#ashtag: By Vita E
I woke up today to another one…
A notch on the belt of the closed-minded;
a note that should never have to be written
#ashtag, #hisnamewasZander.
15 year old trans man, suicide note revealed through Tumblr,
15 years old, dead in 2015, wish we could have seen 16….. Leelah Alcorn, 17.
#ashtag, #RIPLeelah
Quote: “My death needs to be counted in the number of transgender people who commit suicide this year. I want someone to look at that number and say, ‘Thats fucked up!’ and fix it. Fix society please…” End Quote.
The commonality of these two sends dynamite into my stomach, explodes, leaves me hollow, like they must have felt.
#ashtag, #translivesmatter
22 year old woman stabbed to death by her own father…an hour from where I grew up
#ashtag, #translivesmatter
Goddess Edwards, 20 Kentucky…
#ashtag, #translivesmatter
Lamia Beard, 30, Virginia...
#ashtag, #translivesmatter
Ty Underwood, 24, Texas...
#ashtag, #translivesmatter
Taja Gabrielle de Jesus, 33, San Francisco...
#ashtag, #translivesmatter
Penny Proud, 21, New Orleans...
#ashtag, #translivesmatter
Bri Golec, 22, Ohio...
#ashtag, #translivesmatter
Krystina Gomez Reinwald, 46, Miami..
#ashtag, #translivesmatter
The only thing scarier than the deaths that prompt this text, are the responses, and I QUOTE:
“Can’t even be mad.”
“He shouldn’t even be charged with nothin, free him.”
“Can’t say that I blame him…”
This time, the dynamite will explode inside me,
but I will not die, nor will the memories of my people.
I’m tired of having to use social media to bury my brethren in blog posts,
which will most likely be deleted by the servers soon after because the information is, “sensitive.”
Our deaths erased faster than our lives;
An army of queers copy and pasting our memories onto Word Documents,
Before we fade away into the void that they leave open just for us….
In less than two months, more trans people have been murdered or have committed suicide than laws have been passed to “protect” us!
And of course we have to rely on so-called, “experts,”
who have no clue what it’s like to tell stories that we are still alive to tell on our own!!
NO THANK YOU!!!
Instead of Fox News, we’ll use Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Flickr,
Whatever we NEED to, wherever we WANT to!!
WE will NOT be erased!
We will NOT stop,
Until our #ashtags and shares fill up the world like the flames of vikings honoring our fallen soldiers,
Until we melt down the walls of justification for our deaths, and with them, we will create swords of shares, status posts, and snapchats!
We will create an arsenal of emails, pyrotechnic petitions, tanks of tweets,
Nuclear warheads of name drops and exposure of the hateful that would rather see us die than unite!
We WILL LIVE ON, to post our success stories on forums, never stopping, never failing, never falling!
This time, not only will the revolution be televised,
it will get so many hits that the Internet will crash under the weight of our solidarity and strength as a family!
And as our family survives through the onslaught of online obituaries that people refuse to write properly,
We will become a force, that is more viral than the cinnamon challenge,
Buzz Feed,
All of PSY’s music videos combined,
And every single Vine Video, including that dumb one about the potato…
We will be here, building our 18 bit brickhouse, and surrounding it with emoticons, of snapping fingers, likes, and of course….
#ashtags.
And don’t worry, I’ll be sure to mention you in the comments section...
