Tag: Philadelphia

Heavy Sigh.

Having not yet recovered from the murder of Diamond Williams, Philadelphia's trans community was rocked again on Tuesday night. A 26 year-old transwoman is reported to be in critical but stable condition at Hahnemann University Hospital after being pistol whipped and shot in the back of the head in her apartment in Northern Liberties. She is expected to survive.

The victim was found at the front door to the apartment building, having crawled there from her third floor apartment.  She was able to communicate with police when they arrived after being called by neighbors.  She reported that she was waiting for a family member when she heard a knock on the door.  She opened it to discover a man with a gun who she did not know.

There is video here.  That’s the CBS coverage, which describes the victim as a woman.  Early ABC coverage described the victim as a “man dressed like a woman.”  I saw video yesterday that identified the victim and had some interviews with family members, but it appears today to have been scrubbed from the internet.

Diamond Williams is described as someone who had a big personality and even bigger heart.

She was so full of life. She was funny and we used to laugh. And I remember just acting silly with her and I just miss her because we had a lot of great times.

She was a very loving, caring, and creative person. We were family. We were like sisters and she loved her sisters. No one should ever have to die the way she died.

–Rachel Rose

Williams, 31, was killed last week after having sexual relations with Charles Sargent, 43.  Sargent allegedly dismembered her in his apartment and then dumped her body parts in a field in North Philadelphia.

I don’t care if he knew or he didn’t know.  Nobody deserves to die like that.  That’s someone’s life that (you) just brutally murdered and dismembered and threw her parts in a field.

—Rose

A body of a transwoman  found on Labor Day in the Frankford neighborhood in northeast Philadelphia with a gunshot wound to the head has been identified as Kyra Cordova, 27, who also used the name Kyra Kruz on social media.  Her body was found in a wooded area near a Wawa where she was last seen purchasing food and drinks.

Kyra was a volunteer and former employee at the Gay and Lesbian Latino AIDS Education Initiative (GALLAEI).  According to Facebook, Kyra graduated from North Penn Senior High School in Lansdale, PA in 2003 and was attending college, majoring in biology, with “aspirations of opening her own transgender medical facility”.

Cordova began volunteering at GALLAEI in 2010 and was soon hired as an HIV tester.

Hugh Giordano – 2010 Green candidate for state representative in Philadelphia who got 23 percent of the vote in the city, union organizer, and Green Party of Philadelphia City Committee member – is sending the following two-part open letter to every union in the city of Philadelphia:

STOP Supporting the Democrats and Republicans!

LET’S RUN OUR UNION REPRESENATIVES FOR CITY COUNCIL AT LARGE AND CITY COMMISIONER IN 2011 AS GREEN PARTY CANDIDATES!

Dear Union Brothers and Sisters,

My name is Hugh Giordano, and I am fellow union representative for the UFCW, Local 152. Many of you know me or have heard about me in my run for State Representative where I produced the highest percentage of vote of any third party candidate in a three-way race – beating the Republican in Philadelphia!

I produced this great victory because I stood for the issues, used basic union organizing skills, took NO corporate money, and had union support. Just imagine what I could have accomplished if I had all the unions behind me, the man power, and financial backing; I could have done so much more to defeat the CEO/corporate Democrat.

Although I did not win that election, I opened the doors for us, as a united labor front, to do great things for the future. We have a duty to do what is right and to fight back against the status quo. That is why we are labor leaders and chose this activist life. I use the word ‘activist’ because that is what we are supposed to be, NOT businessmen and businesswomen.

Before I get into the meat of this letter, I want to make a few quick statements that I will always say and continue to support. We, as labor leaders, have a duty to the movement, our unions, and the members to do what is right, not what is safe! We are not pawns of the Democrats and Republicans, and we owe them nothing. The two parties have not done anything for our unions and the movement. Most people in elected positions in City Council have never even been a union member!  If you are a union leader and are afraid to support another party besides the Democrats because of retaliation – I suggest you retire and find another job! Sorry that I have to be blunt, but it’s the truth!

[Continued below…]

In an open letter to the leaders of the Philadelphia labor movement, the young and energetic organizer for UFCW Local 152 Hugh Giordano has challenged the city’s unions to have the courage to support the Green Party.  Giordano ran an exceptionally strong campaign as a Green for state legislature this year, raising almost $30,000 from unions and individuals and capturing over 18 percent of the vote in a three way race.  Now he would like to spread the same movement for honest politics, workers’ rights, and a clean environment (among other things) to the rest of Philadelphia, beyond his single district.

As the members of the party, which I am aiding in every way I can, build the organization for the 2011 local elections, Giordano has seized the opportunity make the area’s union leadership reconsider the popular path of supporting corporate Democrats.  In his words, “Why are we, the strong men and women of the labor movement, bowing down to the corporate bosses and politicians…Union brothers and sisters, when any one of us becomes ‘fearful’ or ‘controlled’ by a political party – it’s time to step down and pass the torch on.”

The full letter is printed, with Hugh Giordano’s permission, below the fold.

