#you should share more of her threads on here they are often this anti-defeatist

[laurenfoxmakesthings]

ID: A thread of tweets by PinkRangerLB, a trans lawyer, that say the following.

"We in the LGBTQ+ community must understand that our dead were real people. Vital, awake, worlds unto themselves, like us. They didn’t live and die for the sake of our learning, but they have a lot to teach.

I want to tell you about Hart Island and hope in the darkness. /1

When I say they were real people I mean I do not believe they are necessary sacrifices, or that our dead paid a cost for us. They loved, they feared, they had favorite TV shows and candy bars. They were here and it will never ever ever be okay that they’re gone. /2

They’re not symbols or metaphors. They had books to write, vacations to take, meals to cook, and the world would be better with them still in it. We aren’t enriched by death, but we can stand in their shoes and see the future. /3

Hart Island, if you don’t know, is where New York City buries bodies that aren’t claimed by a licensed funeral director. At the height of the AIDS epidemic funeral homes were urged not to embalm AIDS fatalities. /4

In New York, as elsewhere, stigma toward the queer community was at a level that even now it can be difficult to remember. Many queer people who died of AIDS had been disowned by their birth family because of their identity, their HIV status, or both. /5

To make matters worse, their partners and found families had no rights to their medical care or their bodies after they passed. The hateful families that could claim them often didn’t, and the families that loved them were powerless to see to their wishes. /6

You can read more about all this at the memorial’s website, here:

hartisland.net/aids_initiative

/7

You can feel their weight, can’t you? The absence is heavy. And it’s important we understand that weight, because it’s a flat fact that current attacks on LGBTQ+ rights, trans rights especially, will kill people. There will be more absence, and it is not okay. /8

And when we say we have hope we are not saying it’s okay that they will be gone.

None of this ignores intersectionalism, higher rates of infection in targeted communities, death rates higher still. When I say things *can* get better I am not ignoring that improvement favors /9

the privileged.

Things got better. ACT UP and other activist groups organized and gained ground through community building, mutual aid, and grassroots action. Culturally, the tide began to turn. Federal action by Reagan and then Clinton contributed very little /10

(and in fact often caused harm). Direct action by activists galvanized AIDS research and the tide turned with very little government help.

In New York City, the death rate for HIV/AIDS patients fell by 62% from 2001 to 2012. So here’s what I’m saying. We’ve been seeing /11

an escalating backlash against LGBTQ people for years now. It gets very easy for us to come to expect the worst case scenario. Trump won, states are attacking trans kids, Roe was overturned. So now we say WHEN the Supreme Court overturns gay marriage, WHEN a national /12"

abortion ban passes, WHEN trans healthcare for adults gets criminalized.

And don’t get me wrong, those are all very real threats. We have to fight like hell. I am not pretending that times aren’t dark, that people won’t die, or that it will ever be okay that our people will /13

suffer and die. But things can, and do, get better when we fight, when we look after each other. The tide will not inevitably turn, but *we* can turn it. We can say that when the wall finally fell, our hands were there, pulling it down brick by brick. /14

And those we lost, if we remember them, honor them, we are their hands too. /15"

#lgbtqia+ #trans rights #transgender #activism #lgbtq #queer community #queer activism #lgbt #queer history #AIDs Crisis #you should share more of her threads on here they are often this anti-defeatist #I've been trying to use twitter less and go to tumblr more to get away from twitter's defeatism #I don't want any of you to start importing and accepting that defeatism here