Mari Esabel Valverde joined I Care If You Listen for their “5 Questions” series with composers:
The 19th Amendment was groundbreaking, but only for a frustratingly narrow group of individuals. Would you talk to us about an event, an activist, or piece of legislature that you would also want to be at the forefront of political discussion right now?
To have a feminist movement—to liberate us, to create art to memorialize it, to teach it to recollect its lessons, and to regard it as progress—while ignoring the works of BIPOC women and queer and/or trans or non-binary folks is setting a dangerously low bar. We have more than history in print. We have eachother, now, and it’s late. When the prevailing political ideology dismisses our fighting for genuine freedom as “un-American,” the hours are aching for us to pick up where revolution left off.
Can we shout out to Black and Brown trans women? Activists or not, we are all survivors, and I love and revere us. An LGBTQ history that ignores Miss Major Griffin-Gracy ignores Black trans history and thus tells not “the whole truth.” Similarly, we cannot adequately address immigrants’ rights or prison reform while ignoring the contributions of Bamby Salcedo. These are just two trailblazers who have devoted a lifetime to activism that many of us do not know.
And let’s shout out the Black and Brown transgender and non-binary brilliance of our very generation: actor and CEO of TransTech Social Enterprises Angelica Ross; illustrator, vlogger, and speaker Kat Blaque; singer Breanna Sinclairé; poet and writing coach Amir Rabiyah; and performance artist Alok Vaid-Menon, to name a few. Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi—actor, singer, dancer, author, playwright, and teacher—is my collaborator for an upcoming musical work titled “We Hold Your Names Sacred.” I enthusiastically mention these artists because they have so much to teach the world in a space and a time that is trying to erase all of us from existence.
My collective experiences have placed me at this intersection between vocal music, social justice advocacy, and my own half-Indigenous, transgender, female identity. And I am humbled to have had opportunities to create songs like “When the Dust Settles” in honor of the life of the aforementioned “veteran” of the Stonewall Riots Miss Major:
your heart bigger than any cage
even in the midst of so much loss
you remind us to dream
to hold tomorrow between our lips“When the Dust Settles” © 2018 by Amir Rabiyah
Our footprints on the path towards liberation will concretize only if we hasten to find, fund, and make way for those we have forgotten. Policy matters, of course, but your sisters will die waiting for legislation.[Tweet “When the prevailing political ideology dismisses our fighting for genuine freedom as “un-American,” the hours are aching for us to pick up where revolution left off.”]…