Pride Actions, June 8 2023
A few things you can do for Pride, plus a poem
by Carl Bettis
Hello! In this post I list a few ways to observe Pride Month 2023, and close with a poem about my childhood.
How to celebrate Pride Month
- Buy a book from Tenebrous Press. During June 2023, 15% of all proceeds from will go to The Trevor Project. I highly recommend the body horror anthology Your Body Is Not Your Body, but since I already have that one, I'll probably go for either Valkyrie Loughcrewe's CROM CRUACH - a Novella-in-Verse or the Brave New Weird anthology.
- Buy the StoryBundle 2023 Pride Bundle. Get great ebooks, support LGBTQIA+ authors, and you can direct 10% of your money to go to Rainbow Railroad.
- In general, buy books, art, zines, comics, music, clothes, whatever made by LGBTQIA+ creators.
- If you like something made by an LGBTQIA+ creator, let them know! Also, recommend them to your friends and social media followers.
- Donate to a nonprofit that does good work for the LGBTQIA+ community. A few to consider:
- If you can't afford to buy or donate, consider volunteering for a local LGBTQIA+ nonprofit.
- Educate yourself about legal/political LGBTQIA+ issues in your area. In the USA, a good place to start is with the Human Rights Campaign's Resources page. Vote411.org is also good, but it's not specifically focused on LGBTQIA+ issues.
- Then contact your elected representatives to let them know where you stand.
- And, of course, vote for candidates who stand for LGBTQIA+ rights.
- Practice daily activism. That doesn't mean you have to do something every day — it means always being ready to do something, such as countering homophobic or transphobic statements.
- Tell people what pronouns to use for you — in your online profiles, in Zoom calls, in your email signature. Even if you think you don't need to. Normalize offering and learning pronouns.
- Full disclosure: I haven't consistently done this. One mini-project of mine for this month is to update all of my email signatures and online profiles/bios.
The threatened poem
The House on Thompson Avenue
The childless couple across the street,
Mr. Little and Old Man Bingham,
fought with Dad, or he with them,
over bringing their "New York Ways" to Kansas City.
I don't know that I ever spoke to Old Man B.,
but Mr. Little always sat on their porch
at the top of a long flight of stone stairs,
and I waved when I walked by.
One year I sold peanut brittle for school.
I wanted to hustle enough to earn that transistor radio.
I huffed up those steps and made my pitch.
Mr. Little, despite dentures, bought two boxes.
A few days later he called me over
to hand me a stack of children's magazines
he must have picked up at the Salvation Army.
Mom examined each one
before she'd let me read a page.
I didn't get the radio.
I had to settle for a flashlight
that wasn't nearly as cool as the science experiments,
the craft projects, mazes, riddles
in those old issues of Cricket and Humpty Dumpty.
Some puzzles took me longer than others
to work out.
-- Carl Bettis
