by Soulforce Admin
Photo Credit: Ibrahim Vicks
By Equality Rider Ibrahim Vicks
In my journey through life, I have always been led to what I had to do. Never have I asked, “Where am I going?” until recently. Where am I going? So many times have I talked about what I want to do, or how I wanted to go about doing it. But never have I been the one at the wheel. It’s long past the time that I take control of the direction my life is going, time for me to climb out of this box and actively find my destination. I am growing older and I need to claim responsibility for myself, both as a person, and as a member of the many communities I call family. This is my rebirth into the world, and I’m gonna own it.
About the Blogger:
Ibrahim Vicks is the Youth Planning Committee president at the Attic Youth Center, an LGBTQ youth center in Philadelphia.
by Soulforce Admin
By Equality Rider Cole Parke
CeCe McDonald, a black trans woman, is currently facing 2nd degree murder charges after being attacked last summer by a group of white adults in what was unquestionably a hate crime.
On the night of June 5, 2011, CeCe and a group of friends were on their way to the grocery store when several older white adults standing in the patio area of a South Minneapolis bar began hurling racist and transphobic slurs at them. CeCe approached the group and made it clear that she and her friends would not tolerate hate speech. In response, one of the white women said, “I’ll take you bitches on” and smashed her glass into CeCe’s face. The broken glass sliced all the way through CeCe’s cheek, lacerating her salivary gland. A fight ensued and one of the white assailants, Dean Schmitz, was fatally stabbed.
In the aftermath of this tragic event, one nightmare has turned into another. Following the confrontation, CeCe was the only person arrested. She was denied medical treatment, interrogated for hours, and ultimately put into solitary confinement.
Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman has the power to put this nightmare to an end. As he has done in other instances of clear self-defense, Freeman can drop the charges that have been filed against CeCe. Doing so would not bring Dean Schmitz back to life, nor would it heal the wounds of hate speech and violence, but it would put an end to this spiral of injustice.
Contrary to popular belief, justice does not trickle down. While the majority of the time, energy, money, and resources within the LGBTQ community continue to be funneled into the fight for marriage equality, the most vulnerable among us are suffering and dying. It’s time for us to move beyond panel discussions and workshops about intersectional justice. Rather than building an “inclusive” movement, we must re-center our efforts around those who face the most severe consequences of violence and discrimination in our community.
Start now by signing the petition demanding that Mike Freeman drop the charges against CeCe: http://www.change.org/petitions/free-cece-we-re-looking-at-you-michael-freeman-drop-the-charges-against-cece-mcdonald
For more information and new developments in the CeCe case: http://supportcece.wordpress.com
About the Blogger:
Lauren Cole Parke is currently pursuing a Master’s in Conflict Transformation at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
Connect with Cole:
Hairvolutions (a project of Cole’s)
by Soulforce Admin
Photo Credit: Chelsea Fullerton
By Equality Rider Eric Dean Karabetsos
“In the beginning…”
God begins to create
This I read;
As I walk down the street.
A warm and sunny day
Inwardly to the Lord, I pray
To thank Him, and praise
How can I comprehend what makes Him great?
Snapped from my reverie
I hear someone screaming at me
From behind a sign of yellow, red, and green.
What does it mean?
Of all the people, why was I singled out?
Was it for my pride bracelet and buttons?
Is that any real reason to scream and shout?
“Hey! You’re going to hell!
Where Satan and his angels dwell!
This is your fate!
May as well accept it, you can’t escape!”
Roses are red
As is my blood
When upon the ground it is spread.
That’s how it feels.
Your anger slices like a sword
Your words are like bullets
Searing my soul
Shredding my heart
To me your message is like poison
A poison you drink in a vain effort to kill me
So drink up
“So what you’re saying is that my
orientation
Is another cog in the
machination
That causes my
segregation
From the human
nation.
Tell me, what is your
justification?”
“Listen you walking
abomination,
apparently you haven’t experienced the life-changing
transformation
that comes from earning the free gift of
salvation!
Accept it or be subject to eternal fire and
damnation!
While you’re at it, cease America’s
subjugation
of your awful, sinful
fornication
and the forthcoming
obliteration!
To quote Job’s wife:
‘Curse God and die!’”
You have the gall to stand there and judge me?
You talk about your Leviticus and Apostle Paul?
“Let me tell you about 3:16 in the book of John!
Let me tell you how God sent His Son to die
so that I may be alive!”
I wish I could show you my scars
Humiliation
Rejection
Exploitation
Self-destruction
Old wounds
Freshly healed
Broken open
Torn and bleeding
“My sins are many!
