After Pulse: Anna Eskamani

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Anna Eskamani is an activist in Central Florida. At the time of the oral history she was a senior policy director at Planned Parenthood. She has since been elected the State Representative for District 47.

The day before the Pulse shooting, June 11, 2016, which was a Saturday, Anna had a meeting at a coffee shop across from the Plaza Live. There were trucks around the Plaza because there had been a shooting there the night before. Singer Christina Grimmie had been killed outside the venue. They were discussing advocacy for gun safety. The crime scene was a reminder of why they do the work they do.

Later that day she went to the Don Quixote awards that the Hispanic Chamber does each year. She met a friend she hadn’t seen in a while and felt good when she left. She and her sister live a mile and a half from Pulse. Her sister was sleeping, jet lagged from a long plane flight having returned from vacation. Anna went to bed herself and woke up to the sound of helicopters about 3AM. She checked her phone and saw notifications from CNN. The Pulse nightclub had a shooting. She began texting Latino friends to see if they were OK. She had to turn on the TV and they kept playing the same footage over and over. On Facebook she found that the husband of one of her friends was an emergency responder, so he was in the hospital helping get people there. At the time there was a rumor that there was a gunman inside the hospital. She supported her friend by phone.

She was going to work out that morning with a trainer and she kept putting it off. She needed to see the next press conference. She finally decided she wanted to keep some semblance of normalcy and went to the work out. They trained outside and the sound of helicopters were even more predominant. She cut the workout short. She couldn’t do it. She has 185 co-workers and they began texting. Mass e-mails went out to staff to make sure they were OK. Planned Parenthood wanted to issue a   statement. This was before anyone knew the final count. Anna began crafting a statement for the national office. She hadn’t cried yet. She finally cried on a phone call with a co-worker.  She had been to Pulse in the past and she had friends who go to Pulse. The emotions welled up. She got the statement off to National and local press.

About 4PM there was a press conference at the Center. She needed to be there to show solidarity. The Center became the hub for the response in the beginning. She wore a t shirt that said “My Health My Life No Matter What.” It was so hot inside. The AC was not working. People were crying. There was so much press. There were at least 30 cameras. She wasn’t planning to speak. However all the advocacy groups were asked to speak. She got nervous. She spoke about how Planned Parenthood stands in solidarity with the LGBTQ community. Planned Parenthood is no stranger to violence and the community can not be paralyzed by violence. She pointed out, the community needs to push back and just like the health centers our spaces need to remain safe. This is very real for all of us. In Florida no practical efforts are being made to insure that when you go to school or you walk your neighborhood, or go to a club or movie theater, that you will  actually be able to get back home.

After Pulse: Carlos Guillermo-Smith

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Carlos Guillermo-Smith represents East Orlando House District 49 in the Florida House of Representatives. He was elected in November of 2016. He is Florida’s first openly gay Latin X lawmaker.

When Pulse happened he was a declared candidate for the Florida House. On the evening of June 11, 2016 he was at a Union Conference at the Double tree Hotel near Universal Studios. After the conference he went home.

Carlos found out about the shooting on his phone. He got a series of push notifications. He woke up a 5:30Am and those messages were the first thing he saw. Two messages stood out in particular. One was a CNN push alert, and another was from WFTV Channel 9. The CNN notification announced reports of a mass shooting in an Orlando night Club. He sat bold upright in bed and tried to process.

He then went on Facebook, and he turned on the TV to see CNN which had limited reports. Helicopters hovered over the club. Other than what he saw, he didn’t have any facts. People began to mark themselves safe on Facebook. He got text messages asking if he was OK. He got a blanket e-mail from the CEO of Equality Florida making sure everyone was alive. Everyone needed to confirm. He decided the easiest way to check to see if his friends were OK, was to look at each Facebook profile at a time to see if they had marked themselves as safe. For others he fired off texts. Anyone could have been there that he knew. That morning, Terry DeCarlo was the first person he recognized on TV.

