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Tribute to the #49victims in link by the bio . . . #pulseorlando #neverforgotten #pulseshooting #latinx #forthe49 #pulseanniversary #werememberpulse #pulsevictims #pulsenightclubvictims #pulselatinx #lgbtq #rainbowtimesmagazine #therainbowtimes https://www.instagram.com/p/BynJ5SxgCh0/?igshid=wy51x9doqpa8
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I made this image right after the horrific events at #PulseNightclub after my grief turned into anger. I was angry because it took the death of 49 souls for our black and brown faces to be plastered all over the news. It took the death of someone's lover, sister, brother, friend, husband and more for the world to look at us in the face and feel something for our community. I still feel something every time I step into a dancefloor and I hear a glass break or a fight break out. But I will be damned if our spaces become spaces that I fear. My heart goes out to the family and friends of those 49 lives and to the survivors that must deal with this every single day of their lives. #PulseShooting #PulseSurvivors #PrideMonth https://www.instagram.com/p/BynZC_NFod3/?igshid=9vmpe590db58
In the wake of the Orlando, Fla., massacre, LGBTQ people and people of color are calling out, again: āStop killing us!ā
This is a great article written after the Orlando club massacre in 2016. Although the pressure after the Florida school shooting is intense, and the pained outcry understandable, we must not tail after the advocates of gun control but find ways to engage with the youth, teachers and communities to talk about what a real solution to the violence in U.S. society looks like: building unity, solidarity and self-defense in the struggle against racism, capitalism and imperialist war.
By Minnie Bruce Pratt
In response to the massacre, an agonized cry for gun control has risen in the U.S., and understandably so. On social media, people tell of friends afraid to gather at their local LGBTQ bar or at June Pride events, of young children who fear when their LGBTQ parents leave the house because āYou might get killed.ā There are heartbreaking comments by friends, lovers, parents and siblings who have lost loved ones in repeated mass shootings, from Orlando to the nine African-American churchgoers killed in Charleston, S.C., only a year ago, and many other massacres. The U.S. has had more than a thousand mass shootings in the last three years.
Gun-control advocates are demanding that Congress reinstate a federal assault weapon ban that expired in 2004. More than a dozen gun control bills are pending in the U.S. Senate, but stand little chance of being enacted into law.
To understand why guns are so Āprevalent in the U.S., we have to look unflinchingly at the nature of the U.S. state and its relation to working and oppressed people. The U.S. was founded on the thieving seizure of lands of massacred Indigenous peoples; on white supremacy and enslavement of people of African descent; on the exploitation and wage slavery of working people; on the exploitation of women politically, economically and socially; on the forced imposition of heterosexual family structures; and on colonial and imperialist wars to feed power and profits to its ruling class.
To maintain power rooted in these realities, the U.S. state, like all states based on class rule, must rely on ābodies of armed menā ā a standing army, police, prisons and other āinstruments of coercion.ā V.I. Lenin, leader of the Russian Revolution, explained the true nature of this āsocial orderā in his classic work, āThe State and ĀRevolution.ā
History affords many examples of what this looks like. In the seizure of Indigenous lands and the establishment of slavery in the U.S. South, armed white settlers served as āinstruments of coercionā for the new U.S. state. Recently, we have only to focus on the African-American community of Ferguson, Mo. In the summer of 2014, the small town was invaded by police and National Guard units with tanks and military-grade weapons, similar to those used in Orlando, simply because the community asserted its constitutional right to assemble to protest racist injustice.
In the context of state repression, āgun controlā has historically meant disarming workers and oppressed people who need to defend themselves, their families or their homes against violence by the state or the owning class. With the end of Reconstruction and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and armed white vigilantism in the 1870s, former slave owners mobilized these āinstruments of coercionā to disarm freed people of African descent and force them back into peonage.
As we remember the victims of the Pulse shooting, we asked people to tell us what LGBTQ bars and other LGBTQ-focused spaces mean to them, and why they are so important to LGBTQ people. Special thanks to our campus ambassadors, Levi Jackman Foster, Isis King and Max Emerson.
