Anger, Fear and Tears

Yesterday my friend and I visited the Holocaust History Center. This is the same center that left me completely undone when I first visited it a year and a half ago. We went back because the museum had a special exhibit on display this year that I wanted to see before it closed at the end of the month. The exhibit, entitled Invisibility and Resistance: Violence Against LGBTQIA+ People explored the history of oppression and discrimination against the LGBTQ community in Nazi Germany and around the world today, including within the United States. It was a simple exhibit, but amazingly powerful nonetheless. When I reached the timeline listing the known transgender murders from January 2017 through April of this year, with a little description of each person and the known circumstances of their death, I had to step away and cry. It wasn’t that I was unfamiliar with these deaths. It was the visceral impact of seeing them visually laid out on a timeline, all of them collected together in one place. And these are only the deaths that are known within the United States. After collecting myself sufficiently, I stepped back up to the exhibit and carefully read each individual’s story, wanting to honor them by recalling their lives and remembering their names.

As we drove home from the museum, more tears came, along with a wave of anger. I look at the exhibits in that museum, exhibits describing how genocide happened not only in Nazi Germany but continuing around the world today, and I consider my own country – with shame. This is not the country I believe in. This government and those who support it do not represent the values that I cherish, nor the values that I think truly make America great (recognizing that we have all-too-seldom upheld them). I listen to the rhetoric coming from our illustrious Führer and cringe as he describes people as “animals” and various countries as “shitholes.” This is the language of dehumanization. It’s language designed deliberately to make it acceptable to exterminate people who are not wanted. It’s not just hate speech. It’s a frightening step towards wholesale genocide. Yet too many people don’t just sit idly by – they applaud and support it. Have we no historical memory?

People speak of their pride in being American. I would like to say I’m proud, but at present I’m most definitely not. How can I be proud of a country that views as criminals immigrants who have lived for years as members of our communities, casting them cruelly back to a country many of them scarcely know? How can I be proud of a country that refuses to welcome refugees, even when many of them are refugees as a result of our foreign policies? How can I be proud of a country that separates children from their parents at the border, in the name of some misguided idea of “national security?” How can I be proud when so many voices proclaim that they are pro-life but then have only “thoughts and prayers” when our children are gunned down time and again? Those same “pro-life” voices also refuse to provide support to mothers, families, and children in need. How is this “pro-life?” How can I be proud of a country that exalts wealth and power over compassion and kindness? I cannot. I grieve for what this current regime is doing to this country. How long till it begins forcibly rounding up those it considers “deviants” and “criminals” without cause, simply because they don’t correspond to its idea of what America should look like? In fact, this is already happening around us. I see these actions and hear the words spoken by our powerful politicians (I won’t call them leaders) and my anger swells. I cannot understand a political ideology that so cruelly abuses and discounts human lives.

My anger comes not just because I am transgender – though of course I stand with my community against the incessant attacks and actions designed to exclude us from civil society. I foresee continued efforts to make our very lives “illegal.” Standing with my own community is not sufficient though, because this wave of calculated ostracism encompasses so many groups. We must stand together. I stand with the larger LGBTQ community. I stand with women, with people of color, with immigrants, with refugees and those seeking asylum, with all who in various ways are being demonized and dehumanized by those in power. At the moment I still enjoy the freedom to live and speak openly and I will use that on behalf of all victims of oppression and violence. Should the time come that my voice is silenced, I hope others will speak on my behalf. I’d like to say I’m not afraid, but I am. I still have hope, because I know the people who surround me and see their commitment to justice and equality for the marginalized groups of our society. But I see the darkness that comes against us and realize that I might become one of its victims. Nonetheless, I will not be silent. I will not hide. I will not hope that I can pass through this storm unscathed. I must bear this cross for those who are unable to do so.