Don’t mask your pride, just wear your mask
Centering
President Lyndon Johnson, through a 1968 proclamation, initiated a one-week celebration of Latinx heritage having grown to a month in present day – September 15 through October 15. The term “Latinx”, instead of Latino and Hispanic, represents the identities of non-binary, gender non-conforming and gender-expansive folx centering indigenous, Brazilian and non-Spanish speaking people.
Latinx Heritage Month, lifts up the anniversaries of independence for Latin American nations centering cultural legacies and deeply-rooted traditions. And here rows in the boat of the beauty of intersection. October is also LGBTQ History Month, the time Rainbow Community Center has been able to rally around in order to bring Pride to the People and bring the People to Pride, albeit, mostly virtually.
Celebrating Pride
Virtual Pride: “Expanding Our Margins”, Oct 18-25, centers our Communities of Color and marginalized LGBTQI+ identities, expansively – “if we build it, they will come.” Rainbow will be kicking off Pride with our only in person event of the week, Pride On Wheels!, POW! where event sponsors, staff, community members and partners are encouraged to join in a multi-vehicle “care-a-van”, while maintaining physical-distancing, stopping at a few key and timely landmarks within Contra Costa County, getting out of our vehicles sharing our Pride through representation and visibility. Our Virtual Pride features Queer Latinx Filmfest screenings, a multi chapter PFLAG Panel on Non-binary identities, education, and allyship along with our version of “Rainbow’s Got Talent! and culminating with our 25th Anniversary celebration!
This year Pride takes on a new meaning, a different scope and a heightened importance for us to rise together, bringing to the front and centering those most marginalized in our community. Through Pride we are effectively raising the waters of awareness with oars of education, representation, and celebration as our rowboat of intersection most certainly needs to glide. We all at our core want this, and in effect, raising the waters raises everyone’s boat.
Collaborative Mindset
We have come to learn and live that by being “politically correct”, or “PC”, is not a mindset that changes nor informs the conversations that actually need to be had – the conversations that address, lean into, and face the issues. We are rowing our boats seeking a collective mindset of doing good for the many, not just ourselves and our immediate communities. Collective mindsets can certainly swing in many directions with the tremendous potential to transcend to “collaborative mindsets.” We are able to show up more collaboratively by being informed, seeking understanding, and then intentionally acting and representing in our communities.
Collaborative mindsets are our waters we are raising. We are inspiring the mother of all collaborative mindsets, the one that begins to think within and operates specifically for others and everyone, known to them or not, to have enough water for their rowboat to glide. Sounding recently familiar? The opportunity to adopt why wearing a mask throughout this pandemic not only protects you and your people, we are protecting everyone. Don’t mask your Pride, just wear your mask.
Allyship
One of the amazing things about Pride is the way we have been able to grow from a few who decided enough was enough – Compton’s Cafeteria and Stonewall – to the many, raising our voices together in support of our rights to life, love, and the pursuit of happiness. There is power in coming together, with allies, to celebrate where we have come from and where we still need to go.
We have always in our history seen and experienced police brutality, legislation of our bodies, families, and the way we love, and attacks on our morality, and this year of 2020 is no different, but it should be. To change the long-rooted systems of oppression, it will take all of us showing up for more than one day and commit to lifelong work as this is what our community needs. And it will mean acknowledging that those most affected need action, visibility, and voice now, not to the exclusion of some, but for the support of all of us.
Allyship looks like stepping back and assessing what we still have yet to learn, then teach others around you, so that we might be ready to help when and where the call comes. The rowboat is more than a metaphor, it is an action – you can vote, volunteer, attend a training, donate to a nonprofit, show up for a friend, and speak up against injustice. Being an ally is more than going to a parade or drag show. As one travels along the allyship spectrum and action can take many forms. You can vote for people and policies that support LGBTQI+ folx.
Taking action
And you can take action by demanding justice for our Black and Brown Trans sisters who are subject to violence and whose lives are taken at higher rates by educating those around you that may not know. Pride is a celebration that has become a vital opportunity to dispel ignorance, prejudice and fear through education.
We live in a shared world where our actions, or inactions, affect everyone. Collective choices made by some can affect us all in ways big and small. A group of people, no matter the size, can affect change. When we work together, we are able to lift up our community.
Show up for Pride. Replenish the waters. Then take action for you and everyone else.
Kiku Johnson is Concord’s Rainbow Community Center’s executive director. Dorann Zotigh is the board president. Send questions and comments to Dodi@rainbowcc.org. or kiku@rainbowcc.org.