Called to Move

Activist Deb Love chants "I can't breathe!" at the peaceful protest held at the Wayne Huizenga Park in Las Olas, Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. on May 31, 2020.

BY JOHN SOTOMAYOR PHOTO BY ALEXA FODERE

The recharge of the Black Lives Matter movement by the senseless death of George Floyd resonates deeply with the LGBTQ community, particularly with Trans Lives Matter, and a connection to the Gay Civil Rights Movement of 1969, started by black transgender people hardest hit by police brutality.

As the graphic video footage of George Floyd’s fi nal moments with Minneapolis Offi cer Derek Chauvin’s boot on his neck slowly suff ocating him for an agonizing 8 minutes and 46 seconds was televised, the Ross family watched alongside the rest of America in horror. Floyd, a black man, pleaded for his life. His fi nal words were, “I can’t breathe.” Offi cer Chauvin is white. The date was May 25, 2020. The Ross family, like many other black families across America, was still seething over the death of Breonna Taylor, a medical technician. She was killed on March 13, 2020 – just two months earlier – when three white plainclothes offi cers entered her apartment unannounced with a no-knock warrant looking for two drug-dealer suspects. The offi cers entered the wrong place. The actual location was 10 miles away. Taylor, an innocent black woman was shot eight times in her own home. The Ross family has heard of many other similar accounts throughout their lives. They are in a high demographic for systemic abuse. Not only are they black, they are also all transgender.

Tiff ani Ross is considered aff ectionately as drag-mother. She is an entertainer in Ocala. In drag circles, “parenting” signifi es mentorship. However, for the Ross’ they consider themselves family. Porsha Ross is her drag-daughter. Born and raised in Panama City, Fla., Porsha has lived in Ocala for the past eight years. She has been the Show Director at the Copa, a local gay nightclub, for the past three years. Both are transgender male to female. Vision Ross is Porsha’s fi ancé. Born in Boynton Beach, Fla., Vision has done drag since 2007. Vision is currently going through the transgender process, from female to male.

All three have had no-fault run-ins with the law, but found their own experiences too painful to discuss. They know of other transgenders who have experienced unimaginable emotional pain and trauma while in police custody and by strangers fi lled with hate.

“I had a good friend, Chyna Gibson, who was killed approximately three years ago. She was a Stanford University graduate, very beautiful,” said Porsha. “She went to a grocery store in her hometown of New Orleans and a guy came out of nowhere and shot her 10 times in the chest.”

This story made national news. In February 2017, two transgender women, Gibson being one of them, were murdered in New Orleans within 48 hours. It was reported that Gibson was gunned down Saturday, and the second woman was found with multiple stab wounds Monday morning. The incidents put the New

Orleans transgender community on edge. The assailant or assailants were never caught.

TRANS LIVES MATTER

Tiff ani is cautious about where she goes. She knows her appearance would attract unwanted attention at certain places and at certain times of the day. She avoids them. If she takes the risk of venturing out somewhere out of need, like a doctor’s offi ce or for groceries, she knows and expects someone may make a comment. Even taunt her. She never expected police offi cers to treat her that way.

Back in the late 1990’s, Tiff ani was pulled over. She had her cell phone in her hand. When asked what she had in her hand, her nerves got the best of her. She tried to put the phone in her purse. The offi cer reacted aggressively, ordering Tiff ani to exit the vehicle. He then forced her to

“It doesn’t only happen on the outside where the news is being reported,” said Vision. “Physical altercations with offi cers happen on the inside where no one is looking or reporting the abuse.”

the ground and ordered her to stay fl at on the ground as he searched her purse, then the rest of her car. Things got worse when Tiff ani was taken to jail.

“They made fun of me at the jail station,” said Tiff ani. “They kept bringing in new people in and out to look at me, making fun of me. I had a rough time with that.” Soft-spoken, she could barely get her words out. “They were white cops, and they wanted to get a good laugh, humiliate me and all that kind of stuff ,” Tiff ani continued. “It was bad, it was bad.”

Tiff ani coped by forcing herself to forget. It was the only way she could move on.

Vision recalled the experience of a black trans woman as told to her by the friend when she lived in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

“When this friend was arrested and went through the booking process at the jail, because they did not know how to identify that person, she was given a hard time,” said Vision. “Nowadays we have more freedom to change our identity on our driver’s license, but back then we weren’t.”

