The Wild Wild West

I am happy to be sharing this, though my heart is aching over what has recently occurred in my state. I wish I could have posted a draft earlier, but I could not stop interviewing people. I did not want to offer the global community another bullet by bullet account of gun laws, protesting limits, failed mental health services, or left/right conflict. The truth is that the collective voice of many Arizonans right now is disheartened and embarrassed, and the voices of individuals who are affected by this need to be heard as well, because I believe that voice speaks from the heart and hope for my state.

Here is draft one, so soon/close to the final, but I've had a hard time pulling away from the people and sitting down to write it all out. From the conversations swimming in my head, from the voices of women in Arizona I have been inspired to share this with all of you. I believe much of the personal history will be cut back and much more statistical weight will be implemented, all in due time.

Blessings to you all, I have been engaged in the drafts posted and feel blessed to be learning so much from everyone!

This is what we are bearing witness to: a society in disconnect, in a country that is supposed to be a model of equality and freedom, living within a state that continues to take those things away. Those of us who are fighting are exhausted. Fighting is not the word. Moving forward does not fit either. We feel like we are playing an old-school game of Red Rover, Red Rover, send the next hateful bill right over. The hands of humanitarians, activists, progressive-minded citizens and equalists are feeling splintered and drying out from holding on so tight. When we are lucky enough to keep an opponent out the victory feels short-lived although we become possessed by a tighter grip. As I look to the left and right of me, they are fading. The social worker protecting women’s rights to health services and the freedom of choice, she is holding on but there are tears streaming down her face. The parents marching against SB 1070 are trying to teach their daughter the emphasis of compassion, but they are swarmed only as supporters of illegal criminal activity. Governor Jan Brewer and Sheriff Joe Arepiao are continually re-elected although we keep talking about the inhumane treatment of prisoners, the failure of our mental health systems, gun laws that encourage the rest of the world to continue to look at us as like the Wild Wild West. As new social workers and educators breech into their fields of service, they are pushed away from the politics that will continue to hold the health, rights, and education of the people they will advocate for, living in the past.

In seventh grade three girls teased me mercilessly and called me a lesbian. I continued to relay to my government teacher the details of harassment, but she ignored me. As she described the beliefs the United States was founded upon, I learned that when I spoke about something different I would be silenced.

I was scared to go to high school. During my sophomore year, a boy in my journalism class killed himself on prom night. People were not allowed to wear long coats to school. Everyone blamed Marilyn Manson and violent video games. Parents blamed teachers and teachers blamed the system, but nobody talked about what we were doing to enable communication. Nobody spoke about the tornado of encouraged ignorance and violence, distorted self-image and lack of direction, or the silence. By fifteen I was scared to talk about any difference I might have recognized in myself. I withdrew to the library during school lunches and submersed myself in literature. I hid a pocketknife under my pillow and when I wanted to cry out but knew I couldn’t, I cut myself until I felt like I could breathe. Was it because my parents were addicted and neglectful? Was it my classmates who had no concept of empathy?

I went to New York when I was 17. I was born on Christopher Street. The first gay pride parade I went to in 2002 had over 250,000 people smiling and waving flags. I saw men holding hands in the stairwell of the Oscar Wilde Bookstore. I watched women loving each other outside of Henrietta Hudson’s. I watched acrobats, protestors, and strangers playing chess with one another in Washington Square Park.

I moved to Massachusetts and watched Ani DiFranco switch her guitar with every song at Mount Holyoke where my girlfriend and I had secretly met up because her mother hated me for loving her daughter. I experienced my first hate crime with courts and homophobia in a town a train ride from Boston. Yet, in the sweet embrace of Northampton with its historical buildings built like a town that people would always want to live in, near a pond where Sylvia Path once explored, rainbow flags hung from business doorways not for pride of sexuality, but so strangers would know it was safe.

Returning to Arizona made me feel as though I had time traveled. Many of my friends feel the same way. We arrived here, or back here after traveling away for a long while, and it seemed that the mentality of Arizona had grown more volatile. My first girlfriend, when I told her I was from Arizona, asked if we still drove horses with buggies. I laughed then, but now I am feeling that with all of the advances we have had with technology, people have yet to learn to communicate.

My story as a witness is not just as a lesbian in the gay and lesbian community. My voice has been met with constant opposition and silencing simply because I believe in human equality. Do I tell you about the gun laws in my state that allow people to come to bars and grocery store with holsters and loaded pistols? Do we discuss barriers that keep people from protesting outside of funerals with signs that declare, “God is punishing Arizona by allowing homosexuality,” even though homosexuality is irrelevant? The most applicable statistic to consider is our electorate. It may be growing more diverse, some Arizonans may be electing open representatives, but we need to look no further than to the people continually elected to understand why those of us who are embarrassed and ashamed are looking at our duffel bags every day wondering where else we might go or return to in order to feel a sense of community and feel safe to talk about anything.

People in Arizona do not want to talk about sexuality, unless it is the standard idealistic, traditional sense. I worked for the University of Phoenix for four years, during which employees were encouraged to make collages of their visions of success. More often than not, men would cut out half-naked models from magazines and paste them to poster boards, next to a shiny car, and a house that could accommodate an entire commune of people. I sat in trainings where the people leading my division would make openly homophobic remarks and laugh about it openly as though they should be applauding themselves for their outstanding wit. It was alright for the man who sat next to me to hold up pictures of airbrushed women and say, “Hey, I bet you like this,” because I am a lesbian, without any repercussions, but after four years I was fired because of discrimination against my sexuality. We need not to look at just isolated incidents, but collective mentalities and behavior. I hear stories from friends who still work there about the same behavior and they are some of the most compassionate, intelligent, active people who believe in fairness and equality, but are seen as negative by the majority for saying anything that supports that sense of equality. It is not just our corporations, but our state.

I asked my friend Selah how she felt about what happened in Tucson recently, the “Tucson Massacre,” as anyone watching television will understand it as. She said, “I feel like the Safeway shooting could be a mirror for us here. Look Arizona, look at your own face. You’ve got kids with guns shooting up democratic events in grocery stores, but public schools without air conditioning and enough books to go around. Press will blame parents who will blame kids at school and death metal who will blame violent movies and video games, but no one will focus inward to do anything about it.” Which is why the events do not have to be relayed once again, regurgitated in a minute-by-minute account of the tragedy.....

to be continued, finished, honed, shined!