Voices of our City

Voices are so powerful. The newly founded Voices of our City organization holds great promise in providing a forum for creativity and free expression through the spoken word.

Its website becomes a place where there is a grand welcome extended to the LGBT youth population in New York City, a place where they can post their creative expressions of hope, raw emotion, inspiration or exhortation just to name a few.

Jessica Pelletier has long had a love of words and their resonance in her life and a dedication to social justice and equality. From this passion, the idea for a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering LGBT youth has flourished into Voices of our City. Not only does it provide a forum where one can put forth the words that say who they are and what they know and believe in, but it offers tips on how to tap into those creative parts that we all possess but seldom use.

The website is pleasing on all counts and be forewarned, it will be one you visit often, not only to experience the poetry of its youthful contributors, but also to see what the organization is up to. In addition to the written word, they will be organizing slams where one will hear the voices firsthand and there will also be postings of artwork. 

There is precedent and reverence in New York City for the spoken word, most notably the work that comes out of the Nuyorican Poets Café in the East Village. Nevertheless, New York is a big place with room for all. I applaud this wonderful effort to build a new forum in which LGBT youth can be encouraged, as stated in the mission of Voices of our City, “to identify, expand, and share their voices; so they can partake in a creation of social change and awareness of the issues that impress upon the LGBT community”.

                                                                                                       Maureen Janeski, LCSW