When they announced that 20 people were deceased, panic started to set in. When Mayor Buddy Dyer went on TV and announced that actually 50 people were deceased, Carlos sat speechless. He didn’t know what to feel. He bean to think, “What next?” This was his community, he needed to get in gear. The need to emotionally process was overwhelmed by the need to act. Next pp was an 8Am conference call with Equality Florida. They agreed  to deploy and find out what the needs were. There were 5 Orlando staff. One of things they agreed needed to be done right away was to create a Go Fund Me page to raise money for people impacted. Ida Eskamani figured out how to launch the Go Fund Me. That Go Fund Me page raised 9.5 million dollars.

What do people know about Orlando other than the theme parks? We needed to show that Orlando was not a broken community or a hateful community, we are an inclusive and caring community. He made his way to the Center. It was packed. There were too many cooks inn the kitchen. He felt he wasn’t needed there so he made his way to a press conference of Muslim and LGBTQ leaders. At this press conference he spoke with Pastor Joel Hunter who leads the largest evangelical church in Central Florida. They shook hands and an APP photographer snapped a photo. In “Christian America” a large publication the pastor said he was embarrassed that this hand shake as the first time he had met Carlos. He felt he wasn’t doing any outreach to the LGBTQ community. He said, “Evangelicals must repent on LGBTQ oppression.

Next was a 5PM press conference at the Center.  This was to be the LGBTQ communities press conference. Every LGBTQ leader as there. This was their official response to the tragedy. It was so hot in the Center. There were so many bodies. The press were not local. It was international media. This was also when he first saw some of his closest friends. When you see familiar faces after such horror, that is when you start to process what is happening. Christopher Hanson, a survivor of the shooting walked up to Carlos and hugged him. They are now friends.

That night there was a faith service and Carlos offered a few words. By this time things were n overdrive with phone calls and text messages. His campaign staff helped manage it. The rest of the day was a blur. Weeks and even months later he began processing the news coverage. The next day was the first vigil for the 49. The day was a bur of media phone calls up until the vigil  at Dr. Phillips. Carlos was on the program. He went feeling unprepared. He peered around the stage, he saw the crowd and was stunned. He had prepared his remarks to be bi-lingual. He was nervous about what he needed to say in Spanish. He wanted to get it right. It turned out he was one of the few who spoke Spanish in the program.

Last minute changes happened. He realized there wasn’t much Muslim representation among the speakers. A friend of his, Rasha Mubarak, was Muslim and had a long history of involvement with the LGBTQ community. He found her nearby, and asked her if she could speak at a moments notice. She thought and said, “OK.” No pressure. He decided it was better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission. After his remarks he would be with Nancy Rosado reading the names of the 49 victims. It was the first time the 49 names were read in a public space.  The Segway between his remarks and the reading of the names, he squeezed Rasha in. Her shared remarks form the Muslim and Islamic community and shared in the responsibility of reading the 49 names.

Saint Augustine Food Tour

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Pam set up a food tour on July 4, 2021 for her niece in Saint Augustine. The tour guide told me thee would be 6 stops on the tour, so I discuses my sketch page into 6 sections. I knew ther would be little time to sketch so these small thumbnails would have to suffice. We all met at Old City House across the street from The Leitner Museum and City Hall. This was my favorite stop. We were served large shrimp over a bed of mashed potatoes and asparagus. Neither Pam or her niece like shrimp so I got to eat theirs. I was full by the time we left for the second stop on the tour. Historical stories all seems to abound with insanity fueled by laudanum. Henry Flagler’s wife was certifiably instance and he had her institutionalized and then married her nurse.

‘The second stop was Ancient City Brunch Bar where we had pitchers of Sangria and some French toast slices. Here we got to hear out tour guides back story having been born in Chile and being do-ted by Jewish parents in America and moving south to Saint Augustine. The city is small with a crush of tourists. Between stops we stopped in front of a former Woolworths where black sit ins were held in 1964. I hadn’t realized the Saint Augustine was such a epicenter of civil rights activism. I thinks the stories told about the Civil rights era were my favorite on the tour.

