The Revictimizing Process to Build a Pulse Memorial Continues to Harm Families and Survivors
Today, the City of Orlando released the names of the individuals who will comprise the Memorial Committee for what has purposefully been named the "Orlando United Pulse Memorial."
As a public relations stunt, the name given to this memorial by the City of Orlando is incongruous with reality.
The truth is that the City of Orlando and the onePULSE Foundation have spent over eight years exploiting and dividing the victims/survivors of the Pulse Nightclub shooting.
Now, the City of Orlando continues to do this through this re-victimizing and re-traumatizing memorial process led by Dr. Larry Schooler, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who is being paid nearly $90,000.00 of taxpayer dollars to lead a sadistic course of action that has already caused additional, unnecessary, and entirely preventable harm to Pulse victims/survivors.
This list resulted from an application process developed by Dr. Larry Schooler nearly eight years after the mass shooting, which required families and survivors of the Pulse shooting to prove their worthiness for selection.
On July 10, 2024, the committee that was planned to be comprised of10-15 people ended up being an 18-person committee comprised of victims, survivors, and people who never even met any of the 49 victims of the mass shooting at the Pulse Nightclub.
These 18 newly appointed committee members were ultimately selected by Mayor Buddy Dyer after being filtered by a small group "community leaders" also chosen by the Mayor. The selection of these problematic "advisors" irked many victims/survivors due to their troubling relationships with the Pulse-affected community and included:
JahKiya Bell, Ed.D, Senior Advisor to the President and CEO, Heart of Florida United Way
Rev. Dr. Jose Rodriguez of the Episcopal Churches of Christ the King and Jésus de Nazaret
Joél Junior Morales, Foundation Manager, Contigo Fund (formerly worked for OUAC at The Center)
Jesse Arias, Director of the Orlando United Resiliency Services (OURS), The Center Orlando
After "blindly" selecting applicants from a pool of around 150, these advisors together with Mayor Buddy Dyer created a memorial committee that gave seats to people with no direct connection to the victims to be memorialized. These individuals with no affiliation to the 49 victims and who were not directly impacted were chosen over the mothers of murdered victims who also applied to be on the committee.
In response to a public records request for these committee applications, the City of Orlando improperly redacted the names of the applicants, even though names are not exempt from public disclosure.
We have requested the unredacted applications used in this ineffective process, but in the meantime, you can view the redacted committee applications that the City of Orlando released, below:
Selected applicants who were not directly impacted by the mass shooting and who were chosen over the families of victims who also applied include:
Nancy Rosado (who was not a first responder to the Pulse shooting, as the City of Orlando suggested in their press release, not a survivor, and is not a family member of a victim);
Terrance Howard (a museum professional, when the contentious museum project was fought against, abandoned, and is not part of this memorial process);
Kelly Dawson (a random person from Orlando, with no direct connection to the shooting victims being memorialized);
And others...
Former supporters of Barbara Poma and the onePULSE Foundation were also chosen over the mothers and families who have spoken out against the exploitative nonprofit. These onePULSE supporters are part of the reason why the nonprofit was successful in its exploits, a memorial has not been built after eight years, and the Pulse Nightclub owner was able to walk away millions of dollars richer from her failed nonprofit that promised an extravagant memorial and museum.
The other mothers and families continue to be excluded from leading the process to memorialize their murdered children, parents, and siblings, this time by the City of Orlando.
The pain and harm the City has caused through this exclusionary process is immeasurable, as it continues to privilege the same people who have re-victimized survivors for years.
Survivors are Unified with Victims' Families
The survivors who have been selected to be on the committee are moving in unity with the mothers whose children were violently murdered at the Pulse Nightclub and who want to be on the memorial committee.
Immediately after the news broke, survivors began speaking out publicly and advocating for the families of the 49.
For example, Keinon Carter went on Spectrum News 13 and unequivocally stated that the Memorial Committee should be modified to include all of the victims' mothers, fathers, and families who applied.
