Equality still a work in progress

Our research team from the University of Florida traveled to Washington, D.C., to curate an oral history archive that documents the experiences of LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, etc.) people in a collaboration between the Center for Gender, Sexualities, and Women’s Studies Research and the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program.

We interviewed organizers from the Equality March, Trans Women of Color Collective and No Justice No Pride. Driving back we were exhilarated by the people we had the opportunity to connect with, and the sense of love and community we had felt around us, but that moment quickly came to a halt when news broke about the 34th Street wall.

A mural painted by the Women’s March Gainesville-Ocala group, called “Seeds of Resistance: Best Planted Together,” was defaced within 24 hours of its completion. The mural emphasizes how overcoming systems of oppression works best when unified. I was shocked to see the language used to describe many members within our Gainesville community.

The mystery defacer’s comments were hateful and maliciously ignorant, especially when they linked autism with various social movements. Not only is there no correlation between autism and advocating for social justice, but also using autism as an insult demeans the lives of the many people who have autism. Stop stigmatizing mental health and ability.

Personally, it was tough to see trans folks singled out of the LGBTQ+ community and deemed as having a “mental disorder,” and that immigrants were not welcome here. Despite the amount of knowledge that has been produced about LGBTQ+ people and immigrant populations, members within our Gainesville community are perpetuating these false messages.

After The Sun reported on our research trip to D.C., I had several people reach out to me about a particular quote in which I described experiencing various forms of homophobia in my day-to-day life. What surprised me most about these interactions is the unawareness, perhaps even skepticism, surrounding my experience as a queer Latinx person.

Yes, Gainesville is a growing community where we seek to create a safe, welcoming community for everyone. But let’s not get caught up in this vision of utopia and mistake that for our current lived realities.

Just this past spring there were several concerning events that occurred in our community: a noose was found in a UF classroom; a rally was organized for those who wish for “Old Joe,” the Confederate soldier statue located in downtown Gainesville, to remain in its location; and Ben Shapiro, who refuses to acknowledge that LGBTQ+ people experience discrimination, and works to invalidate trans identities, was paid to speak at UF.

The culmination of these events has solidified my understanding of how important it is to organize and strive for social change on the local level. The need to spark educational dialogue in our community is precisely why we find it so valuable that the public has full access to our collection.

What good are these rich oral histories if they just sit in an archive, stowed away from our consciousness? These stories need to be heard and understood, and people need to become familiar with experiences unlike their own. Only by humanizing the plethora of experiences we face in the United States can “the other” become “the neighbor.”

As the great Audre Lorde once said, “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.” This push for solidarity strengthens my understanding of oppression as interlocking, and declares that until we are all free we participate in (re)producing these hierarchies.

So, this is a call to action — to activate a consciousness that is critical about the events happening here in Gainesville. We, as active and engaged citizens, have a duty to think critically about the world around us, and we, as a collective, can defeat these social problems with the support of one another.

To close, let’s remember that June is LGBTQ+ Pride Month, and that we recently observed one year since the shooting at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, where LGBTQ+ (particularly those who identify as Latinx) people were targeted and 49 people were murdered. We will not be forced back into “the closet,” and we will continue to speak on our experiences with oppression in hopes of creating a more just society.

Do not let these incidents prevent you from speaking truth to power.

— Robert Baez is a Ph.D. student in the department of sociology and criminology & law at UF.