JE’KENDRIA TRAHAN
Executive Director

Je’Kendria (she/they) is a fat Black non-binary (agender) person who grew up in Orange, Texas, and has called the DC area her home for almost 15 years. Je’Kendria began her career working on DC-area educational equity and social justice initiatives in 2005, starting as an AmeriCorps literacy tutor at Garfield Elementary in Southeast DC. Since then, they’ve worked across a wide range of programs, school districts, and state departments by offering technical assistance, professional development, program implementation and evaluation, strategic planning, and community engagement through a racial justice lens.

Je’Kendria has also worked as a facilitator, healer, artist, and community organizer within the Movement for Black Lives since 2015. Her political home is the Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100), having served in several leadership roles for the DC Chapter and national planning teams. They have helped build and execute local and national campaigns to end the school-to-prison pipeline in DC, divest from police and invest in Black futures, decriminalize sex work in DC, cultivate safety from state and interpersonal violence for Black women and femmes, and invest in alternatives to prisons and police through transformative and healing justice. In addition, she has curated art galleries, hosted several healing circles for Black queer and trans folks, and has launched a platform for spiritual healing services. Je’Kendria’s politic is unapolgetically Black queer feminist, abolitionist, anti-capitalist, and is committed to liberation for all until freedom is won. Je’Kendria holds a Master’s Degree in Health Promotion (Program Implementation & Evaluation) from Mississippi State University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Chemistry from Howard University.

Je’Kendria brings her unique background and experiences as a survivor who is disabled and formerly housing insecure to CASS initiatives. They fight against gender-based violence, actualizing alternatives to the carceral state by implementing community safety, advocating for sex workers and survivors, as well as being accountable to her community of people who are historically marginalized.

KAI HARTSFIELD
Deputy Director

Kai Hartsfield (they/them) is a young trans non-binary organizer born and raised in Richmond, VA. They moved to the DMV area in 2015 to attend George Mason University, where they earned a B.A. in Integrative Studies with a concentration in International Studies. It is here, in the midst of the Black Lives Matter era, that they developed a global anti-capitalist politic and began student organizing with Students Against Israeli Apartheid and Virginia Student Power Network. 

Kai began their career in fundraising and grant writing at Elevate, writing for a variety of nonprofit clients including advocacy, direct service, health, and arts organizations. They also routinely consult with and write for small trans-led collectives seeking to begin institutional fundraising. Kai was introduced to CASS through the DecrimNOW coalition as an organizer with the D.C. chapter of Black Youth Project 100 where they have been agitating, creating, and organizing since the fall of 2018. They previously led the chapter as the communications co-chair, working on the DecrimNOW campaign and the chapter’s internal comms strategy. Kai currently serves on the chapter’s fundraising committee and is dedicated to exploring creative ways to build resources and sustain BYP100 D.C.’s work. 

As a trans non-binary person, navigating the particularities of non-binary perception, invisibility, and violence, Kai is committed to developing the necessary language, safety, community, and resources for trans non-binary folks to experience gender euphoria. In their role at CASS, they look forward to creating the resources needed to end gendered-violence and make the transformative justice framework more accessible to the greater DMV area.

Kai is a budding Angoleirx, a Capricorn, a survivor, a skateboarder, an abolitionist, and an avid introvert.

EMEM OBOT 
Programs & Communications Director

Emem Obot (they/them) is a disabled, Black, Trans, artist, facilitator, heaux, and concerned community member from the Chicagoland area. Their organizing works to build the people’s power, systems, and culture that centers on the autonomy of oppressed people. It has taken the form of political education, resources distribution, and cultural enrichment. 

In 2015, Emem started organizing in American University as a facilitator focused on the deconstruction of institutional power and the role of individual responsibility as a part of their work with The Darkening – an unofficial collective of students focused on combating white supremacy on campus through facilitations, direct actions, and coalition work between DC residents, campus faculty and staff. This was their first time as a youth having the space to learn, fight, and channel their rage and passion into something that matters. As a young organizer, they developed a large international focus and still believed in working on a local scale in hopes to connect movements, theories, and praxis to build coalitions. They began their own organization that same year, Blackout Generation Liberation, as a curated space for young folks to learn, heal, and connect. This organization was born from a nationwide youth-led protest in over 13 cities in the States and known internationally as Blackout USA. After the big protest, they wanted to shift the focus of the organization to push for mutual aid work that helps provide safety, material resources, and political education to the youth in the DC area and use the momentum towards a culture of self-reliance and communalism. They also focus heavily on connecting with the work of our elders and ancestors for lessons, failures, and the path we have already traveled. Emem now focuses on creating spaces for self exploration and expression, organizing through resource sharing and intentional collaboration for artists, creators, and creative people. 

In 2016, they began to focus their efforts and energy on mutual aid work with the Food Clothing Resistance Collective at the Maroon House on Rhode Island Ave NE in DC. The Maroon House focused on having an intentional safe space for Black Queer and Trans people. As a collective, they worked within the community to provide material necessities like food, clothing, educational resources and workshops, all of which worked to build a culture of resistance, self-reliance, people power, and sovereignty. Emem identified and began to nurture the role of art as a place of visualizing freedom, community building, and cultural work, including mutual aid systems rooted in the principles and ideas of communalism, autonomy, sovereignty, and self-determination. Emem leans on abolitionist and transformative justice theory and history to inform their work and path within the community while bringing their experiences a disabled, Black Trans person.