The friend was booked in the male facility, since the driver’s license stated this friend was male. The friend was actually trans and had already begun the process of change, so appeared female. Inside the male facility, this friend was tortured every day.

“It doesn’t only happen on the outside where the news is being reported,” said Vision. “Physical altercations with offi cers happen on the inside where no one is looking or reporting the abuse.”

When it comes to trans people, anyone going to jail is going to have a diffi cult time. Especially if they are locked up and doing time behind bars. There is no one there to help them.

TAKING ACTION

George Floyd’s fi nal words “I can’t breathe” became the outcry for a worldwide movement. It called many to join peaceful protests. Deb Love was among them who not only attended, but took an active role.

An advocate against injustice, Love – who is white – took an active interest in Black Lives Matters because both her daughter and girlfriend are biracial between black and white. Her girlfriend also has a biracial son. The two women raise both children together.

“I am the only white girl in the family,” said Love with a laugh.

Raised in an impoverished, low-income, inner-city community in Pennsylvania, Love witnessed the disparity between black and white. She recognized her own white privilege, even though she herself was poor.

There was a period of time in her young life that she was going in and out of youth detention centers she called “juvie hall.”

“I didn’t have the greatest upbringing,” said Love.

Love fi rst realized she had privilege when she and her black friend, both 16, faced the judge for the same petty crime off ense committed together. Neither have been sentenced to jail before. Love was sentenced to 19 days. Her friend was sentenced to a Level 10 program, which is 10 months to a year and a half in juvenile detention.

“That right there showed me that the system favored white kids over black kids,” said Love.

When Love became homeless at 17, she met a woman, Katheryn, while asking for money for food. Katheryn changed her life. Love became homeless because her mother was not accepting of Love’s lesbian lifestyle. Katheryn made Love realize that she had much more potential to give to the world with “her time, talent, and her treasures” to become the best version of herself. Katheryn got Love off the streets.

“She taught me about loving self,” said Love, who has since rebuilt a loving relationship with her mother now accepting of Love’s homosexuality.

“My mother now knows that you cannot pray the gay away,” said Love.

“The black trans women who started the Stonewall Riots, and thus the LGBTQ Civil Rights movement, felt more compelled to stand up because they face the greatest oppression by the police who raided the gay clubs, just for being black and for begin transgender.”

The redirection Kathryn applied to Love’s life led to her call to a life of activism.

Love was a chant lead at the peaceful protest against the death of George Floyd held at the Wayne Huizenga Park in Las Olas, Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. on May 31, 2020.

“For me, it was a monumental experience,” said Love. “Being onstage and chanting, it was emotional for me, just looking out into the crowd and seeing so many beautiful people that were there to represent the cause. I believe we were heard that day.”

The protest began approximately 11 AM. Different prominent leaders in the community spoke throughout the day on the importance of change for the oppression of people of color as well as systemic racism and what we can do as a community to make that change.

After everyone on the itinerary spoke, which included spoken word artists and youth speakers, the group of 1,500 began to march.

By 4 PM, those who organized the event were fi nished with their roles and allowed to leave.

Later that evening, there was a clash between people and police.

According to Love, who was not present but was told after the fact, a police offi cer allegedly got into a dispute with a young woman around 5:30 to 6 PM. She was already on the ground, sitting in protest. The offi cer allegedly put his hands on her and pushed her fl at onto the ground as a move to arrest her.

“Of course, that is going to create some friction when there are people there in protest of police brutality,” said Love. “I want to make it clear that at that time, the chapter of BLM Ft. Lauderdale, Broward County, had already left the scene.”

According to Love, one of the chief organizers, Tiff any, had asked everyone to go home after 4 PM, that the peaceful protest and march were now over, so BLM Ft. Lauderdale, Broward County, was no way affi liated with that occurrence.

According to Love, a female police offi cer of color interceded and removed the offi cer from her, instructing him to no longer put his hands on her. From Love’s understanding, the offi cer accused was suspended pending further investigation.

The unfortunate clash after the peaceful protest ended does not take away from its message, or the importance of it in Love’s heart.

