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Public attention to law enforcement officers’ violent interactions with people who are minorized due to their racial, ethnic, and gender identities has grown in recent years, policing has come under increased scrutiny and critique in the United States. Existing scholarship on law enforcement underscores how policing is a key feature of governmentality and upholds power inequalities based on race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, immigration status, and other social constructions of difference. Scant scholarship, however, examines experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer-identifying (LGBTQ+) law enforcement officers, who are simultaneously agents of the state and also subjected to governing regimes that perpetuate social exclusions based on their identities. While research on LGBTQ+ officers has examined community perceptions of officers, workplace inclusivity, and masculinized employment settings, it has largely ignored the complexities and ambivalent sentiments of LGBTQ+ officers who are complicit with governing objectives but also disenfranchised due to their identities. In this paper, we report findings from participant observation with an LGBTQ+ law enforcement organization and semi-structured interviews with Lesbian and Gay law enforcement officers (n=7) who were recruited as part of a larger study focused on activism following the 2016 Pulse Shooting in Orlando, Florida. Findings underscore Lesbian and Gay officers’ tensions between embracing professional loyalty and experiences of trauma and exclusion due to their identities. Moreover, interviewees underscore the complex political and economic factors that reinforce their loyalty, including proximity to neoliberal economic ideals such as attractive wages and perceived prestige. Overall, we argue that Lesbian and Gay officers’ loyalty to policing obfuscates larger neoliberal economic failings and reinforces social and political differences. 

On June 12, 2016, a shooter entered the Pulse club in Orlando, Florida, and fatally shot 49 people. Pulse was a barwhere lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and otherwise queer identifying (LGBTQ+) people regularly gathered, and the shooting occurred on Latin night, disproportionally impacting people at the intersection of being LGBTQ+, Black, and Latinx. Afterthe shooting, organizations focusing on LGBTQ+ people of color, including undocumented queer people, emerged and mobilized for improved political protections, economic rights, criminal justice reform, and representation of LGBTQ+ people of color insocial justice organizations. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork that began in 2016, this presentation summarizes findings from an ongoing study examining the impacts of social justice mobilizing after gun violencethat targeted queer people of color. It reports findings from participant observation experiences with LGBTQ+ Latinx organizations and interviews with social justice organization members (n=52), local legislators (n=8), health providers (n=3), law enforcement officers (n=3), and national organization leaders (n=3). Findings highlight how the Pulse shooting sparked an intersectional social justice movement workingto dismantle structural racism, xenophobia,and homophobia from within multiple settings. Using theories of biopolitics and frameworks of legal, political, and queer mobilization, I argue that the movement forged out of the Pulse shooting works to advance what I call “an assertive politics of belonging” that pervades multiple social spaces, including within local and state government, law enforcement agencies, and social justice organizations. Situating this movement in a broader US context of deep political polarization and persistent white supremacy, findings from this study underscore the tensions that emerge in challenging structural racism by asserting claims of belonging for people at the intersection of multiple minoritized identities. 

Background: Structural racism is a root cause of health inequality . R esponding to structural racism requires interventions to address systemic inequalit ies that structure poor health , particularly for people with intersecting Black , Latinx , and LGBTQ+ identities . However, l ittl e is known about successful strategies to combat structural racism . Using in - depth , qualitative, community - based participatory research methods, we describe two community interventions in Central Florida that responded to structural racism during the Summ er of 2020. Methods: Findings draw from ongoing qualitative , community - based research that began in 2016 . Data collected include in - depth interviews with leaders and members of community - based organization s that advance intersectional racial and gender justice (n= 54); state legislators (n=2); and clinical service providers (n=4). During the summer of 2020 , community organization leaders created two efforts to combat systemic racism : the “LGBTQ+ Relief Fund” and the “All Black Lives Fund.” The LGBTQ+ Reli ef Fund responded to economic inequality structuring high rates of COVID - 19 among Black and Latinx LGBTQ+ identifying people, and the All Black Lives Fund responded to political and economic disparities in funding Black - led LGBTQ+ organizations. Results: C ommunity interventions resulted in over 800 LGBTQ+ individuals receiving financial assistance during the COVID - 19 pandemic, including LGBTQ+ people who were excluded from statewide interventions such as undocumented immigrants . The All Black Lives Fund d istributed $100,000 to three Black - led LGBTQ+ social movement organizations. Discussion : The se efforts provide examples of community - based approaches to respond to systemic racism as a root cause of poor health. Findings also demonstrate the importance of intersectionality and in - depth qualitative research in public health 

During the COVID - 19 pandemic, the United States (US) operated a patchwork response of varying closures and restrictions that depended on individual states. At the federal level, efforts to address COVID - 19 risk focused primarily on elderly populations and largely ignored the disproportionately high risk of COVID - 19 exposure among Black , Latin x, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and otherwise queer - identifying (LGBTQ+) populations . These groups have elevated risk of COVID - 1 9 exposure due to social, political, and economic vulnerabilities that structure poor health. In this paper, I describe how a grassroots racial, sexual, and gender justice organization responded to state failings in meeting the needs of LGBTQ+ Black and Latinx populations during the COVID - 19 pandemic. Drawing from ongoing ethnographic fieldwork in Orlando, Florida, that began in 2016 following the Pulse shooting, I describe how a social justice organization advanced a notion of intersectional belonging in response to the absence of health and social services during the COVID - 19 pandemic. Specifically, I show how one organization, the Contigo Fund, created an LGBTQ+ COVID - 19 relief effort that provided financial assistance to Black and Latinx LGBTQ+ populations when the state of Florida failed to marshal resources for its most marginalized communities . The state’s failure is just one of many ways the state has historically refused to meet the needs of populations with intersecting queer and racial minority identities , reproducing longstanding health and social inequities. Overall, I argue that the Contigo Fund’s response demonstrates how grassroots mobilization can challenge the necropolitcs of state - sponsored neglect and advance health equity