“Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.”
— Mary Harris Jones (“Mother Jones”)
First, some inspiration:
This turnout.
This turnout, too. (Occurring again tonight.)
This speech.
This performance.
♥ ♥ ♥
Next, work for us all to do:
Donate blood. Host or sponsor a blood drive in your area. Even if you are not in Florida, local blood banks save lives every day — and one out of every three of us will need blood at some point in our lifetime.
Tell the FDA to lift the discriminatory — and non-scientific — ban on blood donations from all men who have sex with other men, as well as from transgender women.
Donate to the Red Cross, a local LGBTQ organization, or Moms Demand Action Against Guns.
Support gun control legislation. AR-15s, the gun used in Saturday night’s killings at Pulse, are easier to purchase in Florida than a handgun. These assault weapons were also used to massacre elementary school children in Newtown, CT; movie-goers in Aurora, CO; holiday partiers in San Bernadino, CA; and many, many more. Another detail all of these mass shootings have in common? They all occurred after 2004 — the year the ban on assault weapons expired.
Sign this White House petition to ban the AR-15 from civilian ownership.
Challenge the religious, political, and ideological extremism that condones and legitimates violence against sexual and gender minorities. Speak up, speak out. Interrupt.
Make sure your voice is heard by the politicians who represent you. Does one of your senators or representatives oppose hate crime legislation intended to protect gender and sexual minorities? How about opposing background checks for commercial gun purchases? Write a letter or email expressing your feelings about that — or call, text, tweet.
Combat Islamophobia. Don’t let the narrative become one of Muslims vs. LGBTQ folk. Remember queer Muslims exist — and they are in mourning, too.
Build loving, kind, supportive communities. (Unsure how to start? Ideas and suggestions.)
Attend one of the vigils being held tonight in cities nationwide; if you can. Cry, grieve, love. Hold one another.
And then get ready to fight.
# # #
Please share any other ideas or suggestions in the comments.
Our regularly scheduled Monday .gif entertainment will resume next week.
Gods willing.
(h/t Emotional Geographic)
Since I can’t directly reply to the discussion of tolerance a few comments above, Ima just leave this here:
“Tolerance can be used to normalize an insupportable situation, or it can serve to warn those groups which lack real power that they exist on sufferance, that they are tolerated. If you are oppressed, if those characteristics which make you identifiable to yourself make you loathsome to a powerful majority which does not share those characteristics, then you are at great risk if your existence is predicated on being tolerated. Toleration is necessary when power is unequal; if you have power, you will not need to be tolerated. People who are oppressed need to strive for power, which in a pluralistic democracy means they have to strive for civil rights, for legal protection, for enfranchisement.” ~ Tony Kushner, Some Questions about Tolerance
tl;dr Fcuk tolerance. Only equality and enfranchisement.
LikeLiked by 1 person
😘 love you, sweets!
*files quote away against some future need*
LikeLike
great
LikeLike
ty
LikeLike
I’ve been looking through your posts this morning and they’ve made me pretty emotional. ❤️ Love your page. You’re awesome!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, Kels! ❤ I'm so glad to know my work is speaking to you.
LikeLike
That’s a good list. Too bad that so many people would totally not get it. Or at least some of it, like combating Islamophobia.
LikeLike
Well, no. That’s a longer conversation than I had energy to get into this week. 😦 Gonna hafta trust that most people who read posts like this on my blog can understand what I mean — or can figure it out later.
LikeLike
Thank you. I have spent the last 36 hours feeling completely heartbroken and helpless.
LikeLike
Love to you. Love to Squish and all your family, two-feets and four-feets. We are all doing the best we can, in the immediacy.
First, we get through. Next, we find our center. Re-find our voice.
Then we act.
❤
LikeLiked by 1 person
Great post.
LikeLiked by 1 person
We live in a cruel, intolerant world… or it seems that way every time something like this happens. However, to give into that kind of pessimism is a no. Building and encouraging tolerance for personal differences is a long and hard path.
LikeLike
“Tolerance” is not my goal. “Tolerance” is not the issue when we face opposition to the radical human essence at the core of each of us.
Humanity is not a thing one learns to tolerate. Humanity is what we must cherish, celebrate, dance in wild orgiastic gratitude beneath full moons. Anyone who disagrees — anyone who would set themselves as gatekeepers to that truth, anyone who would measure out another’s inner ocean in some meager allotment of teaspoons — that anyone is the enemy of life.
My howls are not meant to convert their ears. I will keen and grieve over the pain of their actions — then I and my compatriots will march over their smallness, as they continue praying to the dust underfoot.
I can be cruel too.
LikeLike
I’m in total agreement on the error of surrendering to pessimism, clearly! 🙂
LikeLike
Agree, but don’t you think, that “intolerance” is something what caused a war. And more the less it is a conversation about what is first egg or chicken, tolerance or celebrating a humanity?
LikeLike
Nope — still not interested in being “tolerated.” Sorry!
https://coffeeandablankpage.com/2014/03/26/a-brief-manifesto/
LikeLike
It is sounded like if you don’t like me you have only one choice- to celebrate me. I think tolerance gives much more freedom. And I’m not talking about gays, I’m talking about everything. You might be vegetarian and I might be a butcher, and we tolerate each other, but don’t have to celebrate the presence of each other.
LikeLike
Really, cupcake? You’re coming into a queer woman’s space — stepping into a discussion about a horrific atrocity in which almost 50 LGBTQ Latinx and Black people were just recently slaughtered — but you’re “not talking about gays”? FOH, petunia — you are clearly lost.
LikeLike
Great list. Thanks!
LikeLiked by 3 people
“from each according to their ability, to each according to their need” 🙂
LikeLiked by 4 people
I’m a huge fan of Moms Demand Action, for so many reasons, only one being the fact that when you want to get an impossible job done, start with a group of mothers who have lost something and see how impossible it becomes. I’m off to donate right now.
LikeLiked by 1 person
❤
LikeLike
Done.
LikeLiked by 1 person