They were dancing, they were celebrating Pride, and they should’ve been safe.
But eight years ago, 49 beautiful lives were stolen & many more were forever impacted by the shooting at Pulse Nightclub.
More than ever, we must work together to combat hate—and disarm it. pic.twitter.com/3yah7YuLdp
— Gabrielle Giffords (@GabbyGiffords) June 12, 2024
"Eight people wearing angel wings stood in front of the memorial walls at the former Pulse nightclub, each representing a year that has passed since the horrific attack. They said a prayer and called out the names of their loved ones."https://t.co/3dRodov0Z1
— GLAAD (@glaad) June 12, 2024
… The commemoration of the tragic event began early in the morning, with a ceremony at the former nightclub. There, people marked the exact moment the shooting started.
It was 2:02 a.m. when the shots first rang out, and also the time eight years later when dozens of people came together to remember the victims.
Eight people wearing angel wings stood in front of the memorial walls at the former Pulse nightclub, each representing a year that has passed since the horrific attack. They said a prayer and called out the names of their loved ones.
Many of them spent time quietly looking at the pictures and messages left for the 49 victims.
The people at the ceremony on Wednesday morning include family members and survivors — including one man who was shot twice and had to hide in the bathroom for three hours on June 12, 2016…
The city now owns the nightclub site, and the mayor has promised to get a permanent memorial done by this time in 2026…
Eight years ago today, 49 lives were taken in the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida. That kind of hateful violence is designed to make us live in fear.
But, as @bjoewolf says, our community responded with unapologetic love. Now, we must honor them with action. pic.twitter.com/zOIC0Fk84V
— Human Rights Campaign (@HRC) June 12, 2024
Today marks 8 years since the horrific, hate-fueled attack on the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando.
Our nation continues to mourn the 49 souls taken that day, and we continue marching in their memory to end bigotry and senseless gun violence. pic.twitter.com/axw9BPaGzv
— Katherine Clark (@WhipKClark) June 12, 2024
Orlando Rep. Maxwell Frost got emotional during a House speech commemorating the anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting that killed 49 people in 2016. Frost railed against lawmakers' inaction on gun violence. pic.twitter.com/UKO3PdbLqc
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) June 12, 2024
The city of Orlando is holding a ceremony to remember the 49 people who were killed in the Pulse nightclub mass shooting eight years ago today.
Human Rights Campaign National Press Secretary Brandon Wolf, who survived the shooting, spoke to @jdbalart. pic.twitter.com/83xi8t0Rcx
— MSNBC Reports (@MSNBC_reports) June 12, 2024
I last posted this personal story in 2022. https://t.co/GgY4ydsNok
— JoeMyGod (@JoeMyGod) June 12, 2024
TBone
Pooty just can’t keep it in his pants, he’s got to wave it around in public.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/12/americas/russian-navy-cuba-intl/index.html
A group of Russian Navy ships, including a nuclear-powered submarine (unarmed!), arrived in Cuba on Wednesday morning in a sign of strengthening ties between the two Cold War allies.
Hey Pooty, you’re embarrassing yourself.
geg6
It’s all so sad and senseless. And infuriating.
bbleh
And sadly, there is a substantial segment of our population who consider this Righteous and Deserved (if somewhat regrettable) and another larger segment who will go along with that if not agreeing fully.
All Good People of course. Worship regularly, very Moral, very nice.
tommyspoon
Lifted from my Fb Memories:
“Pulse sounds an awful lot like Tracks, the massive dance club in SE DC where I learned to appreciate house music, outrageous costumes, shirtless sailors playing volleyball in the back patio, and, of course, LGBTQ people.
“Take care of each other,” one of the Tracks DJs used to say as the music wound down and all of us, gay and straight, stumbled out into the night.
“Please, take care of each other.”
Nukular Biskits
Has any national “conservative”/Republican figure commented on this anniversary?
bbleh
@Nukular Biskits: they just haven’t quite yet worked out the pitch for Second Amendment Morality. But don’t worry; they’ll get there.
japa21
@TBone: Only place they’re safe from Ukraine.
Darkrose
I’m surprised Tiny Boots hasn’t banned commemorations of the shooting because DEI.
