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| Images of the disappeared and those who risk their own lives by remembering them in El Salvador |
Sunday was the big pride event. I usually skip the Sunday parade with a permit.
One part claustrophobia, a second part ambivalence about the meaning of a march
with so many corporate sponsors. Thirdly, the last time, I made it through the entire
event, the NYPD kicked out our float, which seemed too provocative.
Something about a sex mobile with Rudy Giuliani’s name on it? Anyways…
One part claustrophobia, a second part ambivalence about the meaning of a march
with so many corporate sponsors. Thirdly, the last time, I made it through the entire
event, the NYPD kicked out our float, which seemed too provocative.
Something about a sex mobile with Rudy Giuliani’s name on it? Anyways…
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| Trans march Gwen Park Photographer |
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| A scene from the 2013 NYC Drag March |
But I usually walk around NYC on Pride weekend,
taking in the Marti Gras like air of the city and its open celebration of
public sexuality, freedom of bodies, imagination, and hopes. Friday
is drag march, which is one of my favorite events of the year. Randy Wicker was there with a picture of his friend trans icon Marsha P Johnson who disappeared in the water in 1992.
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| Marsha P Johnson |
There are also trans marches, the dyke march,
so many others that its almost impossible to go them all. But each person has there own way to handle
it all. In between all the chaos Sunday, my friend
Donald, for example, settled into a relaxed, lazy afternoon of watching a 1971 debate
between Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky.
There is liminal quality to the weekend, of openings,
and closings, welcomings and in between spaces.
Our daughter was born on this weekend and so
was the Coney Island Cyclone. So we
usually go out to Coney Island and celebrate, taking in a few rides, fireworks,
and a baseball game, while checking the changing tides from New York’s most
glamorous of public spaces.
Its always heartening to see just how many
people are out listening to music, strolling, liming, chilling and just being
outside in Coney Island.
Nearly twelve hours later, we didn’t get in
till near midnight, after a lovely day.
Checking the facebook after the ride, I saw
that a friend was going to be sitting shiva for his mother, who had
passed. My plans had been to head out to
the park to see friends dropping into town from Finland and out of town to
Amsterdam. But I would ride uptown instead, seeing where the city would take me,
before going to sit Shiva, in homage of his mother and our friendship.
Riding up to his house, with the sun shining in
my face I just enjoyed being alive in that moment, even with friends
disappearing and others coming back, and everything in between.
Still, downtown I stopped by Judson memorial
for some of the 11 AM service. Its hard
to shake the draw of friends, of community, the communion of stories and songs,
history and action, street preachers and social action, which is a Sunday at
Judson. And after the waves of history
in recent days, I imagined Judson would not disappoint. And it did not. Community
Minister Micah Bucey lead the service, recalling his recent trip to El
Salvador. He preached about the ways we
forgot those who have disappeared, subject to political violence, and oppression,
here and there. Yet, there are ways to
remember, even if we pay a price for doing so.
We are still obliged to remember, to acknowledge the disappeared, even
as their memories lurk in the shadows and murals, memories and mesas in the
distance.
You walk down the street, see someone gone from your life, but it looks like them for a moment. Remember them, even if they are an optical illusion or ghost or a passing memory of somewhere else. Someone no longer exactly here. And they are back, even if they are ghosts of friends long dead walking down Castro Street.
You walk down the street, see someone gone from your life, but it looks like them for a moment. Remember them, even if they are an optical illusion or ghost or a passing memory of somewhere else. Someone no longer exactly here. And they are back, even if they are ghosts of friends long dead walking down Castro Street.
But as Micah points out, we
are still obliged to remember how much more work there is to do. The street youth who first started the riot,
many are still living in the street, subject to the same transphobia, violence,
and neglect as they endured decades ago when the first kicks started the riot. We are obliged to
remember how many do not care to marry. We are obliged
to remember those still living on the streets. We are obliged to remember the disappeared, the
runaways, the neglected lurking in our midst.
See Micah’s sermon below. We are also obliged to fight like hell for the living.
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| bill dobbs and a friend by charles kersington |
Leaving Judson, I rode north up past 39th
and Madison, where
ACT UP and Queerocracy were getting ready to march. Countless heroes of mine from the AIDS struggle
were there – Jim Eigo, Michael Tikili, Eric Sawyer, Nanette, and so many other
lovely people out speaking out about the need for pleasure and safety, not one
or the other, but both. Today, ACT UP's sex positivity is more necessary than.
