"It’s hard to see blueprints for a garden where I thought I was going to die," Carter told the Orlando Sentinel in July 2019. "But if we don't build something there, they win. The hate wins." Nationally, 2019 marked a critical pivot in the conversation about the Pulse shooting. For two years following the tragedy, the "Orlando nightclub shooting" was often framed primarily as terrorism (the shooter pledged allegiance to ISIS) or gun violence. By 2019, the narrative had sharpened.
For the LGBTQ+ community and the Latinx community of Orlando, 2019 was not a year of closure. It was a year of reckoning. Walking past the iconic purple facade in 2019 was a jarring experience for locals. The club had been shuttered since the attack that claimed 49 lives and injured 53 others. For nearly three years, the site was a makeshift memorial—a sea of wilting flowers, cracked candles, dripping paint from murals, and laminated photos of victims nailed to chain-link fences. pulse 2019
"I was at a bar in Tampa last month, and a balloon popped," says "Marco," a 34-year-old survivor who asked to use a pseudonym. "I hit the floor. Twenty other people hit the floor. We looked at each other, and we all knew. We were reliving Pulse in a parking lot two hours away." "It’s hard to see blueprints for a garden
The plan was ambitious: a reflecting pool set within the footprint of the club’s walls, a "Survivors Wall," and a museum dedicated to the history of violence against queer spaces. For survivors like Patience Carter, who was shot in the leg and hid in the bathroom for three hours, the announcement was a double-edged sword. For two years following the tragedy, the "Orlando