Last year's Pride
Unless I am singing in a pew, I am never not aware of my blackness. I think about race constantly and assume that others do as well. After all, race and gender are the first two things people notice upon meeting a stranger. I am often the primary contributor of melanin to the spaces I occupy. For this reason, I have repeatedly been singled out by law enforcement to be harassed and threatened in various modes. Because of my many negative experiences with police, their presence always makes me feel uneasy and fearful. My friend, T, and I started planning for last summerās LA Pride Weekend months before it happened. We Facetimed while I was still in St. Louis to discuss his outfit (heās colorblind and needs help with matching). We exchanged links via Facebook message for t-shirts to buy that would perfectly fill the gaps in the closets we had just barely exited. We arranged with his mom for me to spend Saturday night at her house so I could avoid having to tell my parents I was skipping church in the morning to go to the parade with a bunch of āperverts.ā Friday and Saturday night went pretty much as planned. We drove to West Hollywood on Friday night and danced our little gay hearts out. On Saturday, we went to barbecue send off party for a high school friend about to join the Peace Corps. At the party, we talked with our friendās younger sister, J, and told them about our pride plans. Being only twenty years old, J had never been to the bars in WeHo, but was clearly interested and very jealous of us getting to go exist and celebrate among other queer folk. T and I eventually left the party and headed to West Hollywood for another night of dancing in the bars. The streets were even more crowded than a usual Saturday night. We met up with some friends at the music festival and were surrounded by EDM music and queer people from teenagers to people perhaps in their 60s. I do not know if I have ever witnessed so much PDA, but this was so clearly a safe space for so many who rarely occupy safe spaces so the feeling of beauty at the time was overwhelming. Tired from being on our feet all night, T and I went back to his place for the night. On the way back we remembered how excited J seemed about Pride so we decided to kidnap them in the morning on our way to the parade. Before heading to bed, we talked to Tās mom for a few minutes. She told us about a shooting in Florida that was on the news. Sad, but shootings happen all the time; canāt let them get you down. By the time I woke up in the morning, my entire newsfeed was filled with statuses about the shooting. The biggest terrorist attack since 9/11, they said. 50 dead, another 50 or so wounded. My sister and multiple friends had texted me not to go to the parade. They were worried about another attack on the homos. I didnāt say anything to T about it. If anything, I felt like now I needed to go to the parade; I needed to show that I embraced my identity no matter what violent threat might oppose me; I didnāt want to encourage any fear in my friend that might stop us from going. When we showed up at Jās house, they were still sleeping, but had the hugest grin upon waking up to see us there for them. While we waited for them to get ready, Jās brother made us traditional matte and their mom talked to us about how glad she was that we were getting her daughter āout.ā Parents can know their children so well without knowing them oftentimes. The three of us took a 35 minute bus ride to avoid what would have been a parking nightmare. On the way, T took a bunch of selfies preserving in memory our quality pride-themed outfits. I wore my hair in an afro that day, I wanted to embrace my true self, the self that God created. My shirt, which I had purchased weeks before, read āLove Winsā and featured a rainbow-striped United States. āGod is Love and Love wins,ā is what I kept reciting to myself and remembering as I read new texts from my sister about how a man was arrested blocks from our home on his way to plant explosives at the LA Pride parade. I will fear no evil for my God is with me. If anything, it was more important that we be there. To my friends on the bus with me, my face displayed nothing but a smile filled with excitement. They needed this day to celebrate their identities and I couldnāt ruin it for them. I knew that. The parade was on Santa Monica Boulevard, a street upon which T and I have spent many a late night. It was completely different. It was completely transformed. People filled the rainbow-paved streets. Floats cruised down the road, escorted by brightly dressed dancers. Firefighters and policemen walked along the double yellow line holding the hands of their same-sex lovers. They were real people, smiling and waving. There were National Guard Humvees manned by men with big guns and instead of being paralyzed in fright like I normally would, they provided me with a calm sense that everything would be alright, since I knew that in that instance, I was identifiably queer, an attendee, someone they were there to protect. I must also note that because of nerve damage, I am unable to stand for more than a few minutes at a time without getting very lightheaded and possibly passing out. I did not experience the parade in the company of the friends I came with. Instead, I experienced it waist-high, sitting on a red curb, sometimes with wheel-chair bound parade goers and service dogs. We had our own little disabled section. People donāt look down when youāre below them and that provided me a sort of invisibility. There was my own zone and a safeness as my body was not defined by a powerful stance and was thus deweaponized. I was afforded the chance to retreat into my own thoughts, to marvel at the parade and reflect on the grandness of it all. That day, in that moment, I was able to occupy my many identities safely, but not only that. I was able to celebrate and given reason to celebrate my many identities as well. For this day, I will always be grateful.
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Congress Passes Bill To Designate Pulse Nightclub As National Memorial Almost 5 years after the horrific mass c... Read the rest on our site with the url below https://worldwidetweets.com/congress-passes-bill-to-designate-pulse-nightclub-as-national-memorial/?feed_id=29767&_unique_id=60c44eb1a3010 #massshooting #Memorial #Orlando #PulseNightclub #pulseshooting
When the Pulse shooting happened 3 years ago, I had the same thought I have whenever a public or political tragedy befalls a marginalized community: everyone hates us. They hate us without reason, and we cannot change that, even if we love each other. People will always hate us.
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We bandage our wounds; we mourn our dead. We cling to each other and count our blessings. We pray; we take action. What else can we do?
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I am reminded daily of my privileges in my home, my voice, the color of my skin, my ability to live, to walk, to feed myself and my small cat, my ability to hug and break bread with loved ones, and my newfound ability to work at a job I genuinely love and can make a difference through. I am reminded daily of the importance of writing and the impact made through it, the weight words carry, how carefully we must use them, how much we must count and edit each one.
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Daily, I thirst for justice; my God calls me blessed for this. On occasion, I am reminded when I enter a public space wearing a rainbow bracelet or pin, young and proud: it could have been me. But the sky next to my home, oh, how I love her. How I see my God in her each day.
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#pulse #pulseshooting #pride #pridemonth #lgbtq #lgbt #bisexual #bipride #bisexualpride #vancouver #vancity #queer #gay #poetry #writing #faithfullylgbt #eastvan (at Vancouver, British Columbia)
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