open letter: Attorney General Bonta & Sheriff Dicus
Photographer: Ashley Strong Smith
Source: Mountain Provisions Cooperative
Depending on how you arrived to this page, you may already recognize the above photo.
Lauri Carleton was murdered on Friday, August 18th of 2023 in a hate crime over hanging and displaying her Pride flag. She was brilliant and vivacious, and one of what I’ve come to call my "surrogate" parents, along with her twin daughters and husband, some of my surrogate family. Growing up I much preferred being at friends’ houses instead of my own, and somewhere along the way, parents caught on. I was invited over often and included on family trips & holidays. During my childhood and young adulthood, my own parents died, two of the three of them unexpectedly, though certainly not in a murder or hate crime. Lauri and her family knew and know me and loved me at many different points along my journey without my own parents and particularly without my own mother.
A few peeks into my time with Lauri:
She was one of my Girl Scout leaders as a child and I have memories of earning badges in her living room. Unsurprisingly to those who knew her, Lauri introduced me to Outkast as a passenger in her car at approximately the age of 10 while she drove us up the windy highway from her Los Angeles home to her Lake Arrowhead one. My toiletry bag is still a recent birthday gift from her, of course from the stock of her local boutique, Mag.Pi.
As many of you already know, Lauri was vocal. Admittedly, she and I had that in common. Now Lauri’s time as a mom to both her own children and others’ has been cut short. Her time as a leader and her voice, though, are evidently still standing strong, and there is opportunity for change. I have offered you my unpacking of her murder from my own perspective as a part of my own coping and healing and in hopes that it might prevent others, particularly those less privileged than her, from the same demise.
Before I continue I need to speak to the fact that queer folx, and particularly queer folx of Color and other intersectionally underprivileged identities, are intimidated, harassed, assaulted, and murdered every day. I am not hiding from the uncomfortable truth that the proximity of tragedy to a heart can be a galvanizing force for a voice. I've written these words because my heart is torn to shreds over a surrogate mother of mine being murdered last week and my childhood friends’ resulting suffering. I acknowledge that this victim was a white non-queer upper-class woman with more privilege than many, if not most, victims of hate crimes. I attempt to elevate this plainly throughout my reflections and calls to action and I invite others to do the same.
So what do we know?
Lauri was murdered by a man who did not live in a vacuum. We want to say he was a monster. I want to say he was a monster. But he was certifiably a human being, like you and I. He lived on the same planet that the rest of us are on, with the same streets and gas stations and tropical storms and wildfires and mountains and beaches and severe lack of accessible healthcare and piss poor public education and cool breezes and sunsets and poverty wages and food deserts and militarized policing and, and, and. The difference between him and some of you reading this (but likely not all of you) is that he absolutely must have been a part of communities of hate and violent rhetoric.
Those communities may exist physically, some churches espouse hate and bigotry, but I don’t pews are the crux of our times. I believe he heard, regurgitated, and participated in hate rhetoric communities digitally - television, blogs, YouTube videos, chatrooms and other social media platforms like Discord and what I’m apparently supposed to call “X” now (formerly “Twitter”), and/or politician and influencer email newsletters and text message campaigns.
His hate-driven murder in cold blood is a reflection of our society. It is a reflection of what we allow, a reflection of who and what we ignore, a reflection of what we say we will deal with tomorrow - a reflection, ultimately, of unmet need and the continuation of systems that hate us, all of us in different ways than others, and teach us to hate ourselves and others, too.
Let’s take a look at some institutional context research:
According to California’s Department of Justice State of Pride Report issued just a couple of months ago in June of 2023, between 2021 and 2022 there were over 391 reported hate crime events motivated by sexual orientation bias, which amounts to an increase of 29% from the previous year. Additionally, in the same time period there were 45 reported hate crimes motivated by anti-transgender or anti-gender nonconforming bias, which amounts to an increase of 55% from the previous year.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a self-identified LGBTQ+ ally himself, included in the report that the agency is “working tirelessly to address hate crimes in all its forms.” The report details four approaches: “In the Classroom, In Sports, In Healthcare, and In Public Access.” The approach that is missing is “In Hate Speech.”
The United Nations has multiple resources on their website regarding hate speech’s presence and history as well as its precipitating relationship with violence. While violent misogyny and racism are among the hate speech topics listed by the UN in its brief review, and duly so, queerphobia and transphobia were not. Additionally, in the UN’s 2019 Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech Synopsis, a list of 13 “key commitments” makes no mention of holding the speakers of hate speech accountable for its precipitating violence.
What do we make of this?
We know Lauri’s murderer is dead, and while at times this will be a blessing and at other times a curse, in many ways it is actually irrelevant. His death or life, or what would've been his inevitable prosecution, wouldn't have changed the state of affairs we're in. That man was just a hired gun, a minuteman, one of many. He was hired by influencers and “nobodys” alike, paid in a currency all too common today - the illusion of community and belonging, predicated on exclusion, oppression, otherization, and dehumanization. Instead of peddling workout gear or green smoothies on the screens that run our lives, it’s gun culture, bastardized “don’t tread on me” flags, fear, and hate.