TBone
@japa21: 💙
Scout211
Reading JoeMyGod’s post brings me to tears . . .again.
Thank you, AL.
Rob
@Darkrose: That thought crossed my mind too.
TBone
Not pussyfooting around, they’re going full Nazi with loudspeakers.
https://www.texastribune.org/2024/06/12/true-texas-project-conference-christian-nationalism/
Nuke from orbit
I can’t bring myself to quote the front woman. Fucking horrendous.
SomeRandomGuy
Um. I wonder if this will resonate, in some ways, more than a school shooting, where the memories move with time. The Pulse will always be a shrine; it will always be where the remembered, and memory keepers, were on that fateful day. In fewer than a dozen years, all school shooting victims have literally “moved on,” even if there are commemorations, the populace isn’t forced to re-reckon with the tragedy, as part of the same community.
Maybe that should change? Demonstrations on/near grounds to mark school shootings, “never forget – it can be ‘never again’.” You’d need to work with the students and families, of course. But it could be awkward for Republicans to explain why there are *so many* calls to remember.
Sorry – my brain is stuck in “how can we use this anguish, to stop the people who cause it?” mode.
laura
I am heartened by the Yutes of America coming into their adulthood, their political power and their numbers. I hope with every fiber of my being that they dismantle the sick gun culture, gun by gun by gun, and make owning a gun and ammunition so expensive and so encased in strict liability and insurance and (waves broadly at sand in the gears of these machines of war and death and sorrow) rejects the bullshittery that is school shooter training/traumatizing. It hope that it feels like a cathartic full body heave of purging bile and sickness. I hope I’m alive for that day.
I hope that those of you who have experienced the sickness of gun violence find comfort and hope in any way or anywhere or with anyone that brings you peace.
eclare
Gawd I cannot stop crying.
TBone
I was so pissed when they took me off my flight to Texas that I drove all the way there from PA. This is how I feel today. 🎶
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kW3Hzedn7D4
Pink Tie
This is not an open thread, right? What’s Putin doing here?
I still remember being on our family beach vacation and seeing the news, and all of us sobbing at the breakfast table. Crying now, especially after reading the Joe My God remembrance with the ringing phones. It is beyond sad.
TBone
Oops, sorry for the off topics.
Rachel Bakes
@SomeRandomGuy: Today is graduation day for Newtown, CT home to Sandy Hook elementary school. Their graduating class is smaller than it should be due to more senseless gun-loving. Bludgeoning people with the senseless loss by remembering such events and sites.
my daughter was a first grader 10 miles away from Sandy Hook that day. It still hits me how close.
O. Felix Culpa
@TBone: You know what, I found this comment jarring and unseemly given the post topic. Apart from this NOT being an open thread, you couldn’t have allowed one opportunity to honor the dead before going off topic? Not cool at all. Fucking Putin can wait.
There are not only 49 lives to mourn, but also allyship needed for the LGBTQ and BIPOC lives facing an increasingly hostile and dangerous political climate. Maybe try that on for size.
ColoradoGuy
@SomeRandomGuy: Permanent markers are an excellent idea. People died because of hate, and they need to be remembered.
Maybe one fine day the USA will finally adopt the Australian solution for gun violence.
TBone
@O. Felix Culpa: I already apologized above in case you missed it. I can’t help but think of the Russian ties to all of this (*waves hand) via the NRA.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/changing-story-nra-and-russia
SomeRandomGuy
@TBone: Consider this hypothesis.
Lots of Christians in this nation still believe Black people bear the Mark of Cain, meaning they were *supposed* to be slaves, it was Divine Right that gave a slaver full power to terrorize people into working for them. None of them say it out loud any more – they know better! – but they still believe it.
They realize that their ludicrous “mark of cain” bullshit is so laughable that *no one* is going to adopt it, unless they were born into a nation whose original sin wasn’t slavery, but the arrogance of thinking that their own God, so loving and just, actually *blessed* their cruelty.
(Keep this in mind next time any asswipe says they think our founding documents were inspired by God-by-which-they-mean-their-vision-of-God… not “providence” who provides wisdom and methods to help a nation, but God who gives fucking *orders*.)
