On the Doctor's recommendation...

[x_maker]

It was mentioned to me that Monday is the memorial of what the news likes to call the "Columbia Mutant Massacre". I'm learning that some people here were actually there, and from what I'm hearing, actually involved.

When it happened, I was in the third hospital in three days, getting passed around from trauma center to trauma center when my blood work came back as x-gene positive. Hospitals kept saying that they didn't have the necessary precautions to treat a mutant trauma victim.

They didn't let me have TV until a week or so after, and by that time the news stations wouldn't show the footage of what happened except in little three-second edited-for-prime-time sound bites. But there was the guy talking on Crossfire, I can't remember his name although I could probably look it up. The "Friends of Humanity" guy. Saying that this was a sign of things to come. Advocating camps, roundups, registration only being the beginning. Couching everything in terms of public safety.

I'd only been a mutant for a week as far as I knew, and I was already part of a public menace. Through physical therapy and all the subsequent visits to specialists and stuff, I kept getting looked as a mutant first, and as a patient second. So when they let me have a computer again, I got in touch with some people on the mutant rights websites and started learning as much as I could. By the way, there's a lot of good literature out there if anyone's interested.

What I'm saying is that I wasn't there at Columbia, and I can't pretend to empathize with what anyone here went through because of it - but outside of here in the rest of the world, it was kind of a watershed event for the mutant rights community. Most of the websites have a "Remember Columbia" banner of some sort, still.

I'm told there's a club for mutant rights that some of you belong to that does little fundraisers and benefits and stuff like that. If you're interested in getting a bit more active and political than a mutant bake sale, I think I could get on board with that.

I guess we've all got to find our causes.

Comments

[x-icarus.livejournal.com]

No, but we had riots of our own. Ever heard of Stonewall? Cops pissed off a whole bunch off drunk drag queens and had to deal with them for half a week.

[x-forge.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Columbia can become to mutant rights what Stonewall was to the gay rights movement - something to rally around. A sort of "Look, we're here, get used to us" - but as long as people look at it in the same light as the stuff that happened at the Statue of Liberty (was that five years ago? I can't remember) - they're going to look at us like a threat.

It's why I want to see what Amanda has to say to them. It'll be important.

[x-icarus.livejournal.com]

I thought that was much more recent than that. Only two or two and a half years ago.

Ha, no pressure to Amanda, right?

[xp_daytripper]

*wry grin* Thanks, boys. When I have my nervous breakdown I'll know where to send the psych bill, yeah? ;)

What I'm going to say... I hope it sounds all right. Strange says it's a good speech, but there's bits I can't talk about, given the whole connection with certain people and the fact no-one's going to believe me if I tell them the people who attacked Columbia were from a former government black ops program designed to turn mutants into weapons. Hopefully missing that part isn't going to matter, even tho' it's a perfect example of where talks of camps and registration and the like end up.

[x-forge.livejournal.com]

Just had a talk with one of the teachers on that very same subject, actually. Would you mind if I took a look at that speech? May get a few ideas myself.

[xp_daytripper]

Yeah, sure. If you promise not to complain about my handwriting too much. And I could do with talkign this over with someone who doesn't think I'm a crazy suicidal idiot.