NEWS GATHERING

Faced with a decision between violence or fighting back, the nation’s LGBT community uttered its first organized call for recognition during the Stonewall riots of 1969.

From 1,200 miles away, Miami responded.

Around 2 a.m., the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village, was raided, resulting in a battle between New York police and the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, or LGBT, community. The riots that emerged lasted a week and propelled LGBT discrimination into the national spotlight.

“In 1970, we started saying we’re gay, and we’re proud,” said Ed Sparan, operations manager for the World AIDS Museum. “That was when the door opened for our community to express their sexuality.”

Leading up to Stonewall, Miami was no safe haven for the LGBT community. The community had survived since the 1930s through a nightlife in backroom bars, and discrimination was rampant. It was only when Stonewall shook the United States that the Miami LGBT community began to out itself. Since then, the community has experienced failed equality referendums, HIV/AIDS, staggering mental health statistics, governmental discrimination and, finally, a victory.

Throughout the 1970s, South Florida raids were common. Then, in 1977, the city found itself on the national front of LGBT issues when Miami-Dade passed one of the first U.S. ordinances prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Shortly after, though, well-known singer and Florida Citrus Commission spokeswoman Anita Bryant organized an anti-LGBT movement to repeal the legislation.

Bryant was ultimately victorious when a countywide vote that year struck down the initiative.

“I think we’ve never really recovered from that,” said Luigi Ferrer, health services manager for PrideLines. “There has been a political divide in Miami’s LGBT community between the assimilationists and the liberationists.”

After the loss, high school student Alexei Guren created the Gay Teen Task Force. This kicked off the youth movement in Miami. The group became PrideLines, now Miami’s oldest LGBT youth organization.

“We founded a place where youth could talk to other youth while feeling safe,” Guren said. “This was the only place where we could talk about who we were and what we felt in a place where we didn’t need to worry about being kicked out of our houses.”

In 1981, the American gay community again gained national attention when the HIV/AIDS epidemic hit the United States. The media dubbed it “the gay cancer.”

Ferrer was diagnosed with HIV in 1990. In response, he became an active member of the Miami LGBT community. In 1991, he became the executive director of Body Positive, a support organization for HIV positive individuals.

Ferrer remains an advocate for the community, teaching safe sex in schools and hosting support groups for LGBT youth.

When an anti-discrimination ordinance was brought to the Florida Legislature again in 1998, lawmakers pushed it into action by one vote. Twenty-one years after the initial referendum, the Miami-Dade LGBT community was protected against discrimination.

Today, the battle has shifted.

Megan Muralles, a youth leader in the movement, says that while sexual health is still a major issue, other issues have taken center stage, such as transgender visibility, mental healthcare access, media representation and school curriculum.

“There are still movements in countries trying to legalize being gay,” Muralles said. “Every person you meet will say the movement is focused on something different because there are so many issues and so many solutions, but every one of those people are right.”

One of the recent LGBT issues South Florida weathered was the single-sex bathroom law. In 2015, state lawmakers tried to ban transgender individuals from using their preferred facilities. The bill was similar to controversial laws passed in Houston and North Carolina.

State Rep. George Moraitis, the bill’s co-sponsor, says it was meant to address women’s fears of being harassed in public restrooms. When asked for any supporting statistics, he could provide none.

“It’s kind of sad because [bills like this are] sort of divisive,” Moraitis said. “I guess some people felt like it was targeting them.”

While the bill didn’t pass the House, it reflected deeper ideas about the community.

Mental illness is another pressing issue in Miami’s modern LGBT community. The National Alliance on Mental Illness reports that lesbian, gay and bisexual youth are four times more likely to self-harm than heterosexuals. Muralles, 17, started self-harming at age 11. She had to date in secret and could not tell her parents she was in her school’s Gay-Straight Alliance.

After two years of recovery from self-injury, Muralles says she is happier with herself. She went on to speak at multiple conventions, including the 2015 Stonewall National Education Program.

Denise Palazzo, LGBT facilitator for Broward County Public Schools, says that because of youth leadership like Muralles’, every public high school in Broward County has an active Gay-Straight Alliance. Together, these clubs discuss advocacy and emotional support.

