This year, we’re proud to launch Brooklyn Brewery Supports, a new initiative created in partnership with actor, model, LGBTQ+ activist, and The Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative board member Angelica Christina. Instead of a Pride campaign, we’re taking direct action by sending $1,000 each to twenty-five trans, non-binary, and two-spirit New Yorkers in need, while uplifting their stories throughout 2025. At a time when these communities are facing escalating discrimination, anti-trans legislation, and even violence across the country, we believe the most impactful way to stand in solidarity is by sharing resources and amplifying voices that deserve to be heard.
One of the first recipients of Brooklyn Brewery Supports is Mimi Shelton, a second-year law student at the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law. Mimi is pursuing a career in employment and labor law, driven by a lifelong passion for justice that began in childhood when she first learned about the lawyers and activists of the Civil Rights Movement. Her journey to law school has been anything but straightforward—she spent years teaching middle school before returning to pursue her dream of becoming a lawyer, this time with the confidence that came from embracing her identity as a Black trans woman.
Today, Mimi stands as the only openly Black trans woman at CUNY Law, navigating the intersections of racism, transphobia, and the challenges of breaking into a conservative legal field. Beyond her academic work, she’s also a community advocate, a roller-skater, and a lifelong fan of women’s professional wrestling. In our conversation with Mimi, she reflects on her path to law, the meaning of confidence, and why direct support for trans people matters more than ever.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Brooklyn Brewery: Tell us a little bit about CUNY. What are you studying?
Mimi Shelton: Yeah, so CUNY, City University of New York. I’m in the School of Law there, and I am in my 2L year now. I just finished out my 1L year as well as a summer semester. I’m on an employment and labor law track but I’m also highly interested in criminal law. At the moment it’s looking like I’m more likely going into employment and labor law, like general counsel.
BB: Did you always want to get into law?
M: Yeah! So when I was seven or eight years old, my mom had bought me this civil rights book with the Bloody Sunday, Selma to Montgomery March in Alabama during the Civil Rights Movement during Freedom Summer. And it was a book really starting off about lawyers and how they were working within the Civil Rights movement, as well as Martin Luther King himself and other civil rights activists.
I also was watching crime shows, and I was really interested in criminal defense and also the possibility of justice and civil rights based lawyering. So I’ve taken that into adulthood, but I actually lost a lot of confidence going to college. I had a full ride scholarship to the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. It was a predominantly white institution, and it’s a southern school, a lot of New Jersey and Northern Virginia students who come from these very elite private schools. This was their safety school, and my public school self, I didn’t really understand all of that. So when I came there, I was just being myself, and being out and being open and expressing where I came from.
But people were really sinister, like, “Oh, this is affirmative action, and these Black people are here getting our money, and we are here working harder.” And people telling me, “you’re majoring in English and African American studies. You’re just doing an easy major.” All these things that didn’t make any sense because I’m still taking the same required classes that they’re taking. I was still a high performing student and smarter than many of them. But I lost a lot of confidence at the time, especially not having fully been out as me. And I listened to a lot of those voices. And so I stuck to what was safe. And I went into a career of education, that I was passionate enough and skilled enough in where I thought it would be something that could get the wheels turning of what I fully wanted to do in life.
I taught for four and a half years, and I couldn’t do it anymore. It’s not for the faint of heart. I was a middle school English and history teacher, and I’m glad I spent that time doing that, but it took me going through this route that I felt was safer as an option for me, and that I felt was more in reach for me than I felt law school was at that time And so when I finally came back to it, I was 30 years old, turning 31. I was like, “I’m not getting any younger.” And on top of that, having like fully come out as myself, done my hormone transition, had done all of my name change paperwork, and went through that process, which was really arduous and had a lot of minutiae.
I’m really good at doing a lot of things policy-wise, advocacy, in terms of organizing. I had been a teacher, so I had all these skills that were starting to form, and I was still wanting to be a lawyer in my mind throughout all of this. I was asking everyone for permission at first, but then eventually someone told me, “Girl, you, why are you asking? Go do it. Like, you can do this.” So from there, I started my journey.
BB: Can you talk about your confidence?
M: I think a lot of people mistake the fact that I have always been very outspoken and not afraid to share my perspective and opinion, as well as the fact that I am naturally an extrovert, as evidence that I have naturally gained confidence and unearned confidence. And in some ways I do have natural abilities to show up in a space and have that magnetism. However, when you have that, people will do everything they can, especially when you’re young, to beat that out of you–verbally, emotionally, physically, by hitting on your sex or your sexuality. I wasn’t as confident as people thought. I think a lot of what I was doing early on was people pleasing as a way of looking like I was confident. Like, “Oh, I can be as confident as I want to be because I can do anything for other people, and they’ll be there for me.” But that wasn’t the truth. And I had to really look within and it’s taken me a long time, but I think the minute I started to transition fully and accept the woman that I am, and to do it, even operating with knowing the fearful actions of other people and the consequences, I chose not to live in fear.