We then stopped into Athena’s Greek Restaurant for some flaming saginaki, which is a delicious cheese. The red wine served was strong and bitter but went well paired with the cheese. I didn’t finish my wine, preferring to focus on the sketch. From here we went to a store which had tasting stations to try herb infused olive oils. The several I tried were delicious and Pam picked up several items here. Notably she bought an infused mayonnaise. I note this since I was handed the mayonnaise any time she rummaged through her bag. I leaned my umbrella up against a counter as I sketched knowing this would be a quick stop. We left in a rush and I didn’t have time to get my sketchbook back into my bag.

At the next stop, a cigar store and Cuban Cafe and Bakery, I realized I had forgotten my umbrella. Grey clouds quickly loomed overhead and it started to rain as we sat outside away from the cigar smoke. A trickle became a deluge as we ran through the stone covered streets to put next destination. The guide ran up onto a bed and breakfast porch to tell us a story which was once again about insanity and laudanum. Huge lakes formed on the streets.

The rain let up just a bit and we started our way to the last stop. Pam let me use the small folding umbrella which kept my sketchbook dry. However the sky opened up again and it poured as we ran past a cemetery. Everyone was soaked to the bone. The last stop was a cheese cake store right beside the cemetery. We had three slices to taste, and my favorite was the chocolate one. The walls of the parlor were a deep purple chocolate color. Each cheesecake was paired with a sip of wine.

Pam called the store where I left my umbrella but the damage was already done. The rain had come down so hard at a 45 degree angle so even the large umbrella might not have made a difference.

It Ain’t Over Till the Fat Lady Sings

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COVID-19 is not over. Though numbers of cases are as low as last March 2020, they have begin to rise 10% over the last week. Part of the reason is that the vaccine roll out has slowed and there is a new variant from India now called the Beta variant which is 60% more transmissible.  The World Health Organization has asked that vaccinated individuals should continue to wear masks to help stop the spread of the virus. Fully vaccinated individuals are 75% to 90% less likely to get infected. However there are breakthrough cases which are less severe than getting infected with no vaccination.

The CDC in America however has not changed it’s no mask recommendation for vaccinated individuals in America. Should someone have a breakthrough case, they might be a symptomatic and have a mild case, however any unvaccinated people they might meet could get a far worse case of the virus and die.

It ain’t over till the fat lady sings. I am going back to wearing my mask indoors. The Beta variant is 60% more transmissible that previous strains of COVID. It has been known to infect people crowded into stadiums and outdoor concerts.

After Pulse: Zoe Colon

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Advisory: Please note that this post is about the Pulse Nightclub Massacre on June 12, 2016. It may contain sensitive and difficult to read content. Post written with narrator’s consent.  

Zoe Colon is co-founder of Proyecto Somos Orlando and she is a director of the Hispanic Federation‘s chapter in the South East.

Zoe was supposed to go to Pulse on the the night of June 12, 2016. She had been doing voter registration and was supposed to do voter registration at the clubs. She and the canvases were all ready to go. Ricardo, a canvasser who  had recently arrived from Puerto Rico called and he said that the club had advised that it was probably not a good night because Gay Days had just ended and it was going to be super packed. Zoe was upset. It would have been a great opportunity to even set up in the parking lot.

The next morning Nancy Rosado called and asked if Zoe had seen the news. Ricardo, the canvasser had decided to go on his own. He texted at 4 AM saying they should not go to Pulse. He had no shoes on and he was in someones car. There was a shooting and his credit card was still inn the club.

Co-workers from New York began to text asking if she was OK. The magnitude of what had happened hadn’t sunk in. Every radio was tuned to the news. The world stood still. As the names were published, she realized how many were Latino. Zoe decided to go to the Center. She spoke to Christina there about how Spanish speaking counselors  would be needed. That is how it all started. There were people inn the club that night who were undocumented. Family might not come forward to file a claim for fear of deportation. She was concerned that people might be re-victimized if they were paired up with someone who did not fully understand them or empathize with them. Clergy could also do more damage than good. Nancy Rosado brought in an amazing wealth of knowledge and years of experience.

