Happy Pride to everyone in Key West, the Florida Keys, and beyond!

Every year, Pride is a reminder of where we've come from, a check-in with where we are, and a vision of where we're heading. We've come so far from the days of vice squads, overt criminalization of queerness, and casually accepted stigma. We've come from the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis. Compton's Cafeteria. Stonewall. Marsha and Sylvia. The Combahee River Collective. Kinsey. ACT UP. Queer Nation. Judith Butler. Harvey Milk. Laverne Cox. Janet Mock. Jim Obergefell. Our history is rich, varied, beautiful, complicated—and under attack.

We're in a moment when the forces of cultural normativity and restrictive power are mobilizing against the freedom to love and live authentically. Our trans siblings are being scapegoated for social ills perpetrated by those pointing fingers. Our immigrant siblings are detained and deported without due process. Our safe spaces are again at risk of police raids, as seen in Pittsburgh. Our history is being erased from schools. Our community is at risk.

And... we know our history. We have ancestors and elders who’ve been here before. We know how to take care of each other. We've learned how to organize strategically, with intersectionality and trickle-up justice as our compass. That closet door? Burned long ago to fuel the sacred bacchanal.

Pride started as a riot. It continues as an act of resistance and a celebration of life’s beautiful diversity.

This Pride, we live the words of Black trans activist and writer Raquel Willis:

“Let everything you feel be fertilizer: anguish, anxiety, fear, grief, joy, love, mourning, rage, sorrow, wanting, yearning. And let us not be distracted or deterred from our duties in the garden of liberation: honoring our place, taking the risk to bloom again and again, planting seeds of resilience, and leaving the soil richer for generations to come.”

Love is love. Community is everything.

Happy Pride.