Tag: Activism

Reposted from Wednesday. The night before Thanksgiving is not the best time to post. ;-

After marching for about 4 hours and being on the front line when the police confronted the protesters and having only 6 hours of sleep, I’m exhausted. Still, I have all these random thoughts going through my head this morning as I process both what I directly experienced last night and the social commentary I’ve read since then. This may ramble or be disjointed. It may also be raw, unclear or not fully thought out. I’m seeing it as a snapshot into a frame of mind and body after a highly charged event. Nuggets to, perhaps, spark dialogue or lead to further exploration. I want to see what comes out in hopes of not losing any particularly valuable nuggets. So, here goes….

A few days ago one of the Daily Kos membership wrote a diary proclaiming the need for “a new gay rights platform,” presumably because the fight for marriage equality was over and done.

I have to say that the diary disappointed me at first…and the comments made by the author in response to comments made by myself and MargaretPOA proceeded to really piss me off.

First off I was sure that those LGBT people who live in states where marriage equality is still not a legal fact would be very concerned about am attitude that suggests ceasing to work for their rights, too…an attitude that suggests that if they want to get married, all they have to do is move to somewhere it is legal.  We all know that the wounded evil monster that is the denial of our rights will not die if we just walk away and tun our attention elsewhere.  When you have the monster on the ropes, it is time to make a concerted effort to drive a stake through its crusty hide into its black heart.

And even after that it will be necessary to hang around for a bit to make sure it doesn’t rise from the dead.

But secondly what really frustrated me was the exclusion from the discussion of any concern for the rights of transgender people…the T in LGBT was treated as if it was silent.

Forty-five years ago tomorrow, just after midnight, when the NYPD raided the Stonewall Inn, the police handcuffed transgender women, sex workers, and homeless youth, who were herded out of the bar and loaded into paddy wagons.

That was all routine.  What was not routine was that the people being rounded up fought back.

TransJustice, sponsored by the Audre Lorde Project celebrated today as the 10th Annual Trans Day of Action for Social and Economic Justice, gathering at Christopher Street Pier from 2pm to 5pm.  Representing Trans and Gender Non-Conforming (TGNC) People of Color, TransJustice insists, among other items, that it is time for TGNC people to take back Stonewall from its whitewashed history.

We live in a time when oppressed peoples including people of color, immigrants, youth and elders, people with disabilities, women and TGNC people, and poor people are underserved, face higher levels of discrimination, heightened surveillance and experience increased violence at the hands of the state.  We must unite and work together towards dismantling the transphobia, racism, classism, sexism, ageism, ableism, homophobia and xenophobia that permeates our movements for social justice, while also celebrating the victories and strides for the rights of TGNC POC.  Let’s come together to let the world know that TGNC rights will not be undermined and together we will not be silenced!

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This essay is in part a reply to AoT’s “No, you don’t want another OWS”– I agree we don’t need another, but not entirely with the author’s reasoning why…)

People who were involved with Occupy Wall Street have an understandable emotional attachment to what they experienced within the movement.  In fact, for many in this age of electronica and isolation, it was their first experience in ground level activism and social work.  People cooperated, they exchanged food, medical services and felt unity. By sheer numbers, they managed to enter the concept of the one percent versus the rest of us into the National dialogue. That cannot be underrated.  

In any discussion of what is next, we have to look with an unemotional, analytical eye at whether or not Occupy was or was not a success.

There’s been a common theme lately of calling for a new OWS. I would be overjoyed if all of these calls were in fact calls for a new OWS. But they aren’t. I want to make clear that this isn’t necessarily an attack on people making these calls. They make them for different reasons, and those reasons are often reasons I agree with. But, they are in fact calls for a completely different movement, one that bears little if any resemblance to OWS. I’m going to go through the common refrains of what “the movement” needs and my responses to them.

Let me say first that I think that people really mean that they want another successful and visible social movement when they say they want another OWS they really . I’m completely on board with that, I want another movement with the energy of Occupy. The problem is that the things that made OWS successful are exactly the things people are calling to change.

Fracking, like cigarette production, is one of the moral indicators of Capitalism-as-practiced. A lot of money is spent by the companies involved proving that it causes no harm and is in fact a common good. It also provides a good case study in how the fight against corporate/ governmental hegemony can be a long drawn out process punctuated by the occasional surprising success. If the city of Dallas, the home of Big Oil, effectively bans fracking, that says a lot.

