feature image by Orlando Sentinel / Contributor via Getty Images

Although the abject horror of “Alligator Alcatraz” is and should be the major focus of most of the terrible news coming out of Florida, my home state has been making the headlines again for another infuriating reason.

Last Thursday, August 21, people in Orlando were stunned to discover the rainbow-painted crosswalk created as part of the Pulse Shooting Memorial and designed to help honor the victims was painted over by the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT). While I’m tempted to place all of the blame for the “crosswalk wars” chapter of our ongoing culture wars solely on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, his order to FDOT was — at least partially — the result of an order from the Trump Administration. In July, the U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy ordered all 50 states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico to immediately ensure that all roads in the country are “free from distraction.”

In this vague order devoid of any particular definitions or proof of its claims, Duffy wrote, “Roads are for safety, not political messages or artwork. Today I am calling on governors in every state to ensure that roadways, intersections, and crosswalks are kept free of distractions. Far too many Americans die each year to traffic fatalities to take our eye off the ball. USDOT stands ready to help communities across the country make their roads safer and easier to navigate.”

Being that it is an obvious attempt to enable governors of states in the same culture war hell as Florida, the order doesn’t clearly define what “distractions” he means. So, in a tweet announcing the order, he wrote to make sure people didn’t miss an already explicit anti-queer dog whistle: “Taxpayers expect their dollars to fund safe streets, not rainbow crosswalks.” And of course, Governor DeSantis, the bootlicker he is, wasted no time in trying to make sure the major cities in Florida are complying with the order.

But if you know anything about the queer and trans communities throughout Florida, you know they rarely take these kinds of attacks lying down. In response to FDOT’s initial painting of the rainbow crosswalk at the Pulse memorial, people in Orlando showed up — not once, not twice, but three times — to cover the crosswalk in rainbow chalk that replicated the original painting. The threat of Orlando citizens returning over and over again to bring the rainbow crosswalk back to life became so imminent the state chose to begin allocating law enforcement resources to the area just to make sure people couldn’t chalk it up anymore.

Meanwhile, in the other major metropolitan areas with large queer and trans communities, the resistance against the Trump administration’s and Governor DeSantis’s order is just beginning to heat up. Chalked up rainbow crosswalks have been seen popping up on the west coast of Florida in Ybor City and Tampa. Responding to a letter from Governor DeSantis and FDOT that ordered all crosswalk art to be removed by September 4, the Miami Beach City Commission has vowed to resist removing the rainbow crosswalks that dot the city’s street. Miami Beach City Commissioner Joe Magazine told local reporters in Miami, “I want to show our community, the members, that this is so important, too, that we hear them loud and clear. We are here to fight for them, and we will always stand up for equality.”

Similarly, local leaders in my hometown of Ft. Lauderdale, which is home to the second biggest “gay village” in the U.S. after Provincetown, as well as local leaders in Key West and Delray Beach shared news this week that they would be joining forces to pursue an administrative appeal to the Florida Department of Transportation. At Wednesday’s Ft. Lauderdale City Commission meeting, Ft. Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis said, “…we must stand our ground. We cannot allow us to be bullied into submission and to allow others to dictate what we should do in our own communities.” Although the resistance is just beginning to amp up, it seems as if most municipal leaders and local activists in cities where Florida’s queer and trans communities really thrive are on the same page about this particular issue.

South Florida’s NPR channel, WLRN, has also taken up the task of creating a living archive of threatened street art — including and especially the rainbow crosswalks. They are asking anyone from any community experiencing these kinds of threats to submit their stories and any supporting photos through a form on their website.

I generally don’t allow myself to get caught up in culture war related activity that doesn’t directly and/or immediately impact us materially. But considering Florida has been the breeding and testing ground for so many anti-queer and anti-trans policies that have been made national since the Trump administration began their reign, I think it’s important to pay close attention to how the “crosswalk wars” progress over the next few weeks.

Governor DeSantis, the Trump administration, and the rest of the far-right losers and failures who are currently trying to make our lives a living hell have explicitly said they want queer and trans people to disappear from the public eye. Sure, the dissolution of some rainbow crosswalks in various cities where they have already kind of faded into the background of people’s lives isn’t hurting anyone in the same way many of the other policies are, but these more minor attacks generally serve as the build up to much larger ones — all over the country, not just in the state of Florida.

Whatever larger attacks they have planned will most certainly have more material impacts on our lives, which means we need to keep showing them we’re not going to take it. Resistance via not giving into the demand, creating chalk murals, and through using legal channels like administrative appeals is a start. But in order to truly meet the demands of these times, we have to be unafraid to take our resistance tactics up several notches.

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