Jim Eigo walked up to say hello.
Jim Eigo walked up to say hello.
Someone else passed me an ACT UP fuck smarter
sticker. Its amazing to see ACT UP still
leading with
their new campaign, as new members and veterans come together in the
struggle. ACT UP always helps me
celebrate those who are gone, or just about here, or almost, or used to be with
us, who perhaps just perhaps are still with us as we splash in the sun on aSunday afternoon together.
I remember seeing Jim Eigo walk up to greet
Stephen Gendin at a similar pride moment, back in 1999 when we were here for that Rudy’s sex mobile. Stephen shuffled off the following spring. But for that moment, it was fun to be withhim splashing in the sun.
And Jim is still here, back with ACT UP.
“In 30+ years of the AIDS epidemic, LGBT people have seen our communities ravaged by HIV. Today, we have prevention tools like Pre- and Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP and PEP), but we have to take more responsibility for our sexual health as a community,” said longtime ACT UP member Jim Eigo. “We cannot surrender half of a new generation to the virus that stole so many from the last.”
And Jim is still here, back with ACT UP.
“In 30+ years of the AIDS epidemic, LGBT people have seen our communities ravaged by HIV. Today, we have prevention tools like Pre- and Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP and PEP), but we have to take more responsibility for our sexual health as a community,” said longtime ACT UP member Jim Eigo. “We cannot surrender half of a new generation to the virus that stole so many from the last.”
Walking through the parade route, thousands and
thousands lined the streets.
Riding up to my friend’s, we sat talking about
his mother, Alzheimers and the capacity of the human psyche to endure
pain. There is only so much any of us
can endure before we check out. This is
just part of this experience. Looking at
old wedding photos, we told stories and my friend remembered and
reflected. It was his story now. Her story was his to tell now. He sat just collecting it all in, taking in
the gravity of that.
We talked about Allen Ginsberg and perhaps his finest
poem. The first few lines of Kaddish,
are some of my favorites of his.
For Naomi Ginsberg,
1894-1956
Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on
the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village.
downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I've been up all night, talking,
talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles blues
shout blind on the phonograph
Some of us are alive in the sunshine and others
are passing into other words, but their memories are still here. This in between space, this is what weekends
like this always remind me of. There is
an epiphany in any of us coming together in time to share our lives, even as
they converge and diverge in the distance..
Riding downtown, along the west side bike path,
cyclists passed. The boats at the boat
basin meandered. A helicopter crashed in
the water in the distance.
Riding downtown, the police blocked the path
south so I rode East on 14th. The crowds roared from blocks
away. There were thousands and thousand
of people there.
Cleve Jones recalled that feeling, wondering where all these thousands of people came from such those parades.
Cleve Jones recalled that feeling, wondering where all these thousands of people came from such those parades.
But when I
think back on the '70s, it was so new. It was just so new. We'd never done this
before. We'd
never
had the courage to do it before. It seemed like it was just the other day when
I was
saying
to myself, where did all these people come from? Can they really all be
homosexuals?
There was all this awareness growing up in the cities, in the small towns, all
over
the place. I was living in Tempe, Arizona when I was first exposed to the notion
of
the
gay community, a gay movement that was not just furtive meetings in bathrooms
or
parks
or dark bars. That was brand-fucking new. Then there was this mass immigration,
all
of a sudden, right about '75, flooding into the city and forming these
communities. Then
I
think, there was one very important time, and that was Harvey Milk, at least in
San
Francisco.
The time of Harvey Milk was where it all jelled. The riot was a declaration of
existence.
We are here; we have come this far and no, we will not ever allow you to turn
back
the clock. It's such a weird little twist of fate that right at that point, as
we got there
then...
I mean I thought when Harvey Milk got killed, what could happen next? What
could
possibly? Well, (Chuckles) talk to me now, you know, Harvey Milk one dead, big
deal,
talk about a million dead.
Earlier this weekend nearly twenty years after that interview, Cleve celebrated the supreme
court win in what he explained was the happiest weekend of his life. Its good to remember and to live.
Looking at the parade, an ambulance was zipping
past, as so many do, with lives zipping past us into somewhere else on these
weekends in between. Police were screaming for us to make way. For once, I agreed with them. Making way and riding downtown, with the voices
of the crowd, the roar still echoing through the streets.
