It’s no secret that the present administration has been doing every part it may possibly to isolate and instill concern in trans and queer individuals all throughout the nation. And in Florida, it’s doing so in a seemingly innocent but extremely insidious method.
For the previous few months, DeSantis’ administration has spent hundreds value of taxpayer {dollars} to rip away rainbow crosswalks — sure, these tremendous homosexual, colourful, innocuous road artwork that seem in a handful of gayborhoods throughout the nation. If nothing else, the act feels akin to banning sunshine and bunnies.
Joykilling apart, the newest rainbow crosswalk to be destroyed was in Miami Seashore, and it was paved over with asphalt on Monday, after the Florida Division of Transportation issued an order “to take away pavement artwork used for social, political, or ideological messages or lose state funding.”
Established in 2018, the crosswalk commemorated the hundreds of queer individuals in Miami who confronted numerous types of housing and workforce discrimination or who’ve suffered via stigma from HIV/AIDS. Like many blatantly anti-LGBTQ actions from Trump and his symphony of bigots, the destruction of rainbow sidewalks has been thinly veiled via the guise of “unifying the nation.” Please, make it make sense.
This newest erasure makes even much less sense when you think about that this particular crosswalk in Miami was one of many safest in the area, with half as many accidents occurring there than its nearest intersection to the south, per ABC. That sort of is sensible, if you concentrate on it: It’s method simpler to see a flaming homosexual crosswalk from the gap and even from the nook of your eye than it’s to see one painted within the conventional black and white.
Though scrubbing a rainbow sidewalk might sound nonconsequential and tiny in comparison with different actions taken in opposition to the trans and queer neighborhood just lately, it ought to on no account be taken frivolously. By making our communities much less seen, the administration’s hope, I’m fairly sure, is to make queer individuals really feel extra remoted and alone.
Rising up in Texas, seeing rainbow crosswalks in sure neighborhoods in Dallas (Oaklawn) or Houston (Montrose), signaled to me that there have been different queer individuals, even when I couldn’t see them. These gayborhoods’ visible cues sign, particularly in additional hostile crimson states, that I used to be in a security zone. When many queer areas have been pushed underground or confined to nightlife, rainbow crosswalks have remained considered one of only a few symbols of queerness which are seen within the daylight.
One more reason we all know these strikes are supposed to ship a message to the queer neighborhood? One of many first crosswalks to be painted over in Florida over the summer time was the rainbow crosswalk situated in entrance of Pulse, the homosexual Orlando nightclub the place one of many largest mass shootings in American historical past befell. When protestors repainted the crosswalk in rainbow colours, the Florida Transportation Division painted back over in black. By selecting to deal with erasing such a symbolically necessary place for the queer neighborhood, DeSantis was sending his message, loud and clear.
In a super world, we wouldn’t want rainbow crosswalks. Each neighborhood in each metropolis would merely be secure for queer and trans individuals to exist in. That’s not the world we stay in, however fortunately, Miami’s queer neighborhood is huge and resilient. There are a number of queer and trans organizations to construct neighborhood and set up, together with SAVE LGBTQ, TransSOCIAL and Latinos Salud.
In occasions like these, it’s necessary to remain knowledgeable and concerned each time attainable. It’d really feel like a time to cover, however queer individuals will do precisely the other. We’ll solely be louder, gayer and continuously prepared to color a rainbow wherever wanted.
