Statement of Solidarity and Commitment from the FHHRP

 

Members of the Flint Hills Human Rights Project demand justice for the Black lives lost to white supremacist violence perpetrated by state actors. We bear witness to and are in solidarity with those calling for an end to the institutional and state aggression perpetrated against Black people and communities across the U.S. We understand that this systemic police violence is part of the ongoing practice of centuries of colonial, capitalist, white supremacist treatment of Black people that has harassed, enslaved, incarcerated, and killed Black folks with impunity. The recent killings of George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Aubrey are just the most recent in a horrifyingly long list of Black folks who have had their lives ended by those shielded by the cover of law that engage in life ending racial violence.

June is Pride Month, founded in honor of the Stonewall uprising of June 1969, in which trans women of color, butch lesbians, gender non-conforming folks, and queens fought back against racialized homophobic transphobic police violence. It was two Black women who threw the first bricks at the police that were there to arrest the queer patrons of the famous Stonewall Inn. They ultimately forced the police to barricade themselves in the bar while those they targeted for arrest rose up and fought against their state sanctioned abuse.

As has been made so heartbreakingly clear by the murder of Tony McDade, a Black trans man killed by police in Tallahassee on May 27th,  Black trans folks are all the more vulnerable to police violence due to racialized cis-hetero normativity. Anti-black racism’s transphobia makes Black trans folks some of the most vulnerable to state and police violence with some of the least effective avenues for redress. Racial violence is gendered and gendered violence is racialized. Queer liberation requires anti-racism, it requires challenging norms and working for justice from the understanding that our struggles are intertwined. We work for Black lives to matter because no one is disposable.

In solidarity, we demand structural, systemic, and institutional change. We commit to working to usher in a more racially just world where Black lives matter. We commit to following the lead of the fierce Black trans women who are the reason we have a Pride Month, like Marsha P Johnson and Miss Major, and the Black butch lesbians like Stormé DeLarverie who threw the first bricks and the first punches at the Stonewall uprising.

With rising violence against Black communities from lack of healthcare resources prior to and during COVID-19, to authoritarian attempts to suppress activism against state violence, to the revocation of Black folk’s civil rights through criminal prosecution, Black lives are under attack. We support demands for access to quality healthcare, empowering education, voting, healthy food, and the end of mass incarceration, militarized police forces, and policies of incarceration that have supplanted social services. We commit to supporting and participating in organizing actions to end anti-Black policing. We commit to working toward a more socially just, inclusive, and equitable community safe for Black folks to exist in, free from the fear of life ending violence by police.

Black Lives Matter!

Our Black brothers, sisters, and non-binary siblings deserve justice. And it is justice that is a prerequisite for peace…revolutionary Black queers taught us that.

Following the lead of other trans serving organizations, the Flint Hills Human Rights Project has made a financial contribution to the following programs and organizations. Please join us in supporting those listed below that work toward the liberation of our Black trans siblings:

In Solidarity,

The Board of the Flint Hills Human Rights Project