After the Center, she went to the Hampton Inn with Christina, and Nancy. Families up to this point had not been able to talk to anyone in Spanish. At least 10 people at the Inn wanted to help bring about advocacy. That night they called a press conference. It was held at the Hispanic Federation inn the court yard. There were about 60 people there. They wanted the Latino community to know the phone numbers they needed to call.

Somos Orlando started out as a hashtag. It means Latinos, Latin X, LGBTQ, we all are Orlando. This was a movement about not being invisible.  She went to the Hispanic Federation and asked what could be dome to move things forward. The Federation has a relationship  with Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jennifer Lopez. They ended up creating a song which raised money for Somos Orlando. Things happened so fast. It was emotionally draining. Love Makes the World Go Round.

After Pulse: Kathy DeVault

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Advisory: Please note that this post is about the Pulse Nightclub Massacre on June 12, 2016. It may contain sensitive and difficult to read content. Post written with narrator’s consent.  

Kathy DeVault is director of strategic partnership for the City of Orlando. She directed Camping World Stadium as it acted as a hub for victims families and survivors in the aftermath of the Pulse Shooting.

On June 11, 2016 Kathy was celebrating a college friend’s birthday. Her friend is very involved in the LGBTQ community. She loves to dance and many of her friends are gay men. She wanted a low key evening with five of her friends that night. They went to a desert shop in Ivanhoe Village. It as a relaxed evening with wine and desert.

The next morning about 4AM, the chief of staff, sent about 10 staff a text message that there was an active shooter  at Pulse and Mayor Buddy Dyer was on scene. Details were scarce. Her response was “I am here and will stay out of the way until I am needed.” She watched the news unfold that morning on TV.

She finally got a call from the deputy chief of staff that she was needed. She ran to city hall to get ear phones for the mayor. She parked near Chipolte south of Pulse and got through the barricades to get thing on scene. A lot of politicians were on site for the press conference and it happened to be an election period. Kathy was called to the scene too help greet and cater to the elected officials that were showing up. The mobile command center was a little south of Pulse.

At dusk the press conferences were over and city staff went to the emergency operations center. Kassandra, the press secretary, was overwhelmed by media inquiries, so Kathy decided to become her right hand woman. She spent the next several days answering calls from national and in international media. Media ascended so quickly because just the night before that had been covering the singer Christina Grimmie shooting at the Plaza in Orlando.

Later that week Kathy helped set up the Family Unification Center in the Beardal Senior Center. That is where families went to get updates form the hospital and FDLE about their loved ones. Media largely took over the parking lot and they got in the faces of family trying to get n and out of the center. The FBI and red cross wanted a more secure location. The decision was made to use Camping World Stadium. A city lead was needed. Kathy as recruited. A list of about 35 to 40 agencies was compiled who would become a part of the family assistance center. The Center needed to be open for families by 10 AM the next morning. Well, OK!

After Pulse: Sherri Monroe

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Advisory: Please note that this post is about the Pulse Nightclub Massacre on June 12, 2016. It may contain sensitive and difficult to read content. Post written with narrator’s consent.  

Sherri Monroe is the executive director of the Red Cross of Greater Orlando. The red cross provided immediate services to first responders and victims families in the aftermath of the Pulse massacre.

At that time she was stationed in Daytona. On the Sunday morning following the shooting she turned on the news. Shootings are pretty common in any city, but the numbers were shocking. This wasn’t some kind of altercation. She stated to get a feeling of the scope of what was going on. You don’t expect something like that to happen in your area.

She knew Red Cross would be responding but se  wasn’t part of the Orlando branch. Red Cross was one of the first organizations on the scene other than first responders. Their roll initially was supporting first responders. It’s summer its hot, so we provided water, snacks and food.

