Editor,
I’ve never had to be brave. I grew up in a family who loved me unconditionally, who could provide me with a comfortable life, who would accept me no matter what. I have never once in my life been afraid to live my life loudly — to be myself, unreserved.
Friday afternoon, I walked to my first protest, clutching posters I had spent four hours creating, declaring my queerness to the world in the spirit of resistance. I walked through the campus, and I was afraid.
I was afraid of what was happening and what would happen, both that night and in the coming years. I kept imagining what would happen if someone took issue with my identity. I was worried for the safety of my friends who walked with me. I was angry that I felt the need to be afraid.
When I arrived in front of the SUB, I expected to find people who were similarly angry, similarly afraid. I expected to change minds, to somehow dissuade people from their hate, to make them see me as a human being who deserves her place in the world.
What I did not expect was to walk away from campus, in the dark and the cold, buoyed and hopeful, confident in a way I had not felt for weeks — not because I had slayed the dragon I had come to slay, but because I saw others taking up arms, ready and willing to fight by my side.
We are human. We are vulnerable.
We are not afraid of some abstract threat of totalitarian government. We are not afraid for the sake of our principles. We are afraid that if things do not change we, or someone we love dearly, will be murdered in a split-second decision of hate — left to die in the street, bleeding and alone.
It is no one’s place to tell a person that they cannot scream and yell and fight tooth and nail against that. You cannot ask us to stand silent while we watch our safety and our security crumble around us.
Protests are protests. They will be moved. They will be dispersed. While mass silence is a more extreme form of non-violence (and make no mistake, the protest on Friday was indeed non-violent), it is no exception.
To those who are either brave or blessed enough to be able to stand up and meet this kind of hate with anything but a visceral rage and fear, you have my respect and my blessing. I encourage you — I entreat you — to gather your friends, and if they do not turn you away at the door, enter these events.
Stand together among their ranks and make them feel your silence. Make them feel your dissent. Let them know that they are alone in this fight, while we remind each other that we are not. Not because we have nothing left to lose, but because we have so much left to fight for.
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Kathleen Asher
UNM student