“BLM talks about defunding the police, which simply means redirecting the budget (funding) to buy more guns and using those

funds to rebuild inner city structures, such as education, counseling, and housing,” said Love. “Taking the money and using it to guide the inner-city youth when they are young instead of incarcerating them as juveniles and into a system few ever leave.”

As an open lesbian, Love relates to the oppression.

“When I lived in Indiana, and Pence was governor, I was denied entering into an establishment because I was with a girlfriend at the time,” said Love. “That was a time whereby people could freely say they could deny us service based upon our sexuality.”

For Love, it is time for change. It is time to unify. Enough.

“I felt like I had to be there at the peaceful protest, it wasn’t a choice for me,” said Love. “As a white, LGBTQ woman to say, ‘We stand with you.’ That I am an alley, and I will fi ght alongside you every step of the way.”

BOUND TOGETHER

June 28, 1969 could have been just another day in the life of the nightclub-going gay crowd, including a police raid on Stonewall Inn, a popular gay club in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Raids were common then. What was diff erent that night was the response. Several patrons decided, like Love, enough. Patrons and local sympathizers turned violent against the authorities. The fi rst to fi ght back were black transgenders, who were the most mistreated by offi cers. Bottles were thrown. Disorder took over the streets, which was not restored until after 4 AM.

Several days of demonstrations in New York followed. It was the impetus of the Gay Liberation Front, thus the dawn of the gay civil rights movement. The next year, the fi rst offi cial New York City Pride Parade was held, which is now seen in every city, large and small, around the world.

It became an unstoppable force. In recent years, the LGBTQ community were granted every civil right given to the straight community, including nondiscrimination in housing and employment, the right to serve in the military, the right to adopt, and the right to marry.

“The fact that black transgender women were the pioneers of the Gay Rights Movement of 1969 is probably lost on most people, including many in the LGBTQ community,” said Porsha. “I think it will be discussed more and known now in the forefront because of what is happening now with Black Lives Matter and Trans Lives Matter.” BLACK CIVIL RIGHTS AND BLM HISTORY

The black civil rights movement started in December 1955, when NAACP activist Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man. Black Lives Matter was founded on July 13, 2013 in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman. Zimmerman was a volunteer neighborhood watch coordinator for his gated community in Sanford, Fla. where Martin, a 17-year-old black high school student, was visiting his relatives. Martin was unarmed in an altercation with Zimmerman, who claimed selfdefense.

“It is the same battle,” said Love. “The black trans women who started the Stonewall Riots, and thus the LGBTQ Civil Rights movement, felt more compelled to stand up because they face the greatest oppression by the police who raided the gay clubs, just for being black and for begin transgender.”

Still, we have more to go.

Christian Cooper, a gay black man who was bird-watching in New York City was killed by NYPD when a white woman falsely accused him of being abusive to her, simply because he asked her to leash her dog as required in Central Park.

There is an epidemic of violence against black transgender Americans. A well-known black transgender woman, Nina Pop, 28, was stabbed to death in Missouri on May 3, 2020. The Human Rights Campaign lists her death as the 10th violent death of an American transgender person or non-conforming person in 2020.

Then, on May 27, 2020 – only two days after the death of George Floyd – Tony McDade, 38, a black transgender man, was fatally shot in the Leon Arms apartment complex by a Tallahassee Police Department offi cer, following the fatal stabbing of Malik Jackson.

McDade, who struggled with mental illness, was a suspect due to his own posting of a Facebook Live video that he would get revenge on men who attacked him the day before.

According to the Tallahassee Police Department, McDade pointed a gun at police and the bloody knife used in Jackson’s murder was found at the scene. Some witnesses contradict the police statements that McDade was armed with a gun. Currently, no further investigation has come forth to determine any police fault due to the relationship McDade had to the victim’s mother, Jennifer Jackson, that led to the altercation with Malik Jackson and other male family members.

The police pointed to McDade’s past criminal history which included a fi ve-year prison sentence for armed robbery, and a violation of probation when police found McDade in possession of guns and drugs that led to another 10 years behind bars.

That does not sit well with those who seek justice, including Love.

“Does that automatically allow the police to kill a person they seek to apprehend?” asked Love. “If so, then the alleged perpetrator had no day in court. The police acted as judge, jury, and executioner.”

We cannot sit back and allow this to continue.

“Silence allows violence,” said Love.