Change happens slowly, but it's happening all the time.
Friends of mine had to sneak to another state to marry because our state hadn't legalized gay marriage yet, then marriage equality passed a few years later, and a moment we weren't sure as kids would ever come had passed. Now, there are queer kids who cannot imagine a world where marriage equality isn't a thing. Whose fear of its repeal is that it would thrust us into an unfathomable world rather than a return to what all of us were used to and fought against.
I considered myself an ally to trans people and did so much research on the topic to better support this community and showed up each year to platform trans folks on visibility day. One year, my egg cracked as I looked at the joyful faces of people taking their first breaths of freedom I realized oh, I want that too. More than 11 years later, I transitioned, then transitioned again (so-to-speak). Ive given talks about my gender journey, written about it a lot. I've led student orgs, given trainings and taken them. I worked as a student attorney to change people's names for them for free, I've helped people secure hormones and affirming clothes and haircuts. I've helped folks through early stages of transition and taken them to resources. I've worked with countless amazing orgs doing the work to make us all safer. Housing. Healthcare. Food. When I first came out, I wanted to be stealth and not to be seen as trans ever again. Now, I've been more and more open and fought for the safety of folks like young me.
When I moved to a new city, a nazi rally was taking place soon after I moved, and while I had no contacts yet, I couldn't sit idly by. It was in the actions of that day that all doubts about my journey to police and prison abolition was crushed. It connected me to Palestinians and pushed me to become an anti-zionist. It connected me to genderfluid folks who would help me figure out my identity in the years to come.
During a chapter of my life that I was perhaps a bit too reckless, I used to wear a patch on the back of my jacket that said "Too Queer For Fear"--which was gifted to me once by a protester who helped wash blood off my face. People would come up and tell me they loved my patch, and I'd think of that often when I'd make a point to tell people what their patches, shirts, signs, and pins meant to me.
I remember the first pride I went to where adults started wearing "Mom/Dad Hug" shirts and going around giving support to queer folks who did not have supportive parents. I can still see it clear as day in my mind the image of a bunch of "moms" going around giving hugs to anyone and everyone. I hadn't really imagined at that point in my life that parents could be such fervent allies like that. Now those kind of shirts are everywhere. Someone started it and now it's become a staple across states, countries, and continents. I've attended several prides with the parents of my friends. One such friend's grandmother has also been such a supportive voice in his family, and I attended a small town pride with her once, and we've become lifelong friends and even family since. My wife and I refer to her as "Nana" and get to talk so highly of her when we explain that, no, she's not blood, but she's family. Two years ago she served as one of the witnesses for my marriage.
I was slow to support for Palestine. I had resigned to viewing it as a complicated struggle that could never be solved, and wrapped it in ignorance about my own safety, and the Islamophobic image of Islam. Then I've made so many Muslim friends. In work, in activism, in hobbies. I worked with Muslim kids and learned what snacks I could get them, what holidays to keep an eye out for. I brought groceries for my neighbors in early COVID, and they'd put leftovers outside my door. I had people I respected who challenged my views with their firm stance one way or another. Then in 2021, with the annexation of Sheikh Jarrah, I couldn't continue to sit idly by. Our rallies had such small numbers, and talking about Palestine got you quietly exiled. I was kicked out of my Jewish student org for it. Nowadays, Palestine is on everyone's minds. Just 5 years--2, really, and then the entire conversation changed.
I was slow to support for prison abolition. I was such a stickler for reform. Such a catastrophist over "dont throw out the whole system, everything will collapse!" I worked with an abolitionist in college and squirmed over her intensity, but we went to the same conferences and rallies so I agreed to disagree. I thought I could "fix" things from within. Connected first to policing, then the law in general. I was naive. She was so patient with me. Eventually I realized that our reform efforts were not only not the answer, but they funneled work into a hole. We were placated by the charade of improvement, and so people would pack it up and go home. We were in a worse spot than before. But calling yourself an abolitionist was too intense. Even reform wasn't popular. "Defund the police?" You terrorist! 8 years later, every mainstream tv program at least pretended to entertain the idea. I didn't expect to see these conversations in my lifetime, then here they were. Overnight, the work of "radical terrorists" to take away funding for the police WAS the compromise promised to us so we wouldn't seek abolition. The needle had moved drastically. Suddenly, abolition was possible.
The thing about transition timeline videos is that you feel very silly taking your pictures and videos. Of saying words out loud in different voices and twirling around in your outfits. Then you see the footage all together in a compilation, and the whole world has shifted by then.
Change is like that. You do not see it in the moment, and then suddenly everything is different.
There's a grapevine growing on my building, and in the winter it becomes thin straggly sticks. In the summer, the leaves grow so thick it blocks your view across the roof and there are so many grapes we give away buckets and buckets of the stuff and still have too many to eat ourselves. In the winter you'd never guess how those vines look in the summer, how much fruit it produces.
The seeds of change are constantly being planted. It will take a while for each to grow, but everyone everywhere is changing all the time. Seeds planted ages ago are bearing fruit today. And will start new plants too. New ideas are being presented, new goals are being reached, people are changing their minds and learning and growing.
I am older than the trans flag, yet its design is everywhere now. The rainbow flag is plastered everywhere for pride. The progress flag is so young yet has already become normalized.
Every day we are all building a better world, and while fascists rear their heads there is always resistance cropping up. People fighting to give aid, people fighting fash in the streets, people destroying the machine, protecting their neighbors, or just giving hugs to people who never get them.
A better world is possible because the seeds of that world got planted today and yesterday and years ago, and summer is coming, and no matter how many winters we have, summer will come back again.
