In our lifetime, This has undoubtedly been a time like no other. Everyone has had to deal with the struggles of Covid-19, segue to the heinous murder of George Floyd that sparked anyone with a pumping heart to mobilize back into action in a way we haven't before, all the while trying to find the time to celebrate the always important Pride Month that I feel has unfortuately lost a little bit of it's voice this year. We'll have to celebrate doubly hard next year!
But Benny and Andrew were gracious enough to pose for some portraits in our neighboring park in the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY. In keeping with the tradition of The Universal Family portrait project I asked them "What does Family Mean to you?" I also asked them to talk a little about their thoughts, feelings, struggles, and anything they thought people should hear. Here is what they had to say:
"Family to me means warmth, confidence, support, and love, I've lived here in NYC for over 11 years from Puerto Rico, so here I have created a circle of good friends that I can call family.
...Right now we fighting for our rights, our safety, our lives... Being Negro, Queer and Latino, has made me stronger, much more educated and more careful... I have been very loved and many people have approached me with words of love and support which is also appreciated.
Times are changing and I’m pretty sure that these changes are gonna be for good. Social media has been very useful and I have been involved in virtual parties as well helping friends of the community, and I have also received that love and that helps too. So I have been celebrating in this new way. I can be fine with all that is happening because we are doing things together and we haven’t stopped. These movements are helping all communities. Thank the universe for the BLM movement, and during it we grab our brothers and sisters of our LGBTQ community."
"I didn't have a particularly good experience with my family growing up. There was a lot of late night screaming in my house, and I have some sleep issues because of that, so to me, family is a group you choose to form in which members support each other and build up one another. I don't think anyone owes a persistently toxic relative anything at all. That being said, I remain close with one of my brothers.
I think that beyond the immediate, vital, and incredibly urgent importance of protecting Black People from the institutional violence being committed against them each and every day, the greater work of dismantling white supremacy (and the police force protecting it) offers every person a very real roadmap to a radically different way of living that serves LIFE, instead of this bleak meaningless drudgery that most people are forced to accept under the current system. Black liberation is the key to unraveling the lie of the American Dream. Once white people accept that the U.S. was built on stolen land via slave labor and genocide, they can get to work forcing America to make good on her broken promises. Dismantling white supremacy means a better life for ALL people, not just the 1% in this country, who use racism as their greatest divisive tool.
I can only speak to the experience of being gay, enby, and white in this moment, and striving to be anti racist in my life. That being said, when I moved here in 2016, I landed in a group of "cool" white gays involved in the fashion industry and nightlife here who criticized and frankly bullied me for being "a social justice warrior." They also told me and a close friend of mine that our nonbinary gender identities were tragic attention-seeking behaviors, and that New York City was a post racial society - if we wanted to be social justice warriors, we should "move to Portland" and get out of New York, because people weren't going to tolerate it here. I had just lost my mother to cancer, and didn't know many people in New York, so it put me in the incredibly difficult position of either acquiescing to their version of reality or trying to figure out New York on my own in the middle of intense grief. To this day, I deeply regret not pushing back harder against them.
Partially because of the ubiquitous and exigent nature of 45, and partially because of the hard work and insistence of protest movements like BLM, I've seen the kind of rhetoric I first experienced here shift over the past four years. Gays who wanted to ignore the realities of injustice here in NY, realized that it wasn't going to fly anymore. I want to believe that this shift is because they experienced a change of heart and really came to empathize with people experiencing discrimination and injustice, but the cynic in me knows that for many, they've adopted social justice in the same way big corporations throw a rainbow flag up in June.
But, I bring this up because the people who held, and still hold, these grossly misinformed, ignorant, and frankly, harmful opinions are GATEKEEPERS to Queer culture here in New York. These are the people who are on the list for big parties, who DJ at the local bars, and who dance on the floats at Pride. They decide who has a voice and who doesn't. So, we have an obligation, each of us, to make sure that we hold people in our community accountable all year around, and not just during Pride."
