This morning the Supreme Court of the United States tied at 4-4 upholding the injunction on DAPA and expanded DACA.  Nearly simultaneously, we got the news that an officer involved in the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore was found not guilty. Likewise the 24 hour news cycle wages on about the sit-in at United States House of Representatives pushing for a vote on a gun-control bill that also calls for the expansion of a “terrorist watchlist.”  As we work to protect and defend our organizing wins across the board, our communities continue to face a state of mass incarceration, mass deportation,  policing and surveillance infused in nearly every part of our lives, and a surging white supremacist and Christian fundamentalist rhetoric manifesting itself violently.

As Black, Latinx, Muslim, immigrant people who are LGBTQ, we make choices countless times a day, sometimes with intention and sometimes subconsciously, about our safety and security. Can we fill out this application? Can we turn the corner? Can we go to that public space? What neighborhood should I live in? What should I wear?

But our safety and security is not only beholden to legislators and policy and we must keep organizing to dismatle ICE, end immigrant trans detention, demand a moratorium on deportations, secure our gay bars as sanctuaries, end predictive policing and transform a culture of fear.

“Tenemos las leyes en contra de nosotros que somos migrantes y de la comunidad LGBT con esas leyes que están poniendo [en NC]y con lo que esta pasando muchas de las veces me siento con miedo. Pero tengo un hijo que necesita de mi y tengo que seguir en la lucha…”
–Patty Guerra, SONG Familia in Asheville, NC 

Our movements, our organizing, and our campaigns must include lxs excluidxs (the excluded) of us and continue to turn up in the face of such grief and undermining of our community wins. At SONG, we’re leaning into the deep legacy of our people building safety and security for ourselves. From the Black Panthers Seniors Against a Fearful Environment (SAFE) to the LGBTQ Butterfly Bridgade in the Castro District of San Francisco, we have relied on each other in uneasy and violent times. To find out more and to get connected to a summer full of Free From Fear organizing across the South email us at takeaction@southernersonnewground.org

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