Tag: orlando
I wonder if the Orlando/Pulse shooting is going to be taught in high school history classes or if it’s just going to be reduced a paragraphs mention and maybe one APUSH test question like Stonewall did. I wish our history and the traumatic things that happen to our community mattered to anyone besides us.
How we learn is changing. Schools may not add this into textbooks, but the Internet remembers.
It’s both a comfort and an uncomfortable truth.
why does it feel like everyones already forgotten about the pulse shooting? don’t forget about it. don’t forget the largest mass shooting in us history, perpetrated by omar mateen, which took place on june 12, 2016 and where a majority of the victims were latino gay men. don’t forget the 49 lives lost and 53 wounded. it’s only been a few months! don’t let people forget about pulse.
Never forget.
One of the most frustrating aspects of the mainstream conversation surrounding the tragedy at Pulse Orlando this past weekend is the erasure of Latinx/Afro-Latinx bodies from the story being painted. This is not simply an issue of terrorism or gun violence or homophobia. More than that, it’s about how folks at the intersections, at the margins of the margins, are often re-traumatized/victimized by the state and the dominant after experiencing violence or threat thereof. Nowhere is this clearer than in the the case of undocumented victims in the Pulse massacre. Take some time to read the following article in full, and if you haven’t yet, consider donating to the victims of this tragedy. (Equality Florida, the sponsor of the main GoFundMe has vowed assistance, regardless of status. However, in the coming days, I am going to try and find some more direct pathways with some local comrades. Stay posted.)
I can’t sleep.
its fucking unreal how people are saying “dont erase that the victims of the orlando shooting are lgbt!” in the same fucking breath that they erase that the victims are predominantly black and latinx people and by unreal i mean transparent as fuck
The Pulse shooter’s father, who is also a homophobe, confirmed the Pulse shooter was a homophobe. The shooter’s co-worker, Daniel Gilroy, stated that the shooter was anti-black and used anti-black slurs and specifically said he wanted to kill all black people. Stop trying to remove race from the shooter’s homophobia; it is FRONT AND CENTER in the anti-latinx and anti-black homophobic violence he committed. This disgusting misogynistic racist homophobic man specifically preyed on lgbt poc.
the Orlando shooting is a nightmare and only worse today
I have to use words, and words are failing me. This is what I think I am witnessing, and I think this is the worst frenzy of othering and violence I have witnessed in my lifetime. In this attack, LGBTQ+ people have been terrorized, and their hard-won safe spaces deeply injured. In coverage, their suffering has been appropriated, and they’ve been further made invisible, further marginalized. Latina and non-white LGBTQ+ people have been doubly terrorized during this attack and marginalized by the response. Nationalist, military violence against brown people and Muslims and also deeper surveillance and militarization in the US will be shored up. And people labeled “crazy” will likely suffer further institutional and pathological fear from their society.
What’s coming out is some distorted nightmare – a portrait of the dominant psyche in America. We most fear and hate Muslims and crazy people. We hate queer and non-white people (and fear them when they’re not kept in their place). So let’s further police the former (amplify our hate) and erase the latter (further entrench our hate). How do exaggerated, garish stereotypes imbued with deep hatred couple so fucking naturally with erasure and invisibility? I guess if you’re only being seen as a socially constructed idea of you that’s created for the sake of someone else, you’re also not seen at all. It’s two sides of one coin, not far apart, and a seamless switch.
12 June 2016
What happened at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando was a hate crime against LGBT+s.
LGBT+s were the target and hate towards us motivated this crime.
Let no one tell you different. Media pundits will spin this for a completely separate agenda: to prevent the ban on assault weapons in the US, for example, to exacerbate Islamophobia, to diminish the damage to the LGBT+ community (’our agenda’ must never overtake theirs).
This was a hate crime against LGBT+s and we must not allow the corporate media to re-write this history as anything but a hate crime, an attack of terrorism against LGBT+s.
Remember this always.
REST IN PEACE 💔
Edward Sotomayor Jr., 34 years old
Stanley Almodovar III, 23 years old
Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo, 20 years old
Juan Ramon Guerrero, 22 years old
Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera, 36 years old
Peter O. Gonzalez-Cruz, 22 years old
Luis S. Vielma, 22 years old
Kimberly Morris, 37 years old
Eddie Jamoldroy Justice, 30 years old
Darryl Roman Burt II, 29 years old
Deonka Deidra Drayton, 32 years old
Alejandro Barrios Martinez, 21 years old
Anthony Luis Laureanodisla, 25 years old
Jean Carlos Mendez Perez, 35 years old
Franky Jimmy Dejesus Velazquez, 50 years old
Amanda Alvear, 25 years old
Martin Benitez Torres, 33 years old
Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon, 37 years old
Mercedez Marisol Flores, 26 years old
Xavier Emmanuel Serrano Rosado, 35 years old
Gilberto Ramon Silva Menendez, 25 years old
There are so many posts, conversations happening about Orlando, so much anger and hurt and I wish we had arms big enough to hold each other, around the world – saccharine as that may sound. Our community, all that we are as human beings, and all we have tried to stand for, all we have tried to be for one another, the very goodness of it, at its heart, has been brutalised, once again, and beautiful lives were taken from us. We have fought uphill against the unkindness and ignorance of this world with the only weapon we’ve ever had: love. Love must be our legacy, now and always.
Hold who you can and never stop fighting.
The Doctor Is Out 