Queers Without Borders

By Special Request of Miss Emma Furbird and Ms. Cassey Role

Just a little to shake off all the heavies. We love you and wanted you to know.

Hope you all never run out of air.

[Preface: My gratitude to CT blogger Gideon, from whom I learned about the movie described below in his blog A Public Defender. Though I encourage everyone to read Gideon’s blog to understand more about what’s really going on in the trenches of criminal defense law, it’s lucky for us that he also raises other important issues.]

It’s a difficult 21st century balancing act. Revolutionaries have a positive obligation to validate peoples’ deeply held and powerful spiritual experiences and beliefs. We especially have an obligation to create a space for stories of real people that have been marginalized by white supremacist and sexist and heterosexist ideas about “normalcy’ and “rational thinking.” For millions of people, their spiritual experiences and religious affiliations are expressions of resistance to oppression. It is sometimes the only language allowed to people whose very existence as human beings is denied on a daily basis. (more…)

Back in August 2007 Punk Pink reported a story about a couple named Duggar in Arkansas. The Duggars were proud parents of their 17th child. Well word has it today published, in the Hartford Courant, that Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar are now expecting their 18th child. Can you believe it! For Punk Pinks article Be Fruitful & Multiply, Candidates for a Breeders Statuette please click here. All I can say from my chair is I am glad that more couples are not into breeding like this. Check out the Duggar’s site where you can cast a vote to name the darling little bundle of enough is enough. The baby should arrive on January 1, 2009.  

This e-mail was sent out from Jerimarie of Connecticut TransAdvocacy Coalition and I wanted to share it with all our readers. Jerimarie is also a founding member of Queers Without Borders, Hartford Ct.

 Session Ends…Bill Stalls In House.

Thank you for getting us this far.

Thanks to you we had a remarkable year with HB 5723 An Act Concerning Discrimination. We kicked off this short legislative session with an overwhelming turnout for Trans Lobby Day at the Capital. This was followed by testimony form Child Psychiatrists, Parents, Allies, Trans Folk, Executive Directors and many more that revealed the depth of growing support we have for Trans Equality! The Judiciary vote was an overwhelming bipartisan support for HB5723 and Trans Equality. Your calls, your advocacy and your support has moved more and more legislators in support of HB5723. Unfortunately, this bill was raised in a short session that saw many critical bills being raised as well as a challenging budget issue that time simply was not on our side this year. However, we are already preparing for next years session and your continued support and advocacy will be mandatory for us to secure Equal Rights. We recognize that achieving this equality is not as simple as waking up one morning and reading in the paper that HB5723 was passed. It requires a vital amount of public and personal advocacy, meeting and calling your legislator, mobilizing your friends and neighbors to become advocates and continually educating and increasing the drumbeat that this legislation is not about Special Rights but about Human Rights. (more…)

On May 10th 1933 Nazis and university students in 33 towns across Germany burned books that they considered to be “un-German” In Berlin over 40,000 people gathered to hear Joseph Goebbels the German Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda as thousands of books burned in Opera Square. This event was titled, “Action Against the un-German Spirit.”

On May 6, 1933 trucks pulled up to the doors of Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin . Hundreds of students and Nazis smashed open the doors of the institute and marched into the building to the strains of a brass band. They ransacked the premises and removed books from the library. Later truckloads of storm trooper arrived to finish carting away books and on May 10 these books along with a bust of Hirschfeld, books by Jewish authors and others considered degenerate were burned.

Reference: Out of the Past, Neil Miller, Vintage Books, The Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals, Chapter 15.

             For other information see posting on the Holocaust Remembrance Day. 

A real interesting site is this one. Check it out.

QWB got this leaflet yesterday. Let’s support the Cafeteria Workers of Travelers’ in any way we can.

COULD YOU LIVE ON A CAFETERIA WORKER’S SALARY?

A Cafeteria Worker employed by Aramark, serving food to the employees of Travelers, earns $9.68 an hour. That’s $387.2o a week before taxes!

The average rent for a 2-bedroom apartment in Hartford is over $700.00 a month. (1)

The average gas price per gallon in Connecticut is $3.83. (2)

After all the bills are paid, would YOU have money left to put food on the table?

Call on Travelers’ Brian Maclean, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President to tell Aramark to Respect its Workers. 860-277-0111.

We Can’t Live on Poverty Wages!

(1) http://www.ct-housing.org

(2) Source: AAA Daily Fuel Gauge report; www.fuelgaugereport.com/sbsavg.asp.

Info: www.unitehere.org

UNITE HERE! Local 217, 860-246-2561

A prominent football player gang raped and murdered in South Africa last week was a victim of homophobic violence, according to activists. For the full story click here.

This was received by e-mail from Jon Green, Director of Working Families Party. 

You might’ve seen it in the news. The legislative session came to a close at midnight, and despite hundreds of citizen lobby visits and thousands of phone calls and even more emails to legislators, the House never brought the Paid Sick Days bill to a vote.

But because of all your support, it’s not over. We’re pushing into over-time.

Yesterday, the leaders of the House and Senate began planning for a special session to complete unfinished business. And we have a chance to get the Paid Sick Days bill on the schedule for the special session, if we act now.

We need your help to bring Paid Sick Days back to life. Click here to email the House and Senate leadership and DEMAND they put Paid Sick Days on the agenda for the special session. (more…)

One of our links is AngryBrownButch. The site is run by Jack and always contains some real good stuff. Click on over there and read Jack’s article, The honeymoon is officially over, about the Obama/Rev. Wright controversy. Check out Jack more often from our sidebar.

