QDEP’s Response to the Club Q Attack

On November 20th, 2022, in Colorado, there was a violent attack on the LGBTQ+ club “Club Q”. A 22-year-old gunman entered the LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs just before midnight on Saturday and immediately opened fire, reportedly killing five people and injuring 25 others, before patrons confronted and stopped him. This attack happened a few minutes before Transgender Day Of Remembrance.

In New York City, a few hours before the Colorado attack, a gay bar called “vers on 9th avenue” in Manhattan was targeted for the fourth time this month when someone threw a brick at its window. New York’s LGBTQ+ community, like gay communities elsewhere, has been deeply troubled by verbal attacks in recent years on drag events, from club nights to children’s drag queen story hours at libraries.

Hundreds of legislation bills targeting LGBTQ+ communities have been introduced in just one year. Elected officials in various states have passed policies attempting to erase our community and existence in schools and libraries. These attacks on our communities are just a few of the ways hate has taken shape. This hate is spreading and devastating religious minorities, Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latin, and other People of Color, immigrants, and poor working families.

As an LGBTQ+ organization, the Queer Detainee Empowerment Project (QDEP), is heartbroken over this horrific attack on our community and we wish to acknowledge the collective grief, trauma, and fear brought on by these attacks. Violence towards our community has been on the rise, particularly this year in 2022 when 33 or more transgender and gender non-conforming people have been murdered. We have continued to see a rapid jump in LGBTQ+ state/street violence, targeting mostly Black and Brown Trans people.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of the mass shooting and we are standing in solidarity with their families, friends, and all of Colorado’s LGBTQ+ communities. We also want to recognize that within the fight against white supremacy, its structures and systems can create a competitive dynamic between our many marginalized communities– across LGBTQ+ Black, Brown, and white communities–in order to diminish the strength in our alliances and for the white elite to remain in power. QDEP will continue to work against this dynamic and stands in solidarity with LGBTQ+ communities across the world to create and encourage education around how to #StopLGBTQ+Hate.

We at QDEP are committed to making and holding space for grieving together, and intentionally moving forward in alliance.

At QDEP, we know that Black and Brown queer and trans migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees lack essential life-giving resources on their journey to find queer-affirming homes. We lack access to healthcare. We are barred from finding work and supporting ourselves in a capitalistic-driven society, while our papers and lives are being litigated by the United States. We are criminalized and abused by the police and immigration officials for our racialized, queer, and trans identities.

We wish to create and hold space for radical healing, love, and mourning within our beloved community. We also understand that violence does not occur in a vacuum. State-sanctioned violence compounds and prompts street violence. Anti-Black racism, poor dissemination of information/resources within the Black communities, the continued detention and deportation of LGBTQ+ immigrants, and the white supremacist logic at large are a threat to our beloved marginalized and often-criminalized communities.

“I was disturbed and troubled when someone threw eggs and water at me and my friends last month as we were about to enter club Lambda Lounge in Harlem, one of the few Black Gay bars in New York City, from the window of their apartment, our communities are not safe anymore. All my life I have been fighting to survive, fought my homophobic country until I was tired, came to the US to seek protection but here I am continuing to fight for me and my community to exist, I will continue to fight for my LGBTQ+ communities because we all deserve to exist.

The Queer Detainee Empowerment Project (QDEP) is an LGBTQ+ immigrant-impacted-led organization. We call for the abolition of borders, gender, and prisons! We refuse and reject this carceral system! We are in solidarity with all of the LGBTQ+ communities, especially Coloradans, and as a collective of queer and transgender BIPOC immigrants who have been impacted by the carceral system, we firmly demand the control of gun violence. We deserve the right to live!

And remember “IF YOU ARE NOT HUNGRY FOR JUSTICE, IT IS PROBABLY BECAUSE YOU ARE FULL WITH PRIVILEGES.” (Uchechukwu Onwa)

Take Action:

• The Colorado Healing Fund is raising funds to help victims and their families. Select Club Q Tragedy as your designation on the Colorado Gives 365 website.
• Donate to QDEP’s fundraiser to help LGBTQ+ immigrants with food, healthcare, therapy services, travel, and housing.
• Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok @queerdep to stay updated about our work.
• Stand with us, support the queer and trans people in your life and afar, and join our community in providing resources for Black and Brown queer and trans migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees at QDEP. 

The Queer Detainee Empowerment Project (QDEP) assists folks coming out of immigration detention in securing structural, health/wellness, educational, legal, and emotional support and services. We work to organize around the structural barriers and state violence that LGBTQIA TS & GNC detainee/undocumented folks face related to their immigration status, race, sexuality, and gender expression/identity.

We are committed to assisting folks in building lives outside of detention, to breaking down the barriers that prevent folks from building fulfilling and productive lives, and to keeping queer families intact by demanding an end to deportations/detention/policing. We believe in creating a narrative of thriving, not just surviving.

QDEP is a proud member of the Detention Watch Network, Freedom For Immigrants, New York Immigration Coalition,  as well as the AbolishICE NY NJ Coalition. QDEP is a fiscally sponsored project of the Center for Transformative Action (CTA). CTA, an educational 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, and is legally and financially responsible for all our project activities.