Honestly, I can’t find any other explanation for the *desperation* of people. I hate to think it, because, you know, *eeew.* It’s one thing to have a problem in one’s nation, but, a bunch of losers who believe in doctrines hundreds of years past decency?
TBone
@SomeRandomGuy: 💔💙💔
Pink Tie
@O. Felix Culpa: exactly. I don’t need to read about Texas Christian Nationalists in this thread, either. They can wait… and wait…
And you’re also correct about how this has to remind us all about the danger and hostility relentlessly attacking LGBTQ+ people at all levels of our society. Not to mention the fear so many feel just going into public places and fearing gun violence.
OzarkHillbilly
I want to thank Gabby Giffords for posting up the pictures of every single person who died there. I took the time to study their faces and feel the loss. Not that I will remember them tomorrow, but for a few moments I was forced to face that loss in a world where it is all too easy to forget.
O. Felix Culpa
@TBone:
I didn’t see your apology. It took me a while to compose my comment, I was so upset by your insensitive post. And frankly, your follow-up seems more like a justification for posting barely related Russian shit than engaging with the issue at hand.
One of the lovely things said in the videos AL posted by Pulse survivor Brandon Wolf, who lost two friends that night, was that his intention is to honor them through positive action, to build the better world they worked for. His words were more eloquent than that, but the gist is what I choose to hold onto and commemorate tonight. Peace, out.
karen marie
@O. Felix Culpa: Your hectoring is more of a problem here than TBone’s interjection about Putin. Every time I refresh, it’s you with more hectoring.
Sister Golden Bear
@SomeRandomGuy:
It’s worth noting that — if I recall correctly — it’s illegal in Florida to teach about the Pulse massacre in schools.
Those who ban learning about history intend to repeat it. Maybe not with another mass shooting, but the Christofascists regularly talk openly about killing LGBTQ people and the “biblical” justifications for doing so. At best they’re stoking stochastic terrorism, at worst….
Harrison Wesley
@TBone: Wow, there are some blasts from the past there – I have a sister and brother-in-law who live in Nacogdoches, which was Louie’s bailiwick (no doubt you’ve heard of gohmerta, the traditional code of stupidity). Fortunately SFASU is located in Nac, so it’s not as red as the rest of the district.
And Paul Gottfried? Wow…..sometimes when I went to visit LOML in Harrisburg, we’d go out for some aimless PA touring and drive by Elizabethtown. Never had a mind to drop in and say hi Paul, though.
Sister Golden Bear
Hey folks, the Russian ties to the NRA are worth exploring, as are Texas Christian Nationalists, and the Christofascists use of “the Mark of Cain,” but could you all give us just one thread to focus on remembering our dead.
I realize it’s BJ, so every thread ends up with OT, but It’s not like those topic wouldn’t still be worth discussing in a thread later tonight, or tomorrow.
Harrison Wesley
@Sister Golden Bear: I believe the official Florida government response to anybody broaching these issues is “Groomergroomergroomerquackquackquack.” Or something equally compelling.
Josie
@karen marie: I disagree. The comment was not hectoring. It was simply a request that another commenter respect the point of the post and give the rest of us room to understand the grief felt by so many of our fellow Americans. There are plenty of open threads for us to post on other subjects.
Harrison Wesley
@Sister Golden Bear: You’re right, of course, and this isn’t some incident from the distant past. I apologize for wandering off into the weeds. Probably (hopefully) everybody who posts here remembers. But the state of Florida does make a concerted effort to make sure that everybody forgets. Which also makes it more likely to happen again.
Jackie
@Rachel Bakes: Seeing Sandy Hook survivors graduating high school, and remembering their missing classmates, coupled with the Pulse massacre anniversary has really gut-punched me today.
Sister Golden Bear
@Scout211: JoeMyGod’s post brings me to tears every year.
I think one major thing straight folks don’t get is how gay/lesbian bars* like Pulse and Club Q are far more than just bars to us. They’re gathering places, community centers, they’re where you go to find help when your parents have just disowned you for coming out, or and when you’ve left your small repressive town for a better life in the wide open big city. But most importantly they’re refuges and sanctuaries for us — one reason the issue of straight women bridal party stops there is a touchy one (especially before marriage equality became law).
