July 8, 2014
I met Juan Pacheco of Barrios Unidos recently at a gathering focused on creating an affirming narrative about boys and young men of color. He shared his own personal story—a journey from El Salvador to the U.S., from a supportive family to a gang as a substitute for family. He shares the power of love to transform violence and to liberate young people from despair, pain, and confinement within a prism of societal and self-perceptions of failure. Here are just a few of his many inspiring thoughts, quoted from two talks that you can listen to on line.
Young people join gangs to find love and belonging
“Young people in gangs are willing to hurt you to the degree that they are dying inside themselves. But they’re not dying because of their own choosing. Right. They’re dying because of that reflective mirror that they see from society that builds their identity. And they would rather choose something than be nothing. They would rather be radical failures because they can’t find success in our world…
Gangs replace a network of systems that fail young people.
“Young black and Latino men are not the cause of gangs. Immigrants are not the cause of gangs. Gangs are the effect of communities that are ineffective. Somebody dropped the ball on these young people … the familia should always be there … maybe the church should have been going out to the young people … maybe it was the school … zero tolerance policies instead of listening … or their friends or community or neighborhood that didn’t give them the foundations of success, support, understanding … Eventually I made the only choice that made sense … if the groups that were supposed to take care of me didn’t, I went to the only ones that did listen to me … They were there 24/7, they operate on holidays, and gave me what I needed. I didn’t care the price I had to pay to be loved and have brotherhood… The gangs … get started because a whole bunch of young people need love and a place to belong and we as adults don’t give that to them.”
We are all part of the solution to gang violence.
“What I needed was a community that believed in redemption at a time when I didn’t believe in forgiveness…
“Everyone has a part to play in the prevention of violence in our world, even the gang members themselves… At the personal level, when you’re dealing with a young person, dealing eye-to-eye. It’s all about relationships. Programs don’t help people. People help people; people who care; people who have heart; people who are willing to give away their title and their life for these homies. And that takes corazón…
“Let us all go out and do our part … Make sure you never grow comfortable with your position or title … Revolution and change is what we need to make sure young people have dreams, alternatives and good people with good heart to move forward away from this violencia that has been marketed …”
Juan reminds me of something that was said often when I worked with the Boston TenPoint Coalition. At their best, programs are simply a great opportunity to build caring relationships between young people and adults. And, it makes me think about how to build more of those relationships myself.
June 27, 2014
Transgender women of color are finally making a (positive) splash in the mainstream media. Janet Mock, a writer, has been getting accolades for her new memoir, Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love and So Much More; Laverne Cox, an actress in Orange is the New Black, was recently on the cover of Time magazine; and CeCe McDonald is increasingly being recognized as a trans activist leader.
On June 5, 2011 in Minneapolis, CeCe McDonald and her friends were passing a bar on the way to a grocery store when they were accosted with homophobic, transphobic, and racist slurs. CeCe defended herself with a pair of fabric scissors in her bag. She was accused of murder even though she acted in self-defense, jailed for defending herself against bigotry and violence that transgender people often face. The judge rejected considerations of how gender, sexual orientation, race, and class played into the situation; statistics that trans people are more at risk for hate violence; the swastika tattoo on the attacker’s chest and his three previous convictions for assault; as well as the meth, cocaine, and alcohol present in the attacker’s system.
In this Democracy Now! clip from February 19, 2014, CeCe (after her release from prison) and Laverne talk about why black trans bodies matter. It is a must watch for anyone who cares about human beings and wants to better understand what is at stake in the movement for trans liberation. As a cisgender (in other words, non-trans) queer white woman, I am inspired and humbled by these two fierce trans women’s words.
“I know what is like to always have this guard up because you don’t know when somebody will literally try to kill you for just being who you want to be…. I’ve yet to hear of a trans woman who has just lived her life happily….” CeCe McDonald
Why do we insist that there are ok expressions and not ok expressions of masculinity and femininity?
When will we stop policing people’s gender expressions?
When will we start allowing ourselves to see people who challenge mainstream notions of gender not as freaks who are offensive or dangerous, but as beautiful people with unique gender wisdom?
Many trans people are warriors on the front lines, fighting for liberation from restrictive and false gender norms. When will we wake up and see that this fight is one that all of us, people of all gender identities, will benefit from?
Laverne calls us to the future we can all be a part of creating if we choose to:
“How do we create spaces in our culture where we don’t stigmatize trans identity, where we create spaces of gender self-determination? It is so often acceptable to make fun of trans people, to ridicule trans people. When we look at the epidemic of violence against trans people so many people think that our identities are inherently deceptive, inherently suspect, and that we should be criminalized because of that. In Arizona they were trying to criminalize going to the bathroom last year. How do we begin to create spaces where we accept trans people on trans people’s own terms and let trans people lead the discussions of who we are and what the discussion about what our lives should be?” Laverne Cox
Keep an eye out for the release of the documentary, FREE CeCe, to learn more about CeCe’s story and the culture of violence experienced by trans women of color.
