‘No matter your background, we are human,’ speaker says at Stonewall march and protest
Personal stories shared at a recent Bellingham rally highlight the similarities of people striving to change systemic injustice.
Several speakers touched on the movement for queer liberation, while others focused on various parts of the movement for Black lives that are being left out, such as deaf or blind Black people.
Felixia Santana, Ashanti Monts-Tréviska and Zora Carter were three of several people who spoke June 28 at a rally at Bellingham City Hall in honor of the 51st anniversary of the Stonewall riots, in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and to defund the Bellingham Police Department.
Santana, who described herself as a white-passing, bisexual, socialist Latina, said the fight for queer and Black liberation is intertwined. She told the crowd that Black lives matter, and that the gains made in queer liberation have their roots in the Stonewall riots, which were led by transgender and queer people of color. Santana said the riots were a fight for the right for people to live openly, no matter their identity.
The Stonewall riots of June 28-July 3, 1969, were a series of protests by members of the LGBTQ community after a police raid at the Stonewall Inn in New York City. The riots were considered one of the first major events to launch the gay rights movement.
Santana said the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, has sparked an outpouring of rage similar to the one that led up to the Stonewall riots. Floyd’s death has set off nationwide protests against systemic racism and police brutality.
“While it is essential that individuals question their own beliefs and unlearn the racism, homophobia, transphobia we all have internalized from living in this highly individualist culture of capitalism, we must elevate the struggle to tackle the underlying mechanisms that perpetuate and institutionalize that hate,” Santana said. “It is not enough to just be an ally. It is not enough to just say the words Black lives matter. We must act in solidarity with each other to dismantle the institutions that enforce racism. We don’t need allies. We need co-conspirators. Our collective liberation is intertwined.”
Santana said the community needs to defund Bellingham police and instead invest that money in the underlying issues responsible for crime, such as mental health, addiction and housing issues and poverty. She said she wants the police disarmed, an end to qualified immunity, community oversight boards and Bellingham police’s budget cut in half.
Bellingham Mayor Seth Fleetwood previously said he will ask the City Council to set a special meeting on Bellingham Police Department accountability where many of the reforms protesters are seeking locally and nationwide could be discussed. The Bellingham Police Department currently receives about one-third of the city’s revised 2020 general fund budget, or $30.7 million out of the city’s total $92.7 million.
Fleetwood has not yet set the special meeting.
“This march is part of a larger movement for Black lives, for Indigenous lives, for queer liberation and for liberation of ICE detainees,” Santana said. “I’m urging you, all of you, all of us, to keep up this momentum. Do not make this just a single moment in time, but continue the movement. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
Sacred breath
Monts-Tréviska, who is deaf and had a translator narrating to the audience through a tablet, echoed Santana’s sentiments of the need to work together to change the systemic injustices facing people of color and others because of their identities.
Monts-Tréviska shared a story about stepping foot into her Cuban father’s home for the first time. Monts-Tréviska said she didn’t grow up with him, and when she first entered his home, he told her that it was her home too and she was welcome there.
“I feel like it really parallels what we’re seeing today is that the struggle of the Black community is your struggle, whether or not you are Black or not,” she said.
Monts-Tréviska said during a recent moment of mindfulness where she reflected on her breathing and how sacred that breath was and how it connected her to the world around her. She said George Floyd’s death, in which he pleaded with the officer for breath, has shaken the world.
“That air was sacred and it was stolen from him, and I think when we forget to look at the humanity within people and we just go ahead and take away that sacred thing and take away that life, it creates this unbalanced world for everyone. Not just for Black people, but for everyone,” she said. “No matter your background, we are human.”
Monts-Tréviska also touched on the specific struggles of deaf Black people. She said she had to have her American Sign Language interpreter appear on a tablet, because there were no Black interpreters in her area.
