This month, the Orlando Sentinel published a Letter to the Editor written by City Attorney Mayanne Downs, which was nothing more than a rehearsed deflection dressed up as civic gratitude. We submitted our response the following day. The Sentinel did not publish it, once again choosing the City’s voice over ours—the actual survivors of the PULSE shooting.

We agree with Downs and other city officials who repeatedly point out that the global response to the Pulse massacre was remarkable. The blood donors, the volunteers, the millions of dollars collected — none of that is in dispute. But every time accountability is requested, Orlando’s political class pivots back to that same script. Resilience. Unity. The world’s response. It is a reliable mechanism for quelling dissent, and it has worked for nearly a decade.

Holding City officials accountable and questioning authority is not ingratitude. It is the foundation of citizenship and a functioning democracy. Public engagement is the only way we can get justice for the City’s failures precisely because of its flagrant lies about the unpermitted renovations, code violations, and response failures, which include the failure to follow active shooter protocol. These failures increased injury, trauma, and death, and even turned sixteen “survivable wounds” into “preventable deaths.”

In her letter, Ms. Downs went out of her way to praise Heather Fagan, the Mayor’s Chief of Staff, whose emails are currently the subject of a public records lawsuit against the City. She praises DeSantis-megadonor Craig Mateer — without mentioning that he is a long-time client, the brother of assistant City Attorney Jody Mateer Litchford, or that he employs Mayor Dyer’s son, Trey. She describes Mateer’s purchase of the onePulse property as the result of a warm “quick phone call,” omitting that the transaction bypassed the City’s standard real estate acquisition process entirely and injected cash into a failing, indebted onePULSE Foundation — bailing it out by giving it the cash it needed to repay misspent taxpayer funds and avoid a state audit.

This rushed financial transaction undoubtedly shielded the nonprofit from accountability, which was then being run by its Chairman Earl Crittenden; an eminent domain attorney who was Downs’ former colleague at GrayRobinson and the City’s former Chief Protocol Officer appointed by Mayor Buddy Dyer. In another taxpayer-funded financial transaction related to PULSE, the City handed the owners of the noncompliant nightclub $2 million for a property worth half that — public dollars that went straight into the pockets of the defendants that survivors are still suing for premises liability.

Furthermore, Mateer is actively acquiring real estate and developing downtown Orlando, with millions more on the line from development projects already in the pipeline. We do not believe his favors for the Office of the Mayor have anything to do with helping PULSE victims or the Orlando LGBTQ+ community. If this was a real commitment, Mateer would not have given significant financial contributions to the politicians who pushed to paint over the rainbow crosswalk at PULSE, tried to erase our identities, and are currently working against our Black, Latino, and LGBTQ+ communities. Rather, we believe these favors have everything to do with strengthening personal and reciprocal ties in the Office of the Mayor, especially as Mateer has repeatedly needed the City’s approval to move his development projects forward. Clearly, creating a mutually-beneficial relationship serves all of their personal financial, political, and legal interests—at the expense of ours.

Ms. Downs’ own history here deserves serious scrutiny. In addition to the aforementioned conflicts of interest, for years Downs had in her possession a list of unpermitted renovations and code violations at PULSE that City attorneys compiled in preparation of imminent criminal or civil litigation—a list that City officials kept from the public and from victims/survivors. This list was only released after it was discovered completely redacted in a random public records request and only after the statute of limitations expired for victims to bring claims against the City of Orlando. That was not an accident—it was a strategy. While the evidence sat in their files, the City called off a post-shooting building inspection specifically to document known code violations, refused to conduct a building inspection after acquiring the building, and issued statements carefully engineered to mislead journalists and deny documented violations.

There are multiple city officials desperate to perform a self-serving connection to the mass shooting that shattered and stole our lives. Some are the same officials who spent years ensuring we couldn’t hold the City accountable, either through silence, obscuring the truth, or withholding the facts.

We deserved a safe and compliant nightclub and a police response that didn’t leave many of us trapped inside PULSE and bleeding out for hours. We deserve officials who don’t try to bury the evidence and purposely mislead victims’ families, survivors, and journalists. The City’s ongoing grandstanding adds insult to injury.

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Carmen Capo, mother of Luis Omar Ocasio Capo—murdered at PULSE and trapped for 30-minutes inside the nightclub by the beverage refrigerator blocking an exit

Jorshua Hernandez-Carrion, wounded PULSE survivor trapped in the bathroom for over three hours

Keinon Carter, wounded PULSE survivor shot twice and declared dead

Norman Casiano, PULSE survivor shot twice, was trapped in the bathroom, and was shot at by responding police officers during his effort to escape

Marissa Delgado, wounded PULSE survivor shot 12 times and trapped in the bathroom for over 3 hours

Olga Disla, mother of Anthony Laureano Disla

Martiza Gomez, PULSE survivor

Aracelis Jimenez, mother of Gerardo Ortiz-Jiminez—murdred at PULSE

Christine Leinonen, mother of Christopher Andrew Leinonen—murdered at PULSE

Brenda Marquez and Michael Santos, cousin and brother of Brenda Marquez McCool—murdered at PULSE

Jessenia Marquez, mother of a PULSE survivor and cousin of Brenda Marquez McCool—murdered at PULSE

Isaiah Henderson, PULSE survivor and son of Brenda Marquez McCool—murdered at PULSE

Tony Marrero, wounded PULSE survivor who was shot four times

Tiara Parker, PULSE survivor shot three times and trapped in the bathroom for over three hours and whose cousin, Akyra Murray died in her arms

Ilka Reyes, wounded PULSE survivor who was shot nine times

Cesar A. Rodriguez, PULSE survivor

Darelis Torres, PULSE survivor

Myriam Torres, Nelly Benitez, and Damaris Benitez, family of Martin Benitez Torres—murdered at PULSE

Passion Wilson-Suarez, PULSE survivor

Jeff Xavier, wounded PULSE survivor who was shot in his leg, stomach, and neck and was trapped in the bathroom for over three hours