Riding over the Manhattan bridge I looked
forward to seeing the kids and some friends from their class, who were leaving
town, going back home to Holland. A
social work friend was also there to say hello, for a brief meeting.
Greeting the kids, we played, romped about, and
enjoyed a long evening of chatting, eating sushi and hanging out for hours and
hours of stories, before saying goodbye and riding home. Another day in the life, all the
better for the presence of those coming, going, and sometimes disappearing, and
intermingling in this naked city.
A Light
That Never Goes Out
Sermon
by Micah Bucey on June 30th 2013
This is not a sermon about El Salvador.
True, Donna and Michael asked me to preach a bit on my two
recent trips to that beautiful country, but the truth is, I feel about as
comfortable objectively exploring my experience of the history and situation of
El Salvador as I do objectively exploring most any verse of the Bible, which is
to say not very comfortable at all, but please don’t tell anyone at Union
Theological Seminary until I have my diploma safely in hand.
No, this is not a sermon about El Salvador. But this is
a sermon written after two immersive and life-interrupting trips to El Salvador
and I believe it to be the first of a future lifetime of sermons that will
probably always be, in at least some way, informed by my time there.
So let’s look at the quotation on the cover of today’s
bulletin. It’s not something I read in a book. It’s a simple statement that was
offered to me in a meeting with Patricia García, also known as Paty, who is a
member of COMADRES, which is the Committee of the Mothers and Relatives of
Prisoners, the Disappeared, and the Politically Assassinated of El Salvador.
COMADRES formed in 1977 with the aid of Archbishop Oscar
Romero and, through the unshakable strength of the organization’s first members,
this group overcame constant threats, rape, and torture before, during, and
after the country’s brutal civil war. Their main focus, from the start, has
been to support individuals and families as they search for the bodies of their
loved ones who have been assassinated and “disappeared.”
Now, this word, “disappeared,” is a different kind of verb in
El Salvador. It’s something that is done to a person. A person doesn’t
simply disappear. A person is disappeared by another person or, in most
cases, a death squad of persons. Many of these disappeared have never been
found, alive or dead, and COMADRES insists on its existence until every last
one of them is found.
Paty has much to say about pain and about the word,
“disappeared.” She even shocked me by casually introducing one of her stories
with the words, “The second time I was kidnapped and tortured,” without ever
having described the first time, leaving my own imagination to fill in the
blanks.
But one of the most significant pains that Paty noted was the
fact that COMADRES, after twenty-six years of struggle, has yet to be
officially granted status as a Non-governmental Organization. And why is this?
It’s because they refuse to extract the word “disappeared” from their name.
Apparently, the Salvadoran government will let COMADRES acknowledge that scores
of people have been murdered, but it won’t let them acknowledge that there have
also been scores of Salvadorans who have simply been disappeared, never to be
found again.
The pain that propels Paty is common in El Salvador. When I
returned for the first-ever Salvadoran LGBT human rights conference in March,
the pain took on an even more complicated dimension. I saw queer communities
struggling to pinpoint just how to fight for rights attached to their sexual
orientation and gender identification in a country that is still reeling from a
civil war that stripped most citizens, regardless of their identity, of the
basic right to live.
By the way, most of you know that my favorite letter in our
acronym is the “Q,” but I leave it off when talking about El Salvador, because
they haven’t yet officially added it to their own version of the acronym. In
fact, when my group used the traditional LGBTQ version in our meeting with a
Salvadoran United Nations executive, I watched as he whispered to his
assistant, who whispered to her assistant, who whispered to her assistant, who
whispered to another executive, until they finally looked quizzically at all of
us northerners and admitted, “We do not know what you mean when you say, ‘Q’.”
So they leave it off. For now. But we cannot.
El Salvador changed my life. So why is this sermon not about
El Salvador?
Because, even though I thought I needed to fly south to a
quote-unquote developing country in order to combat anti-queer violence, upon
returning home, I was quickly reminded that anti-queer violence and hate is
happening all around us, all the time, even in our fabled gay ghettos. By now,
we all know that the recent upswing in reported anti-queer violence is
skyrocketing into double digits.
Our community is scrambling to hold candlelight vigils,
organize rallies, promote marches, and this is all absolutely necessary.
