Civic Story: Q Long
Quenessa Long, who goes by Q, is proud to be from Tacoma. Having spent 4th grade through high school in Lakewood and college in Parkland, Q is “born and bred, 253,” she says, “got the whole [Tacoma] triangle going.”
“There’s so many things to love about Tacoma. A lot of the things I like about Tacoma are based on the people who are here,” says Q, who has been in Pierce County her whole life. “Anyone else from outside the Tacoma, Parkland, Lakewood area — they always have something bad to say about us, you know, like the most crime-infested, hood, whatever. We’re called the City of Destiny. There are people who are here, destined to do great things, but not because they had the most opportune of chances or they were always invested in.”
“What’s hard about Tacoma is it’s the city of the have’s and the have-not’s.”
While Q can list off facts and stats of systemic poverty, she speaks from a sincere place, linking the realities of inequity to the intimacies of her own community. “How I came up in Tacoma was…my grandma migrated here from Germany. Divorced, my grandma was a single mother immigrant woman from Germany who barely spoke English and had to raise three black children. Between the Hilltop and the East side is where they grew up. And then my mom met my dad. So these kids are a product of their environment. They grew up on the Hilltop. Everyone’s heard all the stories about all the bad stuff, but the reason why my father was a gangster wasn’t because people told him he could be like president or mayor one day; they told him you have to take care of your family. He wasn’t able to develop skills like through education. Neither one of my parents finished high school the first time. They were just doing what they needed to do to take care of their family, take care of who they had around, because they both grew up impoverished. It’s just this cycle. So that’s why my dad got into gang culture, and my mom didn’t finish high school and had two kids by the time she was 19.” Poverty shapes how Q’s family has to survive, she says, “things like for my parents to be like that [poor] for their childhood and their youth, and for my dad to be in prison for 20 years. My mom now is this community-based activist who works with people who are changing the city. People can be reformed here. People can have these revelations because they get so inspired, they knew the life that they grew up in, and that the childhood that they had was not fair. That’s what I love about Tacoma, where there is some bad, but there is more good here — more people countering the bad than there is bad. For all the bad there is, it can be explained by poverty or violence, whatever form it takes. But everyone here is the counter-narrative. People are living counter-narratives.”
Q herself is a counter-narrative, defying the boxes that some might put her in. “I’m this educated person that benefits from things like citizenship, colorism, all these different things, but also with that, I also live this really interesting life — parent in prison, a lot of poverty, a lot of instability — but I can’t let myself only be the poverty and instability.” Living in liminality allows Q to help others process their upbringing and move forward. “If I can give myself permission to forgive some of these things I haven’t been afforded, I’ll be able to move forward and give other people permission to move forward, past the pain and trauma that they’ve had to survive. I’m more than my trauma. I think before, trauma was so central to my life, my story, all the things that I’ve been to.” Combating the lie that struggle defines her life, Q knows her story will inspire others. “I’m not like mayor of the city or something, but to allow myself to feel and work in community and learn healing techniques from other people is how I’m contributing.”
Q has always been community-minded. A lot of the work that she is involved in includes organizing people from different backgrounds to work together. “I think all oppression is rooted in the same things: colonialism and capitalism. A lot of my work surrounds racial justice, inclusion, and equity around social justice.” Q understands all people are complicated, so supporting people in their specific circumstances is part of how she relates to folks. She attributes who she is today to the nuances in how she grew up, giving her empathy for other people’s complexities.
“Tacoma is so wise. People here are so smart. Take away the gentrifiers, take away the out-of-town students who come in here and know everything more than we do, take away those people, and just look at the heart of Tacoma. You’ll see people creating scholarships in their garage so kids can go to school on full need scholarships.” Q is referring to Tim Herron, who with his wife turned their garage into a tutoring center, which became Act Six Leadership & Scholarship Initiative. Act Six has sent hundreds of students like Q on full-ride scholarships to college, equipping young leaders to return home to serve their cities.