She said for Black deaf people who are arrested, there aren’t tools in place for them to have the ability to communicate. She said oftentimes a deaf person will be trying to sign to the police and explain they use their hands to communicate, but an officer won’t understand and will mistake the communication for resisting or fighting. Once that person is in prison or jail, there often aren’t video phones available to communicate with attorneys, family members or interpreters while inside the jail or prison.
“Defunding police is not just necessary for the larger whole of society, but also for and especially necessary for deaf, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) individuals as well. It’s time for those people to have a voice and be represented in this fight,” she said.
Monts-Tréviska said she is tired of fighting for her own liberation as a Black deaf person, but also for the liberation of future generations. She asked the crowd to fight with her to create a better future for their children.
“The oppression has to stop and it has to stop in all areas. We must stand together and I stand with the message that we need to defund all systems that are not respecting individuals at all levels,” Monts-Tréviska said. “Whether you’re queer, an Indigenous person, deaf, if you’re deaf/blind, disabled, part of the BIPOC identity, we are valuable and we are struggling. And the struggle of Black people is our struggle, because we are truly in this together.”
Bubbling hate
Carter, the last speaker of the protest, said she has lived in Bellingham for more than a decade. She said it has been a place where she’s found community acceptance, but that she too has experienced racism while living here. Carter said she is an Okanangan Westbank First Nations transgender, two-spirit woman.
Carter said that during the time she has lived in Whatcom County, she has had violent, racist epithets yelled at her from vehicles and has been stopped and questioned by Bellingham police “for the simple act of walking home and having this skin and having this hair.”
Carter told the crowd about several encounters she’s had with Bellingham police. She said in one incident in 2009, she was walking in a local park with her then 4-year-old child. Bellingham police approached Carter and her child and said they had received a report of a suspicious person and questioned Carter at length about her identity and relationship to her child. A similar incident occurred in 2017 when Carter and her child, who was then 12 years old, got on a bus on their way to church. Carter said several officers stopped the bus and questioned both Carter and her child about their relationship to one another.
Carter said she now realizes she is not alone in her experiences with the police.
“Bellingham police can’t be bothered with looking into white supremacists shouting death threats and slurs, but will certainly follow up on a suspicious person walking home in their own neighborhood. I don’t feel safe. My friends don’t feel safe, and I can’t count on the cops to protect me,” she said.
Carter said some might not consider her experiences to be violent in nature.
“But I will tell you that being questioned, to be stopped and asked for your ID when you are just walking home is a form of violence. It is a reminder that one missing ID, one misspoken word or hesitation could erupt into brutality in which you submit or die, or submit and die anyway,” Carter said. “This should not be routine and should not be the responsibility of any unarmed civilian to deescalate an encounter with an officer of the law who has a professional responsibility to protect the lives of others and not just tow the thin blue line.”
Against the backdrop of these incidents, Carter said she has seen a rise in hate in the community. Before a rally in early June in Bellingham, hate literature and leaflets promoting racist views were found on Western Washington University’s campus and in the Lettered Streets neighborhood in Bellingham. Armed men were also seen downtown prior to the rally.
The day prior to a separate protest against systemic racism in mid-June, outrage broke out on social media after drivers heading north on Interstate 5 reported seeing “White Power” painted on the rock near Bellingham that has for decades served as an unofficial community billboard. State crews ended up painting over the rock, which was later repainted with slogans in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement by community members.
Carter then spoke to the crowd about the Stonewall riots, and said that Black transgender and queer people are still being killed, despite the gains made in the queer liberation movement. Carter said there is currently a push in D.C. to peel back protections and rights for LGBTQ people.
“Fifty years and we are still on the first few steps and getting pushed back to square one,” she said.
Carter said the people of Bellingham have strong civic pride, and that the community could be leaders for others across the country for how things could be different and how to dismantle systemic racism.
“Our city must reallocate funding from the police department and funnel it toward community-based programs to address gaps we see in education, housing, health and the arts,” Carter said. “Bellingham cannot continue to focus funding on our police force as the only solution if we truly want to make Bellingham a diverse place.”
