Brandon Wolf on stage at Maxwell Frost’s MadSoul Music and Arts Festival, 2025. Credit: Photo by J.D. Casto

The tenth year since the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando has stirred a range of emotions and reactions in the community.

Some survivors and family members believe there was more that the city could have done to prevent the tragedy, or to address blocked exits and other code violations at the nightclub that trapped people inside with a domestic terrorist.

Others have placed hope in an ongoing process by the city to finally build a memorial that will honor the victims and survivors of the tragedy, without exploiting their pain.

For Brandon Wolf, a survivor of the tragedy who has channeled his passion for a better world into political activism, the 10th anniversary of the Pulse shooting is also a personal call for courage.

“I spent the last almost three years traveling the country, talking to people about what this moment requires of us,” said Wolf, who until recently served as national press secretary for the nonprofit Human Rights Campaign.

In an era of political turmoil and a chaotic federal administration led by President Donald Trump, Wolf has urged others through his work to “dig deep and find the kind of courage that is contagious,” the kind of courage “that inspires other people to be courageous in their own right.”

And with 2026 upon him, he realized this message was beginning to hit closer to home.

“As we started the new year, and we got closer, quite honestly, to the 10-year remembrance of Pulse, I think I realized I was talking to myself — that this moment requires me to be as courageous as I would ask anyone else to be,” he admitted in an interview with Orlando Weekly. “And the most courageous thing I could do was go back to where I am from, to go back home and fight the bullies on the front lines.”

Back on the front lines

After a three-year stint with the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, D.C., Wolf is returning home to Orlando later this year as the director of communications for Equality Florida, the state’s most prominent LGBTQ+ rights advocacy organization. Readers might recall that Wolf previously served in this role for Equality Florida before he left for the HRC.

The 36 year-old advocate and author, however, has an unapologetic adoration for Orlando that is, frankly, infectious. “This is gonna sound cheesy. I promise it’s real and authentic, but I’m obsessed with Orlando,” he admitted, with a sheepish grin. “There’s such a beautiful sense of community.”

As the nation watches battlegrounds for resistance to the Trump administration, such as Minneapolis’ confrontation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Wolf sees parallels in Orlando, too, and believes those stories also deserve to be amplified. “I think Florida can be a blueprint for how we fight back against extremism, rising authoritarianism, how we fight back against the scapegoating of LGBTQ people, and win,” he said.

“I see that kind of courage — that Minneapolis-style courage — in communities across Florida all the time,” he said, citing the Sarasota community’s pushback against the anti-LGBTQ group Moms for Liberty, as an example. Wolf recalled that it began with just 50, then 100, then 200 or 300 people who would pack into Sarasota County school board meetings to publicly oppose the Moms for Liberty agenda, from book-banning to undermining anti-discrimination protections for the LGBTQ+ community.

“It felt really important to me again, as we started this new year, as I thought about what you know, the next chapter of this country looks like … it felt important to me to be part of taking the bullies head on at ground zero,” said Wolf. “Because I want to show the country that when we take them on at ground zero and win, we can do it anywhere.”

Pulse survivor Brandon Wolf at Orlando’s Rally For Our Collective Rights (Feb. 26, 2022) Credit: Photo by J.D. Casto

Courage at ground zero

“Ground zero” isn’t hyperbole.

Florida has widely been seen as a breeding ground for policies that right-wing ideologues in the Trump administration have pursued since Trump returned to office, from efforts to weaken public welfare programs for the most vulnerable, to anti-DEI initiatives, attacks on the transgender community, and efforts to starve the public education system at the behest of right-wing billionaires.

While Florida has trended redder since 2020 or so, Wolf said it’s important to remember the communities in Florida that have demonstrated resistance and resilience, including Orlando after the Pulse nightclub tragedy.

“We saw — as national pundits were trying to squeeze our tragedy into a political horse race, or a few talking points — it was the community in Orlando, on the ground, everyday people who wrapped their arms around each other and said, you know, no matter what they say on the outside, we’re going to stand together.”

Grief, of course, is complex, Wolf admitted. It doesn’t go away. “You learn to coexist with it,” he said. Wolf himself lost his friend Christopher “Drew” Leinonen at Pulse in the early hours of June 12, 2016. Gunfire began at the tail end of Latin Night, just after 2 a.m., and most of the 49 killed were LGBTQ+ people of color. Leinonen’s boyfriend, Juan Guerrero, was among them.

“Healing is complex, it is challenging,” said Wolf. The Orlando community, he’s not shy to admit, “saved my life after Pulse, when I wasn’t sure that the next day was worth waking up for anymore.” Wolf first moved to Orlando in 2008, 3,000 miles from his hometown, as he explains in his 2023 memoir, A Place for Us. The City Beautiful is where he says he learned how to be “unapologetic and proud,” where Wolf found his chosen family.

Then, in 2016, Pulse happened.

“This is a community that gave me a shoulder to cry on, offered me a hug in line at the grocery store, that wrapped their arms around me at vigils, and I think that kind of community in the face of immense hate and violence is the antidote to what ails this country,” Wolf said.

After the DeSantis administration shiftily painted over the rainbow colors of a crosswalk outside the former Pulse site in the dead of night last August, the story garnered national headlines. The move piggy-backed off a so-called “safety” initiative of the Trump administration. What didn’t receive as much of a national spotlight, Wolf argued, were the acts of resistance and community-building in Orlando that followed.

“I don’t think the same number of people heard about Trina Gregory opening the parking lot at Se7en Bites to allow muralists to come and paint parking spots,” Wolf argued, referencing a call from restaurant owner Gregory last September for local artists to paint 49 parking spaces (a reference to Pulse victims) in her popular eatery’s parking lot, in protest of the state’s anti-rainbow paint job. “That kind of story of resistance, of resilience, of resolve is something that I want people to hear,” said Wolf.

‘Building the future we deserve’

Equality Florida, his employer, advocates in the chambers of Tallahassee for policies to advance the rights and protections of the LGBTQ+ community and fights against policy proposals that seek to undermine them.

“We are thrilled to have Brandon back with us on the front line, right where Florida and the country need him most,” Equality Florida CEO and executive director Stratton Pollitzer shared in a statement. “Equality Florida is not simply defending against harm; we are building the future we deserve. Brandon brings the voice, experience and moral clarity to tell that story at this critical moment.”

On a less solemn note, Wolf admitted he’s excited to return to Orlando’s underrated (in his view) foodie scene. Over a recent weekend, Wolf blissfully sank back into the comfortable experience of grabbing his favorite small plates at Mamak Asian Street Food — a Southeast Asian restaurant in the Mills 50 district — and walking next door afterward to Sampaguita, a Filipino-inspired ice cream shop, for dessert.

“That’s what I’m most looking forward to, is being at my favorite food spots with my favorite people,” Wolf said. As Black poet and memoirist Toi Derricotte said first: Joy, too, is an act of resistance.

This article appears in June 10-16, 2026.

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