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Y’All White Queers Better Quiet Down in North Carolina

http://bit.ly/1RO5qGH

By QASIMA WIDEMAN

“…The fact that queer and trans people of color and black folks have led the fight against HB 2 has been erased from local and national media. Despite our coalition’s tireless work to center the voices of trans people of color as we organize against this racist and transmisogynistic legislature, our stories, our demands, and our needs are once again being drowned out and left behind.

I have been a part of this broad coalition since August 2015 and have consistently watched the corporate gay Pride movement leave us behind, and erase its roots in the militancy of black and brown trans women’s struggle against criminalization and police brutality. The so-called mainstream gay movement has a long history of investing in and accepting sponsorships from corporations that profit off the incarceration of people of color and facilitate the gentrification that displaces us from our homes — building cupcake shops and luxury condo complexes over historic queer community spaces. These corporate behemoths that sponsor Pride festivals around the country also finance and fuel U.S. military invasions of countries in the global south.

I have borne witness to how the mainstream corporate gay rights movement has glossed over its radical roots in the unapologetic militancy of Marsha P. Johnson, Stormé DeLarverie, Sylvia Rivera, and so many other trans people of color unsung and unnamed.

And as my fellow trans and queer people of color wage what is literally a battle for our lives, I have watched us be forgotten, ignored, pushed to the margins of the fight against HB 2 in North Carolina. But the truth remains: We started this movement, and we remain and will always be at its vanguard…” http://bit.ly/1RO5qGH

QASIMA WIDEMAN is a mixed black gender-nonconforming and gay artist and community organizer from Durham, N.C. They organize with Muslims for Social Justice and the #BlackLivesMatter QTPOC Coalition of NC and work as a professional political educator.