Given the chance
Founder of new West Side center for transgender people: ‘I took that bullet so you don’t have to’
Zahara Bassett, 31, is happy with her life, comfortable in her skin and living her truth.
She is not ashamed of her past as she uses it to fuel her drive to help other transgender women of color.
“I’ve been a woman all my life,” said Bassett. “Growing up, it always felt different.”
On Juneteenth, Bassett will be opening the Life is Work Center and the Life is Work Solidarity resale shop adjacent to each other at 5463 and 5465 W. Chicago Ave. in the West Humboldt Park neighborhood, not far from the Austin community.
The center will service transgender people of color and the resale shop will train them, as well as offer a place of employment. And starting at 10 a.m. on June 19, 60 boxes of fresh food, sponsored by the Office of Community Health Equity and Engagement at Rush, will be given to the first 60 people to register in an effort to show the center’s emphasis on helping the community. It’s also a good place for Bassett — finally.
She said she was born a “drug baby,” and the cards were stacked against her from the beginning. At a young age, she navigated being gay on the West Side of Chicago. It seemed she had an advocate in her grandmother, but when Bassett decided to come out and share her truth, all that protection went away.
“When I came out, everyone and everything shifted,” Bassett said. “I tell those I help — I took that bullet so you don’t have to.”
An article published by Invisible People, an organization that works to bring attention to the homeless population, noted that there is little data collected about homelessness in transgender populations, but transgender people are “significantly more likely to become homeless than their cisgender peers.”
One in five transgender people in the United States has experienced discrimination when looking for a home, and more than one in 10 have been evicted due to their gender identity and status, according to the story.
Bassett adds that in addition to the risk of homelessness, transgender people might also have to worry about the criminal justice system and its woes, lack of employment, physical violence, mental and medical health and much more.
In rehashing her struggles to become what she always felt on the inside, Bassett painfully remembered the time she sang in the youth choir and came to church with fake nails.
The mothers of the church, held in high esteem in the Black community, pulled her out of the choir and began cutting her nails while scolding her, saying that boys do not wear fake nails, Bassett said. Then they escorted her away from the choir seats. Broken and angry, she decide to come out and share her truth to her father.
“I was beaten for about two weeks until I couldn’t take it anymore,” she said. “I have the scars to prove it. It got really nasty and abusive. They would never take me out in public, but I took it in stride.”
After coming out as a woman, the years continued with her sleeping on “L” trains, banging on her grandmother’s door pleading for a place to sleep, running from bullies at Crane Vocational High School and fighting to protect her identity as a transgender woman.
Bassett talked about making a few wrong turns that landed her in Division 10 at Cook County Jail, where she said she was abused and raped by a fellow prisoner, and after being found guilty was shipped to an Illinois correctional facility where she said she was subject to more mental and sexual abuse.
Eventually, Bassett was released, and found shelter with a “mother” of children thrown out by their families. She slept on the floor and learned lessons of how to live a “trans” life, Bassett said.
She would have relationships with men who were undercover about being gay or loving a transgender woman.
“Exposing a transgender woman can be attempted murder,” she said. “Exposing them could lead to their death, especially if they’re a man’s secret.”
But things are changing for Bassett. She met a man (who she is with now), and says she never fully felt accepted until now. She and her boyfriend raise his young son together and are extremely protective of him because they know how cruel the world can be, Bassett said.
During her growing pains, Bassett got a chance to work with Brave Space Alliance, a South Side organization that addresses LGBTQ issues, and is designed to create and provide culturally competent services for the LGBTQ community of Chicago.
In her duties for Brave Space she worked to secure funding and was amazed at being given the chance, calling her work “one of her greatest accomplishments.”
LaSaia Wade, director and founder of Brave Space Alliance, said she is proud of the direction Bassett has taken and looks forward to working together to fill the gaps created through fear and lack of understanding of transgender lives.
“All transgender persons must push themselves and challenge themselves, and society needs to trust in Black leadership,” Wade said. “I love a challenge.
“We don’t need to be coddled. We are more than just a tax break for employers. We can do the job if given the chance.”
Bassett’s focus now is creating the same opportunities on the West Side.
“My ultimate goal is to own a block,” said Bassett, who was once addicted to ecstasy pills for about eight months.
“I want to run a needle exchange because injectable drug use is real in the transgender community. Just drive around Madison and Pulaski; it looks like New Jack City.”
She also recognized the recent deaths of transgender women nationwide and in Chicago.
“Many of us are killed because we are someone’s secret,” she said. “Domestic violence can be someone outing you. It’s serious, but we aren’t talking about it.”
In early May, she connected with another transgender person who she hired to develop the center and the resale shop. The shop was constructed in record time, said Bassett, who is looking to fund a five-year budget of at least $1 million for Life is Work and provide housing for members of the transgender community.
“The real change has to happen in our community,” Bassett said. “I was in a dark place, but I emerged from prostitution and hiding, so other little Black transgender girls from the West Side know it can work out.”