Dear Readers,
Wow!
Five years ago, journalRAGE was launched to the world on July 22, 2019. When I set out to send our very first email, I had not the slightest inkling it would amount to what it is now. Who would? Of all the things I could do with journalism, I chose to be an outlier by focusing on the LGBTQ+ community.
Then, I was just a lone soldier on an unbelievable crusade.
It all began in the bedroom of one of my best friends, James Yancy, when I, using his phone to browse, stumbled across an article from the News Public Trust about two caucasian ladies sharing a kiss on the football stadium.
So biased, homophobic and written as if the reporter held the Bible in one hand while he wrote with the other, I was filled with rage. So incensed, I coined the name journalRAGE –a journalist raging against the excesses of bad reportage against the LGBTQ+ community.
Two years earlier in 2017, I had traveled to Cape Town, South Africa as a fellow of the Religious News Foundation where I was trained on how to report on gender and sexual minorities and religion in Sub-Saharan Africa.
I wanted to make a change, but I knew not where to start. It was a tall order.
I began contacting friends, acquaintances and colleagues across the world whom I have worked with. Through referrals, specifically from Prue Clarke of New Narratives, I was placed in touch with Prof. Ken Harper of Syracuse University.
Sharing my idea, Prof. Harper, with the backing of the university, was on the next available flight to Liberia to build the journalRAGE website from scratch. Over a week, everyday Prof. Harper and two of my friends of mine would meet at iCampus to teach us things about WordPress.
Initially, it appeared to be a little complex; but as someone with a spirited determination and one who is also quick study, I latched on to it very quickly. After a week of training and building, Prof. Harper handed me a blank canvass, so to speak, and returned to the United States.
The charge of painting that canvas became entirely my responsibility and I set out to do so with gusto. Snooping into every nook and cranny, I began writing stories on the LGBTQ+ community. Initially there was bit of hesitation from people identifying as gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders.
This was due in part to having been victims of negative and unprofessional reportage. The media have played a role in the spread of homophobia, I often told my interviewees, and the media can also play a pertinent role to foster tolerance, acceptance and respect of human rights.
There were also pushbacks from those who have been entrusted to serve that community when my stories began to cover issues of improprieties.
If the hesitation and sometimes pushback in the LGBTQ+ were not enough, the media, at least a large section, was also in tow. Save FrontPage (whose newsroom was then led by my long-time friend Lennart Dodoo), Daily Observer and a motley few, my stories were often treated with benign neglect as many saw it as the spread of homosexuality.
In my family, I was told by some of my siblings that my work was bringing shame and disgrace to the family. So much so that I was threatened and verbally abused. For a while, it took a toll on my mental health as I hibernated, taking a hiatus.
Less than a month later, I bounced back with so much ferocity that I have not experienced since the day Nigerian peacekeepers entered Liberia following the departure of former President Taylor.
As I went through this, many nights and days I pondered over funding opportunities to expand as it’s been an overarching dream to train my colleagues.
Prior to then, Prof Ken Harper, in collaboration with Patrick Waechter, a journalist based in Los Angeles, organized a talk on the ClubHouse app to raise money for me to purchase a computer and camera.
Nicknamed Lazarus, the rickety HP laptop that I had purchased in early 2019 for US$120 on the bustling Carey Street in downtown Monrovia, had given up the ghost by crashing in the middle of a crucial work.
Over a hundred people joined to listen and we were able to raise a staggering US$1600 and change. I was also given two Macbooks.
Our silver lining came when we applied for a grant from ISDAO, an organization whose fund empowers organizations working directly with the LGBTQ+ community. That funding enabled us to register journalRAGE legally as well as pay a few staff who had been volunteering with us and get more equipment.
A month later, we were awarded a grant from the US Department of State via the Public Diplomacy Section of the US Embassy.
While it seemed we were experiencing a bit of smooth sailing after turbulent waves had splashed us repeatedly, it was for a fleeting moment. Our chief undercover reporter was catfished and robbed. When he took his case to the Police, he was instead charged with “homosexuality.”
Barely a month later his residence was attacked when the roof of his apartment was pelted with stones. Again, when he was able to identify the assailants and had them reprimanded, his case was flipped at the Police.
Our finance manager also found himself in a dilemma when his girlfriend told his family that he works for a “gay company.” In African families where homosexuality and anything related thereof are a taboo, it posed problems for him.
Nearing the end of 2022, I received an invite from the Online News Association to attend its conference in LA. Around the same time, I also got an invite from Syracuse University to speak. However, that trip was canceled when airlines suspended flights to Liberia just as I was getting ready to leave the country.
I was utterly disappointed.
Left with a US visa which was basically purposeless with a year validity, I traveled to California to see my best friend who I hadn’t seen since November 4, 2009, and to lay the groundwork for future fundraising efforts.
While in the US, I received news of threats against my life. Quietly, I traveled to Canada where I sought protection. My first reaction to the news was to downplay it by a wave of the hand. As I recall telling the Canadian immigration female officer, I am not an economic migrant or anything of the sort. I’ll be back home as soon as the situation has improved.
But, 2023 was an election year and, as I told a friend from a western embassy in Monrovia, if anything had happened, it could be swept under the rug as the government wasn’t keen on prosecuting attackers of human rights defenders. I had seen it with Cheeseman Cole, the ex-soldier who targeted about 27 gay men. My coverage of him earned me the Press Union of Liberia 2021 Human Rights Reporter Award. The government failed to prosecute him though its case appeared to be airtight.
I bided my time by waiting for a year in the Canadian city of Montreal where I had temporary employment working at a credit card company from 3 pm to midnight, activating Walmart’s credit card. What an experience it was. Somedays you are thanked profusely, other days you’re lashed at and cussed out by irate clients.
Partnerships of different kinds were established in the diaspora. One of which led to the signing of an MOU between journalRAGE and Out for Equality.
While away, with the help of staff, many groundbreaking stories were written. Some of these stories sent shockwaves across the world, especially in the global health community.
Upon the unseating of the Weah-led government, I began making plans to return home. I was homesick and already tired of living in a place that was perennially eerily quiet with no sense of community. On the eve of the inauguration, I arrived in the country from Canada on a Royal Air Maroc flight that kept rattling, not from turbulence, from Casablanca to Monrovia.
Happy I was returning from a frigid weather to a humid one to continue doing what is evidently my first love since I was 17.
My arrival was without any fanfare and the only peeps who knew I was returning home were friends from different embassies in Monrovia. Not even my family.
Allowing the dust of the inauguration to settle a bit as I got adjusted to heatwave that nearly killed the President during his inaugural speech, I quickly hit the ground running.
Five years of operating amid the ups and downs interspersed with stacked odds, we have remained resolute and unwavering.
Five years later, the News Public Trust, the outlet which inspired me to start journalRAGE, took an aim at us by accusing us of leading the spread of LGBTQ+ practice in the country. Such grave allegations cannot be waved by the hand as it places our lives in immediate danger.
Our only crime is to promote human rights and it is one which we are determined to do unabashedly.
Happy Birthday Team journalRAGE!
Sincerely,
Gboko John Stewart