Republished from Bashback! News  www.bashbacknews.wordpress.com

More Queer People Murdered. Lesbian and Gay Organizations Seem to Care Less.

By Beau Vyne

New Orleans Police discovered the bodies of three young, Black, Queer people in a 7th ward house Saturday. The three people, one of whom was gender variant, were all shot to death in the house sometime around 3 or 4am Thursday. Mainstream media and the Police are as of now ignoring the fact that the three people were queer and possibly trans. However, Facebook groups devoted to the three and comments on news sites, are raising interesting questions by Queer people of color as to why large Lesbian and Gay organizations are ignoring this. Many people have wondered as to whether there would be an LGBT organizational black out on such violence had the three been wealthy and white Gay businessmen. [Read more →]

EDITORIAL

Ode to shoes

Published Dec 17, 2008 3:51 PM

Ah, lowly objects of mundane human existence, forever condemned to carry on your backs the weight of the world, this ode is to you. Because of you we tenderfeet are able to trudge through burning deserts and freezing slush. We slap you upon the pavements of great metropolises and quiet villages until your seams split, your tongues loll and your soles disintegrate. You are then discarded to the ashbins of history, leaving no record of your great service to humanity.

But now comes a humble pair of shoes that shall live forever.

When you flew through the air, one after the other, in a transcendent arc that nearly clipped the ears of W. Mad Dog, a great sigh went up to the heavens and swept the globe. It was the sigh that comes when a door long shut is cracked open, when a torment long denied at last finds its breath. [Read more →]

This in from www.infoshop.org: Richmond County Sheriffs shot and killed 23 year old Justin Elmore on Monday in the Cherry Tree Crossing Housing Projects. The Cops, claiming that Justin had stolen the SUV, surrounded him and opened fire. Bullets flew everywhere. Local apartments had windows shot out and a little boy was almost shot in the Head.On Tuesday, the community held a vigil in response to the shooting. After an occupying force of 90 police descended on the neighborhood the people fought back. Locals threw rocks and bottles at both the Police and the Corporate Media. People also set fires to dumpsters and at least one car. Corporate media reports at least 30 shots had been fired during the riot. Militant resistance to police violence is not confined to the arbitrary borders that make up Greece. Oppressed people’s in the US fight the police on a daily basis. Lets keep Augusta, and all of the other cases of atrocities committed by police in the US in mind when we act in Solidarity on Saturday the 20th. Fighting for Greece means fighting for all of us!You can find corporate coverage at http://www.nbcaugusta.com/news/local/36277654.htmland other local Augusta stations 

QWB received these 3 e-mails for publication. These are between  a City Council person, Constituent Services, and Engineering Services Bureau. Comments please. All of this correspondence concerns the library doors and making these doors accessible to all. The first is from the city council member inquiring about the doors,  the second is from Constituent Services, and the third and most interesting is from the Engineering Services Bureau, Project Manager [Read more →]

November 17, 2008 (See more @ saffolicious.blogspot.com.)

Hello everyone. My name is Saffo and I am trans. Some of you may know me by my birth name, Fokion. As many of you will already know, to many trans people, changing our names is an important rite of passage. Coming out as trans, choosing a new name and transitioning my identity has been a difficult, beautiful, emotionally exhausting, revitalizing and spiritually empowering process. Some of you who have known me for years have struggled to remember to call me by my new name, and by my new preferred pronoun. I assure you that it’s been even more difficult for me, adjusting to a new name, to a new relationship with the world. But it is so important and I appreciate the many people in my life who have supported me through this struggle, as well as the countless many trans and gender variant people who have struggled and fought so hard before me— many of whom have sacrificed their lives for the chance to name themselves. After all, today is the day of remembrance, so I must remember with a sense of gratitude and humility those who have fought before me and made the ultimate sacrifice.

