We Are Here

 This was my speech at the opening ceremony of the first LGBTQIA+ Pride in Bonners Ferry, Idaho on June 21st, 2024

We Are Here

By McCallum J. Morgan

Here we are. We are here.

Sometimes it feels a little like survival, but we’re still here, we’ve been here, and we will continue to be here.

For just a second, I want to acknowledge the resistance we’ve faced. The haters out there—right out there in Bonners Ferry, Idaho.

When this event was announced, it felt like tensions exploded. We had horrible comments referring to this as a “movement" being imported into this town. I found a letter, left at the door, asking why we wanted to bring “those people” here.

They see us as a shadowy contagion, creeping across the land. Something new and fearful. But we’ve always been here.

This is the stigma I want to break. The idea that we are “other.” We are not. We’re all human. We are their sisters, brothers, siblings, parents, cousins, friends, neighbors. We’re already here. And that’s all we want. To be here. Fully.

Pride is about removing the veil. The lepers bells. We’re not the monsters in the closets, the boogeymen outside the windows. We should’t have to lie about who we are.

We belong to the light, not the shadows. They’ve pretended we don’t exist and ignored us, chased us back into the gloom when we tried to make ourselves known. There’s nothing to be afraid of—not for them.

We’ve been afraid, though, haven’t we?

Afraid of ourselves for what they made us believe we are. Afraid of them, when their own fear hardened into violence. Afraid that we would lose our friends and families. Afraid we would always be the leper, the pariah, hiding on the outskirts.

And we found each other there.

Pride is community. It’s holding each other up because no one else will. Its telling each other: You’re not alone. And then we tell the world, we’re here.

We claim our place in the sunlight. Alongside them. They think we’re trying to take a higher place than them. There are centuries of inequality still clinging like cobwebs, holding us back, even as they push us down. But we found each other. And we’re not so easy to push away now.

Pride is love in the face of hate. Love in the face of fear.

We’re their siblings and they, are ours.

I grew up here in this town. It was a matrix of homophobia. I internalized so much of it that it took me until my early twenties to even come out to myself. How many of us grew up alone like that? Here, and in every town across America—across the world. No one should have to grow up like that.

They’re afraid of change. But we are change. 

And we are already here.

Notes:

I would like to welcome you all here to Bonners Ferry’s first Pride. We couldn’t have done this without the wonderful volunteers who put this together: Bobby Wire-Roberson, Alan Tozier, Jessica Tingley (without whom there would be no Pearl Theater to even host this), everyone who donated money to put this on: the Boundary County Human Rights Task Force, Lani, and more. I want to thank Crystll Blu for being our guest of honor, and Matthew Danielson—our Dj, and all the musicians, poets, and drag queens who will be performing tomorrow.

And I especially want to thank each and every one of you who showed up tonight.

Happy Pride and Free Palestine.

Video here