“We’re going to hear more voices,” Palazzo said. “Young people nowadays won’t stay silent about harassment. There’s much more dialogue taking place.”

Particularly on the trans bathroom issue, I knew it was a multi-faceted debate, despite my own personal beliefs. Thus, I wanted the opinion of someone on the other side, so I called every sponsor on the bill in question to try to get a response. However, when Rep. Moraitis was unable to give any supporting evidence on the bill's position, I chose to include that fact in the article for two reasons. Primarily, I believe it is the job of journalists to hold the political sphere accountable, and I believed there was a lack of existing journalistic prowess on the South Florida bill's cousin legislation, HB2, which gained a lot of press at the time. So I asked the question that I felt I was unable to find in any other article: what are the statistics of women being sexually harassed by predators posing as transgender individuals? Despite being a sponsor of the bill, Moraitis had no quantitative evidence. Below are the call logs for how many calls I made to various representatives to get a single phone interview with a sponsor of the bill.

Furthermore, I knew I had to be particularly sensitive in my handling of the information from Megan Murrales. Because she was a minor at the time and furthermore releasing information on her self-injury, I made sure to keep contact with my writing coach throughout the process. While there is no legal measure against publishing information on minors, I took special care to ensure that she was not being put in danger by releasing this information. She was very enthusiastic to share her story, but in keeping with my own integrity, I worked closely with the subject to ensure the portrayal of her story was as close to the truth as possible.

About: This article was published in the University of Miami's Montage magazine, as part of a summer program I participated in from July 10-30, 2016. With an overarching theme of identity, I chose to report on the history of Miami's LGBT movement. I then had to contact educators, advocates, politicians, and LGBT individuals in the area to get a complete picture of the rapidly-changing scene. I spent three days interviewing, writing, researching, revising, and, ultimately, producing a piece that won the best news story award, granting me a nomination to the Dow Jones News Fund award in summer program reporting.

About: At the beginning of the 2016-2017 school year, I got a text from my dad one night that there was a swarm of police cars by my school. Immediately, I sent out in the Lariat group chat to ask if anyone wanted to cover it. When no one was able to, I headed over to the scene, where I found out that there had been a bad car accident which resulted in a car flipped into the fence of our football field. The marching band had been practicing at the time, so I went in planning to interview police officers as well as witnesses. However, upon talking to the police officers on the scene, they said they were unable to release information before the police chief issued an official statement, but that I could interview the tow truck workers that had worked on helping the victim out of the vehicle. This was published the same day on our website as a short informational piece on the crash. While I understood that none of the information was verified officially at the time of publication, I talked with a police officer to ensure that their station was okay with me publishing the information I had in the manner in which I obtained it. I wanted students to have a quick, easy way to understand what happened. The next day when officials gave a statement, I double checked my information against the release.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article was checked against a Broward County Police Department release on September 21st. It was last updated at that time.

At 6:35 P.M. on Stirling Road, an unnamed driver crashed into a tree, flipping the car over into the Cooper City High School football stadium fence.

An airlift later came to transport the victim to Broward General Hospital, according to witnesses. There was one occupant in the car and there are no fatalities.

“A tree was split in half, the fence was obliterated, he was upside-down in his vehicle, and his neck was all the way back,” Witness and CCHS Band Parent Brian Hack said.

The police are as of yet unable to release any verified information, but sources on the scene believe the driver was speeding. An unnamed tow truck operator stated that by the look of the crash and its damage, he had to have been going over the speed limit.

The CCHS Sound of Pride were practicing when the crash happened, making many students and parents first-hand witnesses of the incident.

“We got to the scene before any of the fire rescue arrived,” Hack said. “We saw the car flipped over [and] saw the trace all the way from the senior parking lot entrance all the way to right behind the football scoreboard.”

The color guard in particular was on the baseball field when the crash occurred.

“At first we heard a siren but we figured it was just passing by,” Color Guard Member Justine Russo said. “But when we got onto the field we saw a line of police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks parked along the fence … A few seconds later a Sheriff’s helicopter came and landed on the football field.”

Police cars still lined the area well past 9:00 P.M., closing off the west-facing side of Sterling Road in front of CCHS.

