By Friday, the back room of The Spiral Staircase was overflowing. It wasn’t just the usual crew anymore. There was a trans man named Leo who taught self-defense classes. A drag queen named Miss Cherry Jubilee who brought a dozen homemade empanadas. A quiet teenager questioning their gender, holding their mother’s hand.

The next day, Rio, Jay, Samira, and Marcus stood on the sidewalk with brushes and bright acrylics. They painted a phoenix rising from a cracked pane of glass. Underneath, in bold lavender letters: “Still Here.”

“They want us to be afraid,” she said. “They want us to disappear into corners and live half-lives. But I spent twenty years being half a person. I will not go back. And neither will you.”