The
rise of violence
in Capitol Hill has
been
documented and shown to disproportionately target the LGBTQ community,
in particular trans women and trans women of color. It is not an accident that as neighborhoods experience an influx of white, affluent renters and homeowners, marginalized people with intersecting identities are harmed through displacement and this rapid change deteriorates the social atmosphere of the neighborhood. When queer and trans people of color get priced out, networks developed to support each other within community get harder to access when people get displaced.
LGBTQ Allyship recognizes that housing justice is vital to ending violence against the LGBTQ community. Having a stable place to live, develop connections, and create spaces and solutions to serve our community helps keep people safe.
Communities can keep support each other and keep each other safe by knowing how to de-escalate a situation, how to step in and intervene when violence is happening, how to support, uplift, and center black and brown queers and queers with disabilities. All these skills are necessary to develop and keep our communities safe not relying on police as a protective force especially when they carry out violence against people of color.
The same forces that are responsible for working to deprive trans people of the right to use the bathroom are also connected to the forces that result in the murder of black and brown queer people. The community at large needs to reflect on ways they are complicit with these systems and how to disrupt them.
As Pride celebrations commence, LGBTQ Allyship urges LGBTQ communities and communities at large to show up for each other locally by addressing racism and ableism, and condemning police violence. From Stonewall to Pulse, our communities have always been engaged in a struggle to fight violence and hatred to be seen as human and granted basic dignity. As long as violence is happening across racial lines and in the context of ableism, none of us are free until all of us are.
