WE NEED A DIRECT PATH TO JUSTICE

A measure of delayed accountability does not equate to justice. On the same day our nation held its collective breath awaiting the verdict of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s trial for the murder of George Floyd, police in Columbus, Ohio, shot and killed a 16-year-old girl. Her name was Ma’Khia Bryant. It was not a day of justice.

I am a queer nonbinary first-generation U.S. citizen rape survivor and formerly homeless youth. I am the product of Jewish refugees who escaped state-sanctioned violence and Mexican immigrant field workers. Both sides of my family came to this country in hopes of pursuing opportunities, liberty and justice.

Growing up in a border community, with a father and family whose skin, hair and eyes were darker than mine, I became used to the way people would treat us. As a lighterskinned Mexican American, my entire life has been navigating the relationship between the shade of my family’s skin causing their lived experience to be different than my own. From restaurants to roving Border Patrol, police encounters to educators, the fear and anxiety we endure throughout our lives are exhausting. While everyone in my family can point to an experience of discrimination on the part of law enforcement, some can also recount the violence they endured as their family and young children watched in horror.

As a young person who experienced homelessness, the fear of finding a place to sleep or bathe had me in constant fear of police. As a queer person, I have been assaulted, threatened and harassed by police over the course of my life because of my appearance, organizational affiliations or attempts to intervene in law enforcement escalation. As a rape survivor laying in a hospital bed, I recounted my experience to the responding officer only to have her respond, “So what do you want me to do about it?”

I am also the executive director of San Diego Pride, an organization built on a movement sparked in response to state-sanctioned police violence. For over 50 years, the LGBTQ community has stood up to systemic and legal discrimination and police brutality. Our LGBTQ community to this day does not have equal protection under the law. By the metrics we can measure, we are over-policed, overincarcerated, and underresourced.

I share these personal accounts because while I can never know what it’s like to be a Black man in this country, I do know what it is like to face violence and oppression on the part of the police and legal system. The data, personal accounts and history of this nation are clear; minority and marginalized communities are playing a game that has been stacked against us. White supremacist values have been woven so deeply into the fabric of this country that one court ruling and a year of marches are not going to resolve centuries of oppression and violence.

We can, however, continue to build on this moment. If George Floyd’s life can give us a lasting gift, may it be the discarding of our blinders so we may see each other cleareyed, not as different, but as siblings with shared struggles and common values.

Our pursuit of justice, yes, looks like criminal justice reform, but it also must look like equitable opportunity, education and employment. It must be about workers’ rights, universal health care, reproductive justice, environmental justice, fair and affordable housing, destigmatizing and providing free access to mental health care, free public transit, expansion of public education and daycare, social services in place of policing, immigration reform, reparations and decriminalizing poverty. Justice looks like anti-racist work repairing the wrongs of our nation’s past and present. It looks like minority and marginalized communities seeing each other as accomplices in creating a more perfect union. Join us when summoned to action.

After Derek Chauvin was found guilty, I sat virtually with my Black, Latino, Filipino and White co-workers of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. We wept with hope and shared our feelings. Immediately after, I called my father. We recounted our own past traumas with law enforcement and chuckled uncomfortably at the possibility of change. The common thread in those conversations was hope. Hope that we are finally being seen, that we are finally being heard, and that generations of faith and will are met with the change our nation has promised us but not yet delivered.

Tuesday brought a measure of accountability, but it will be up to all of us to ensure it is the day that sets us on a more direct path to justice.

I do not know what it’s like to be a Black man, but I do know what it is like to face violence and oppression.