‘We keep us safe.’ Calls for self-defense echo in LGBTQ community after club shooting
The shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs has many calling for those in queer communities to take their safety into their own hands.
It was patrons’ actions that saved lives as the shooting unfolded inside Club Q in Colorado Springs on Saturday, Nov. 19 just before midnight. Ultimately, five people were killed and 25 were injured in the shooting, McClatchy News previously reported, and officials said it likely would have been more tragic.
An unidentified customer rushed toward the shooter while others fled from the gunshots, grabbed the shooter’s handgun and slugged him with it, Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers told the Associated Press. That customer and another then pinned the shooter to the ground until police arrived.
“It’s an incredible act of heroism,” Suthers said on NBC’s “Today.” “That act probably saved a lot of lives. There’s no question about that.”
It sparked a noticeable shift in how LGBTQ communities — and the prominent voices leading them — responded to the violence against their community. Many shared the phrase “we keep us safe” to advocate for more community members to follow the customers’ lead and defend their own safety.
Hate groups have increasingly targeted drag events in recent months, McClatchy News previously reported.
The shooter attacked the club the night before Transgender Day of Remembrance on Nov. 20, when LGBTQ people honor and remember their transgender peers who were killed in the previous year. Club Q was scheduled to host a drag brunch to mark the occasion.
For Erin Reed, an activist and legislative researcher, it was a show of armed solidarity against attacks on Saturday that helped bring her around to the idea of LGBTQ groups taking matters into their own hands. She shared a photo of a community defense force in Texas who defended a “Transgender Storytime” event by standing at the entrance with guns and Progress flags.
“I resisted the idea of needing armed protection for the longest time,” she wrote. “Last night, it was queer people who stopped the shooter. It is queer people who will defend each other.”
LGBTQ author and activist Dan Savage wrote a Twitter thread that explained the critical significance of nightclubs and the safe haven provided inside nightclub walls.
“It’s not just that gay bars are supposed to be a safe space,” he explained.
“Behind those doors we can forget — we can suspend our disbelief — and pretend the haters don’t exist. Just for a few hours,” he wrote. “An attack like this says ‘not even here.’... It’s not that they want us to exist out of sight. They don’t want us to exist at all.”
He compared the attack in a nightclub to the Stonewall Riots in New York City in 1969. The Stonewall Uprising marks when LGBTQ people, led by transgender women of color, fought back against repeated police raids of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar. It is widely accepted as the birth of the Pride movement.
“The modern LGBT civil rights movement began with an attack on a bunch of queer people — gay men, drag queens, trans women, butch dykes — being themselves behind closed doors,” he wrote and shared a chant used in the riots: “Out of the bars and into the streets!”
“If we’re not safe in there… behind closed doors… where they say they want us… we have no choice but to fight to make it safe everywhere, for all LGBT people,” he wrote.
Savage detailed how LGBTQ people were arrested in bedrooms, evicted from apartments or fired from jobs, all for being queer.
“We fought back then. We fought back last night,” he wrote. “And we’re going to keep fighting. Because if we’re not safe behind the closed doors of a gay bar — if they can’t let us have even that — then we’re not safe anywhere. So we will fight until we’re safe everywhere.”
Activists began speaking more openly about what they think is a need to defend queer communities. For some, that can look like firearms training, they said. But many also pointed out the importance of emergency medical training, such as learning CPR and methods to stop bleeding from gunshot wounds. Activists shared that gunshot victims can bleed out and die within five minutes, so every second counts.
One user stressed the importance of carrying an IFAK (individual first aid kit) for treating traumatic injuries and knowing how to safely apply a tourniquet, which applies pressure to stop bleeding.
“If for whatever reason you can’t own a gun, yet still want to contribute to community defense, please learn basic first aid,” they wrote on Twitter. “Knowing how to effectively stop bleeding and how to stabilize someone that’s been shot is honestly more important.”
This story was originally published November 21, 2022 at 5:57 PM with the headline "‘We keep us safe.’ Calls for self-defense echo in LGBTQ community after club shooting."
