After Pulse: Zebra Coalition

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Advisory: Please note that this post is about the Pulse nightclub massacre on June 12, 2016. It contains sensitive and difficult to read content.

Heather Wilke is the director at Zebra Coalition. After the Pulse nightclub massacre the Zebra Coalition provided significant services for the LGBT community. Zebra assists LGBT youth. Heather was at Zebra for about a year and experienced an exciting year of growth and then Pulse happened. Things turned for the entire community. Zebra was suddenly in the spotlight. Everyone was in crisis. For two weeks media was swarming everywhere. As the director she kept getting calls from media for at least six months.

The night before the shooting Heather went to bed at 9pm. She announced on Facebook that she was putting her eye mask on and turning the phone off. With a small child, sleep becomes precious. It was 6 am when she got up and first looked at her phone. She checked on family and friends and then the Zebra kids and staff. Everyone she contacted was fine.

She went to the Center at 8:30am. There was a press conference with LGBT leaders at 10am. That evening there was supposed to be a dinner with friends. That went on hold. The day was a blur of response and reactions. Everyone was in crisis mode. The streets were blocked off in every direction down by Pulse and media was swarming. Police had to redirect traffic on Mills because of the Center across the street. At the Center board members were scrambling to figure out what could be done.

The Center was packed. People needed a community. They needed to physically be around people and have a place to gather. The Center became that. It was a beautiful thing to witness.  Security came out to figure out who could go in. People brought food. Overflow supplies went to the Zebra Coalition.

The Zebra Coalition put everything aside and responded to the community needs. They responded to survivors, youth that were in the club at the time of the shooting. Zebra became the hotline for two weeks. They already had a 24 hour hotline that then was directed towards the crisis. Mental heath counselors in the community all stepped up. All the volunteers were organized. People rotated through Zebra. Counselors came in for 3 to 4 hour shifts 24 hour a day. Many of the calls were not from youth but instead from people who wanted to help.

People started bringing water to the coalition. They had water from floor to ceiling in the back room. Startbucks came by every day with coffee. Universal Studios brought lunch every day. Church groups and school groups came by delivering trinkets. At one point all the windows at Zebra were full of art. One group delivered rainbows so there were rainbows everywhere. Therapists made “You Matter” cards. The school of holistic medicine brought by essential oils.

After several weeks the Orlando United Assistance Center (OUAC) took over the organizational aspects of donations and distribution. Zebra went back to business as usual with a different lens. They were always supporting youth in crisis, but now they had this trauma lens. Youth felt unsafe. It was about a week before many regulars started coming back. They were scared, they didn’t want to leave their houses. When they already had anxiety and depression issues, they wanted to get them back to actively engage with them. That fear lingers. The past Pride, people didn’t want to go into massive group gatherings. People felt they have a target on them.

Zebra did work with several youth who were in the club at the time of the shooting. Noises can trigger the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). One youth didn’t reach out for help until six months later. For the most part however, OUAC handled survivors and families of the victims.

For six months Heather was working in non stop crisis mode. After six months she finally got some time to decompress and the enormity of what had happened sank in.

 

 

 

After Pulse: Lindsay Kincaide

Posted on by Thor

Lindsay Kincaide is an Orlando Florida mental health clinician and an HIV, LGBT advocate. She volunteered at the Center on Tuesday nights and the volunteers  became known as Team Tuesday. After work they would go to Karaoke night at Pulse.

She loved Pulse. A friend dealt poker at Pulse. Barbara Poma had named the club after her brother who passed away from aids, and she was always open to local agencies coming into the club to do fundraisers.

She started with front desk work at the Center but wanted to get involved as an HIV tester. She did the work to become a certified HIV tester in the state of Florida. She as also a case manager for low income people living with HIV, Aids. She was promoted to become the Center’s HIV program director. She built the program up adding Hep-C and STI testing and she expanded mental health services.

She vividly recalls June 11, the day before the Pulse tragedy. She was running a support group for partners of individuals how have come out as trans-gender. She was running that support group on Saturday mornings. It was a beautiful day. She felt great and went shopping at Publix for the weekend. The plan was to have mimosas on Sunday. She and her partner went to bed early that night, about 10pm. She considered the idea of going out, maybe to Southern Nights, but she was tired.

She woke up the next morning to the text messages, “Are you OK?” “Did you go to Pulse?” A text message at 2Am read, “Are you at Pulse?” from a friend. She assumed her friend wanted her to meet at Pulse. Then she got a text from a best friend in Atlanta. Then she sought out the news at about 8AM on social media. What the hell is going on? She jumped out of bed and woke her partner up, “There has been a shooting at Pulse.” She realized she had to go to the Center. That was her first instinct. Her partner was nervous, “What if they decide to go to the center and begin shooting?” At that point Lindsay didn’t care. She needed to be there. They both went.

They got coffee and immediately drove to the Center and they were some of the first to arrive. No one was prepared for this. The Center started putting information online via Facebook. People started to arrive. Water, Klenex, toilet paper, paper towels, coffee and food poured into the Center. They moved the TV to the front room so that the news could come in.

About mid-morning about 12 councilors went into the back and stated to figure out how to mobilize. They needed to be in the community. A clipboard was passed around but that wasn’t going to work. Someone suggested Google Docs to get organized. A spreadsheet was created. Lindsay began to sign people up, getting their contact information. The Zebra Coalition right across the street donated their crisis hotline. People were sent to the hotel across the street from ORMC where the families were hoping to hear news about their loved ones. They also needed an off site location. The Center was getting insanely crowded. That off site location became Christ’s Church on Robinson.

The Google Doc which she ran had contact information and then tabs for the different sites and different shifts. For the first day, Sunday, She tried to schedule people. It was too much for her to handle alone. She was there until 11Pm on Sunday. She decided to just put the spreadsheet out into the world, and let people sign up virtually. She added new tabs as needed. The document was editable. It went out on all the Facebook pages that counselors are a part of. Her phone blew up with call from all over the country. She was texting, e-mailing and calling out information to everyone to sign in on the Google Doc. She was up until 2AM. Over 700 people signed up. There were about 1000 interactions between June 12 and July 4th.

By Monday they were going to the LGBT clubs, Parliament House, Southern Nights, Savoy, Stonewall, because that is where the community gathers when they need support. That is our safe space. Councilors were at the clubs until midnight. The mental health community wrapped their arm around the LGBT community and said, we are here. They provided support and connected people to counseling. Two Spirit began offering services for free and the Center got their counseling mobilized. Another Google Doc was created where she asked all who had signed up, what they were willing to offer the community. That document went to what became the United Orlando Assistance Center and to the Center as a counseling resource guide.