Journalism is the art of finding the story. However, sometimes the stories don't make that task easy. Particularly with dealing in sensitive subjects, being a journalist requires a mix of respect, curiosity, and tenacity in the interviewing and fact-gathering process. In my belief, I don't think my articles are valuable if they're not adding a new perspective to existing discourse. So often, journalists reiterate the same facts, but when I write my articles, I always try to find something new to add to the conversation. Often, the route to novelty is in the interview subjects. I find that the best interviews I have are the ones where I'm simply having a conversation. Whether it's a story on drag queens or car crashes, I never err on the side of timidity. I'm always trying to find the story that hasn't been told and, in many cases, the story that needs to be told. While I do urge my staff to prepare for an interview, my own methods differ a little from the norm. I don't generally go in with pre-written questions, particularly for feature interviews. If depth is the goal, interrogation is not the correct method. But for brief, factual quotes, I cut right to the chase. One of the most important things I've learned about interviews is that people are willing to talk to students, you just need to learn to ask and pursue.

About: This article was written for the FSPA district category prompt "health page." It won first place for District 7, but part of the reason I believe it did so well was that it took both a unique angle and a sensitive topic. Collecting sources for this was difficult, as many students were unwilling to openly share their experiences, but wanted to share them anonymously. As part of keeping with journalistic integrity, I insured that these students' identities remained anonymous. Furthermore, for the student that gave a misinformed quote, I insured that he was aware of the implications of his quote were made clear, as well as its purpose in the article. This article was meant to shed light on the state of mental health awareness.

Behind the fronts put on by many unassuming students, deeper issues plague minds - often invisibly.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 11.4% of U.S. teens age 12-17 have struggled with symptoms of a major depressive disorder. Our locality is not an exception to this trend; even in the halls of Cooper City High School, many students mask personal strife.

“It’s the worst feeling into world when your mind is pitted against you,” one unnamed student said. “It was hard to pinpoint what was bothering me. I felt like everyone else wouldn't understand, so I didn't speak out about it for a long time.”

Stories like these, while unique, are not uncommon. These things are treatable, but the largest roadblock for many students is the simple act of speaking up.

Spanish teacher Lindsey Roberts believes stigma comes from a lack of understanding.

“I think it's hard to sympathize if you haven't gone through it personally,” Roberts said. “Physical illness is a bit easier to understand, you can see what's wrong, and you would never joke about a physical disability. That's not the case for psychological problems, which are far less tangible.”

What, then, is mental illness exactly?

“A mental illness is a condition that affects a person's thinking, feeling or mood,” writes the National Alliance on Mental Illness. “Such conditions may affect someone's ability to relate to others and function each day. Each person will have different experiences, even people with the same diagnosis.”

The general understanding of mental illness at CCHS is largely misinformed. When asked the question, “what is mental illness?,” many students were unable to answer accurately.

“If you have issues, you had a birth defect, or something during childhood or adulthood that took away some of your sanity I guess,” Sophomore Klaus Meiner said.

The reality of the situation is that frequently, illnesses like depression and anxiety are not sparked by a specific event, and are rather just generalized, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

A basic misunderstanding of what exactly mental illnesses are makes it hard for students to find the strength to speak up.

“I tried initiating conversations about it, but [my friends] didn't seem to understand,” one unnamed student said. “I’ve learned to accept that they can't understand.”

Despite a culture of silence, there are many resources for those who are struggling. World History teacher Peggy Wilfong wants her students to know that she is there for them, and other faculty concur.

“Often, [getting help is] one of two things,” Wilfong said. “In some cases, the person themselves realizes they are not coping, and seeks guidance, from a counselor, a friend or a family member. Otherwise, loved ones will notice a change in the person, and can guide them, and make recommendations.”

CCHS is home to a family counselor and a school social worker, both of whom can be contacted in the front office. Teachers and students both have the ability to refer students to these school board professionals.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness finds that the best way to find help is to speak up. This simple, empowering move can be the key to lifelong mental health.

Note: I did have a staff member help me collect quotes for this article, but said staff member did not want their name published as a contributor. I helped guide the staff member through the credibility of anonymous quotes as well as the importance of debriefing interviewees after deciding to use their quote in such a sensitive article.