Pulse hit the LGBT community of color hardest; a year later, it’s a struggle to heal
One year ago, 49 lives were taken at Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Fifty-three survivors — most LGBT — still bear physical scars. Thousands lost loved ones, friends or a sense of home.
It may never be known whether the gunman behind the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history targeted Pulse on June 12, 2016, because it was an LGBT club filled with people of color. But that’s who he hurt the most, and the small, increasingly vocal community at the intersection of those identities want its stories to be known.
For some people, the motive is less important than the pain. They want to be visible. But not like this. Not under the uncomfortable gaze of the international media, as victims or political pawns, but as whole persons.
“We’ve been here all along,” said Nancy Rosado, an Orlando activist and expert in post-traumatic stress. “The community of color has been here all along.”
A Hispanic lesbian, she understands the struggle of feeling overlooked. Pastor Debreita “Brei” Taylor, the leader of a nondenominational Orlando church with a mission to welcome the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community, nodded in her seat next to Rosado. She lamented the fact that the nine AfricanAmericans who were killed at Pulse typically received less attention than their white and Hispanic counterparts.
“It’s never spoken about,” she said. “That is a continuation of erasing a community that says that we’re forever overlooked.”
But they and their communities are finding support in one another. Since the massacre, this partnership has blossomed into nonprofits that provide much-needed mental healthcare, language classes and support groups that speak to the communities they serve.
They’re doing their best to a build a safety net that never existed before. But there still are gaps.
Pulse was a home, a place where a diverse spectrum of people could feel comfortable. The black community feels it has been sidelined in the narrative of the attack and its fallout. Unmarried LGBT couples with families have trouble accessing benefits in a system that wasn’t built for their partnerships.
And overall, the powersthat-be were ill-equipped to handle tragedy in the LGBT community of color. Some victims were outed because of Pulse. There were undocumented survivors who were scared to come forward afterward if it meant an FBI interview. Money set aside for victims got caught up in court arguments between biological and chosen families.
“They never planned for us. They never planned to take care of us,” Rosado said. “And it cuts through down to the bone.”
On a blisteringly sunny Thursday a few weeks before the one-year mark, a handful of mourners clustered at the memorial that dresses the chain link fence outside the shuttered Pulse nightclub.
A short, black woman knelt below the collage of pictures, poems and messages to a bright yellow pot, one of 49 bordering the tarp shielding the wreckage of the club. She straightened the sagging succulent and turned the pot so the name on its rim was visible — Tevin Crosby.
When Crosby’s mother wanted to know what happened to her son, she picked up the phone in North Carolina and dialed Charlotte “ChaCha” Davis in Orlando.
Members of the black LGBT community in Orlando don’t have a nonprofit that caters to their culture. They have ChaCha.
“I’ve always been the crisis advocate,” Davis said. “I’ve been there for every funeral, every birth, every family emergency.”
Davis worked as a club promoter in Orlando for more than a decade. She moved away a week before the shooting, but the day she got the call she came right back to her people. All of her possessions are still in a Fort Lauderdale storage unit.
She stepped into the role of community advocate. She brought candles and bottled water to vigils. She consoled loved ones. She cooked their meals and planned memorial events.
“It was like ‘ChaCha, ChaCha, ChaCha, ChaCha,’ ” she said, stomping her feet into the pavement. “I’ve been on the beat like this.”
Davis is the person Emily Addison calls when her grief keeps her awake. Addison’s partner of seven years, Deonka Drayton, was killed in the shooting.
They never legally married, and Addison said she never felt accepted by Drayton’s family.
Although Addison may not have a marriage license, she carries a stack of papers — printed-out Instagram photos, doctor’s notes, rent checks and shared bills — that document their lives together.
Addison goes through documents used as evidence that she and Pulse victim Deonka Drayton were living as a typical family.
Even at the hospital, Addison had to show staff pictures of the couple on her phone to convince them to give her any information on Drayton. Only Drayton never made it to the hospital. She died inside Pulse.
“I have been proving I was a part of someone’s life since that day,” Addison said.
The OneOrlando fund, created by the city after the Pulse shooting, gave 308 people more than $31 million. Drayton’s family got its share for her death. Only a small amount went to Addison.
At her partner’s funeral, “I was treated like a stranger,” Addison said.
As the one-year mark approaches, Addison’s grief is still fresh. She can’t stand the memories she feels driving down the same streets and walking into the same stores. She’s moving out of the city with her three children.
“All these signs saying Orlando United and Orlando Strong just hurt me,” she said. “I feel like if you need to portray Orlando as united, then act like it.”
The ubiquitous rainbow #OrlandoUnited rubs Davis the wrong way, too. She prefers her own hashtag — #WeExist.