But, as I myself have been scrambling to join these vigils and
rallies and marches, I’ve come into contact with some members of our community,
particularly those of color, those who are homeless, and those who identify as
transgender or genderqueer, and they have reminded me that this violence goes
unreported all the time, particularly when it is inflicted on our trans
population, our homeless population, and on our populations of color. As I hear
these stories, it’s Paty and COMADRES and their struggle to hold on to the word
“disappeared” that sticks in my mind.
See, in El Salvador, the queer folk know that their world is
not post-queer. And now, as violence rises in New York City, we savvy
post-queers are being reminded that we’re not safe, not yet, and we actually
never have been. Sure, we white queers, particularly the ones who resemble the
white, affluent couples in most every Marriage Equality ad, we have been able
to lull ourselves into believing that the only people who really want to
inflict harm on us are the surreal members of the Westboro Baptist Church. But
we’ve been wrong and our privileged blindness is disappearing our fellow
queers, those who we don’t see attractively redecorating apartments on
television.
We, as a queer community, even as we celebrate immense
progress, are in danger of inactively disappearing our own people. Our Marriage
Equality campaigns have embraced the institution and ignored the less easily
assimilated members of our queer community. Our visibility is helping kids to come
out at younger ages, but some are being kicked out of their homes, coming to
New York City to find community and, in a terrible twist, being booted off of
the piers by the very residents of the Village who came here decades ago to
find their own safely queer space.
Now, I realize that this brand of “disappearing” is different
from a systematic and active disappearing, but it is our inactive participation
in this disappearing that troubles me the most.
One of my favorite authors, Steven Millhauser, has a short
story called, “The Disappearance of Elaine Coleman,” in which a woman literally
dematerializes one day, much to the surprise of her inobservant neighbors. As
the townspeople struggle to understand how Elaine has disappeared into thin
air, they discover that it is the years of collective disinterest from those
around her that has been her downfall. As this realization dawns on them, the
narrator laments:
“[Elaine] is not alone. On street corners at dusk, in the
corridors of dark movie theaters, behind the windows of cars in parking lots at
melancholy shopping centers illuminated by pale orange lamps, you sometimes see
them, the Elaine Colemans of the world. They lower their eyes, they turn away,
they vanish into shadowy places…they are fading, fixed as they are in the long
habit of not being noticed. And perhaps the police, who suspected foul play,
were not in the end mistaken, for we are no longer innocent, we who do not see
and do not remember, we incurious ones, we conspirators in disappearance.”[1]
That’s gorgeous prose about an ugly reality. But it’s not my
intention to leave us depressed, even gorgeously depressed, this morning.
Because I think, even with this devastating increase of reported anti-queer
violence, we have hope, we have a light, and it comes from acknowledging the
pain that still haunts us and using it, much like Paty, to push us toward a
blindingly bright future.
So let’s take another look at the photo on the cover of
today’s bulletin. This mural adorns one wall of the COMADRES office and is one
example of countless walls throughout the country. You can barely walk ten feet
without being faced with the pensive smiles and suggestive silhouettes of those
who have been murdered or disappeared in the country’s history. And the remembrance
doesn’t stop with the mural. Salvadorans want to talk to you about each mural,
each face, each life that has been lost. These murals make up the background of
Salvadoran life, but they don’t simply sit, unnoticed. They are maintained,
they are displayed, they are discussed.
In El Salvador, the veil between life and death is so
permeable as to be non-existent. The dead are always looking out at the living
from their fixed places on each wall and the living encounter the dead on most
every corner they pass. This is not morbidity. This is life at its most
viscerally activating.
Many of you in this room joined the rally that followed the
assassination of Mark Carson just blocks from this building. Two things amazed
me that day. The first was how many of us took the time, probably because we
were so furious and terrified, to come out in the middle of a weekday afternoon
to raise our bodies and voices in protest and solidarity. The second was how
many of us I saw on my walk uptown, through Chelsea of all places, casually
sipping happy hour cocktails, and asking me why I was carrying a sign.
“Mark Carson was murdered,” I would answer.
“Who?” I heard several times.
I was apoplectic by the time I reached 38th Street.
This is not an exchange that should take place when we are
under attack. And we are under attack much more often than many care to
believe. Amazing things happen when we choose to accept and believe that pain
is happening all around us and must be countered with light. Stonewall happened
when we chose to believe. ACT-UP, the AIDS RESOURCE CENTER, Bailey House, the
GMHC, and our very own safer injection and sex kit parties here at Judson
happened when we chose to believe. It’s time to believe again that holding a
candlelight vigil for one night and a rally for one afternoon can’t and won’t
keep our lights lit.
