My understanding of liberation at the time centered on the bullets others aimed at me, the horrors I experienced. It was an individualist vision of self-ascendancy lifting me above the ugliness of society’s hatred of gay people, and it had kept me alive. But in Newark that day, I was being called to profess love for femme men, butch women, transgender people, those who resisted categories of difference altogether, sex workers, queer and trans folk who lived in the projects, homeless LGBT youth, and those living with HIV.
