Tag: blacklivesmatter

My Hope For You

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Cari and I chat, wondering, what is happening? What makes a white female police officer shoot a young unarmed black man in his own home? What makes a white male police officer shoot an unarmed black woman in her own home? What excuses any man for killing a transgender or homosexual person based on being “surprised” by the persons’ gender identity or sexuality? What makes a brown person more apt to be demonized based on their skin, regardless of their contribution to society, values, or morals? What makes any woman believe that a misogynistic, sexual predator, or abusive man is fit to fill any elected office in this county?

I wish we had the answers, but we don’t.  All I can offer is hope. I hope you have the opportunity to experience so many things you may never have experienced before.

I hope your white daughter brings home her black boyfriend, the boyfriend who challenges your views on what it’s like to feel safe in the world. The boyfriend who says that they must teach young boys in their family to raise their hands every time, regardless of the situation, even if the police have not yet screamed at them to do so. Especially when weapons have already been drawn on them for utterly no reason. Your daughter would instantly jump in front of the bullet meant for him, and your future black grandchildren. I hope you understand why.

I hope your son brings home his boyfriend, the one with an old soul who sees beauty in everything around him, but who has been bullied every day of his life and been disowned by his biological family. The beautiful boy who befuddles you with his gentle and kind spirit, the boy who exudes love and compassion even though he has yet to experience these things in his life. How does he know these exist, and how does he know how to give these to other people? I hope you see the gift he is giving you and family.

I hope your brown neighbor has a wife and children sitting in detention at the border waiting for an immigration hearing. I hope you know your neighbor well, and know that he is a good man who would do anything for his family or for you. He works hard and has told you his dreams for his children, which are simply to go to school and not be killed by the gangs in their country. I hope he mows your lawn when he sees you are tired and the lawn need mowing. He will, because that’s the sort of neighbor he is, and I hope you will do the same for him.

I hope you have the privilege of knowing a transgender person both before and after transition, watching them struggle with the fear, guilt, and shame they must slog through in order to simply live as the person they were meant to be from the beginning. I hope you have the chance to hold the hand of the most courage, amazing people you will ever have the privilege of knowing. And I hope you hold their hand in the most public of places so the whole world has the chance to know these people are beautiful, and real, and special, and belong.

I am so sad about what is happening in this country right now, so much fear and guilt and doubt, all seeming to build into misunderstanding and hate. I don’t believe hate comes first. Hate comes last. It comes out of not knowing another person. Not willingly understanding someone else’s lot in life, not believing them when they tell you their story. Thinking no one else can possibly have it worse than you, and that it’s someone else’s fault that you have it rough.

I do not know why it is so difficult for some of us to believe that other peoples’ struggles are equally difficult as ours, or more difficult, but for some reason we hold it against people who seek to shine a light on the injustice they experience every day. The injustice inflicted upon our brown and black neighbors; the violence experienced by our gay and trans brothers and sisters; the hateful remarks and attitudes continually thrown at our Muslim, Sikh, and Jewish friends. The list goes on. Needlessly, and remarkably, the list goes on and on.

I hope you are faced with love and compassion from those in your life who you have struggled to give love and compassion in return. Those who have surprised with the gift of unconditional friendship, who have left you completely and utterly speechless with their devotion to family and community.  Given the opportunity, these people will open your hearts to an entirely new world, one in which color and sexuality and gender and identity and ethnicity are not required to add up in certain way in order to make a person worthy of love and compassion.  I hope you see a world in which simply BEING is enough.

I hope you have the chance to see the world through the eyes of truthful people, whose hearts and minds are honest and true and loving and kind.

I hope you are touched by kindness and find it within your ability to return the kindness to anyone and to all.  Is that really so much to hope for, friends?

So Much To Care About

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You can’t get away from it. Every radio program, every TV station, websites, social media, newspapers, EVERYWHERE YOU TURN!  Bad news.  People suffering in so many ways, and hateful words spewing out of the mouths of leaders, elected officials, so-called clergy, neighbors, friends, even family.  How do you decide what gets past your defenses and what glances off your well-worn armor? How do you decide what to care about and what to ignore? How does a person sleep at night when they think it only matters if it hurts them personally, but not if it hurts someone else?

Thinking back, I realize with no small amount of shame that I used to fall into a terrible pattern myself.  If a human situation didn’t effect me I didn’t think it was important enough to care about, or even worse, there was something wrong with the people who were suffering.  They somehow let themselves be put in those situations so it was their own fault they were suffering.