Just a note before I begin.  These are just the candidates that I know of from my work in the Green Party and what I can glean online.  There are plenty of other strong Green candidates for state offices all over the country.  Not to mention, there are tons of strong local Green candidates.  You can find Green candidates near you at NewMenu.org.

With these three candidates representing just one part of a group of strong state legislative candidates the Green Party has running across the country this year, the party has a chance to make history.  Since its founding, the party has had four state legislators in office, with one of them being the result of a party switch.  There’s now a good chance that they could elect that many state legislators in a single election.

1.  Ben Manski. Manski is an environmental and democracy advocate running one of the strongest Green campaigns in the nation.  He’s widely regarded as a fierce competitor against the Democrat in the race, while Constitution and Republican candidates are also running.  He is running for the Wisconsin Assembly in the 77th District, which is in Madison.  Manski has racked up an impressive list of endorsements, ranging from local firefighters’ and teachers’ unions to over a dozen current elected officials to statewide figures in the Wisconsin Democratic Party.  With a platform that includes support for ending the war on drugs, the creation of a state bank, and only sending the National Guard into combat when a war is authorized by Congress, Manski is impressive not only because of the likelihood of his election, but because of his bold politics.

2.  Hugh Giordano. Before the election, I’ll be putting up another post about Giordano, because I’ve been volunteering for his campaign for several months, so I’ll keep it short for now.  Hugh is one of the hardest working people I’ve ever met, and when he’s out knocking on doors he’s a union organizer for the United Food and Commercial Workers.  He has garnered endorsements from several local unions who have been helping with the campaign, as well as from a former Democratic candidate in the race and former US Senator Mike Gravel.  He has billboards up, he’s got signs throughout the districts, and he’s got tons of support, especially in the Roxborough neighborhood, where he’s lived for most of his life.  (If you donate to Hugh, which I highly encourage!, please use the mailing address and not paypal, as the campaign has been having troubles with paypal.  Thanks!)

3.  Jeremy Karpen.  Karpen is going against the heart of the Chicago machine, a Democratic incumbent whose father is also in government.  At one point he actually outraised the Democrat, although that ended once the machine’s corporate interests caught wind of it.  Just like Giordano and Manski, he’s been raising an impressive amount of money for a Green and he’s garnered some impressive endorsements, including the Chicago Progressive Democrats of America, a local teachers’ union, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Chicago Tribune.  When I interviewed Phil Huckelberry, a co-chair of the Green Party of Illinois, he insightfully pointed out that having even a single Green in the notorious Illinois legislature would give the body a clear conscience, and it would have the potential to create a movement in the state for clean government.

To me, that is what’s most significant about these campaigns.  They reject the corruption and compromises on principle (or lack of principle from the start) that are inherent in the Democratic Party.  Hugh Giordano’s opponent likes to say that she would remain independent even while being a Democrat in the legislature, but that’s ridiculous.  Without the support of the Democrats, she would be nowhere.  Yet Giordano, and all other Greens, can prove that better, more honest politics is possible by winning without the support of any machine.

Originally posted at PoliZeros.

I went to a protest in Philadelphia this past Saturday, and it was more disheartening than anything else.  It was against the wars and various other injustices, with a special focus on he recent FBI raids of peace activists and Pennsylvania Homeland Security spying on innocent civilians and activists.

By the end of it, I kind of just felt like going up to the megaphone and asking, “How much moral outrage can one person muster?  There are more people handing out fliers here than not, and with this country committing so many disgusting, outrageous acts, I don’t blame you.”  I won’t lie, I handed a few out myself.  Yet the contrast between the righteous causes featured in the speeches and on the signs and on the fliers and the, as a fellow protester said to me, “complete lack of solidarity” was striking.

I’ve been gone all summer – traveling, gardening, volunteering a bit, and doing some other things – and as much as I had a lot of fun, it is nice to be back.  In all that time, some interesting things have happened with what I consider to be one of the better Green campaigns in the nation this year, and one that I’m very involved with, Hugh Giordano’s campaign for state legislature as a Green.

In case you don’t know who Hugh is, he’s a 25 year old union organizer running as a Green in PA’s 194th district, which is mostly in Philadelphia and also a bit in Montgomery County (for locals, it encompasses Roxborough, Manayunk, parts of Lower Merion, and some surrounding areas).  He’s been running a great campaign, knocking on doors, holding fun fundraisers, getting in the newspaper, and raising as much money as a typical Green congressional candidate.

Anyway, below the fold is some news from the campaign, including an endorsement from a fairly prominent local Democrat.

This Earth Day, while an oil rig was burning and sinking and spilling out into the Gulf of Mexico, I joined a small band of protesters during my lunch break to tell the government to stop a similar crime against nature, one that is taking place in my home state of Pennsylvania.  There are no offshore oil rigs here, of course, but the new and dangerous method of extracting natural gas through fracking is becoming a larger and larger threat to our water, our land, and our climate.  And Pennsylvania is ground zero.

So I took to the streets at a Green Party-organized protest.  We stood outside the regional Department of Environmental Protection and made our voices heard.

(Go below the fold for more info on the protest, fracking, and what you can do, including upcoming actions.)