So what’s in a name? Many of us live out our lives with names that were given to us by our parents, which may or may not have any real meaning or significance. Your name is perhaps the most important, most deeply engrained social marker you will have in your life. It claims to define you— and yet most people did not choose their name, or may not feel that it has any real meaning to them. Coming out as trans has given me a sense of solidarity with people everywhere who have chosen to rename themselves. Similarly, it is through this politics of naming that we are also able to name the forces of violence that oppress us. Transphobia, Heterosexism, Racism, Classism, Imperialism, Ageism, Ableism, Capitalism, Sexual Assault and Violence, the Prison Industrial Complex. The list goes on. Naming the systems of violence that oppress us and those around us is a vital first step in our various struggles for liberation. And so it is through naming both ourselves, our communities, and the forces of violence that oppress us that we are able to fight back. [Read more →]

Hear Mazin Qumsiyeh, just back from Palestine

“History, Practice and Theory of Palestinian Non-Violent Resistance.”

Friday December 5, 7:00 P.M.

Unitarian Universalist Society: East

153 West Vernon Street, Manchester, CT.

Free and open to the Public.

Thanks to Frank of People of Faith and Queers Without Borders for this item.

While many a progressive folk and organization are celebrating the victory of Barack Obama and intently watching the formation of his administration, the winds of a Depression are howling at our doorsteps.  Most all economic indicators are rapidly drawing their dangerous spiral downward; while the current and future administrations are refueling the coffers of the rich.  And so those of us who care must now turn our attention to the immediate needs of our communities as well as the serious economic issues facing our cities.

Lord knows what will happen in ‘09 but I for one feel the winds of the great Depression growing stronger every day.  And sadly with Obama surrounding himself with hawks, free traders, free marketers, de-regulators and assorted Clintonites ~ Change may simply become the political jingle that feeds

[Read more →]

 SPEAK NOW OR FOREVER HOLD YOUR PEACE? WHY WE NEED QUEER CRITIQUES OF GAY MARRIAGE_ Susan Thompson

When Toronto began issuing gay-marriage licenses on June 10, 2003, WorldNetDaily quoted Toronto attorney Michael Lershner as saying “The argument’s over. No more political discussion, we’ve won, the Charter won, it’s a great day for Canada.” Lershner had good reason to celebrate. Justices in three provinces had just redefined marriage as being between “two persons” instead of ” a man and a woman,” giving gay and lesbian couples across the country (and visiting citizens of the United States and elsewhere) legal grounds to apply for marriage licenses.

The decision has had repercussions outside of Canada, as well. On November 19, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled four to three that it would violate the state constitution, which prevents gay and lesbian couples from marrying, specifically citing the Ontario Court of Appeals’ decision. Gay and lesbian couples in the U.S. are hailing the ruling as a significant step forward, even though the court did not go as far as ordering the immediate issuance of marriage licenses. [Read more →]

Below is an excellent article about the impact of the Presidential election. It not only addresses the historic import and hopes that have been raised with the election of Barack Obama, but also makes a compelling call for advocates of economic and social justice to continue to fight for what we need. 

This issue of the Freedom Socialist newspaper also includes a great article, “Stoking global feminist rebellion” about the Radical Women conference that happened the first weekend of October. You can subscribe to the paper at http://www.socialism.com/fsarticles/newspapr.html [Read more →]

This article was e-mailed to Queers Without Borders 

The unapologetic case for gay marriage from the Socialist Worker.

Sherry Wolf makes the case that leftists ought to stand unapologetically with the struggle for marriage equality.

November 20, 2008

IN THE face of mass protests to roll back the recent anti-gay marriage election ballot measures, especially California’s Proposition 8, some leftists are a bit queasy. Why, they ask, should radicals be so adamant about defending the right of gays and lesbians to enter into an institution that is decidedly mainstream and tied to the state and religion?

Good activists have approached me to argue that same-sex marriage narrows our agenda and ties LGBT people to a “hetero-normative institution” that valorizes that hobgoblin of the right–monogamy. [Read more →]

I received the following today as a e-mail and received permission to publish it here on QWB. The young person wishes at this time to remain anonymous which we respect. Some of the ideas expressed I haven’t thought of for years and other ideas I hadn’t thought of at all. I want to say thank you for sending this in, thanks for trusting me with the article, thanks for allowing us to publish it and thanks for sending in some fresh air to the debate. rn