 However, fracking is a complicated subject. The points made for it by its apologists include economic development, the prospect of having a smaller carbon footprint than with coal fired energy generation, and cheaper gas for those who are vulnerable to high heating costs. Proponents say that fracking is a proven technology used for many years, has never been proved to have a negative effect on environmental degradation, and has never caused earthquakes, which is true…if you define fracking narrowly as sending an explosive charge down a borehole to loosen the formation from which the oil is extracted, and discount the storage and transport of waste, the fugitive emissions from extraction and storage, and earthquakes caused by injection disposal wells.  Fracking is also bound up in our ideas of individual versus collective rights, class warfare, corporate/ governmental collusion, and climate change, something we on the Left are passionate about, and rightly so. On the Right it is likewise associated with decreasing reliance on foreign gas and oil imports, national economic progress, and providing jobs. Because the media promotes controversy, everything from the visual images of protesters to the letters written to local papers are often chosen to be polarising. The most extreme examples of corporate sponsored puff pieces are often balanced with impassioned but uneducated letters and e-mails, so that readers unfamiliar with the process become confused. One friend of mine asked, “How can anyone possibly think that injecting a highly pressurised column of carcinogenic chemicals into a pipe through the water supply could be a good idea?” Another made equally valid points from his point of view: “If you all say that nuclear power is off the table, renewables can’t generate enough power, biofuels take up too much productive land, and coal and petroleum has to stay in the ground, how are you going to heat your houses and cook your food?”

Audrey Mbugua is a 26-year-old Kenyan transwoman.  She is currently suing both the Kenya National Examinations Council and the Attorney General for failing to recognizing her gender identity.

Audrey is seeking to have her name changed on the certificates she earned and her identity cards and to have those reflect her new gender.  She says she has suffered prejudice and discrimination because of the reactions of potential employers to the disparity between her appearance and the data on her identification.

We realise that the matter is tricky… We may have to liaise with the registrar of births and deaths for the necessary procedures to be followed before we can put in a proper reply.

–lawyer for the State

Judge Weldon Korir refused to grant a 30-day period sought by the state, saying the case was of urgent nature.  Then he gave he respondents three weeks to reply instead.

The parties are to meet again in court on August 6.

Back in the day…back, back, back when I was living on the streets of San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury neighborhood…back in 1968 when I was 20 years old, there was a presidential election going on as well.  Republican Richard M. Nixon defeated Hubert H. Humphrey that cycle.  Nixon was one scary dude.

What’s right for Richard M. Nixon is right for the country.  And what is right for the country is right for the world.

But it wasn’t as scary as wondering where our next meal was coming from…or where we would sleep at night…or how cold and wet we would be come morning.

In 1968 twenty-year olds were not allowed to vote, so even had we been fiercely involved in the election, we would have had a very limited impact.

Here we are 44 years later and there are still homeless young people.  And after the election which we hope we will be able to celebrate, they will still be homeless.

I did not know Kyle Scanlon…except in the way that one recognizes one of one’s own.  Scanlon was a transgender activist in Toronto, “a valued leader, gifted mentor, and much-loved friend.”  He was education, training and research coordinator at 519 Church Street Community Center, co-founder of Toronto’s Trans PULSE project, a member of the AIDS Bureau, Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care‘s Gay/Bi/Queer/Trans Men’s Working Group, and co-investigator on a new study focused on the sexual health needs of transmen who have sex with men.  He previously worked for Sherbourne Health Centre, the FTM Safer Shelter Project and the Youth Migration Project.

Kyle took his own life on July 3.

[D]epression, hopelessness and suicide are very real issues for trans people and Kyle’s death has and will continue to hit the community very hard; take care of yourself and each other at this time and if you are feeling distraught please call a friend, go to your emergency department, or call a distress line.

–TransPULSE

Ace Nelson already published some of this story.

Several people have recently tried to make sure that I noticed the Boston Globe article about Nicole Maines and her family, entitled Led by the child who simply knew.  Jonas and Wyatt Maines were born twin boys but, as Jonas is reported to have said early in their childhood:

Dad, you might as well face it.  You have a son and a daughter.

The twins are now 14 and Nicole is being treated by the relatively new Gender Management Service Clinic at Children’s Hospital Boston.  The GeMS Clinic was founded in 2007 by endocrinologist Norman Spack and urologist David Diamond.  It is the first pediatric academic program in the Western Hemisphere to evaluate and treat pubescent transkids.

Not everyone agrees with what GeMS does, of course.

Not everyone agrees that they should, of course, and Spack has heard the arguments: Man should not interfere with what God has wrought. Early adolescents are too young for such huge decisions, much less life-altering treatment.