Thursday’s vigil at Crockett Park demonstrated communal grief for the Orlando massacre victims and their families as well as a growing fear of the dangers faced by marginalized groups, particularly LGBTQIA communities, communities of color, and Muslim communities.
Grief counselors were on hand during the vigil, organized by Pride Center San Antonio and other groups, to conduct free private counseling sessions, and a number of speakers brought the crowd to tears. In moments between emotional remarks from more than a dozen secular and interfaith speakers, people read aloud the names of the dead.
In voices that broke and shook from choked-back tears, they yelled out the names of the 49 murder victims.
“Eddie Justice,” yelled one reader.
“Presente,” shouted another.
“Presente,” echoed the crowd.
Justice, who was hiding in a bathroom at the club, texted his mother shortly after the shooting began. Along with a short biography of the 30-year-old man, one of the readers yelled out the message Justice had sent to his mother: “Mommy, I love you.”
“Presente,” shouted the crowd again.
And on it went, the pain of each name, each story, compounding the pain of the one before it, until each name had been spoken and released into the humid, summer air.
The reading of those names, which were almost entirely Latino, spoke to the particular pain felt by San Antonio’s LGBTQIA community. The names of the victims in Orlando sounded like home — a reminder that the deep hatred demonstrated during Sunday morning’s shooting is not limited to Orlando.
While mourning families and friends in Florida brace themselves for the traumatizing protests from Westboro Baptist Church, the vigil in San Antonio had its own disruptions.
A masked man carrying a sign that read “God Hates Fags” was assaulted by someone attending the vigil, according to media reports. The man who punched the protestor was arrested for unrelated, outstanding warrants and the man in the mask was briefly detained by San Antonio Police Department (SAPD) after the altercation.
This was the second vigil at Crockett Park since the shooting, which took place in the early hours of Sunday, June 12, and left 49 dead and 53 injured: The deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. The park is adjacent to a section of North Main Street, generally referred to as the “Gay Strip,” that includes several blocks of bars, clubs, and restaurants that cater to San Antonio’s LGBTQIA community.
The vigil was complicated by the attendance of San Antonio Mayor Ivy Taylor. As the District 2 City Councilwoman in 2013, she voted against extending San Antonio’s non-discrimination ordinance to include sexual orientation and gender identity.
Taylor did not read a prepared set of remarks as other speakers did. Instead she recited a prayer, the first of several that evening, from the steps of the central gazebo to the more than 800 people that attended the vigil.
The verses of her prayer were punctuated with several shouts from the crowd of “shame on you,” as well as other supportive shouts of “yes” and “let her finish.” Some audience members turned their backs on Taylor as she spoke while others gave her a loud round of applause as she stepped down from the platform.
Robert Salcido Jr., Pride Center’s Board of Directors chair, said that it was never the Center’s nor the Mayor’s intention for her to make any personal remarks at the event. Her decision to attend came about during a regularly scheduled meeting this week between Taylor and LGBTQIA liaisons during which, according to Salcido, the Mayor herself offered to attend the vigil but acknowledged that personal remarks or a speech from her would not be appropriate.
“The mayor and I had a conversation about that and in fact she was the one who said that it was definitely not a good choice for her to speak,” Salcido said Thursday afternoon. “She very much knows that she’s a guest in our community, that she’s coming to our event, and honestly she’s making an attempt.”
That choice was intended as a way for her to show her respect and solidarity with the LGBTQIA community without invading their space.
Before the vigil, Taylor told reporters she simply wanted to connect with San Antonians in the wake of tragedy, no matter their differences.
“I believe that people are entitled to their opinions or concerns,” she remarked, “but I certainly feel a responsibility as a person of faith and as a leader of this community to be here in unity and say that what happened was wrong.”
When casting her vote in 2013 against the inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity, Taylor distanced herself from religious and political extremists who made baseless claims about the dangers of the LGBTQIA community, but she said she worried that the ordinance would force individuals and business owners to choose between the law and their faith.
Some attendees were disappointed by the Pride Center’s decision to invite her to the vigil and give her a prominent place in the proceedings. Polly Anna Rocha, a local poet, musician, and transgender woman who read a poem at the vigil, is one of those people. She expressed her discomfort with the Mayor’s presence in a preamble to her poem.
“I would like to address those who are spectators of our pain,” she said to the crowd. “Specifically to the politicians and police who do nothing to protect us any other day. I would like to say that you have contributed to the culture of violence that allows events like Orlando to occur. You have contributed to the loss of life in our community through your inaction, silence, and abuse of power. This poem is not for you, but since you are here, you may listen to it.”
Rocha’s remarks were greeted by loud claps and snaps from the crowd. Their reaction reflects a sentiment among many LGBTQIA individuals and their allies across the nation, who have rejected entreaties of politicians who they say offer “thoughts and prayers” for the victims of Saturday’s violence, but have not stood with the LGBTQIA community for equal rights at other times.
Salcido said it is important to look at the big picture when it comes to the Mayor’s participation.
“How, as a community, do we move forward past this shooting?” he asked before the vigil. “But also, how do we move forward in ensuring that we as a San Antonio community are able to provide a safe community?