Some Thoughts On Marriage

* I wanted to talk to you about marriage and some things that I haven’t really heard anyone say about it yet. We’ve talked about some practical critiques as well as some ideological ones, but my beef with marriage is its colonization of desire and the stigmatization it imposes on other people who feel the same way. This is not a good thing for kinky people, perverts and sluts such as myself-we talk about the dangers of assimilation but tend to stay away from this particular danger because we’ve already let liberal and conservative forces arrange the trajectory of this discourse-also a lot of us are accustomed to monogamous or monogamous-modeled relationships-if not we think we are are supposed to want one or that having one might solve our personal problems. [Read more →]

QWB received this e-mail from our friends over at the HGLHC, who received it from Lori Jean of the Los Angles LGBT Center. This is one view of what happened in California where voters approved a “gay”-marriage ban. 

From Lori Jean, dated 11/5/2008 

I had hoped never to have to write this email.

Sadly, fueled by misinformation, distortions and lies, millions of voters went to the polls yesterday and said YES to bigotry, YES to discrimination, YES to second-class status for same-sex couples. [Read more →]

As we quickly approach Election Day amidst the media onslaught from the politicians and pundits as well as the pending historical significance of this election, it would be timely to reflect upon the import of ones vote and role within a representative democracy.  There is no doubt that electing Barack Obama as President would be a monumental moment in the jaded history of these here United States of Hysteria.  This election also coincides with the historic significance of the number of people registering to vote as well as actually going to vote.  For example, the number of 18-29 year olds voting in primaries and caucuses in 2008 is 109% more than in the previous set of primary elections, which in themselves show significant increases from prior years.  It is clear that for once in a very long time and for whatever reason people have awoken to even take the time to vote.  Though Gil Scott-Heron in his song B-Movie Lyrics “honoring” Ronnie Raygun’s election kinda summarizes the issue of representative democracy fairly well:

Because it seems as though we’ve been convinced that 26% of the registered voters, not even 26% of the American people, but 26% of the registered voters form a mandate - or a landslide. 21% voted for Skippy and 3, 4% voted for somebody else who might have been running. Mandate my ass!

Reflecting on Gil’s assessment of mandates and representative democracy, we must sober ourselves from this euphoria for Obama or whatever political candidate you support and ask ourselves: Will a (likely) Barack presidency actually enact [Read more →]

For those who don’t know, I’ve begun volunteering my services to organize the library of the Metropolitan Community Church which serves the LGBT community. Previously I worked on the Luisa Capetillo Memorial Library; Capetillo was an important Puerto Rican feminist anarchist figure, which is why we picked her name for a library housed by an important cafe in the Puerto Rican community, La Paloma Sabanera. Unfortunately, she also carried some homophobic views, which I think would make it inappropriate to use her name for MCC’s library.

So the reason I’m writing is to see if anybody has any ideas for a name. It can be historical, it can be conceptual, it can be comical, whatever. In any case it needs to be approved by MCC of course, so I’d like a few different ideas to present to them. I suppose it’s not terribly important, I just like to name stuff; plus it’s a good opportunity to introduce people to something new and place it in the popular consciousness, or it can help people identify with the thing.

 TRUTHSAYERS                     PART 1                       by Hartford C.T.

            9-11

I am not just another’ conspiracy theorist’. I am a card carrying C.T. However, there are semantics that I take issue with. The term itself gained popularity because of  ‘man’ himself. It was the Bush’s, Cheneys, Roves, etc. who used it repeatedly to discredit anything with an alternative, ‘non-official’, story life view. This is to avert the people’s eyes from the non-mainstream media info-wars. Take 9-11. When the first groups of free thinkers began to see the official story was full of holes, and the so-called blue ribbon commission was a white wash; the corporately owned media stepped in. By allowing the official version unlimited media access, they began the brain washing. Still, this wasn’t the 20^th century any more; and thanks to Internet access, web sites for 9-11 truth sprung up everywhere. So they chided: “oh, but you have nothing scientific to prove your conspiracy theories. A year or two later 40 scientists and architects have challenged this, as well as 9-11 firefighters, police, and high-level security personnel, not to mention former Bush administration members. Still, there’s little response. Yet they will happily devote a third of their broadcasts to Sarah Palins’ pit-bull image. [Read more →]