One of the most important lessons of the annus horribilis that is 2020 is the dangers of truly unchecked power and privilege, even when they are wielded by a big city’s first openly gay mayor, or an openly gay presidential candidate.
But many queer people of color speaking out against the event, like Chicago-based author, artist, and educator Benji Hart, say that the pair, in particular, have done much to sow the distrust they will be discussing, and that their historic political victories do not absolve them of that.
Lightfoot, though she campaigned on a platform of police reform and accountability, has rejected efforts to significantly decrease the Chicago Police Department’s almost $1.8 billion budget, as well as efforts to remove police officers from Chicago Public Schools buildings.
“I think that pretty much how she’s built her political image is by using a mainstream platform as an opportunity to portray herself as progressive as an active and intentional means of distracting from her actual record,” Hart says.
In 2011, as part of his mayoral campaign, he alluded during a roundtable that minority students lacked role models showing the value of education. A video of that roundtable later made the rounds during his eventually unsuccessful presidential run. Another report made the rounds during his run that detailed him using the racist “All Lives Matter” slogan as recently as 2015.
Dimitri Nesbitt Pérez, who is Mexican and nonbinary and who spoke out on social media against the CHF event, says Buttigieg represents “a person who I think really does mean well, but has so much to learn.”