“Whether anyone acknowledges it or likes it, we have to have a relationship with the Mayor who’s running the city in order for us to do that. That’s the only way that we have to educate her, and for her to see who we are as people. If we completely shut her out, I don’t think we’re meeting our obligations as community members to change hearts and minds.”
Rocha said she is skeptical of a platform that puts the onus on marginalized people to educate others on their humanity.
“I think that it shouldn’t take 49 people being murdered to bring someone over to our side and see that we are living human beings,” Rocha said Wednesday before the vigil. “That part about it frustrates me. That it really took such a loss of life and such a tragic situation to have her come down to our level, so to speak, to have her step off the pedestal and address us as human beings and as peers.”
Salcido, who says he understands and feels the pain and anger of those upset over Taylor’s presence, also believes that the community has to meet her and those like her halfway.
“The Ivy Taylor that I knew in 2013 and the Ivy Taylor that I know in 2016 are not (the same) — she’s in a different place,” he said. “Is she fully where we want her to be? No. But change is not an event, change is a process, and that process takes different timeframes for different people.”
Councilman Roberto Treviño (D1) addressed the City’s commitment to keeping the community safe in his remarks to the crowd.
“There’s a tendency to think that such a monstrous act couldn’t happen in our city, but it could,” he said. “Hatred runs deep.”
Though officials, including San Antonio Police Chief William McManus, have clarified that there are no credible threats in the city that they have discovered, the department is stepping up patrols, particularly on the Gay Strip. Several police officers were assigned to the vigils held on Sunday and Thursday.
“The violence that happened in Orlando was really heavy, but it’s nothing new,” said local organizer Arty Trejo. “I think we see it everyday. We see (transgender) folks being murdered, we see queer folks being antagonized, we see queer individuals being policed and usually it happens to LGBTQIA people of color as well.”
Rocha expressed that sense of perpetual unease, even in “safe spaces” like the bars on the Strip.
“As a queer trans woman of color I am always looking over my shoulder,” she said. “That fear is always there no matter what, even within safe spaces.
“So while we have been, for decades and decades, making safe spaces for ourselves, there has always been that notion that we weren’t safe. There are places where we can be ourselves without worry of judgment, but there are not places where we can go to be ourselves and not worry about someone trying to hurt us. There are no places like that.”
The vigil was largely free of the explicit political discourse that has gripped the nation since Sunday. There were only passing references to gun control legislation from the speakers. A 15-hour filibuster led by U.S. Sen. Christopher S. Murphy (D-Connecticut) made headlines this week and ended just before 2 a.m. Thursday morning with an agreement between Republican and Democratic Senate leaders to hold votes on two gun control amendments.
Top image: From left: Nathaniel Barrera and Joely Mojica light candles in honor of those who passed away in Orlando. Photo by Kathryn Boyd-Batstone.
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What does the I and A stand for at the end of LGBTQIA? We keep adding letters, where does it all end?
Also, do we even have to add the “Q” to the end of LGBT? What does the Q add that is not covered by the other 4 letters? In fact, we can probably get rid of the L since lesbians are also considered gay, which is covered by the G. And how about the B? I think bisexuals need to just pick a team, so let’s get rid of that, too. That leaves G and T, so from now on, I’m just going to use GT, which can also mean gifted and talented, which many in the GT community are.
Wow, you should check out http://www.letmegooglethatforyou.com
“Pick a team…” Really? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised this kind of ignorance is still around.
It ends when the hate & discrimination ends. And, your comment tells me what I already know, we have a long road ahead of us.
Here is a lesson, (knowledge is power)
“Q” can mean “questioning” or “queer,” an umbrella term
“I” is for “intersex,” someone whose anatomy is not exclusively male or female
“A” stands for “ally” (a friend of the cause) or “asexual,” characterized by the absence of sexual attraction.
Be aware that there’s a different generation of people coming of age, with different conceptions of gender and sexuality.
Mayor Taylor said, “…as a leader of this community to be here in unity and say that what happened was wrong.” It is clear she meant what happened in Orlando was wrong but the Mayor should recognize that what happened in that SA City Council meeting where she voted AGAINST the nondiscrimination ordinance was also wrong. In UNITY? Really, Mayor? You were AGAINST the LGBTQ community when you could have supported our fight for equal protection under the law.
The Pride Center’s Robert Salcedo said the LGBTQ people of SA are to meet Mayor Taylor “halfway.” We have done that already when she tried her best to make us less than full citizens worthy of the same protections in housing and employment that she and her family enjoy.
How “nice” of Mayor Taylor to “support” us during our grief. Why not support us in preventing discrimination against us? She had an opportunity to do that but her religion prevented her from doing the right thing. I guess Mayor Taylor is comfortable with “love thy neighbor” but don’t give all your neighbors equal rights. That is what her action on the NDO vote tell us.