So the Pulse massacre was devastating** precisely because it targeted one of the few places we feel safe, where we feel free to be ourselves, where we don’t have to worry about what straights will think. The best analogy I can make is that it felt similar to how things felt after 9/11. Yes, it was that traumatic for the LGBTQ communities.
For me the worst part of the aftermath of Pulse was all the dead silence from my straight friends and co-workers. It felt like I was in an alternate reality where Pulse never happened. It felt like no one gave damn. Finally, one of my co-workers asked if I was OK, and I broke down crying.
I realize that after something like Pulse, it’s hard to know what to say. But that’s one reason we have platitudes, like “I’m so sorry to hear what happened.” They at least could’ve said platitudes. But they didn’t. And the band played on.
*Though sadly there’s only about a dozen lesbian bars left in the entire U.S.
**As was the Club Q massacre, but Pulse was the one that shattered any illusions we might be safe in gay bars.
Jackie
@Sister Golden Bear: I’m sending {{{hugs}}} to you.💔
prostratedragon
“Vamos Nina”
Roughly, Don’t be ashamed, Nina, for what is your shame compared to that brutal barfly who beat and spit upon you?
O. Felix Culpa
@Sister Golden Bear:
Stopping back in to say thank you for this. You said beautifully what I was unable to. As MVP stated in the opening tweet, “We pause to grieve and remember … and we will continue to fight.”
Melancholy Jaques
@Jackie:
It is appalling that Sandy Hook did nothing to reduce the power of the gun fanatics. And equally appalling that the Pulse massacre did not reduce or at least shame the open hatred of LGBTQ+ people.
We have to keep on pushing against evil.
Sister Golden Bear
@Harrison Wesley: As I said earlier, it’s BJ, so every thread ends up going off topic eventually. What felt insensitive to me is that it was the first comment, and that it’s not your typical type post. While unintentional, it came across to me as the sort of “silence of the straights” that I talked about in my previous comments.
Kind of equivalent to doing some in a 9/11 commemoration post when there’s folks who were directly impacted by 9/11. Myself, I had family and friends who knew six people killed in 9/11, so I saw their grief, I have good friends in NYC who are still traumatized by it, and had there been more hijackers, I likely would have been injured, or possibly killed, in an LA attack since I worked on the 51st floor of a building across the street from the target. So it’s also anniversary that’s still raw for me.
But it is what is, and I’m not going to hold grudges about it — at least after tonight.
Sister Golden Bear
@Melancholy Jaques:
We mourn the dead, and then fight like hell for the living. Because that’s what we have to do. Every year, year after year
BTW folks, if you haven’t read the JoeMyGod piece, please do.
rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun)
We might have felt safe in a gay bar, but Paul Broussard’s murder taught this (closeted) gayling that the only thing that waited for him outside the closet was a fist.
“It gets better”. Maybe if you’re a white middle-class straight-passing gay guy, but not for the rest of us.
RaflW
While attitudes about trans and gender expansive folks are being driven negative for political gain by Republicans, so far they aren’t getting anywhere with plain LGB bashing. It’s a losing position, so I dearly hope GOPers lose over it.
“The [LA Times] poll, released during Pride Month, found that only 28% of American adults believe that same-sex relations are always or almost always wrong, down from 72% the last time the poll was conducted in 1985.
Additionally, 14% said they would be very upset if their child came out as gay or lesbian, down from 64% in 1985. And 77% of people now favor job anti-discrimination protections for gays and lesbians, up from 51%.”
I see my niece, in high school in a reddish, exurban county having friends who are gay, bi, and a few even who have tried on different pronouns, to a ‘no big whoop’ attitude. Seeing that nationally, parents and other adults have come around that much on gay and lesbian kids is big.
We have to beat back all the anti-trans shit. But the contemptible sh*ts like little boots in Florida are not changing minds about the ghey
And note that last one: We hear all the time that Republicans are ant-regulation, but if the 77% is to be believed, that’s gotta contain some Rs and definitely lots of R-leaning indies.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: Yes, seeing all those beautiful young faces and knowing they were in a place where they felt they were safe to just be themselves, and dance and have fun. But they weren’t safe at all. Hate stole them from the world. It’s the job of all of us to fight the hate everywhere we encounter it.
satby
And thank you Anne Laurie, for this reminder of the anniversary of the Pulse murders.
