Changing the Conversation

The Friday before Pulse Nightclub’s Latin Night was the target of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history (read Marc Dones' thoughts on the impact of the tragedy in Orlando), I was in Boston at Machine Nightclub’s Latin Night. At this local gay nightclub packed for Pride weekend, my friend and I danced, waited too long at the bar for overpriced drinks, cheered Latinx drag performers and gogo dancers, and left before the bar closed to get a good night’s sleep for the rest of the celebratory weekend.

The next morning, the Saturday morning before Pulse Nightclub’s Latin Night, I hurried to the Boston Pride float I was walking with and took in an unexpected sight. Of the more than 50 people already there, about three quarters were wearing sombreros, in assorted colors and patterns, ready to march to represent a prominent LGBTQ-focused organization that has no unique ties to the Latinx community.

I exchanged a few words with my friends about it. Did you know about this? Whose idea was this? Should we say something?

Schools in every corner of the United States serve children who have experienced homelessness or are currently homeless. Nearly 2.5 million children are now homeless in our country each year—that’s one out of thirty children. Children in our schools have lived on the streets, in cars, and in motels. They’ve moved in and out of crowded emergency shelters. They've experienced severe violence, abuse, neglect, and hunger. Traumatic events like these occur before or during homelessness, or too often both.

Before I joined the Center for Social Innovation, I worked at a residential treatment program for adolescent girls with behavioral health issues. All had experienced severe or recurring trauma. Most were neglected or abused by a person close to them. For some, their childhood trauma included periods of homelessness. They had spent time on the streets, in shelters, doubled up with friends or family members, and in unstable housing where they were one crisis away from another bout of homelessness.