And the same — if not much more — goes to those Christian Republicans running Texas: Dan Patrick (in a snit over what folks have in their britches as they go about their business in restrooms). Ken Paxton (who urged county clerks to not issue marriage licenses to certain couples [you know, those sinful same-sex ones] adding that he (meaning the state coffers) will subsidize any resulting legal costs those clerks run up by failing to separate their state duties from their church beliefs], These elected officials are DIRECTLY responsible for ALL violence perpetuated against LGBTQ people as their finely crafted homophobia contributes mightly to the pervasive homophobia in our culture.
Where’s that good ol’ US Constitution (does “separation of church and state” ring a bell?) when it doesn’t serve your hateful purpose, Dan & Ken & Greg, too?
Thanks for the prayers, Mayor, I guess. But it seems to me they were said only to make you feel better. They haven’t done the LGBTQ people of San Antonio any good at all.
PS: My regards, accusatory as they are, to your former colleague and accomplice Elisa Chan.
Whose response is more reflective of political life in a modern, pluralistic society, and which one sounds more hateful?
1. “Where two parties’ rights are irreconcilably in conflict, we’ll just have to agree to disagree. Regardless, I’m praying for you and hurting with you in this time.”
2. “Shut up! I’m turning my back on you and not listening. Agree with us 100% or you’re a bigot!”
The LGBT movement errs in considering the first to be the extreme position; in reality, it’s the moderate position. The opposite of “accept us 100%” is “I reject you 100%”—but that’s Westboro Baptist, not Ivy Taylor. Through the media, however, the LGBT movement has won control of the narrative to where even Ivy Taylor can be seen as a hateful bigot no different than the masked Fred Phelps guy. An honest media would examine the different positions and not fan the flames of polarization on this issue by lumping everyone into either/or categories.
I don’t hate Mayor Taylor. I hate that she allowed her religion to dictate the rights of a good number of San Antonians.
As for her prayers and condolences being helpful. We’ve heard prayers and condolences after EVERY mass shooting. How’s that working for ya? It ain’t working for me and at this point falls in the “talk is cheap” category.
In fact, I think Mayor Taylor’s pay should be docked for the official time she spent praying. That is not part of her governmental duty. Why should she get paid for HER agenda?
Mayors, senators, governors, congresspeople can pray all they want. Just not on my dime, please. Do the job you were elected to do. Pray when you aren’t doing the business of government. Or just pray silently (Isn’t that good enough? Matthew 6:5 actually agrees with me on this one).
I guess I will concede that Mayor T has met the gay community halfway — she made us half-citizens by not allowing LGBTQ people the same full protections as the heterosexuals of SA (including herself and her husband). What will she do if her child happens to be gay as an adult and is discriminated against in employment or housing? Will her prayers be sufficient to remedy that situation?
I don’t want Mayor Taylor or anyone for that matter to accept us 100%. I don’t care if she accepts me at all. I just want her to allow all gay people in SA to have 100% of the rights everyone else has.
She can make fun of how I look or how I talk or who my friends are. The First Amendment protects her speech. But she didn’t think my employer should be prohibited from firing me for being who I am. And Motel Six has the right to refuse me a room if they figure out I’m gay. And Mayor Taylor would be on the side of my boss and Motel Six.
Does this make me angry? You bet it does. Angry enough to be sure I vote according to my conscience. And Mayor Taylor’s conscience prevented me from voting for her.
Please don’t lump all gay people of SA as rude protestors. Most of us are just fed up second-class citizens.
Preach, Daniel. Also, was this supposed to be an opinion piece or a real piece of unbiased journalism? All I see is some straight girl apologizing for the mayor because she doesn’t know any better and wasn’t directly affected by Ivy Taylor’s decisions.
Some of you all need to seek counseling and let the past go.
I applaud Mayor Ivy for coming out as our leader to lead us in prayer despite your non-compassion for the people of Orlando, my second home.
I know she has not been a friend to the LGBT Community but this anger does not make sense especially since WE WON the NDO…so your anger does not make any sense especially since you hang on to that hate from that meeting.
Let it go so we can start building bridges…instead people like you continue to rip apart this community due to your hate. Protesters are the reason why LGBT Community members did not attend…they did not want to attend a protest, only a vigil. Protesters kept LGBT Citizens away, not Mayor Ivy.
The protesters showed they have no respect for the community…they couldn’t even stay silent during a PRAYER. Such a lack of respect for those trying to pray and for the people of Orlando.
Keep this in mind, the Orlando Terrorist Hate Crime occurred in the most LGBT friendly City, with a very pro-LGBT Mayor, in a district with an Out Lesbian Commissioner…so this could have happened anywhere.
Yes, Ben, a shooting such as occurred in Orlando could have happened here. As I looked at the pictures and names of the murdered, I kept thinking that my friends and I could easily had been those shining young people dancing on a Saturday night but a few decades back.
Homophobia is rampant in our culture, fed by anti-gay legislation, hate groups and the dictates of organized religion. Any government official who votes against proposed LGBTQ legislation (as Taylor did with the NDO) or propose anti-LGBTQ bills & lawsuits (as Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton have done with the terror of transgender people in the bathroom that accords with their gender identities) are complicit in the deaths and injuries in Pulse. Your actions have consequences and legislating against a population of Americans (LGBTQ) validates the homophobia in the minds of a good number of Americans. And a few of those Americans have guns and will choose to use them.