I wasn’t homeless, so it was easy to look down my nose at people living on the street.  Get a job, I remember thinking to myself.

I remember believing that if you lived in the United States of America that you should learn to speak English.

Dressing that way, what did you expect to happen? All the guys will see are your boobs!

I remember playing games on the playground with names I can’t even bring myself to type on the keyboard now, full of racial slurs, homophobia, and hatred of what I did not know. I just knew no one else seemed to have a problem with those games. It wasn’t until we had a Black family move into the school district that those games suddenly felt wrong but I couldn’t pinpoint why.

Surely you could decide not to be gay, right? And cross-dressing was odd, fun to play along with, but nothing you really wanted to talk about.

The shame that burns my face with a bright red flame never dies. I was that person and I have to own it.  But what changed? What happened to me in my life that has me thinking in such dramatically different ways now?  Well, I don’t have an easy answer to that other than I grew up and lived life, met so many people and soaked up experiences as I went along that completely altered my way of being.  It had been easy to go with the flow of the majority I was surrounded by, to blindly follow the bright colors of the flag, to hold others to a different standard based on nothing but uneducated myth and opinion.

Thinking for myself, opening my heart, becoming educated, learning empathy…….those things were hard, and they remain really hard.  So many things to care about now! How can a person care about everything all at once?  Homelessness, the opioid crisis, food deserts, cancer, veterans, LGBTQ rights, immigration, animal cruelty, climate change, sexual assault, misogyny, elections, police brutality against young black men….the list goes on and on and on.  My heart hurts in exponentially more ways now than it ever did before. Wouldn’t it have been easier to stay in the dark? To shield my heart from the inevitable pain that grows out of empathy?

I look at the people living their lives without any concern or care for another living thing and I have to believe it is pretty hard to stay in the dark like that. It has to take a toll on a person’s heart. Where empathy causes pain because it swells the heart with love, disengagement and hate causes pain because it shrinks the heart and creates a darkness that surrounds the soul, blocking any warmth or light.

So much to care about, yes, but you can care about ALL of it! Don’t pick and choose one over another based solely on your own experience. Care about the immigrant even if you’ve never had an immigrant to your house for dinner. Care about climate change even if you don’t understand the science. Care about the victims of sexual assault even if you’ve never been assaulted. Care about transgender people because they are real, even if you think you don’t know any trans people (statistically you do, though, just so you know.)

Care.  Care about all of it, be okay knowing you can’t fix all of it, but do what you can as often as you can.  For some of us that means we talk a lot, trying our best to educate and change minds and open hearts. For others it means running for public office, or marching on the capitol or raising money for a cause.  Whatever it is you are doing because your heart is swelling with love and desire to help, keep doing it. And then do more. Your heart can take it.

 

Letter to the LGBT Community on our 30th Anniversary

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Dear Friends,

You were there for us when we needed you most. About three years ago we took our first tentative steps into a community we knew very little about, unsure, more than a little scared.  And there you were, waiting for us with open arms and open hearts. We are still in awe of your strength, and your fearless ability to live your lives out loud, never backing down and never compromising. We admire your loving relationships, and you validate ours.  You made us feel welcome, like we had a place to belong. You helped us map our future and reassured us that we could indeed move forward together as Carli and Tracy.

We celebrated our first Pride event in June 2016, marching side by side with the first transgender unit in the history of the Indy Pride parade.  We choked back tears of joy as we walked, holding hands, hearing nothing but love, support, acceptance, and encouragement all around us. It was a life-changing event for us.  The next day we woke up to the news of the Pulse shooting.  There was no holding back the tears.  The grief was overwhelming.  49 people, simply living their lives out loud, gone out of pure hate. So far in 2017 there have been 27 transgender people murdered in this country.  It could be anyone of you, our dear friends. Or our son and his partner. Or us.  Yes, we woke up that day and we continue to be “woke” as the cool kids might say.

You, friends, continue to keep us woke about LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, the relentless tragedies that continue to besiege people of color.  You care about everyone who struggles to be seen, everyone whose rights are still not a foregone conclusion.  Your compassion knows no bounds, and you strive to make the world a better place for everyone.  You are quite simply remarkable. Thank you for being there for us, for all of us.

