Indiana Reproductive Justice Coalition, International Women’s Strike-US, & Fat Rose.  She learned the importance of group-centered leadership and Southern People Power from the members of Memphis Homeless Organizing for Power & Equality (HOPE) and day-dreaming about Midwest-Southern solidarity keeps her up at night.  Melissa facilitates organizing workshops, music festivals & two-minute teach-ins in her living room, at the local bar, in the streets & on the internet.  She laughs often, she laughs loud & with no apologies. 

Dawn Haney

A 5th generation Hoosier now living in California, Dawn Haney has been organizing, teaching, and writing for 20 years, on feminism, white anti-racism, violence prevention, direct action, public health, spirituality, and more. They took a Health Behavior graduate degree from the University of Georgia and alchemized it into their role as a change midwife, using their mix of powers as a white, fat, queer, neurodivergent, nonbinary femme to lead and coach social justice organizations to build power in frontline communities. Previously a Co-Director of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, she co-instigated Fat Rose to develop a community of fat radicals to embed fat politics across the political left.