Before the committee selection process, we recommended to Dr. Larry Schooler and City Officials through multiple emails that the 49 families should comprise the Memorial Committee.
We said memorials are meant to memorialize those who were killed. You do not memorialize the living. The 49 families should lead the memorialization of their loved ones.
You can read one of our many emails to Larry Schooler and the City of Orlando below:
We even questioned if this committee process is even necessary, eight years after the shooting, after numerous committees, designs, surveys, community feedback, and even an international design competition. We have already done all of this. How many more ideas are there that we have not already addressed? Why are we being forced to do this all over again and in a way that is equally as harmful, if not more so?
Everyone is satisfied with the beautiful Osceola County memorial, which did not require a committee and was designed successfully with empathy, compassion, and donated time.
How many design ideas do Mayor Buddy Dyer and the City of Orlando need to proceed with building a public memorial? How many times do we need to go through this process to design and develop a Pulse memorial?
There are just a handful of designs that have already been done, showing there is no need to start over from scratch and again without the proper guidance and facts:
Our advice was willfully ignored and the City of Orlando continued on its path to divide families/survivors and force families/survivors to once again fight against an organization for human decency and respect.
The Struggle Continues
Our fight began in 2019, when we learned of the onePULSE Foundation's plans to turn our tragedy into a tourist attraction that ended up paying Pulse Nightclub owner Barbara Poma nearly $1M in salary payments alone. We were disgusted by the support the City of Orlando and Orange County gave to this woman to exploit survivors and the murder of our loved ones. We watched and spoke out as millions of dollars in donations and taxpayer dolllars were pocketed and wasted.
Christine Leinonen was the first mother on the scene of the mass shooting that resulted in the murder of her son, Christopher Andrew Leinonen.
For the past eight years, she has been a fervent voice of reason and the public face in our fight for a just public memorial.
Now that a public memorial is on the horizon, the City of Orlando has excluded her from being on the Memorial Committee. The advisors, the Mayor, and Larry Schooler's process have rejected her application, along with the applications of a dozen other mothers and family members.
This is revolting and unacceptable.
No one should tell a mother how her murdered son is going to be memorialized. No one should exclude her from the process and put someone with no connection to the victims in her place.
Furthermore, after eight years, the City and the local media should know how to navigate the language used when talking to (or reporting on) mass shooting victims. This Memorial Committee announcement showed the City, once again, has no idea what they are doing and has failed yet again.
No victim of the Pulse Nightclub shooting was "lost." You lose a set of keys. The 49 victims were violently killed and the language used should not erase this reality. To say victims were "lost" is retraumatizing and insensitive.
The City's press release, which local media mostly regurgitated (copied and pasted), was also a sign of total disrespect and showed a complete lack of compassion. The announcement failed to name the victims whose families are represented on the committee. It did not mention their relationship either, only "lost a family member in the tragedy." Rather than look up each victim's name, local media agencies reverted to their lazy practice of being the City and Mayor's mouthpiece.
The City, while leading a memorial intended to honor the victims, did not even have the courtesy to name them in their press release. Most local media outlets followed suit with similarly neglectful reporting.
The City did this even when the world continues to call for everyone to "Say their names" and "Remember the names and lives" of the 49 murdered victims.
This neglect proves that the 49 victims of the Pulse Nightclub Shooting are not the priority for the City's Pulse memorial and process.
This egregious and impersonal omission also shows that the City is incompetent and should not be leading the memorial process, which we were also publicly against from the beginning due to the City's culpability in the deaths of the 49 victims and conflicts of interest.
The bottom line, the City of Orlando is forcing us to continue to be involved with this humiliating, exhausting, and destructive bullshit for another two years. In the meantime, the City and the Mayor get to put out press releases to sway public opinion and make it appear like everything is okay.
None of this is okay.
***UPDATE***
Since posting this, Nancy Rosado publicly agreed to give up her seat on the Committee to one of the mothers who applied and whose application was rejected.
If we don't fight for what's right, we will not win.
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