TrendingTEA, Episode 1: Eclipsing ourselves

Editor’s Note: Today marks the first installment of a new weekly column by Dallas Voice and Dv contributor Brandi Amara Skyy. She has titled the column Trending Tea, and each week will explore and discuss the topics that are on our minds and on our tongues.

This week the entire world was enraptured by the happenings of the sun. Even if you weren’t one of the 4.4 million people who tuned into NASA’s live stream of heavenly events, you were probably still talking about, referencing or sharing memes about the eclipse.
When the last total solar eclipse visible in the U.S. happened, on Feb. 26, 1979, I was a year and two months old, and the world was a whole lot different.
While I was too young to remember who was president, what the social political climate was like or what music and movies were popular, I can Google (an unheard-of verb in 1979) and find out.

As Google has informed me, Jimmy Carter was president; Donna Summer reigned supreme, and Alien and Apocalypse Now were gracing the silver screen.
In 2024 another total solar eclipse will happen, and luckily for all us Big D residents, we will be in the moon’s direct path and get to see it head-on. And seven years from now, kids who were too young to remember or understand what was going on in the world on Aug. 21, 2017 will be able to Google (or perhaps there will be something more cutting edge by then) what was going down the last time the sun was eclipsed by the moon:
We have politicians policing bathrooms instead of creating policies that protect their people. Racial tensions are at an all time high. Nazis are coming out of the woodworks, and “fake news” is spreading like wildfire claiming that hate is happening on both sides.
We have the president’s daughter trying to school us in science when she can’t even convince herself or her father that global warming and climate change exist, and that fracking and pipelines under the earth are environmental disasters waiting to happen.
And we have a president who is too fucking stupid to listen to anyone but himself.
 
Meanwhile, we in the LGBTQ community are still fighting for our rights as parents and married couples under the law. We have been asking the world to join our cause, but we are also guilty of being sources of hate:
At a California supermarket on Aug. 15, Angelo Cabuang, a Filipino college student at the University of San Francisco, burped out loud when shopping with his mom and was immediately attacked by a racist white lesbian couple. They called him a “pig: and told him to go back to Filipinoville. 
We as a rainbow community can’t preach inclusion and diversity if we ourselves are guilty of divisive acts.
Here in Texas, I celebrated with my queer community the death of the bathroom bill while simultaneously being shocked that none of my LGBTQ friends even mentioned that Greg Abbott set women rights back decades when he signed into law House Bill 214, which requires even rape victims to pay for supplemental health insurance coverage to have an abortion.
Where are all my trans sisters’ voices now when our cisfemale bodies need them?
And dear beautiful people, we have got to do better at living in, seeing and connecting in the intersections where our “otherness” meets. We have to have each other’s back.
Because like Seal said, “We’re never going to survive unless we get a little crazy.” Crazy, as in crazy together to create a movement of inclusivity of different bodies, different colors, different experiences.
Thanks to Facebook and the power of quick Google search, I learned that Frank Reynolds was the ABC news anchor who covered the last solar eclipse in 1979. When it ended, he declared: “So that’s it, the last solar eclipse to be seen on this continent in this century. … As I said, not until Aug. 21, 2017, will another eclipse be visible from North America. That’s 38 years from now.”
He ended his coverage with a message of hope and love that all of us now — thinking forward to 2024 — need to hear: “May the shadow of the moon fall on a world at peace.”

And as much as I wish we were at peace, as of Aug. 23, 2017, we are far, far from it.
But in the spirit of love, light, solidarity, inclusivity, and intersectionality I want to offer my global wish for all us seven years from now:

May the shadow of the moon fall on a world that has healed from its many visible, invisible and divisive wounds. And may the light of the sun shine brighter on a community of all when la luna’s shadow finally passes.

And that’s your Trending Tea for this week, earthlings! Got something to say? Spill it! Email me at brandi@brandiamaraskyy.com and let’s continue the dialogue and creating change!
Brandi Amara Skyy is an award-winning writer and drag artist. You can find out more about her and all her projects as BrandiAmaraSkyy.com or @brandiamaraskyy on Twitter and Instagram.