The term queer has been recently identified in our society as a way to label someone or something as “out of the norm”. To be anything out of the ordinary, in this society, makes you prone to harassment and hate, and is unfortunately all too common of an occurrence for those living in the LGBT community. Recently, these injustices have gotten more attention from the media and the world, creating an opportunity for change. However, the places where queer injustice is prevalent, such as in the criminal justice system and the health care system, will be some of the hardest places to attempt to fix. The people living within those structures will have a long and hard battle to see changes, if they see them in their lifetimes. Another issue is that many people in our broken country think we have achieved justice for queer people, but, let’s be honest, we haven’t gotten there, so let me show you what injustice looks like and how we will fix it.
Through the readings in this course, I have become aware of the forms of injustice that plague our nation. Angels in America is the perfect example of how people living with HIV/AIDS were looked down upon and treated as something other than human. The care they should have received was taken from them, as our government did not find it a priority to fund research for the virus. ACT UP and similar groups were formed in order to raise awareness, and finally, years later, the medicine became readily available for the LGBT community. A huge success. The Laramie Project highlights the murder of a gay boy named Matthew Shepard and the death penalty in the United States. It was given to one of the boys who brutally attacked and murdered him, even though he tried to use the ‘gay panic’ excuse, a common occurrence for those trying to get out of the murder of a queer person. This excuse worked often. Queer Injustice: The Criminalization of LGBT in America gives several shocking cases of how the system has failed so many people who identify as queer. The authors of the book end it by writing, “there are no easy, one-size-fits-all answers to the question of how to move forward-and no single version of what change will ultimately look like” (Mogul, et al., 157). This is why proposed solutions, built on utilizing human development and capacity, are the best we have right now. Challenging these systems and the interlocking parts within them is the beginning of the progressive queer movement, and the next steps to their freedom.
My solution comes from the belief that we can use artistic expression to bring together the people in order to destroy stereotypes of the queer community. It is not a revolutionary idea that artistic expression has always existed in contrast to authority. For example, in queer culture, drag has been used for over subvert the dominant paradigm that is the gender binary that the patriarchy we exist under dictates. If breaking these kind of systemic rules isn’t a perfect political statement, I don’t know what is. Poetry can be used as a means of getting ideas, feelings, and opinions across. So, it is the perfect way to win this fight. To bring people together is how we have made progress in social injustices around the world.
In my poem, titled, “Open Your Eyes”, I am attempting to give the people of the LGBT community a firm realization of where they have come from and the struggles that their community has faced in our country. I decided to do the poem in the form of spoken word in order for the emotions to be felt. After all, this has been an emotional ride for everyone, because for many people, the struggles I focus on are their daily realities. I end the poem by reaching out to them, letting them know that even when they feel like they have no one, there is always an ally. They have their community and they have voices standing up for them, so they should not be scared anymore to come out and be proud of who they are. The future of the movement starts with the empowerment of the disenfranchised and marginalized LGBT youth, which is exactly who I am speaking out to. Only when we get the power of the people will a new future begin, one without hate, inequalities, and fear.
This poem goes out to everyone in the world, those dream chasers who want to fix the injustices we see. We will not let these stigmatizations decide the fate of the people. Equality is the goal, and it can be achieved through political disruption. Art in its many forms is something that we can all use and all stand behind. This won’t be achieved in a day. In order to fix the many facets of queer injustices that the LGBTQQIP2SAA community faces every day, there are many things that must be done. Right now, many have settled with marriage equality as the ‘end goal’, but the bottom line is our system must be broken and rebuilt. The health care system has to start to care about people outside of the norm, the criminal justice system has to take better care of the inmates who live within the walls, to keep them from entering the system in the first place.
Open Your Eyes.
In our society built on injustice and lies,
what groups have struggled to stop their utter demise?
Those brought down and marginalized,
the time is now.
The time is now to bring them back up from where they are stuck.
Their journey long and rough,
through it all they have become tough,
tougher than you or me or anybody you know.
Because what they’re going through now is like the ‘New Jim Crow’.
Living hated by the masses.
Unable to go to masses.
What year do we live in?
Is this really 2015?
I can’t imagine what will go on in between
now and the future.
A future where the people who identify as LGBT,
won’t have to flee from society.
Won’t have to struggle with which pronouns to use,
he or she?
We will all just be.
Human beings.
Open your eyes to what you are seeing.
The time is 1969,
at the most popular gay club on the block,
It was late, lets say 11 o’ clock.
the club jams were poppin’,
all of a sudden stoppin’.
Police run in,
“Get the FUCK on the ground”!
Anyone not of the norm was arrested,
by men and women much detested.
Chaos. Confusion.
The riot begins.
Scuffles with men in blue,
turns to a rock threw,
turns into overturned cars,
shooting across the bars.
It burns,
and its over,
like that.
1981, New York.
AIDS was consuming,
the lives of scared young boys.
The rest of America goes on resuming,
their daily lives.
Because in their minds those boys were oversexualized,
and somehow deserved this kind of horrible demise.
And the medicine that could save them,
wasn’t being created fast enough.
And only the rich of the richest was getting the stuff,
that could heal the Kaposi’s Sarcoma on their broken bodies.
And make them feel like they could win the fight.
But instead they lived each day and night,
knowing it could be their last.
The community got together fast,
but not fast enough.
There’s Angels in America now.
The place you didn’t want to be was 1993.
“Land of the free” updates a “Don’t ask, Don’t tell” policy.
So they can control the military.
Because God forbid you try to die for your country,
while committing “homosexual activity”.
Laramie Wyoming, 1998.
A repulsive act of hate,
took the life of Matthew Shepard.
Suddenly, a town most unheard became
a symbol for injustice.
And now its getting harder for the LGBT community to trust us.
They’re scared to come out, to live their lives.
Because if they say it to the wrong guys,
their existence is ended in the blink of an eye.
2001, a two-spirit in Colorado,
a killing we couldn’t foreshadow.
Just because he was himself,
he became a target for someone else.
Not for nothing,
their death has become something.
For everyone out of the normal to follow behind,
making them feel stronger in numbers and in mind.
In the last decade,
The stigmatization of those labeled “non-conforming” has arisen,
within the walls of our nations prisons.
Transgender women placed in mens detentions,
become targets pleading for intervention.
Intervention never comes and by the time their sentence is done,
they have been broken, beaten, raped...undone.
June twenty-sixth, two thousand and fifteen.
The White House became a beautiful scene.
Years of blood, sweat and tears.
Lives were lost, rights were denied,
no more segregation and fear,
marriage is here.
But this war isn’t done,
just because love had finally won.
I swear this ignorance will kill us all,
and I refuse to sit here and watch us fall.
Fall.
Down.
Deep.
Into the trenches.
Where gay boys become names on benches.
Memorials for their taken lives,
in cities where injustice still survives.
The time is NOW let’s start a movement,
take this time and analyze what were doing.
Rebuild the Stonewall broken down,
not by the police of a town,
but by the disgust and hate that people share,
for anything that they’re unaware.
Please, hear me out.
No more sitting in fear of reaching out from the binary,
coming out of that closet might at times seem scary,
but there are allies here and we are with you,
were here to encourage you to be yourself.
Just you.
Thats what we want.
So please, if you need me, I will be your confidante.
Whether it’s next year, next month, tomorrow, or today,
remember what I say.
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men, women, queers, are created equal, that they are endowed by whoever the hell their Creator is with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
Open your eyes.
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