Open Letter to Pride Source
Hello Pridesource,
You have now effectively blocked all my email communications with staff at Pride Source. I believe I can still write the News line and the Editor.
I would like you all to understand that I have a mental illness that causes my disability known as Bi-Polar I disorder. This illness, even when treated and managed appropriately with medication, still causes me to have outbursts that can be difficult to shoulder if you are the target of those outbursts.
The genocide in Palestine has been particularly difficult for me to absorb and respond to appropriately. I don't know what an appropriate response to genocide looks like, but apparently, my response to it has offended all of you, to the point where you've made it clear you don't want to talk to me.
I see this as a few things...
First, it's discriminatory on the basis of my disability. Second, it sends a chilling signal that dissent and objection won't be tolerated by the staff at Pride Source. I don't think you all agree on the approach with respect to how to respond to me. I think some of you disagree with the approach that has been taken thus far.
I think this firewall rule you have instituted to block my emails from reaching staff is immature and frightening. You have taken silencing the community to a whole new level by silencing me in this way. If you can't have any empathy for why I have been so angry at you, and you can't understand that your silence is violence to me and to this community, then I personally don't want any kind of relationship with you, professional or otherwise.
If you are so immature that you have to block my emails as a response to holding you accountable for your silence for more than a year on the genocide in Gaza, then great. I'll give up on you. Like you want me to. But not before I tell you and the community how unfair and unjust you are being.
If you can't overlook and forgive my anger, then you're in the wrong business and you have no right to call yourselves a newspaper of any kind. You're just more propaganda for the white queers in this community. Because you seem to only really employ white people. True or false? I have yet to talk to one non-white person at Pride Source. It hasn't happened yet. And you know why? Because you white people resort to tactics of silence like this.
You hold such a unique position of power in our community, and you are abusing it by silencing me because of my strong disagreements with how you have handled the lack of reporting on the genocide in Gaza. I may have no legal recourse to this, but if you people have any conscious left in you that gives you a right to hold this position of power you hold in this community, then you'll engage in a dialog with me.
I won't hold my breath. But I want you know that you are unequivocally wrong to have blocked my communications with the staff at Pride Source. Hire someone who isn't white and allow me to speak to them and I guarantee you, the outcome would be different.
I often offend white people. But that won't stop me from pointing out how racist and Islamaphobic your silence on the genocide in Gaza is. I expect nothing less from a newspaper headed by, founded by, and lead by, and staffed by almost exclusively white people.
IT'S WHY YOU BLOCKED ME!!!!!!!
I'm no longer angry. I'm just disappointed. But white people in power do that to me all the time time. So, I'm not at all surprised this dispute has taken the turn it has.
You haven't listed my business in the Pride Source directory. You have blocked my access to advertising in the newspaper. All because I called you out on being racist, and I did it unapologetically, as I am doing now. I won't apologize until you do. I did nothing wrong. You did. And I hope you are aware enough and lucid enough and not so ignorant as to think this was my fault. It was yours.
Thank you.
-Amrit Kohli