What Red Cross did in this situation is sort of similar to hat the FBI did. No matter how prepared Orlando Police might have been, they were not prepared for this. The FBI knew what to do because they have seen this all before. Red Cross sort of did that on the community side. Within 24 hours people were on the ground here who had been through Sandy Hook, and other mass shooting events. They had seen this before. A local church immediately provided their address as a family assistance center. Red Cross stepped in to say ‘Look this isn’t going to work.’ It was fine for the moment, but there was no way to keep the families protected. That was part of the reason Camping World Stadium became an assistance center. They could set up all the resources from all the different agencies. But most importantly they had a fence around it. They could let the families in and close the gates to keep media and curiosity seekers out.

The Red Cross worked closely with the city to help them figure out what they needed to do next. They also let then know what was coming. You have to stay in front of the situation. It is hard to come back from behind. The following week with all of the vigils, and all of the events, the Red Cross brought in a lot of mental health counselors that could be at those events. They also provided water and simple things like that. The city had set up a 242-7 call line out of the Emergency Operations Center (EOC), but they didn’t have enough people to man it. The Red Cross ran it for them. Sherri was responsible for keeping enough volunteers on the lines. People might call if they could not locate someone, or their car was stuck in the area around Pulse which was locked down, or a call might be about how to transport a body back to Puerto Rico. Mental health counselors were available to talk to the people taking the phone calls. Some calls were challenging.

After Pulse: Andria Estrella – Roa

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Advisory: Please note that this post is about the Pulse Nightclub Massacre on June 12, 2016. It may contain sensitive and difficult to read content. Post written with narrator’s consent.  

Andria Estrelle – Roa is a mental health counselor. She has been a volunteer counselor to victims families and survivors of the Pulse Nightclub massacre that happened n June 12, 2016.

For the sake of self care Andria seldom watches the news but something compelled her to turn it on June 12, 2016 at about 8AM. The camera panned bu a white van and there was concern about possible explosives. The news said that 15 people had died.

She had a meeting with an intern. At 9 AM in the meeting she looked at the news again. At that point the number was 25. A friend texted and said that a mutual friend was at the club. She started calling and texting him and she could not reach him. She called and texted his dad. He hadn’t hear anything. By about 10 or 11 AM the number of people who had died had once again climbed. By 11 AM all the One Blood trucks were out at the local churches.

She spoke with a colleague and they agreed that they had to do something. They agreed to offer free counseling. They sent out a post. They still weren’t fully aware of the scope of hat had happened. Because this affected the LGBTQ community, they offered three free counseling sessions that Sunday to anyone affected. Estrella then got in touch with the Center which was coordinating all the crisis counselors. By the end of that day on Sunday she had found out that her friend was OK.

Monday, she went to the Unitarian Church since it was designated a s a counseling site. She did one crisis counseling session that night with someone who walked in. He had been at Pulse the night of the shooting and escaped. Tuesday night she found out the Citrus Bowl was going to be outfitted as a response center. She was tying to get on the list to help at the Citrus Bowl. Bi-lingual therapists were in short supply. Wednesday morning she went to the Citrus Bowl. She wasn’t on the list but made her way inside.

There was a welcome area for the families and survivors. In a closed room all the providers were set up. The Mexican and Colombian consulates were there, the Puerto Rican chamber of commerce, DCS, The Center, Major Airlines to provide free flight for families, the State Attorney, any and every social service and governmental agency was there. It was mind boggling. It made me proud to be from Orlando. Crisis Counselors were on the next floor up. Disney had donated plush Mickey Mouses for the children and survivors held them as well. This should not have happened here. This is the happiest place in the world.

Families were not going upstairs so she went downstairs and joined the Center where she could talk to people. She was at the Citrus Bowl Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Anybody who was at Pulse that night, would be eligible for victims compensation. Immediate family members of the 49 would also be eligible for the compensation as well which would provide up to $10,000 worth of mental health counseling.   The family would have to pay first and then submit the receipt to the state. That seemed a stressful way to offer help. The family would only get 66.67% of the reimbursement from the state. That is just stupid.

She found out that she could become a state vendor and she could charge the state on behalf of the client. The client would not have too  pay her. Families and survivors never had to pay. In the first two to three weeks no one sought help. People were in shock. They tried to return to life as normal to ignore what had happened. In July she was flooded with sessions. Those who got out of the club without physical wounds had emotional wounds. They went back to work and found out they could not return to life as normal.