You’d be at a loss!
They were separated from me when Christ hung upon that cross!
My soul has been wiped clean!
My sins erased from memory!
The scales fall from my eyes
so at last I see!
You’re the walking definition of hypocrisy!
For a so-called Christian,
you sure do love to oppress the QLGBT!
For this is the gospel message:
The Jesus came to set us free!
The freedom to simply be!
But I’ve had enough.
Enough of your empty, soulless fluff.
I’m going to walk away now;
Leaving this in my past.
About the Blogger:
Eric, from Pittsburg, PA, has been looking for opportunities to promote equality, and believes God led him to Soulforce.
by Soulforce Admin
Photo Credit: .aditya.
By Equality Rider Christian Parks
There was a time in my life when my identity was not widely accepted, especially in the Church setting. I remember times when people would look at me and deduce that I was demon possessed by the way I walked and talked. There must have been no other explanation in their heads; so, they diagnosed me as being controlled by some demonic force. This was a very farfetched and spiritually damaging way to go about the situation, but people will be people. I know that, in their hearts, pastors in my youth group and the church wanted the best for me, and they must have seen this act and this power as a lifesaving tactic. They wanted the best for me but did not recognize the pain that was caused. I know many of us have stories like this – stories that allows our wounds to be visible, our pain to be apparent, and our anger to rise up.
So now, I come to this time and place in my life faced with a hard question: Should I forgive? I could choose to act like the damage was never done. At the same time, I refuse to give up my pain, to act as if nothing happened.
Forgiveness, as I have learned and experienced it, is an action and a state of mind that returns the power that was stripped away. By forgiving my church and the people in it, I am free to reclaim G-d and figure out what that being means to me. This forgiving nature is what I would calling the beginning to learning the Art of Resistance, which, as Rev. Dr. Cindi Love declared to the congregation of All God’s Children MCC in Minneapolis, is love. I believe that to forgive is to love and to love is to begin to fight the powers of injustice in the world.
This love and resistance that I speak of compels me to break the rules set up by society and its view of what is right and wrong. This calls for me to cross roads into places that are and may seem hostile and unloving. I am charged to walk in the power of this love to seek out that person that has created a wound in my life and invite them to my table to eat with me. It teaches me that I am merely human. I learn that love keeps no records of wrongs but opens the door for reconciliation and a renewed relationship. This love allows me to be free in community and be exactly as who the Creator has created me to be. Do you know of this love that I am speaking of?
About the Blogger:
Christian Parks is 20 years old with a heart for people and a passion for spirituality.
by Soulforce Admin
Photo Credit: Presbyterian Student Center, Athens GA
By Equality Rider Ryan Barnette
Ever since I read Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist,” I have looked for omens. Omens are God-given signs that teach us something about our chosen path. While on the Equality Ride I have kept my eyes open for such omens, which I find usually appear in threes.
The first labyrinth showed up in an Episcopalian church in Philadelphia where “O Little Town of Bethlehem” was written. This labyrinth was carved into a large wooden plate. The point was to move your finger through the smooth maze while centering your heart and mind. Arriving at the center of the maze, you retrace your movements out of the labyrinth. This is a tool for deeper contemplation and prayer. The wooden labyrinth’s place in the front right corner of the chapel gave it a very sacred and important aura. Seeing this object for the first time, I began to dwell on its meaning. I entered the labyrinth.
The Equality Ride stopped in Athens, GA for a potluck. The host church provided great food and space for wonderful conversation. Behind the church was a walkable labyrinth made from hundreds of bottles. In the brown dirt and stone, someone had created this great maze from mundane everyday objects. Bottles that once held beer, wine, and soda now line this path of meditation, this garden of prayer. Someone’s drunken night contributed to another’s sincere conversation with their Creator. This labyrinth presented me with the intersection of the sacred and mundane, the ordinary and hallowed. I’m sure that we travel through this intersection constantly without always noticing it.
Now I began looking for the third labyrinth. I was sure it would appear somewhere. One dark evening after an especially powerful conversation with a group of students in Nashville, TN, a fellow Equality Rider told me to look at the ground next to the church where we had been meeting. Sure enough, there was a large stone-made labyrinth placed alongside one side of the church. The darkness nearly hid the maze, but I believe that I was meant to see it. The trilogy of omens was complete. By the time I had seen all three labyrinths, I realized several things. The Equality Ride is a labyrinth of sorts. We journey on curvy highways and country roads, residential streets and parking lots. We sometimes go the wrong way or meet a dead-end, but every mile centers our passions upon the justice we seek.