Dear California Attorney General Bonta and San Bernardino County Sheriff Dicus,
I want to see your allyship show. Sheriff Dicus, I appreciate some of what I've seen your work to be so far. I also think you and your office need to get real. You've said that, "From a preliminary standpoint, it looks like the suspect acted alone, but we want to be sure that that's the case, and there are no hate groups or anything else associated to this." Of course there are other people associated with this. Truthfully, there are thousands of people associated with this crime. However, I am certain that there are at least a handful of folx whose hate speech this murderer heard, replicated, participated with, and ultimately actioned on.
I want you to scour this once-innocent-child-turned-murderer’s devices. I want you to charge all content creators he ever watched who demonized queer folx, queer events, queer spaces, and/or queer symbols like flags with conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to commit a hate crime. Please also be clear on this: I want the same procedure for every hate crime assault and murder of every queer person in this county and across the state, and for the rest of the states reading this, I hope you follow suit. We know that queer oppression and hate did not begin with the internet, social media, and today's digital news media, and we also know that its vitriol and its exponential reach has been worsened by the rise of technological devices and the platforms that live on them.
Additionally, please do not spend more of our collective time with the claim that there is no legal path for this. Do not tell me that our legal system allows Johnny Depp to sue for defamation over temporary reputational complications in landing his next multimillion dollar role, but when your constituents' lives are on the line, being stolen by bullets loaded by algorithms that craft round-the-clock alternate realities where humans spewing hate content is normalized and prized, that only then we all of a sudden do not have a path to hold rhetoric accountable.
Attorney General Bonta, it is your obligation to ensure that charges are brought that build foundational case law to start holding hate speech accountable for its violent harms.
While we’re here, please also do not tell me that there is no path to hold rhetoric accountable because it did not identify Lauri’s name, nor did it identify the names of the thousands of other individuals who have been assaulted and murdered in the name of queer hate. Generalized rhetoric produces generalized results, but the generalized nature does not invalidate the link between the two. When spewing oppression of an entire identity, one is responsible for the harms against anyone of, or supporting, that identity. If the speakers didn’t mean to generalize, then they shouldn’t have done so. If folx don’t want to be held accountable to violent harms as a result of their hate speech, the answer is quite simple. They can simply stop spewing hate speech.
Find the videos. Find the podcasts. Find that man’s most commonly watched "news" shows. Find the message boards. Find the text messages. Find the posts. Find it all and hold all of those folx accountable.
To whom it may concern:
It is not lost on me that there is a tender relationship between hate speech accountability and the protections of freedom of speech. There are many tender relationships in our society and in our criminal legal system. Direct verbal attacks on queer folx, whether individually or as a collective, are unequivocal, and the impending violence is not questionably linked, it is obviously so. First amendment rights do not and should not allow speech that kills.
While this is not my focus at the moment, it is important not to forget that the murderer appears to have used a semiautomatic weapon that was not registered in his name. We, of course, also have the epidemic of gun violence in this country, and it is palpable no matter where you are standing. Where and who did he get the weapon from? Who else have they provided weapons for? Does the investigation stop at the fact that the weapon was not registered, or will the investigation continue with consequences for accomplices?
One thing I know to be true in this world about this tormented species of ours is that we are both humans being and humans learning, at all times. We learn who to be and how to be by the consequences we absorb from our own actions, and the consequences we witness others absorbing. Currently, it seems as a society we have no consequences; other than social inflammation, polarization, and escalation; for violent and oppressive language. Not only do we seem to have no consequences, we cultivate few to no opportunities for education, communication, connection, and healing.
I am not the first person to say this but I will say it today:
We need to get real about transphobic, queerphobic, violent, and dehumanizing rhetoric, and getting real means figuring out what we can actually do about it.
What is the role of the criminal legal system?
What is the role of community?
What is the role of the internet as a space?
What is the role of the communication platforms and social media sites?
What is the role of news media?
There are roles for all of these segments of our society to actually do something to prevent more queer folx, especially queer folx of Color, and allies from being murdered (and oppressed into suicide).
Where are the think tanks and working groups willing to plot out strategic plans with the specific, actionable shifts we need to see at all these levels? I know we have the collective resources, I believe we just need to be more organized and effective. I love love, and I have a lot of love, and I want to continue to see a lot of love, and I also want to see change.
Can we bring an integrity to this tragedy that provides a structure for real change?
If you have financial resources available for redistribution, consider sending funds to the Lauri Carleton Memorial Fund to support LGBTQ+ efforts local to the hate murder and to Human Rights Campaign to support LGBTQ+ efforts more broadly.