Credit: STANTON STEPHENS

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STANTON STEPHENS

Luzviminda Uzuri Carpenter, also known as Lulu, is at the center of Seattle’s community organizing scene. She works for the City of Seattle’s LGBT Commission and serves as a resident artist and performance studies teacher at Seattle Girls’ School. Through her work with other nonprofits, she also uses art and education to prevent youth violence within marginalized communities. A Filipinx, Black, mixed-race, working-class, femme, queer person of color, Carpenter created her Hollow Earth Radio show, #LuluNation + crew, to help archive the stories of queer and trans people of color (QTPOC). “I wanted to create a metaphorical ‘nation’ that accepts all of who I am and all of the complexity of people,” she told me. “I wanted to build community with [people] who were on the margins of the margins.”

Ana Sofia Knauf reports on Neighborhoods for The Stranger. When she’s not commuting to work by bus, she’s worrying about Seattle’s rising rents, giving herself headaches thinking about race, or trying...