- On June 12, 2016,
I woke up like any other Sunday morning
and like any other millennial
instinctively checked my phone.
I immediately saw two words splashed
across news outlets and social media,
Orlando and shooting.
My first thought was oh it must be
about the shooting that happened last week.
So I shrugged, wrap a rainbow handkerchief around my neck,
and traversed the few blocks that separated my apartment
from the start of the Los Angeles Pride Parade.
It was then and there surrounded by a sea
of fellow LGBTQ marchers, surrounded by family,
that it became common knowledge
that a very similar celebratory crowd
of vibrant young people had just hours before
been gunned down at Pulse nightclub
in what would be called the worst mass shooting
in modern US history.
I realized throughout the following week as my friends
posted eulogies for victims who they knew in the massacre
that the degrees of separation between these events
and me don't exist anymore.
In fact, I wondered if they ever existed at all.
And it dawned on me that the longest,
most influential relationship I never knew I had
in my life is with mass shootings.
These tragedies have been brutally effective
in shaping my world view.
So I don't want to speak on this topic
as some self purported expert
like you'll see flooding your feeds,
but from a more sincere, experiential perspective.
I can remember exactly where I was and what I was doing
for every major massacre in my lifetime.
And more often than not
the victims and the perpetrators are around my age.
I am stuck in a cyclical pattern
of abuse in his relationship.
But it wasn't always like this
and it has gotten much, much worse.
When I was five years old,
a man crashed his pickup truck
into a chain restaurant called Luby's
about an hour and half from where I lived
and shot and killed over 20 people.
My father to calm my fears
recounted an infamous school shooting that had happened
in the 1960s as we drove passed the Clock Tower
at the University of Texas.
He pointed at it and reassured me
that was the last time something bad like this
happened around here.
These things don't happen often so don't be scared.
Little did he know at the time
that he had only lived through around 20 US mass shootings
before I was born.
By today I have lived through over 100 and counting
and it all began at Columbine.
I was 13 years old and I can vividly remember sitting
in front of my television set
in my living room watching the news replay
the scenes of countless students running out of the school
with their hands on their heads.
Teenagers my age were dangling
from broken windows trying to escape.
Columbine change everything.
And as the adults argued politics
we kids actually went through a massive tonal shift
when it came to our perspective
on our peers and our culture and security
and that's when I grew paranoid
because our parents had wars and we had Columbine.
I remember schools installing metal detectors
at their entrances and I remember that it became
a common sick practical joke for some idiot
to call a bomb threat just to watch everyone get evaluated.
I remember rock music and video games
and even the Internet being blamed.
And if you wore a trench coat you were a killer.
We were very quick and eager to turn on one another.
Everyone debated about who or what was at fault.
And if history has taught us anything
there is no easy answer.
Kids were dead and nothing was done.
And then 9/11 happened and our generation went
from cautiously skeptical to absolutely terrified.
Columbine ignited our fears as young citizens
then 911 defined it to be rampant, righteous and unending.
And why not? We were scared.
You wanted answers but instead of reaching for a common goal
we split ourselves in two and every conversation you had,
every fight online you'll see in the comments below
and every election year we witness
this endless back-and-forth as more people die
last resolutions are reached.
Years later while I was attending film school
at the University of Southern California
I was two weeks away from publicly premiering
a short film which had already wrapped
when the deadliest attack at that time happened
on the opposite coast on a campus much like mine.
And in some twisted sense of timeliness
my short film was a graphic critique of school shootings.
I remember a mother of one of my friends walked up to me
and remarked you should watch what you make
since it looks like your kind are prone to violence.
Virginia Tech like any other massacre
involving a wide array of players from different backgrounds
whether it was racial, religious, cultural,
brought forth and ugliness that direct affected me
for the first time.
And as we mourned the dead it struck me
that every time that this happens
it not only opens up an opportunity
to advance personal and political agendas,
it becomes top priority for most of us to do so.
And yet again kids were dead and nothing was done.
You have Omaha, Binghamton, Fort Hood twice.
Fort hood in the same town
as that Luby's cafeteria that was shot up in my childhood.
Schools, malls, churches, post offices, military bases,
a grocery store parking lot in Tucson.
And then a movie theater in Aurora
during a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises.
Where was I? Waiting to attend a midnight screening
of The Dark Knight Rises.
We all could have been those victims
excitedly waiting to watch a blockbuster on opening night.
No one was safe.
And then later that year over 20 people,
the majority being children on the first grade,
were shot and killed at Sandy Hook,
our little brothers and sisters,
our own children gunned down.
My gut reaction was well now things
will definitely have to change.
But it did not.
Little kids were dead and nothing was done.
Santa Monica, Santa Barbara, Marysville, Umpqua, Charleston,
I apologize if I'm forgetting some
but there's just too many to count.
So many that I am becoming so used
to turning from passionate rage
to desensitize resignation on a dime.
I only shrugged. I screamed and then I shrugged.
And then I forgot.
Our interconnectedness not only as a nation
but also as an international community.
The Internet, social media and bullet holes
are like the connected dots that link our generation
beyond each of the shores.
Paris my second home where my mother has lived
for over 17 years was hit by a series
of unfathomable terrorist attacks.
And my immediate bleak thought was my mother is dead.
Thankfully she was unharmed
but we have come to such a low point as a global society
where we assume the absolute worse
because it's how we already view
one another as human beings.
And then less than a month later San Bernardino happened
and my mother returned the favor
and had to call me to see if I was okay.
Our entire office on Sunset Boulevard
heard the sirens driving eastward to San Bernardino
less than an hour away.
In the following week we'd hold a security meeting
on what to do in an active shooter situation.
What was once video games and trench coats
has morphed into the red flag dechoir
for politicians who have ensured,
especially with our upcoming election,
that we are a country solely operating on our fear.
We have let the politicians and talking heads
and online forums dictate a conversation
that our generation needs to have
about our role in the fight against violence.
We grew up on these my shootings.
The victims and unfortunately the shooters
are people we all personally know.
Orlando provided a spotlight on a real issue
this disconnect between those who write the narrative
and those who are actually living it.
Most of our leaders are not what the victims were
primarily LGBTQ LatinX, black and young.
In fact many, many a politician
aim to marginalize those groups today.
We are passionate and over-educated,
but desensitized and underrepresented
and thus we become divided
just like the generations before us.
But instead we need to consider shutting the fuck up
for a second and actually doing something about it.
The patrons of Pulse were targeted because of who they were.
They were queer people of color
and US millennials out there all know
and love someone from those backgrounds
and not all politicians do.
It's fine to share their speeches in your opinions
even about this very video,
but posting in the infinite soapbox that is the Internet
is like prayer without action.
Contact your elected officials
because eventually we're gonna become
those elected officials.
Some merely shrugging at politics
instead of actively participating in it
will not change the game.
Let's get up all in their business
because if Orlando has taught us anything
it's that they need to know
that we cannot watch any more of our friends
and love ones die.
And I'll be damned if kids who are watching this right now
will grow up to be another statistic
because we blindly join a system
that loves to argue about problems
but refuses to produce actual results.
Mass shootings they have been my longest
most intelligible relationship, yes,
but from this moment on it will be I who defines it.
And when I look back on June 12, 2016,
I want not only remember the deaths of the innocent,
but what we did to finally make a change.
And finally to the LGBT community
know that you are brave and that you are strong and loved
and that we are with you.