Bio Picture Susan and Naomi Soccer dog Cousteau! Pets not shown: Fenn, Skinny, Charlie

FULL BIO: Naomi Archer is an artist, author, activist, teacher and catalyst for human rights, justice, and the sound stewardship of our Mother Earth. Her work has spanned nearly two decades. Following 11 years of work as a marine (ocean) biologist and field ecologist, Naomi was forcefully thrust into the role of human rights advocate when her gender transition was met with derision by her employer, an environmental agency within the State of Florida. As a response, in 1995, she co-founded FORGE, the first statewide organization to educate and advocate on behalf of transgender and other gender diverse people in the state of Florida. She traveled to Washington DC to lobby Congress on behalf of the transgender community and achieved noteriety from her testimony at the Florida Legislature's hearings on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). She was then hired as Director of Media, Education and Outreach by statewide LGBT advocacy organization Equality Florida in Tampa, Florida. At this time she became the first transgender recipient of the national Gill Foundation Communications Fellowship for communications excellence and has since served as a media consultant to more than 20 groups and organizations. Following a move to Miami, Naomi developed Project TRANSFORM for the South Beach AIDS Project. TRANSFORM was an innovative HIV/AIDS intervention program for transgender people, sexworkers and other sexual minorities in South Beach. With the Iraq war looming, she co-founded CodePink Miami and helped to organize Miami For Peace. In 2004, she served as co-media coordinator for the South Floridians for Fair Trade and Global Justice coalition during the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) protest in Miami. Working closely with direct action, labor, and communities of color, Naomi helped to create a broad coalition of activists as they fought to preserve civil liberties and police accountability in a rapidly militarized protest environment. In the aftermath of the police-state conditions and police violence at the FTAA, Naomi persistently and successfully led the quest for police accountability with both city and county governments. She was also a co-founder of Save Our Civil Liberties (SOCL), a national organization designed to track the loss of civil liberties as well as educate about the so-called Miami Model and the criminalization of dissent. SOCL members have provided cutting edge analysis of government models used to track, stifle and criminalize dissent to the National Lawyers Guild, ACLU, and at national conferences. Naomi also served as an organizer/and or media coordinator for the the G8 protests in Brunswick (2004), GA; Hooded Bloc/Protest Pit and Democratic National Convention protests in Boston (2004); and the Counter-Inaugaration protests of George Bush in Washington DC (2005). In the fall of 2005, she responded to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and Rita and served as one of the first on-the-ground organizers for Common Ground Relief in Algiers, LA. At this time, her Real Reports of Hurricane Relief Blog became an invaluable source of information for people all over the world concerned with the humanitarian crisis in New Orleans. In October 2005, she moved further into the Louisiana bayous and co-founded Four Directions Solidarity Network, serving the coastal Indigenous nations. Four Directions provided culturally-appropriate assistance to the coastal tribes facilitating more than 75 tons of supplies and food to the area. In the summer of 2006, Naomi began traveling to Europe to teach people of European heritage about Indigenous solidarity and the importance of reclaiming Indigenous European culture. She proudly claims her own Iladurarrak heritage and in 2007 was honored to serve in the Indigenous delegation to the U.S. Social Forum (USSF) and was invited to help draft the Indigenous Declaration to the USSF People's Assembly. In addition to her activist work, Naomi is a professional group facilitator, experiential educator, graphic and natural material artist, public speaker, and author. She wrote and performed the one-person show Escaping the Gender Matrix and has spoken at a variety of local, state and national events. She is also a professional workshop trainer on more than 20 different topics and has educated more than 5000 people representing over 500 different organizations. Naomi currently lives outside Asheville, North Carolina with her partner of 5 years and their crazy pets.

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