Where do I even start?! 🫥
Hello again. Glad we’re on the same outrageous, bumpy af ride together through what is possibly the fall of the US empire. Sucks that it involves so much outright and senseless bigotry, racism, hatred, erasure, and civil rights violations.
Because while a lot of the focus is on DEI—Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion—what they really mean is civil rights, as it pertains to :
Employment discrimination (this category left intentionally super broad and all-encompassing)
Detainment without charge and/or due process (think ICE raids)
Access to things necessary for life (healthcare, education, participation in the public sphere)
I could go on, but then this whole newsletter would be a stack of bullet points 🫥🫥🫥🫥🫥🫥🫥🫥
Overwhelm is the point so that we’re spread thin and unorganized in our resistance. But we know better than that. This ain’t our first rodeo—or second, or third. We know that the state will target the most vulnerable groups of people first—undocumented immigrants, transgender people. We know that we are stronger in solidarity with one another. We know that our collective resistance and joy is more life-giving than anything the current administration could even dream of.
Ultimately, we can’t count on the state to both grant us rights and protect us from abuse. The state cannot be the only arbiter of whether or not queerness and transness and diversity exist, because the state is always going to act in the state’s interest.
We’re seeing “DEI” immediately scapegoated for the administration’s own failures to maintain a federal agency that keeps air travel safe 🫥
We’re seeing erasure happen in realtime, as the “TQI+” is erased from the State Department’s traveler info website 🫥
We’re seeing a directive for federal workers to erase pronouns from their email signatures and other communications 🫥
Soooo… where do we go from here??? 🫥 Some thoughts :
If you haven’t already, get your workplace to confirm their commitment to DEI / civil rights / not supporting Nazism. If they can’t do that, gurl you in danger 🫥!!!!
Don’t panic but also be on the lookout. Make sure your community / neighborhood ties are strong. Solidarity comes in many forms - not just protests and petitions. Mutual aid is as diverse as our unique skills and passions.
Join a conversation on legal concerns for queer architects, organized by the AIA LGBTQIA+ Alliance and hosted by AIA Northern Virginia. It’ll be on Zoom and largely focused on Virginia-specific laws, but a great place to start in terms of figuring out what legal avenues are available in our own home states. Click here for info and to register!!!
That’s all I’ve got, for now, as my thoughts and feelings vacillate between “in the end, all we have are each other” and “should I be making arrangements to leave the country? 🫥” and “maybe I should stock up on rice and beans” and “the end of empire is inevitable, let’s ride this one out 🫥”
In future Queeries newsletters: revisiting queer “homes”; Octavia Butler’s prophetic stories; slowing down / resting; making space for joy; and how to take action on multiple levels.
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Thank you for reading this newsletter. It really would not exist without you.
I hope these words inspire in some way, shape, or form.
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Until next time,
A.L.