By: Gabrielle Garcia, Project Assistant

While scanning objects from an unnamed flat file drawer of miscellaneous materials from San Diego Pride events, Diversionary Theatre, and a private artist, I came across a small double-sided flyer from 1976 that immediately caught my eye. The words “200 Years of Freedom for Whom?” across the top of the first page are bold and unrelenting. As of 1976, the United States celebrated its 200th anniversary of existence, a country built and maintained by the systemic exploitation and disenfranchisement of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, women, LGBTQ folks, disabled people, immigrants, and poor and working class people. 1976 was also the year of the second permitted San Diego Pride Parade, entitled “Gay Spirit”, six years after the events at the Stonewall Inn in New York.1 LGBTQ pride marches and events across the United States were born out of the Stonewall Uprising, led by Black and brown queer and trans folks in response to homophobic, transphobic, racist, and classist police violence in 1969. It is necessary to say that LGBTQ pride owes its very existence to the most marginalized community members who frequented the Stonewall Inn, including butch lesbians, trans folks, houseless folks, sex workers, drag queens, people of color, and those at the overlaps of these identities.

By: Gabrielle Garcia, Project Assistant

There’s something particularly chilling about handling memorial objects for local loved ones who had passed from HIV/AIDS while living through a devastating pandemic where the same government negligence continues to exacerbate human loss.

By: Gabrielle Garcia, Project Assistant

After watching the “Native American Intellectual Property Issues” webinar, the fourth in a five-part series regarding the Protocols of Native American Materials, several themes from the discussion between the speakers from the Passamaquoddy People Project stood out to me:

1. Trust building and engagement with communities of origin
2. Communities of origin being formally recognized as intellectual property rights owners and dictating use and attribution protocols
3. The power of collections when accessible to and interacted with by communities of origin