I think that is what the root of confidence is: doing what you need to do for yourself, even when fear is there. Because if you let yourself live in fear, it’s inevitable that you’ll stay there for the rest of your life. I think there’s a bravery to confidence, because you also have to say, “who the hell am I?”I think because I haven’t always had the finances I’ve wanted or the career I’ve wanted, I’ve even had to ask myself “who the hell are you?” I’ve started to realize I’m so much more than just a career or a dollar. I’m inevitable. I’m magnetic.
It’s taken me a long time to understand my intelligence and how deep it flows. I think I can do that with humility as well, which makes the confidence not just cockiness. It’s a level of understanding that makes me, me, about the work I put in, and not about my journey being compared to somebody else’s.
BB: What does it mean to be the only openly black trans woman at CUNY Law School?
M: I think it is an interesting experience in understanding how racism and transphobia plays into the legal field, and what happens when those two intersect in one person. Because people can handle you being one or the other, but they really can’t handle [both]. It really freaks out my white community members who are queer or trans, or my black community members who are straight and cis het. It’s like they can’t understand that I am trans, and I am black at the very same time. And that those two labels or those two identities don’t drop off or transform when I exit or leave a different community based on our affinity together.
“Oh, so you just basically mean this?” No, don’t reduce how I’ve defined myself. So I think sometimes they may see me as whatever trans person or black person they’ve come in contact with–usually someone who is struggling through sex work or probably who is low income–they’re assuming that I won’t be as reasonable or as understanding as I am. And it makes it difficult to exist in a community together, because there are times when I feel people flatten my person.
It sometimes feels that you’re not the perfect victim for folks. If you’re not sad or quiet or timid, then you’re not going through anything. I’m here to advocate on behalf of like trans people, not just myself. I’m trying to be that kind of leader within the community. And I am. People don’t understand that responsibility.
Making connections to my race or to my gender always becomes an issue for people in class. I think it’s just the hyper visibility, even when all I’m doing is just existing. I’ve told you that I’m trans because it’s so natural to me. I’m not hiding anything, it’s a part of who I am. The same way you just told me you’re a mother. Your being a mother is no more of an immutable quality than my being transgender because I work for it. I’ve changed my body for it, and I’ve chased what I wanted for myself.
So I think a lot of the politics around my body rather than around my ideas come into play, and a lot of the social stuff becomes a lot more overbearing than the academics, which I’m actually doing well at. The bigger stressor was finding how and where I fit in, and navigating people’s perceptions of what it means to be a trans person and a black person in a highly conservative field where there is a very deep and long history of racism. And I often think it is because of my blackness that my transness is even more problematic for many people. If I were only trans– I have seen it with my white counterparts–they get treated differently, more fairly, more justly, more kindly.
And people will say, “Mimi, it’s because you have an attitude or you’re aggressive.” I’m like, if you talk to any of my loved ones, my friends, my roommates, I am literally laughing most of the time, watching professional wrestling, roller skating. I think that this idea of the aggressive, angry person is people’s way of not being able to handle both my truth and the truth that I bring to the legal field. Because sometimes I have a lot of perspectives that many students will never have because they have not had to go through being on the other side of the law, or trying to get the law to work for them.
BB: Tell us something that you love and that brings you joy.
M: It’s two things. It’s roller skating and professional wrestling.
I used to roller skate as a kid, but I was not so good. Our school would take us on Fridays, and the rink was just fun. We would do the limbo, I would fall, I would hold my hands on the rails, all scared.
I didn’t skate again until 2021, when I was going through a very, very hard year. I remembered going to a friend’s birthday party in 2019 to rollerskate, and I was like, let’s pick this up. That first year, I struggled with the bumps and falls. And then the second year I was a little bit better. And then the next year, even better. Now, in year five, I feel pretty advanced.
When I skate, I feel like I’m flying. It really sets me free when I’m angry, hurt, or just need a little bit of movement in my life. It is so fun as an alternative to the gym, where it’s just very hard to feel comfortable going into a women’s dressing room with so much trans investigation that goes on these days. I’m not gonna go into the men’s room and change. The culture of the gym is quite gendered and toxic, so I just don’t put myself out there anymore to do that. And it costs money.
Whereas roller skating, it’s free in spring, summer, and fall. I get to take my breaks during the winter. It’s just a confidence booster.
And then pro wrestling, I’ve been watching since I was 11, and I started watching because of the women. I know all about the company, I could write you a history book about how evil Vince McMahon and his evil, evil wife Linda, who went from being slammed through tables to being the current department of Education secretary, which is wild. But I started watching for the early 2000s “attitude era,” girls like Lita and Trish Stratus and Tory Wilson. But at that time, they didn’t really have a division, just a few women here and there.