Every afternoon must be a rally and every night must be a
vigil. This isn’t morbidity. This isn’t living in the past. This is staying
true to the wounds of our ancestors, staying true to the wounds of those around
us who need the most support, and staying true to the gospel of what a
queer-celebrating country and world might look like and achieve.
Many of us have gotten pretty good at not disappearing
ourselves, but that hasn’t always been the case. Even I kept the fullness of my
self from my family for years, fearful that they might not accept me. When I
finally, tentatively, came out, they basically said, “Thanks for catching up.
We’ve been waiting for you.” They un-disappeared me within seconds.
But many others are disappearing in the noise of our hopes for
Marriage Equality. Don’t get me wrong. Marriage Equality is a necessary thing.
Equality is a necessary thing. But this fight sometimes leaves behind those
queer folk who are just trying desperately to survive without compromising who
they are. Our vigilance against HIV/AIDS has softened into a cool acceptance of
the disease that breeds a dangerous, lazy relationship with sex. Our coolheaded
attempts to promote ourselves as happy, often white, abnormally attractive
couples has created a new binary in which genderqueer and transgender folks are
left in the dark. And don’t even get me started on the Voting Rights Act
debacle that came down like some evil sibling of our more celebratory rulings
this week.
So what do we do? Well, I think the answer comes from the
queerest one of them all, and you know who I’m talking about. I’m talking about
Jesus. He says to hold tight to our saltiness, to keep our brightness, to
refuse to be thrown out into the world just to be trampled because we’ve
forgotten what made us queerly unique in the first place.
Our queer identities were designed, as Oscar Romero says, to
provoke, to disarm, to get under people’s skin. Our lights were designed to
flame freely and to get us in trouble. That’s why our past and present are so
filled with pain. And it is the embracing of and the transformation of this
pain that not only gives us the pride that we should have every day of our
lives, but also gives us the imperative to continue to take care of those most
in need of community, those who are being raped, killed, and harassed every day
of their lives, those who can’t yet dream of freely sipping a happy hour
cocktail on a Chelsea sidewalk.
If we disappear the pains of our past and the saltiest lights
of our present, we will eventually forget who we are and why we exist at all.
If we disappear those who still seem the “queerest” of our population, we will
eventually disappear ourselves. And then there will be no saltiness to make the
world take notice and question its assumptions. There will be no light to burn
ahead, showing the liberating queer possibilities that come from questioning
the false gospels that have gotten us into this binary-based mess in the first
place.
We have some of the most amazing ancestors in the world, we
have some of the most miraculous martyrs, and, even if their faces don’t cover
every wall of the city, we must keep the memories of them emblazoned on the
walls of our minds, we must fill our conversations with talk of those who came
before us, went before us, died in front of us, or died all alone. We must hold
these portraits, like David Johnson’s paintings of the residents of Bailey
House that you see behind me (Bill, Maria, Gino, Gwen, Clarence, and all of our
ancestors who are not represented here), close to our hearts.
Because we are the ones who are surviving, we are the ones who
now carry the candles and the signs, we are the ones who now embody the salt
and the light of queerness. We have the power to un-disappear all of the fabulous
people of our community who are lost in the shadows of even our most profound
victories. Let us keep both our saltiness and our light held tight enough to
keep us remembering and raised high enough to keep us moving, leading all
toward an idea of equality we’ve only begun to imagine.
Let us pray:
Creative Hand of the Universe:
Thank you for the trust. Thank you for the salt. Help us to be
a light that never goes out.
Amen
For Your Meditation
“In addition to the strength given to you by God, I think it
is pain that pushes you forward.”
—
Patricia García, member of COMADRES
Ancient Testimony
Matthew 5:13-16
You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory…
Matthew 5:13-16
You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory…
Modern Testimony
From Archbishop Oscar
Romero
“A church that doesn’t provoke
any crises, a gospel that doesn’t unsettle, a word of God that doesn’t get
under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn’t touch the real sin of the
society in which it is being proclaimed–what gospel is that? Very nice, pious
considerations that don’t bother anyone, that’s the way many would like
preaching to be. Those preachers who avoid every thorny matter so as not to be
harassed, so as not to have conflicts and difficulties, do not light up the
world they live in.”
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