We Have Already Overcome
The present moment we are living in feels overwhelming and sometimes unprecedented.
But we have been here before.
We have never really left here.
We live on land stolen from Indigenous people and made rich by the enslavement of African people.
Slavery and Jim Crow were not that long ago.
In my lifetime, people were arrested for being in a gay bar or for wearing clothes different than their gender assigned at birth.
A generation of our queercestors died from AIDS and our government refused to even say the disease’s name.
Our current moment is perilous. I don’t know where I will get my hormones from a few months from now. Transgender people have become the distraction and scapegoat of the moment.
But we will overcome, we have already overcome. For no one can take from us who we are or who we love. No executive order can take away the bonds of chosen family.
You can do whatever you want to my legal documents, but you can’t take away who I am.
We shall overcome because we have overcome.