But around the 2010s, the women started to get their own division, and now it’s fully operational. I’m very into women’s wrestling, particularly because it’s like drag. They have the costumes, the makeup, the glamor, and they’re better at acting. I do watch the men, but it’s for the women. And I also get my little inspo from there. I’ve always tapped into some spirits from pro wrestling whenever I need to have a little baddie moment. I love it.
BB: What will receiving the support from Brooklyn Brewery as part of this campaign mean to you personally?
M: For me personally, it’s gonna help me out in a time where I’m a full-time student. I pick up jobs here and there, but every penny counts. So the money that I’ll get from Brooklyn Brewery really will help support me, whether that’s in bills or in supplies or in starting school with those types of necessities, and living. That’s really the biggest thing right now, and the most important thing in my life. I’m going to be applying for scholarships and different grants.
BB: Why is it so important to support the trans community today, in 2025, in the moment that we’re in?
M: I never realized until I transitioned just how much people hate, resist, or are still getting used to transgender people. From 2010 until 2020, there was a massive movement of visibility of transgender people that shook the nation. To many, all these people coming out as transgender looked like this big fad. But actually, if you look at statistics about what keeps people from transitioning, it is transphobia. What you’re seeing with these en mass transitions is people taking their moment, me included, during this wave of momentum where people seemingly are protecting transgender people.
But reform was immediately followed by retrenchment, which was already going on when the Obergefell v. Hodges case happened. The campaigns against trans people being women or men, and being in sports, and being visible started. Many white cis gay men and lesbian organizations that were operating at that point had seen Obergefell as the end point, and shut down their services. Some people just felt like this is all we wanted anyway. And that all the other stuff about connecting to community wasn’t important to us.
So the combination of massive visibility, a conservative retrenchment, and then social media and the proliferation of trans people’s bodies provided people dialogue and mannequins to just bounce their ideas off of. I once asked a journalist how you can have an effective conversation about trans people without having a trans person present, and he said, “Well, you can.” And I think that is the epitome of what cis people believe: that their opinions and their perspectives about trans people are more valuable because they are the “real normal humans.”
“I may be on my fifth marriage and, and fifth divorce, but as long as I’m cis het, I’m good, right?” But when you’re trans you don’t get afforded the same kind of ability to live. And that’s going back to that flattening. If you step out of line from the sad, miserable character, people start being like, “you have too much personality for what we thought transness was.”
The whole gender variant portion of our community is getting their asses kicked because everyone else’s perspective about transness seems to matter so much more. Every community has had this type of issue where another dominant group tries to tell you who you are. Black people got it all the time throughout American history.
I see it as a very similar journey and issue, that people haven’t reconciled yet that trans people are actual people and that sex work and substance abuse are factors within our community, that they’re not the norm of every single person who has transitioned.
People don’t make space for trans people to feel comfortable to come out to them in their homes or in their academic or professional fields. You may actually know somebody who is transgender and hasn’t transitioned yet. I know plenty of people in school who haven’t transitioned, but have come out to me because of transphobia. So I think it’s so important today to provide support for the trans community, especially financial support, because with the original executive order on gender ideology, the trans athlete executive orders, the youth executive order, they’ve given states that already were on the attack of trans youth and adults, the ability and legal backing to go full force.
And they are. The court’s decision in committee has now provided language to begin to roll back medical access for adults. The ruling was that discriminating based on gender dysphoria is not discriminating based on transgender identity. But what’s so messed up is that what you have to have in the medical field to transition is the diagnosis of gender dysphoria. So for you to say that we are discriminating against you based on gender dysphoria, and not being transgender, is intellectually, morally, and emotionally dishonest. And it’s socially and politically strategic. And I think right now it’s going to be a lot of sanctuary states, foundations, individuals, and communities that are providing support to trans people, because it doesn’t look like it’s gonna be coming from the federal government anytime soon. And we will have a lot more work over the next 10 years, even after folks are out of office, to fix whatever is happening now.
BB: Is there anything you would like to say?
M: There will always be time periods and moments where there is human atrocity, where there is an attack, assault, or scapegoating of one community over the other. There will always be those issues as long as we have politics.
The time is now to live your truth, not tomorrow, because tomorrow really isn’t promised, especially for black and brown trans people who, at least in American society, have the average life expectancy is 30 to 35. I’m 32, that’s really not that much. Take advantage of all those opportunities. People will feel uncomfortable. And I know that not every state and person has access to the medical care that I may have in New York. If you can, find it.
If not, find a friend. If not, at least find a community that can guide you and that can validate that identity for you. Because it’s actually taken me so long to understand who I am and to affirm myself. And it’s only come through my loved ones, my friends, my community members, reflecting back to me what I actually put out, honestly. And that comes from love and not a place of hate. I encourage you, not dismissively, but very much passionately and with love and with care, to not hold back when it comes to your transition or when it comes to being trans and existing as trans in public life and public space. Because if we don’t take up space today, we won’t even have it tomorrow. So I think it’s very important for us to not move in fear right now, but to move collectively.
