It’s been two weeks since the tragedy in Orlando. We’ve seen an amazing outpouring of love, support and unity from and for the LGBTQ community. In Milwaukee and in cities nationwide and countries worldwide, people came together to mourn and to stand strong in the face of bigotry and hatred. This unity, the coming together of strangers and friends, the love that’s been lifted up, has sung far louder than any of the voices shouting about guns, God and terrorists.
This week we have two moving stories of community, faith and redemption. Our first story comes from our 2015 “Degrees of Separation” StorySlam and Kanwardeep Kaleka, whose family and Sikh community became victims of a racist gunman in 2012. In the days and weeks after the tragedy Kanwar was called to serve his community as counselor, coordinator, media representative and much more. It was this service, his faith and his community that carried him through the mourning and he realized that even tragedies sometimes lead to great blessings.
In 2014, Tiodolo Delagarza III took to the stage for our “Off the Hook” StorySlam. He shared a moving story of redemption. After spending much of his life in a gang and later in prison, he found himself once again a “free man” with a choice to make—return to the gang and repeat the pattern or make a change. What he hadn’t expected was the community he would find when he did make that change.