This Saturday I attended the LGBTQ Solidarity Rally at the Stonewall Inn in the West Village with a few friends to draw and show support. The event was originally organized in response to a pending executive order from the new White House administration that was said to dismantle anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people across the country. Trump ended up not signing this EO so the Rally morphed into a solidarity rally for all disenfranchised groups amidst the new Trump administration. People were not just going to sit back because the President decided *one* time not to illegally infringe upon a minority's rights.
This, I think was an even more powerful show of strength. People came together, not because they personally were under attack (although this one order not being signed should not be taken as an "all clear" for LGBTQ folks under any circumstances), but in support of those that are. The LGBTQ community knows what its like to be under attack.
I was heartened to see that, more than any other Pride event, rally, or march I've seen from the LGBTQ community, this one embraced the diversity of the community. Often, the gay movement tends to center on wealthy, white men. But there are gay Muslims, queer immigrants, trans Latina/o/x, queer black women, and all different combinations of identities that, because we are all threatened, have the opportunity to intersect.
The Muslim community and the LGBTQ community would seem to be, pardon the term, strange bedfellows. Trump himself has tried to co-opt the LGBTQ community by saying his exclusionary anti-Muslim policies will make gays safer in response to the Orlando PULSE shooting this summer. But I was so proud to see that this community would not be turned away from fellow Americans, and those striving to become Americans, in a time of need. Fear will not divide us. I was again heartened to hear speakers from various Muslim and immigrant community centers and organizations come to speak in front of Stonewall, a symbol of the LGBTQ rights movement.
The speeches began with Louis, an immigration lawyer, who was working to protect a Syrian refugee and green card-holder of 10 years who became separated from her family during the travel ban. He was once a refugee himself, from Ecuador, where he fled anti-gay persecution. He was a living embodiment of the intersections of all of our communities and how we are in this fight together.
Ishalaa Ortega, the first of several trans speakers of color received resounding applause as she described herself as Mexican, Transgender, Refugee, and American and that "WE ARE NOT GOING ANYWHERE!". Corey Johnson, gay New York City Council member and an organizer of the event, spoke passionately about our need to push ourselves to keep fighting and to not become complacent.
Several speakers referenced the black and Latina trans pioneers of the LGBT movement in NYC, Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, and their immense bravery. Others referenced the ACT UP movement during the AIDS crisis and its slogan "SILENCE = DEATH", stating "WE WILL NOT BE SILENT!"
Each speaker gave their own personal story of why they were there. There was a gay man who was also Syrian, Lebanese, and Mexican: a melting pot of Trump's targets. Khalid Latif, of the NYU Islamic Center echoed the refrain that "An attack on any of us is an attack on all of us." Olympia Perez of the Audre Lorde Project, a trans woman who identified herself as Afro-Latinx, Dominican, Brazillian, Puerto Rican, and South Asian eloquently said "I cannot divide the pieces of me." And these two ideas became the common thread between all the various speakers. Whether black, gay, trans, Latinx, Native American, Asian, queer, white, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, atheist, rich, or poor, we cannot separate the pieces of ourselves and we cannot separate these pieces of our nation.
We are Americans because of our intersections, not in spite of them, and that is what will make our resistance powerful.
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