Kilat Fitzgerald / Winonan

Tuesday Oct. 11 marked National Coming Out Day, and Winona State University celebrated the day with a week full of activities, beginning with social justice educator and Black Lives Matter Minneapolis Co-Founder Adja Gildersleve discussing the activism behind it.

Coming Out Day began in 1988 on October 11 to honor the first March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights the year before. This recent 28th anniversary serves as a mile marker for the movement, being a year after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage across all 50 states. However, as Gildersleve explained, there is still much more work to be done.

The presentation, titled “Not This Era, Resisting Erasure in Our Movements.” Brought to light several figures that are not well known to the public because they did not fit the picture that mainstream media would have preferred.  Claudette Colvin was the first person to be arrested for resisting bus segregation in Montgomery, Ala., as opposed to Rosa Parks. It was determined by leaders of the NAACP at the time, she was not “respectable” enough, because she was a pregnant teenager. For this reason, her status as a pioneer in the Civil Rights Movement was erased. It is this politically motivated rewriting of history that Gildersleve is working to combat.

The session was an exploration of the dynamic between the two civil rights efforts of the LGBTQ Community and Black Lives Matter, while showing how they both fight to make life better for erased individuals.

“Our movements right now are saying ‘no more.’ We’re here for each other, and we’re really seeing what liberation looks like,” Gildersleve said.

Director of Inclusion and Diversity Alex Hines,  said, “We offer a great co-curricular programs on campus. Social Justice leadership retreats to provide the skills for your toolbox to have these conversations. They’re not always going to be comfortable conversations.”

Gildersleve fights for the rights of the LGBTQ agenda and Black Lives Matter, both an important issue in many people’s daily lives. However, in the past the two movements have been painted by some media outlets as having opposing views. An embodiment of this perceived conflict was seen during the aftermath of the Proposition 8 in the state of California. Proposition 8 was seen as a defeat for the LGBTQ community, as it approved a statewide ban on same-sex marriage.

Afterwards, a poll was released stating, “70 percent of the black voters were in favor of proposition eight. We know now that’s not true. It turns out that was a false number,” Gildersleve said.

At the time, however, it was an opportunity for channels to pit the two groups against each other. Due to the ever-present permeation of white supremacy, activists felt the pressure to compartmentalize a part of their sexual identity to prioritize their racial identity. Gildersleve showed how the two movements are not antagonistic, but can work together for mutual progression.

“The black community was blamed for Proposition 8 happening,” Gildersleve said. “That was unfair.”

-By Kilat Fitzgerald