Queer folx must be soul-keepers and dream-weavers, illusion-makers and earth-benders. We must resist breakage and remember the lessons of our ancestors – Marcia Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Harvey Milk (z”l), Cherríe Moraga, Leslie Feinberg(z’l), Crow Two-Spirit member Osh-Tisch, Miss Major Griffin-Gracy and so many other protectors. We must uphold their names as we persist in their memory. Florida, Oklahoma, Utah, the Dakotas and so many more – you target us, you attempt to shatter us, you denounce and condemn. We are too powerful for you and your tiny views, your privileged blinders and flailing fears. We are primordial and brilliant suns, not for you to hurl your rot onto the decrepit canvas of trans misogyny. We who are Jews know what hate means; we who are trans and queer Jews are all phoenix rising. We need us as the body needs breath. We also need our allies and our accomplices, each and every one, to show up, in whatever way possible. We have always been here, and we will continue. Gender cannot be bound, restrained, dismissed, disregarded or “rectified.”
We ancient partisans, battle-scarred and weary, will not “go quietly into the night”; our light is not yours to cast out. There is no darkness here, either – there is the beauty of the “all” and the “in-between’; and that which cannot be named. I promise you, my siblings, that we will survive, because we can do nothing less than that. I promise you, the fearful and the haters, that you will destroy yourselves, before you destroy the world. I promise to fight. Who will fight with me?
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Milwaukee born and raised, Sxdni Small grew up on the city’s Northwest side, in a Jewish household where books and community organizing were household staples. They attended Milwaukee Public Schools and then college in Stevens Point. Sxdni is a member of Emanu-el of Waukesha.
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Read more, What does it mean to be an American, a Jew and queer in 2025?
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