Many conversations I have entered on the Ride are labyrinths, dual journeys to the center of what we’re trying to say. I rejoice when a student and I arrive at the center of a conversation and find respect and commonality.
I take every step into the labyrinth of life with the hope that purpose, community, and love exist at its center. I invite you to heed this advice from “The Alchemist:” “Never stop dreaming. Follow the omens” However many signs it takes for you to see life as a beautiful journey, I hope that it is abundantly clear how much the maker of our paths loves us. May that love inform our dreams of justice.
About the Blogger:
Ryan Barnette’s perfect day includes hot tea, a game of Catan, Japanese fiction, and increased justice for the disenfranchised.
by Soulforce Admin
Photo Credit: Simon Yamauchi
By Equality Rider Chelsea Fullerton
As of today, we are twenty days in to our journey…
twenty days – feels like an eternity, my heart bound up in the minutes and hours I’ve spent
laughing and crying and talking and writing and pushing myself and trying
not to feel
because feeling means that I could be weak,
lose hold of the fragile exterior that indicates what’s inside of me is at peace
when reality is that the ground I’m standing on is shaking,
threatening to break.
And each day, I feel the weight of each moment -
stories, woven and spun with the thread of the souls of the oppressed,
forming the fabric of the ragged tapestry we call this life.
I carry the words, tuck them in the deepest recesses of my mind,
telling myself I’ll have time to comb through them later.
So here they sit, in a tangled mess of identity and pain and belonging and exclusion and fear
waiting to be loosened,
waiting to be understood.
The unraveling begins today
as the words wash over me like a thundering cascade,
testing the limits of what my shoulders can bear.
Let’s not talk about inclusion, they say.
Let’s find some middle ground, some way to keep them silent
while convincing ourselves that love is made of straight lines,
confines that keep out those who can’t fit inside our limited minds.
Hatred is a part of religion, a necessary defense
to separate us from them,
so let’s reduce them to sin
to indulged temptation
to nothing.
I am drenched with the weight of each drop.
But there are some quiet moments that drown out the downpour,
when the fire in my heart becomes brighter and more fierce than any storm.
I breathe,
drinking in the smoke that absorbs the words and carries them away into oblivion.
I sigh,
letting it wash over me like a wave,
with fingers so gentle and a touch so imperceptible that I wonder:
how many times have I missed these moments
of cleansing, healing, unwinding and rebinding
because I have not been willing to feel them?
About the Blogger:
An advocate and ally from Athens, GA, Chelsea wholeheartedly believes in the fundamental worth of all people and strives to empower them to gain the tools and opportunities that they need to find meaning in life.
Connect with Chelsea:
Facebook | Twitter | Flickr
by Soulforce Admin
Photo Credit: Makenzie Marineau
By Equality Rider Zachary Pullin
As I gathered my carry-on belongings and rushed to my last flight home from service in the Peace Corps, I chatted up the TSA agent when he asked, “So, what’s your next step?” It is this question – this precise question – that has peppered the moments between finishing Peace Corps and my adventure on the Soulforce Equality Ride. And I have responded with everything from grad school to living on a ranch in the middle of nowhere.
Unfortunately, I was attempting to answer the question without understanding my personal motivations. Then, we visited North Central University in Minneapolis. On the vigil line, a father and his two children joined us in silent protest against the discriminatory policies that have been the impetus for suicide attempts, homelessness, depression, and pain on campuses across the country.
It was this contrast of an LGBTQ family and the people in power who have brought so much harm that moved me to tears. Seeing this father with his two children reminded me of my own two, young brothers. I have a 5 year-old brother and 9 year-old brother who make me want to be a better leader and activist every day. I think about a Native proverb, “We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our children.” I reflect on the idea that what we do now is for the future. I reflect on my two, young brothers being the next generation in charge of continuing the march of progress. I reflect on the fact that the partnership of my generation and theirs will be the way to change.
Most importantly, I believe that, once I know my motivations, I can better engage my deepest desires. I think about the words of a great friend, “Let’s be young in our best hopes!” So, though I may not know what I want to do after the Ride, I definitely can say that I understand my motivations. And understanding our motivations is key to translating our hopes into reality.
About the Blogger:
Zachary Pullin pulls his beliefs about humanity from his Native American roots. He believes that the conversation must begin with compelling our brothers and sisters in faith communities to believe with their hearts and not their minds.
Connect with Zachary:
Facebook | Twitter (@zacharybob)
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