THIS IS A STORY THAT BEGINS WITH THE SIMPLE IDEA OF FIGHTING FOR MY CHOSEN COMMUNITY."

arrived at this moment from very separate walks of life and holding diverse identities, but were willing to unite in a common struggle over our shared vision of intersectional liberation. For queer people who have lived in the South, saying this place feels like home is an act of political rebellion, but thanks to what we have started here and the promise of where it can go, I have found a home.

Maybe I felt it for the first time while marching on Monday, April 3rd. Each step brought back memories of my friends and I marching beneath the towers of the growing Atlanta skyline, eyes staring at the gold dome in the heart of the city. I was even wearing the same shoes as I had been then, knowing that these would be my protest shoes because there were many more protests in my future. I could hear each voice, I could feel their pleas with whatever power might return them back the promise of their future, which had been cashed in so many times that it felt like we were begging for pennies on the dollar. I cried in the light rain as we made our way from campus to the capitol building. Tears were strong enough that I could feel them run down my cheek faster than the raindrops. I looked up at the statehouse in the distance and made a promise. I would commit myself to everything that came next on behalf of my little brother so that I would never get a text again about his school undergoing a lockdown, so I never had to comfort my mother as she went through the stages of grief for an event that felt all too real but never came to fruition. So that I did not have to hear the heavy sigh of my father as his world went up in flames.

I made a promise that I would be part of the generation of voices who stopped gun violence and that the terror would end with us. I would make this place and every place safe, and then we could call it home.

When Brynn Jones, one of the March for Our Lives organizers for the Nashville-wide walkouts, approached me Friday, March 31st, to help, I had little idea what would happen. I was drinking coffee in our on-campus coffee shop, nurturing the hot cappuccino as I stressed over polling data, content creation, and the midterm paper due in twelve hours. After the first march, I jumped in the back of a pick-up truck with Brynn and Ezri, national March for Our Lives staff members, and Vanderbilt students. We had learned of the expulsion and were ready to document the moment for the world to see so that fascism would not happen quietly or without opposition. Like most of Tennessee, that moment was a spark that ignited my passion for pursuing justice. I, like everyone else who has been marginalized and bullied and told they don't belong, deserve to feel safe in our communities. So this is a story that begins with the simple idea of fighting for my chosen community. Three weeks of continuous organizing brought me into a community with people who had been in this fight longer than I had. Folks from groups like TN Advocates for Planned Parenthood, The Equity Alliance, and inclusion tennessee became role models and, more importantly, mentors willing to pour decades worth of knowledge into a young activist still trying to find his way. As they helped galvanize the youth wing of our growing coalition, I felt myself standing on surer footing, again feeling the sense of home that

I had longed for in Nashville. My chosen family was filled with badass people, willing to give it all for the higher calling justice asks us all to live up to. This movement is made of intersectional voices fighting for justice and winning. They make me feel safe, restoring my hope as walkouts turned into rotunda occupations and late-night strategy calls about marching Justin Jones from city hall to the TN legislature and later night planning about Justin Pearson’s return to the People’s House. In their eyes, I saw the same hope that let me know I had found my way back. Brynn and Ezri and Phil and Jules had helped build something special. They were helping build a movement that felt like home.

It is hard to describe what has happened over these last few months because we have so much left to do. The news has been there, documenting each protest, vigil, rally, and celebration. In this moment of collective action and budding solidarity, we are preparing for the future in a state without adequate gun laws, respect for the LGBTQIA+ community, or willingness to affirm the dignity of trans and genderqueer and Black and