Trans and queer Latinx social movement leaders respond to the massacre. Image: Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement.
Trans and queer Latinx leaders are speaking out.
“This attack did not occur randomly; it was not aimed at the general public,” noted the Farmworker Association of Florida in a statement responding to the mass killing at the LGBTQ Pulse club's Latin night. “It was aimed at latinx* and queer people.”
And indeed, it is now clear that most of the 49 people whose lives were stolen in Orlando were of Latin-American descent. Meanwhile, some of those killed and wounded are undocumented, nationals of countries including Mexico and El Salvador. This status creates further hardship, from prohibitive medical costs to the difficulty of bringing family to one’s hospital bed during recovery, as Fusion journalists Jorge Rivas and Rafa Fernandez De Castro recently pointed out.
In this video, Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement invites viewers to listen to trans and queer Latinx social movement leaders respond to the massacre, reflect on the communities targeted and analyze how the massacre stems from homegrown social ills in the United States.
*For background on why the term latinx is used, click here.
This story originally appeared on AlterNet and has been republished with permission.
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