Nearly eleven years later, I’m afraid that the climate is worse than you remember. We had a brief respite, but we unfortunately found it by shortsightedly elevating progressive influences over the detractors, allowing these regressive elements to take root and thrive unchecked. Many among us are still shocked to have realized the perspectives of our peers. Having fallen from the progressive victories of the early through mid 2010s, our neighbor’s are unrecognizable, and we’re toothless.
At yesterday’s team lunch, a colleague asked how we remain hopeful in spite of the surrounding world, and quickly redirected her question to the rest of the table on remembering that this is why I’m leaving the country. We talked about choosing a cause and investing, and recognizing that while no one of us can impact the broader good, we can carve out an area for impact and watch ourselves do good work. The world is overwhelming, but choosing a cause and therefore encouraging yourself to focus is ultimately positive. There’s no good in ingesting every headline, but there is in making a local difference.
The conversation turned to harm reduction, and I stopped contributing. I can’t count the times that the conversation stops at harm reduction. The minimum may be all we can do, but the minimum is still good. Yet there’s no justice in the minimum, and I’ve begun to suspect that when we can do more than the minimum, our imaginations fail us. We can try to put out the fire but we can’t pull ourselves out of the ashes, and we struggle to extinguish the next. Our collective imaginations and vision of goodness is limited by how we addressed the last crisis.
The Progressive’s work is never done, and while that may mean that there’s always a greater good to strive for, it more realistically means that progressive victories are forever precarious. I hope that where we find ourselves now is a trough, and we soon find ourselves making better lives for our children.
Rest in peace.
Leelah Alcorn published her suicide note on December 28, 2014. I recently came across a journal entry I’d written shortly after,[1] and in light of the 988 LGBTQ+ Suicide & Crisis Hotline’s closure[2] I’ve been reflecting on the last decade’s false victories and resonating defeats. History’s a bloody pendulum swing.
Back in December 2014, I wrote:
Our hearts are so irrevocably and deeply broken. There’s nothing to say or do. You were born to a cruel, bigoted lot. Your only control in your life was in ending it. That’s perversely empowering and defeating: death’s lack of sensation is preferably to your living pain. Fuck our living oppressors, and mourn the corpses over whom they step.
It’s tough out there. While life’s so easily made worse, none of us know how to make it meaningfully or lastingly better.
I see a handful in K-12 education doing what they can to protect queer children, and I love them for it. I would’ve been a happier, healthier kid had I had that type of support, and I’m relieved to see so many teachers and administrators do their best to hold the line.
Please offer each other not just love and compassion, but also safety and protection. Check on your friends.