We have too many tragic anniversaries of slaughter in this country.
satby
@Josie: Agree. Sometimes it’s important to read the room.
UncleEbeneezer
@Sister Golden Bear:
This is heartbreaking. So sorry you had to go through that.
Mousebumples
That JoeMyGod article is good, in a devastating way. Thanks for sharing, AL.
I remember going out with friends to a gay bar in Des Moines one night during my college years. Much cheaper to drink at home, but we had tons of fun dancing – and I think there might have been a drag show that brought us out, if memory serves.
A great environment to be whoever you are or might be. I’d never been to Pulse, but I mourn those who were lost.
(and I’m trying not to think about other school shooting victims of gun violence, with my daughter so close to kindergarten)
I remain hopeful that the school shooting generation is going to vote to change this country for the better. Let’s work to do it together.
cain
@Pink Tie:
Christian nationalists and right wing media is exactly why we had some MF going into Pulse and killing 49 souls.
Deep sympathies to the families on this day.
Pink Tie
@cain: I believe the Pulse shooter was Afghan-American and Muslim. Anyway, my point was that posting about some CN conference in Texas has nothing to do with a thread dedicated to mourning the victims of a horrific hate crime.
opiejeanne
Pulse was such a shock. Horrible. So was Q Club.
In February of 2020, there was an arson attempt at the Queer/Bar in Seattle on a night when it was crowded. The man who set the fire was quickly arrested and the fire was put out before it became a tragedy, but the fire was intended to harm the people inside. It was a hate crime but I don’t know if itwas charged as such. He was finally sentenced in October 2023 and only got 4 years in prison.
Queer/Bar was a popular place in Seattle before Covid and both of our daughters had visited it several times with gay friends, and one night the youngest was a backup dancer for a friend who decided to do a drag performance.
When we heard about the attempted arson we were shocked back to the memory of Pulse and Club Q, and knew how terrible it might have been that night, but ultimately the victims would just have been another bunch of statistics if the worst had happened, because it’s so easy to file terrible things away if they don’t affect us.
I wish humans weren’t like this. I wish people could see each other as people.
Gloria DryGarden
Sympathy and deep condolences to families and survivors of this shooting and of any hate crimes against LGBTQ People.
I feel so angry and helpless in the face of persons who use Jesus, and some book, as a moral excuse to harm people.
Sending out prayers, and the energy of burning sage, and an entreaty to the angels, to surround everyone LGBTQ or affected by this and other similar tragedies. Praying for protections
I love the image of people dressed as angels, standing outside the nightclub site.
I too have been nourished by going dancing or hanging out in gay bars with friends. I’ve been cradled, while sobbing, in a lesbian bar in Denver, decades ago, surrounded by my then-lesbian sister and a pile of her pals. They didn’t care that I was crying over a man, they just cared for me, as a woman, in a safe place. The gay community has been on my positive radar ever since. So grateful to everyone I know in this community.
Sister Golden Bear
@rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun):
I once had a friend visit from a smaller town in South Central Ohio, and the thing that amazed her the most were the people smoking outside the SF gay bar we were at. Not CA’s smoking ban, rather that it was something that was far too dangerous to do at the (unmarked) gay bar at home. Doing so risked a drive by shooting. This was around 2010.
Not that SF was a paradise. Twice I narrowly escaped getting gay bashed, and the training for the SF Pride Parade safety monitors always emphasized that people needed to be especially situationally aware at the disembarkation area at the end of the parade. That’s because there were haters looking for gay people, since it was away from the main parade/celebration area.
Sister Golden Bear
There’s a saying that coming out means living as your authentic self at the cost of safety.
cain
@Pink Tie: Fair enough.
SectionH
@Sister Golden Bear: Yep. Tears from Hillcrest in SD, and doubling down. July is Pride Month here, because SD was that out front.
Matt
If I’ve learned anything from the last few months, it’s that the “correct” response to this would have been to kill a couple thousand random Talibangelicals and/or their children.