While working for Miami’s public school system in 1984, I was assigned to photograph Coconut Grove Elementary School students aboard a Metrorail train for the transit system’s inaugural ride. The girl’s steady gaze seemed to challenge mine in her private moment amid the pomp and publicity.

Hundreds of queer Miamians dance in defiance, joy, and solidarity at a 2024 Pride celebration at Pérez Art Museum Miami, a public institution supported in part by tax dollars. After his landslide reelection as Florida governor in 2022, MAGA Republican Ron DeSantis launched his “war on woke,” targeting DEI initiatives and marginalized communities, including LGBTQ Floridians. While many public institutions and private businesses capitulated to the threat of fiscal and political retaliation, Pérez Art Museum Miami chose a different path, continuing to provide a welcoming space where queer Miamians could gather, celebrate, and be seen. For their part, the revelers did what queer communities have done since Stonewall: They came. They saw. They danced.

While visiting Barcelona in 2018, I was struck by the juxtaposition of passersby enjoying Antoni Gaudí’s “Casa Batlló” and other Barcelona wonders, while oblivious to a nearby billboard urging an end to the barbaric custom in some world cultures of mutilating girls’ genitals.

Jeff Ronci, a Miami-based writer, photo artist, and human rights activist for more than four decades, has seen his work published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Miami Herald, and Forbes magazine, as well as in literary anthologies The Stygian Lepus, Teacakes and Tarot (Spell Jar Press), Chameleon Chimera: An Anthology of Florida Poets (Purple Ink Press), and Born Remembering (Spell Jar Press).He holds an MFA in creative writing from Florida International University and is working on his second novel and a book of humor satirizing life in Trump 2.0 America. You can see his photo art at crazymoon.jeffronci.com.