Advisory: Please note that this post is about the Pulse nightclub massacre on June 12, 2016. It contains sensitive and difficult to read content.
Stephanie Piniero works for the Hispanic Federation, Somos Orlando. Stephanie was in Argentina when she hear about the Pulse Nightclub shooting via social media. She got texts asking if she was OK. At 8am she saw that 20 were reported dead. Sadly in America we are used to mass shootings. She stayed glued to her phone all day. At around 11am her host family was watching TV and the Pulse shooting was on every channel.
She had clients and friends who went to Pulse often. Her friends were OK. The updates kept coming. It was like a nightmare that didn’t stop. She had left her job a Zebra Coalition for the vocational exchange in Argentina. The Zebra Coalition was ground zero for helping in the aftermath of the Pulse massacre. Stephanie was the only Spanish speaking staff at the Coalition so she felt guilty that she wasn’t there to help.
When she got back, the streets around Pulse were still closed off. In the beginning of July a position opened up at Somos Orlando. Two weeks later she was hired. Within a few days she was seeing clients. One Orlando money helped fund the services. Survivors who were able to escape that night had a different application than those who were injured. This happened to a community that was already marginalized. In some cases the main bread winner died that night. So they were a few steps away from loosing everything. Sometimes a basic service was to help get furniture.
One father of a shooting victim wanted a translation of a the autopsy report. The coroners office does not do that, so she translated. He needed to know.
Hispanic Federation has many different advocacy avenues, like LGBT rights, immigration rights, healthcare rights and reproductive rights. Stephanie’s roll has transformed, to work on reproductive rights and reproductive justice, with a focus on abortion rights in Florida.