Robert Sims and Odetta sing Down By the Riverside. 

“Another black gay youth has been gunned down in Fort Lauderdale. Shanesa Conaway, 22, was shot to death on April 26 during a domestic dispute between her partner, Shameca Davis and Kevin Cartwright, the father of Davis two children.”

Click over to the Bilerico Project to read Waymon Hudson’s full story. QWB thanks Waymon for his diligence in keeping our community informed and his wonderful postings over at Bilerico. Fight Out Loud a group that Waymon is president of fights against hate directed at our community. Check them out.

WE REMEMBER

NEVER AGAIN

Please see here.  So It began February 23, 1933.

For a first person story please see here.

For info on the Holocaust and Homosexuals in Germany click here.

Ringling Brothers Circus will be at the XL Center in Hartford. Please Join To Protest Ringling’s Exploitation and Abuse of Wild Animals. Protests will take place on the following dates.

Wednesday, May 7th at 5:45 (opening night). * Thursday May 8th at 6:00,  *Friday May 9th at 6:00, *Saturday May 10th 4:45, and on *Sunday May 11th at 2:45.  Signs and leaflets will be provided but feel free to bring your own. For directions to the XL Center which formerly was the Hartford Civic Center see: http://www.hartfordciviccenter.com/directions.cfm

cynic: an idealist whose rose-colored glasses have been removed, snapped in two and stomped into the ground, immediately improving their vision. …from the Cynic’s Sanctuary. 

I going off this blog for now. My writing is going on a vacation, a little leave, a bye; bye. I need to think and get my stuff in order, stuff that needs to be in order maybe, and if I find nothing needs to be in order than I will come back out swinging. The other day I read over a pamphlet that a friend of mine had written and I read these words, “Without an alternative a critique would be nothing more than an exercise in cynicism and depression.” I remarked that some of my written works come out of being depressed and out of a certain amount of cynicism. He then told me that the line was written for me. I don’t know if this is good or bad, a put down, a rebellion of youth against old, or what but aim to study it. I think that anyone being presented with something like this needs to check it all over before going any further. I don’t want everyone thinking that I am just a Koo Koo oddball. A person to run away from or cross to the other side of the street if they see me coming. Oh wait, they do that now. Maybe my breath smells. (more…)

“While things have shifted a tad for those of us still on the margins of society, the benefits of the change have befallen only to those who come from or have ascended to the upper tiers of society’s socioeconomic ladder. While race still matters as Cornel West’s bestseller of the same title waxes eloquently about, the daily bite and sting of racism, however, is cushioned by class and social upward mobility that gives the illusion to some that we are now in a post-racial era, especially in light of presidential hopeful Barack Obama.”..Rev. Irene Monroe

If your interested in Rev. Monroe’s full article click over to Bilerico Project. This article “Obama’s Chickens Have Come Home to Roost” can be found here and is entered on this blog as food for thought. Rev. Monroe has been a guest with us and has spoken to our Hartford lgbt community on several occansions  and writes a column for INewsweekly. (more…)

Note: This Draft Manifesto was produced by a group of Reconstruction Party activists who met in New Orleans on Saturday, Jan. 26 in support of the International Days of Action against Neo-Liberalism. This draft is being submitted for wide discussion and amendments to all activists interested in joining the effort to build a Reconstruction Party. Sister Cynthia McKinney participated in this meeting and contributed to this Draft Manifesto.

What We Want; What We Believe; What We Need. Now!
Draft Manifesto for a Reconstruction Party

” . . . whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” — Declaration of
Independence

In the context of what is perhaps the most important Presidential election in a generation, we feel compelled to add our voices to the deafening silence coming from both the Democratic and Republican parties on the real issues of concern to us. We therefore insert this agenda — our agenda — into the current political discourse and assert our readiness to cast our votes on the specificity with which these issues are addressed in the electoral arena. We reject “differences” that will not make a difference and “changes” that will not bring about any change. The vision of the Reconstruction Party encompasses all communities in need of reconstruction. (more…)

by Eric Mann [a veteran of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and the United Auto Workers (UAW), and was a delegate to the United Nations World Conference Against Racism.]

[printer friendly pdf]

The Opening Argument

Hillary Clinton is running an increasingly desperate, unprincipled, and racist campaign against Barack Obama. She must be stopped. At this moment in history the defeat of Hillary Clinton and the victory of Barack Obama in the forthcoming Democratic Party primaries in Pennsylvania, Guam, Indiana, North Carolina, West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon, Montana, South Dakota, and Puerto Rico is a critical question facing the anti-racist, civil rights, and Black Liberation Movement. (more…)

The Internationale

by Billy Bragg

Billy Bragg complained to Pete Seeger that the traditional lyrics to the Internationale were somewhat dated. Pete Seeger said: “why don’t you write new ones?” So Billy Bragg did. For May Day 2008 Queers Without Borders sends out to all of you this wonderful version of the Internationale. The original Internationale was first written and sung after the brutal suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871. This rallying cry sings out loud and clear for all exploited and oppressed people of the world to rise up and overthrow their masters.

Over the weekend I read two blog posts about Barack Obama by two different white activists that I know. Both could be described as criticisms of Obama from the left. These are activists for whom I generally have some respect, and I’m convinced their comments come from a place of deep personal commitment to social justice. Even so, there’s something to that old saying about the road to hell being paved with good intentions, and in both instances I found myself wondering when we, as white activists, will begin holding ourselves accountable to black America rather than waiting for black America to be accountable to us. (more…)