On February 12, 2008 Lawrence King, a queer eight grader from Ventura, California was shot in the head and killed, in his classroom by a fellow student.

Two years later I still vividly remember reading about his murder just days before the call for submissions to Kicked Out closed. I read everything I could find about Lawrence, trying to make sense of how queerphobia could be so powerful that it would drive another child to carry a gun to school, and shoot a classmate. I’m still trying to make sense of that. Beyond the senseless violence of Lawrence’s death, the aspect of his life that has stayed with me was something that media outlets, as well as community organizers and activists seemed to overlook. At the time of his death, Lawrence was living in a foster home for abused and neglected children.

Lawrence who in death has become a poster child and rallying point for issues of school safety for LGBTQ youth, must in my opinion also be connected to the thousands of other LGBTQ youth on the streets and in foster homes across the country and around the world who have been forced to leave their parents homes because of abuse and neglect. I talk about Lawrence’s death in the introduction to Kicked Out, repeating many of the same words I spoke only weeks after his murder at the day of silence rally in his memory here in NYC: “We must never let community leaders forget the work that needs to be done for those who are still living.”