“You see people creating like indigenous based farming, community based farming initiatives.” Like Hilltop Urban Garden, a community-based agriculture, justice, and equity organization led by poor and queer people of color in the Hilltop.
“You see indigenous people protesting pipelines because they’re like, ‘We were here first.’” Q is talking about the Puyallup Tribe sending a message to the City of Tacoma demanding a new project impact statement for the proposed LNG project.
“You see people who are just so strong here. The Tacoma community, they’re a community that has to learn no one is going to come in and save us. We have to have real human-based community, people-centric, based solutions here in order for us to survive. It’s gentrification. It’s homelessness. It’s racism. It’s all these things that are trying to tear our city apart, but because these things have always been here, it’s not new to us. There’s people out here who are boots on the ground every day. That’s what I’ve been learning from Tacoma, it’s there are people with so much knowledge already.”
Q’s compassion for all people anchors a vision for community change and a better city. “Everyone in the city has something to teach you; even if it’s something bad, harmful, something racist, something problematic — they’re going to teach you. You’re not going to like it. You’ll be like, ‘That’s a practice we aren’t going to continue.’ And if a lot of people are doing harmful practice, how are we going to fix that? You’re never going to say, ‘Didn’t you read Kimberly Crenshaw’s Intersectionality?’ Not everyone understands that language. There’s so many people who are putting into practice what we read in books, so tapping into that knowledge is important.”
Q works as a Legal Advocate for the YWCA, helping survivors of domestic violence with civil law cases, including dissolutions, parenting plans, or getting domestic violence protection orders. The YWCA focuses on empowering women and eliminating racism, and Q tries to center that in her everyday work with clients.
“There’s so many people who have been in circumstances that they didn’t create for themselves. Or maybe they did, but they shouldn’t have to be defined by. Kids who were poor, they shouldn’t have to live their whole lives poor. Kids should be able to have houses and food and clothes. It’s not like people are wanting to not have enough money to survive. The market went up, and people can’t control that.” As her family has been relocated several times, Q knows the power of stability and empathizes with those needing place to call home. “A hope for me would be that people in Tacoma can have a lot more power to what happens to them. If people want resources, they shouldn’t have to beg. That’s just what’s been on my heart. One day I want to go into public policy, because I was a person who lived this, and I don’t want to have to live this forever. I know what it’s like to be in these shoes versus a lot of people in power are people who came from money, who came from resources. Everybody should have access to resources.”
Q's dreams for the city include equity and communal health and flourishing, so that “everyone is able to contribute in ways that they want to, and able to get the resources that they need, food and shelter and access to a good education, no question. Maybe it’s just that simple. People should have their basic needs. That’s my wish for Tacoma, is that people live a fulfilled life, whether they have a lot of money or not. And I think that starts with making sure that people having a solid foundation.”
As a first-generation college graduate, Q’s support from her close-knit family gives the foundation she needs as she continues to be fiercely committed to her community.
“I want narratives to be rewritten as to who is homeless, you know, it’s not always the panhandler on the side of the street, although they are important and need to be seen as human too. Homelessness is looking different in Tacoma now. Who is the ex-con? That’s not always the person with tattoos all over their face. There are people who are ex-cons who made mistakes when they were 13. They want an education. We gotta rewrite narratives and see people as human no matter what label we put on them.”
“I think building community comes with being able to see humanity within people. Allowing people to be bigger than their mistakes. Allowing people to grow and learn. People should be able to make mistakes. It’s life. We’re not given a handbook on how to be successful.”
“Some people are punished [more] for their mistakes than others, and some people have to live in connection to their mistakes constantly. I feel like people should be able to outgrow those if they’ve taken steps to learn from it and we can provide people opportunity to live full lives where they’re able to get in trouble and make mistakes — as long as they’re not harming people — and then grow from that and contribute to society. I think that’s how we make a society that’s supportive of all people.”
Q’s not done. She will start law school soon and return to Tacoma to exist as a counter-narrative, inviting others to be part of the story.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 11, 2020