Bored.

in aotearoa, june isn’t our pride, it’s theirs. marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera are their historical figures, not ours. the phrase that “you owe your rights to Black trans women” is true there, but here we owe our rights to (mostly) Māori historical figures. i have the freedoms i do because of the legacy of an entirely different set of people operating in an entirely different context at entirely different times.

But because of american cultural imperialism, most queer people in Aotearoa don’t even know our own queer history. Carmen Rupe, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, the Dorian Society, Gillian Laundon, Georgina Beyer, and the Wolfenden Association are some of our queer history. We should know their names! we should know what they did for us! but because of the power of the american imperial machine, we don’t.

our national pride month should be july, the month that the Homosexual Law Reform Act passed in 1986. our two largest cities hold their pride festivals in february and march, respectively. american queer history has very little (or nothing, depending on who you ask) to do with our queer history. anecdotally, from my own queries, queer youth in aotearoa know more about american queer history than our own.

Witch: And that is?

Fictional small town in the middle of nowhere in real country: par for the course in any genre

Fictional major city in real country: standard fair, but it's usually clearly based on a real city

Fictional suburb of real major city in real country: strange but I can see the application

To the average person, it looks like we're just tearing up all the parks for development. But there were meetings and posts and announcements, and there was community input and awareness programs and we did our absolute best to keep everyone in the loop but some people still fell through the cracks.

So they think we're destroying all the parks.

"Why did parks and rec get rid of the fence at this park??? All parks should have fences!"

The fence was damaged and we thought it might be more convenient to open up the area so that people using the shelter didnt have to walk all the way around to get into the playground. The fence was damaged because people would climb it as a shortcut. (I personally disagree that all parks should have fences.)

"Why did they tear down the playground at Miller Park? It was perfectly fine- they wouldn't have to tear it all down if they bothered to maintenance it like they're supposed to."

Playgrounds are suggested to be replaced every ten years to keep up with accessibility updates. Likewise, it was decided that while we're updating the playground it would be a good opportunity to address the safety concerns brought to our attention in the past decade.

"THEYVE COMPLETELY TORN APART WILLOW RIDGE PARK! How dare they take away our precious few greenspaces and line their pockets with kickbacks from high density housing???"

-deep breath-

If you had bothered to go to any of the four public meetings, read the announcements, or looked at the giant sign in front of the park, you would notice that we are remodeling the park to include a wetland restoration area to address the flooding issues, which was voted on by the neighborhood it is adjacent to.