In July she was seeing about 20 Pulse survivors a week for two to three months consistently. She began seeing the physically injured as well. The emotionally injured could process and return to life withing the two or three month sessions. They might have family support, friend support which helps in recovery. Estrella never tells her clients that they have to get over things. She helps her clients live in a new reality. They learn to appreciate that they got our and survived and can write a new story. Physically injured survivors came months later. Most of those were in home visits. They were so focused on their physical recover that there emotional recovery took a back seat. They were relatively fine with family and community support and media interviews. But eventually they could not sleep any more. Their emotional injuries were left untended as they recovered physically. Healing does not happen quickly.

 

 

Jim Coffin After Pulse

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Advisory: Please note that this post is about the Pulse Nightclub Massacre on June 12, 2016. It may contain sensitive and difficult to read content. Post written with narrator’s consent.  

Jim Coffin is from the Interfaith Council of Central Florida. Jim is an interfaith community leader. The interfaith Council began over 30 years ago as the National Conference of Christians and Jews. Jim has been the director of the Interfaith Council since 2011.

June 12 is Jim’s oldest sons birthday. Jim and his wife had planned a trip to Atlanta Georgia for about 8 days. His daughter in law worked for a hotel chain, so they had a great room deal. When they heard the the news of the Pulse shooting they had to decide if they would actually go. Perhaps he could help from Atlanta. They realized it was a time to put aside all personal things. He had to focus on where the need was which was Orlando.

Jim immediately looked to see what he could do. He realized an interfaith prayer service would be needed. Monday night there was an interfaith service at Saint James Cathedral. There was Muslim representation, Jewish representation, it was quite diverse. Tuesday the First United Methodist offered their church for a service. The minister had a close connection with the LGBTQ community. They did a reading of the names of those who were killed. They had a picture of each person. Someone would stand and read details about the person and then put the picture on display at the front of the church. About 600 people attended.

When Camping World Center opened, they had every imaginable service available. It was impressive. They had travel for bringing in relatives for funerals. Airlines were giving free passage and accommodations. Intimidate cash was available. There were 30 different services like that. There was no problem getting mental health counselors. The Catholic Church had a big part on spiritual counseling. The city called and said they need pastoral counselors who are gay sensitive. Jim put out the word. That involved lots of calls from around the country and even outside the country.

Because the gunman claimed he was Muslim, there were backlash concerns in the local Muslim community and law enforcement. Jim became involved in lots of meetings with law enforcement along with other faith leaders. When Obama cam he wanted to meet with faith leaders so Jim helped line up faith leaders who could be available at the given time. On top of that it could be that nothing happens and the meeting with Obama didn’t happen. The attorney General also came down and he was asked to find faith leaders. That meeting as well didn’t come off. It is a lot like a metaphor for life, it often doesn’t come off like it is supposed to.

7PM June 12, 2021 at Pulse

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June 12, 2016 is he day 49 people died while dancing at a Pulse Latin Night celebration. At 7PM on June 1, 2021 a Remembrance Ceremony was held at the club which is still standing and surrounded by a temporary memorial wall covered in photos.

The event was to be telecast on the jumbo trons at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts front lawn as well. Concerned about crowds I considered sketching from the front lawn but decided to sketch at the club instead. est Esther Street was shut down being blocked by a pink Lynx bus. Suburban side street were shut down for blocks, and police cars blocked traffic driving north on Orange Avenue as well, effectively securing the site from any fringe lunatics.

Folding chairs were set up in the street intersection and the stage was on the North West corner of Esther and Orange. All the seats were occupied when I got there so I walked around looking for a safe spot to sketch from somewhat removed from the crowd. I settled on sketching from behind the media cameras which were set up in a line in the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot across the street from the club.

I couldn’t hear much from my vantage point but I did hear the names of the 49 victims being read. It was brutally hot and the remembrance was over just before the sun set.