In love, gratitude, and appreciation…………Carli and Tracy

I Call BS

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Every time there is a national crisis of some sort people turn out in droves loudly proclaiming their love and concern for the population effected by the tragedy. Hurricane Harvey is just the latest.  Hurricane Sandy, the Sandy Hook massacre, the Oklahoma City bombing, 9/11. The list goes on and on, and in each instance people donate money, they send relief supplies, they cry what they profess to be real tears for people who are hurting and in desperate need of help.  I CALL BS

Today is the first news cycle that was not lead by videos of Hurricane Harvey.  What was the first video? The president of the united states claiming “we love the dreamers, we love everybody” all while making the decision to end protections for young people protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival – DACA – act.

Let me get this straight.  You love them but you want them to go “back” to countries they do not remember, where they have no family, they do not speak the language, and have no means to support themselves.  That doesn’t sound like any love I’ve ever experienced and it’s certainly not coming from a place of compassion or concern.  How many DACA kids do you suppose are helping rescue hurricane victims? How many DACA kids do you suppose are up to their necks in debris and devastation left from the storm, but they’re at their neighbor’s houses helping with the clean up? These kids are allowed to work and required to pay taxes, but they get nothing in return.  They don’t qualify for any social services, they don’t get “hand outs” from the American people.  They give far more to this country than what we give them in return.

Thanks for helping.  We love you, now go away.

How about that ban on transgender people serving in the military?  The administration and a lot of flag-waving Americans claim to be “friends of the gays” using the phrase “the gays” as a catch-all for the entire LGBTQ+ community, but transgender people are clearly too much of a drain on military so they must go.

What a load of crap. I won’t even attempt to lay out the real cost of being transgender on the military, or compare it to the waste, fraud, and abuse that is rampant in this administration.  Others have done that already.  It doesn’t seem to matter to those making the decisions that the cost of caring for transgender servicemembers is astonishingly miniscule in the grand scheme of budgetary expenses.  This ban is borne of pure hate.  There is no way to spin it to make it sound remotely responsible or compassionate.

My transgender wife honorably served in the United States Air Force for 20 years.  She did not have the option to live authentically at that time. It’s speculation, but I believe those 20 years would have been so much easier for her had she been allowed to serve openly.  Haven’t we learned this lesson by allowing people to serve regardless of their sexual orientation?  Here is something to consider, United States of America……….there will soon be NO eligible young people willing to serve in the military. If we don’t wake up and accept that our young people have the expectation of being accepted for who they are, our military ranks will continue to dwindle to dangerously low levels of operational readiness.  Good luck dealing with the crazy loon in North Korea!

Let’s talk about what it means when our police take the oath to “protect and serve.”  What does that look like for the citizens who rely on law enforcement?  It looks very different for me as a 50 year old white woman than it does for a 25 year old black man. White men taking oaths to protect and serve making jokes about “only killing black people” when making a traffic stop.  Jokes like that are never innocent and certainly not funny.  That statement tells a lot about the person’s true character and judgement.

Are we a country that truly believes in civil rights?  Well of course we are, right? We settled that a long time ago when we let Black people drink out of our water fountains and sit next to us on the bus.  We white people have done our part.  It’s all good.

Nope.  Not even close to being a country that actually CARES ABOUT ALL PEOPLE.  People who enjoy their civil rights are still actively trying to steal them from others.  My civil rights are far more important than your civil rights.  If you get more rights, mine will be diminished.  You will steal mine so I’ll make sure you just don’t have any in the first place.

BS BS BS!!!  Civil rights don’t run out like milk and bread the day before a snowstorm.

I could go on forever, but I have to end soon or you will stop reading.  One final thought, knowing this last paragraph is directed mostly at people outside my community of  truly compassionate friends, so share widely if you would……

Keep your teddy bears, keep your canned goods and diapers, keep your cash and blankets and clothes you’ve dug out of your closet.  Don’t fly the flag in your yard.  Don’t bother placing your hand over your heart during the National Anthem or singing the hymns in church on Sunday. Don’t bother “giving until it hurts” unless you have searched your heart and find compassion for ALL human beings, love them for who they are rather than who you want them to be, are more concerned about their well-being than what you can get from them.  Keep all your gifts given out of some false sense of patriotism and compassion because it’s been proven time and time again that none of that compassion, concern, and love for your fellow man lasts for long.  It’s temporary to make yourself feel better.  It flies out the window the next time somebody refuses to serve a gay couple because of deeply held beliefs, or an unarmed black man is shot for walking down the sidewalk at the wrong time of day, or a statue of slave owner is moved out of a place of reverence.

I hope some day I can stop calling BS.