Reflecting on Florida's LGBTQ+ fight a decade after Pulse
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A man plants a Pride flag at a makeshift memorial in Orlando the day after the Pulse shooting on June 12, 2016. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Ten years ago today, I hung up with my editor, threw a change of clothes in a bag and sped toward Orlando.
Flashback: I was working Sundays then for the Tampa Bay Times, covering breaking news. There had been a shooting at a gay nightclub called Pulse.
- I arrived in time for an update from city leaders that still haunts me: 49 people plus the shooter were killed. We would learn most of the victims were LGBTQ+ and Latino, attending Pulse's popular Latin Night.
- My hands shook as I recorded the rest of the news conference. Then, I stepped away, called my mom and cried.
The big picture: What moved me then was that unfathomable number. What broke my heart in the days and weeks and months to come were the individual stories:
- Luis Vielma, 22, who adored his job at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and whose parents and siblings welcomed me into their home on their darkest days.
- Kimberly "KJ" Morris, 37, who used to perform in drag as "Daddy K" and had only recently moved to Orlando to help her mother and grandmother.
- Christopher Andrew "Drew" Leinonen, 32, who, years earlier here in Tampa Bay, had started Seminole High's first Gay-Straight Alliance, and was killed that night with his partner, Juan Ramon Guerrero, 22.
In the years after, Leinonen's friends started The Dru Project, a nonprofit to support queer youth and continue the fight for LGBTQ+ equality.
- One of those friends, Brandon Wolf, went on to work for Equality Florida and has become one of Florida's most outspoken advocates for queer rights.
State of play: What strikes me now, after years of covering this state's transformation into a test kitchen for anti-LGBTQ+ policies, is how relevant those missions remain a decade later.
- Lawmakers and Gov. Ron DeSantis have placed restrictions on classroom instruction and books with LGBTQ+ themes, a move some advocates worried would bar teachers from telling their students about Pulse.
- Other state policies have targeted drag shows, transgender health care, and street art, the last of which resulted in state workers painting over a memorial crosswalk outside the former nightclub.
- Last year and again this year, in commemorating the shooting, DeSantis departed from prior years by declining to mention Florida's Hispanic and LGBTQ+ communities.
Yes, but: There has also been resistance: thousands of students walking out of their classrooms; advocates turning out in droves to testify at the Capitol; the perseverance of LGBTQ+ sanctuaries, like what Pulse was to so many.
- "Our joy is our resistance," state Rep. Michele Rayner said last week during St. Pete's Pride flag raising. "Our showing up as who we are is our resistance."
The remarks reminded me of my visit back to Pulse three months after the mass shooting, where a fence around the property had become a makeshift memorial.
- A breeze blew a rainbow flag, showing a message written underneath: "Keep dancing."
Go deeper: Remember the 49