a guy i'm hooking up with right now is currently unemployed, and has been for months. most of his work has been in consulting, and for several years he'd been making moves to get a federal job. obviously that didn't pan out. early last year he followed a mentor when she started her own firm, only to quit when they started taking a bunch of ice contracts in the summer.
that background added to the surreal feelings when i found out about alex pretti's murder from him, as i came out of his bathroom after spending the night. the walk to the metro we commiserated about the bullshit narratives we anticipated, and the despair of whether anything would change this time.
and then i went to the last day (afternoon, really) of the lgbtq task force conference. and that added a lot of hope. i met a lot of folks from minnesota last week, and the grim determination has been sitting with me. especially as i get used to passing by clustered of (bored-looking) national guardsmen loitering in metro stations, and continue to get text notifications from icirr about kidnappings in my chicago neighborhood.