Bob’s Blog: On Liberty & Justice for Nex

For us at The California Endowment, the oft-used term “for all” is meaningful. The Pledge of Allegiance’s “liberty and justice for all” – is ubiquitously recited in thousands of classrooms daily across our nation and to begin countless public gatherings at the city, county, township, and state governmental levels. It appears that sixteen-year-old Nex Benedict did not enjoy liberty.  But will Nex experience justice? Nex Benedict was an indigenous, non-binary tenth-grade student of Choctaw descent at Owasso High School in Oklahoma, who died on February 8, one day after a fight with other students in the school bathroom. Officials are continuing to investigate the death and the altercation that took place the day before. Still, it appears that the “altercation” was triggered when a group of students poked fun at Nex and friends, and things escalated from there.

Freedom Oklahoma, an organization that advocates and organizes across Oklahoma for Two Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer communities, has organized in response, and there have been vigils and calls to action across the country. On February 21, the Human Rights Campaign filed a complaint with federal education officials to investigate the circumstances surrounding Nex’s death, specifically the role of our education system – and this federal attention is most welcome from our perspective.

If one takes the opportunity to google the phrase “trans deaths” (we invite you to go ahead and try it), you will witness a litany of violent, hate-filled, venomous attacks on trans- and non-binary persons – story after story after story – with increasing regularity in recent years.  The data on such violence, overwhelmingly faced by Black trans women and femmes, and the stories that accompany them paint a picture that being trans or non-binary – especially as a young person – is hazardous to one’s health in the United States of America. Across the country, the political environment creates conditions where the rhetoric and actions of elected and appointed officials fuel bullying, scapegoating, marginalizing, and hate.

The state superintendent of Oklahoma’s public schools had this to say about LGBTQ students in a statement before Nex’s death: “We’re not going to tolerate the woke Olympics in our schools, left-wing ideologues trying to push in the radical gender theory…that you can be gender fluid or change your gender constantly.” So, if high school students are aware that school district leaders and elected officials are infusing marginalization and hate into policies against LGBTQ and non-binary young people – then what Nex and thousands of non-binary young people are being subjected to is, in effect, a form of state-sanctioned violence.

Nex appears to have been denied liberty and freedom as a non-binary young person. Yet, another loss in the rabid anti-LGBTQ politics and posturing increasingly prevalent in our nation.

Only time and investigations will tell whether Nex and the family will also be denied justice. In the meantime, how can those of us with both heart and resources confront the denial of “liberty and justice” for Nex and those who are marginalized, scapegoated, and bullied like Nex?

We can and should invest in organizations that help give agency to the abused and power to the persecuted. We encourage philanthropy and private donors to fund organizations like Freedom Oklahoma, GSA Network, and the TransJustice Funding Project and get involved with initiatives like Grantmakers United for Trans Communities, which are “fighting the good fight” to see that stories of oppression, hate, and violence are transformed into policies and practices and systems of support for young people like Nex, seeking the freedom to be their fully human selves.  As in liberty and justice – for ALL.

Kris Hayashi                                                                                        Dr. Bob Ross

TCE Board of Directors                                                                   TCE President & CEO