Category — Activism

From our comrades at Radical Women

 In commemoration of revolutionary feminist political prisoner
Marilyn Buck (1947-2010)
August 19, 2010

The world has lost another heroic freedom fighter. Marilyn Buck died on August 3, at the age of 62, just two weeks after being paroled from a prison medical center in Texas. Ms. Buck spent the last quarter-century of her life imprisoned because she was dedicated to fighting injustice.

All her life she fought against capitalism and imperialism. She was a staunch advocate of Black, Native American, Puerto Rican and women’s liberation, and social and economic justice for all the afflicted.

From a very young age Buck protested against the Vietnam War; she was a member of Students for a Democratic Society, pressing it to take women’s freedom seriously. She actively supported the Black Liberation Army, aiding in the escape of Black Panther leader Assata Shakur.

[Read more →]

It’s Still the Economy, Stupid! No, Seriously. I Mean It.

(Some Thoughts on the HIV Epidemic, Social Problems, and Capital)

Deric Shannon

I picked up a copy of the International Herald Tribune recently on a flight from Madrid to Paris. My friend and co-conspirator, Abbey, and I have been doing a lot of traveling lately and a free copy of an English-language newspaper is a hot commodity for an hour and a half plane ride, particularly this one since I left the “Marx for Beginners” book I was reading at home! I nestled into my seat, prepared for being a little unsettled—what counts for “news” is usually disturbing as all hell, after all. [Read more →]

And this issue extends to all of us and/or our loved ones within the Trans communities. The Federal Government on more than one occasion has enacted federal regulations excluding trans folks from federal protections: the Americans with Disabilities Act, Insurance Coverage and Medicaid to name a few. And we now see the House of Representatives, the Senate and even the President supporting even more abortion restrictions on a Woman’s Right to full health care coverage and her ability to govern decisions over her body. Click here to read more of these connections between a Women’s right to choose and Trans folks being denied the right to determination over their bodies, their gender identity and their expression.

So please join Queers Without Borders, WSA-CT, TransAdvocacy, the Women and Gender Resource Action Center of Trinity, NARAL Pro-Choice Ct and other organizations as we stand and say we will NOT be silent as our government tries to chip away our rights! Click here to view flyer.

Event Info

Date: Monday, December 21, 2009
Time: 4 - 6 PM
Address: Federal Building,
450 Main Street
Hartford, CT

http://hondurasresists.blogspot.com/2009/12/walter-trochez-active-member-of.html

Walter Tróchez, the human rigths defender, member of the gay, lesbian, trans and bisexual community and active member of the National Front of Resistance Against the Coup d’Etat, was killed this morning. Below there is a denunciation from the human rights organization CIPRODEH, a press release from Feminists in Resistance, and a denunciation written by Walter before he died about the repression against the LGBTQ community in Honduras under the de facto government. Killing of human rights defender Walter Tróchez On December 4th the human rigths defender, member of the gay, lesbian, trans and bisexual community and active member of the National Front of Resistance Against the Coup d’Etat Walter Tróchez was kidnapped and savagely beaten around the Obelisco Park of Comayaguela by four masked men who came in a gray pickup truck without plates, presumably from the police investigative unit (DNIC) (a vehicle of similar description that he had denounced a few months back had been watching his home, forcing him to move).

[Read more →]

On the one year memorial of the horrific Gaza Massacre and in solidarity with a thousand Americans who will attempt to break the siege of Gaza and march with Palestinians of Gaza to the Israeli wall

Nada Khader of Wespac, musician Rich Siegel, performance satirist David Lippman
(and others)

$5 donation suggested

Come Out, Come Out Wherever You Are for a Queer discussion around Queer organizing in Connecticut!

Date: Sunday, November 29, 2009
Time: 5:00pm - 8:00pm
Location: Metropolitan Community Church
Street: 155 Wyllys St
City/Town: Hartford, CT
download flyer

Marriage equality represents a seat at the table for LGBT folks-but whose table are we sitting at? And what about the rest of us who are still grasping for crumbs?

On the job, at school and on the street, queerfolk of all stripes are still some of the most oppressed in society. Queers Without Borders seeks to build a movement to flip the table over altogether. Come contribute to the discussion, and meet the faces behind the statement below:

“This document is Queer As Fuck”

We are a collective of people with diverse backgrounds, ages, identities and a variety of progressive political outlooks. We are committed to creating a welcoming space for social action with a solid foundation of respect and compassion.

We want a free world based on equality, learning and healthy relationships. We believe in each person’s right to free expression of gender, sexuality and beyond, based on the desires of the consenting individual, not by other peoples’ definitions and prejudices.

[Read more →]

Hartford’s World AIDS Day event will take place on December 1st, 11 AM - 12, at the Connections Drop-in Center, located at the Institute for Community Research, 146 Wyllys St, Hartford.

Hartford City Councilman Luis Cotto, will be the keynote speaker, with Connecticut’s Health Advocate, Kevin Lembo following Councilman Cottoand ending with two people living with HIV/AIDS.

At 1 PM, there will be a showing of the video “Love in a Time of HIV” one-hour documentary that takes a walk in the shoes of several people around the world living with the disease and how it impacts their relationships. “Love in a Time of HIV” reaffirms that the scourge is alive and well, but that people can maintain day-to-day normalcy with friends and family and even find love. Although there is still no cure, recent drug breakthroughs have extended the lives of many and a diagnosis is no longer necessarily a death sentence. Even in the face of the illness and an early demise, love can prevail.

Click here for a PDF flyer with additional details. For more information please call me at 860.761.6699 or (cell) 860.543.9113.

hbeftmwu9n

from the audre lorde project

Since 2005, Trans and Gender Non-Conforming (TGNC) communities in New York City have been urging the Human Resources Administration (HRA) to address the rampant Transphobia, discrimination, and harassment that Trans and Gender Non-Conforming people in New York City face when seeking to access welfare/public assistance.

In June of 2008, a week before the Fourth Annual Trans Day of Action (annual March organized by TransJustice of the Audre Lorde Project) which was set to protest at HRA headquarters, HRA officials agreed to meet with TransJustice to hear community concerns.  After this first meeting with HRA in the Fall of 2008,      TransJustice formed a committee of organizations including the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, Housing Works, Queers for Economic Justice and others, to develop a HRA procedure to address transphobic discrimination at HRA. To date HRA has not approved this new procedure. [Read more →]

QwB note: An excellent statement that embraces all peoples of diverse gender identities and expressions and their rights to not be coerced by a Transphobic Society into a medical system and/or diagnoses that simply works to subjugate ourselves into State mandated concepts of gender and sex!  As a result of these IDAHO 2009  actions, France on May 16, 2009 announced it will take Transgenderism and Transsexuality out of “mental disorder” category and on May 17, 2009 the Dutch minister of foreign affairs Maxime Verhagen acknowledged that the current Dutch law requiring irreversible sex reassignment surgery as a prerequisite for documentation changes, violates principle 18 of the Yogyakarta Principles (pdf) (the right to be protected from medical abuses).

Reject Transphobia, Respect Gender Identity:
An Appeal to the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the States of the World

[from the International Appeal to reject Transphobia and to RESPECT Gender Identity]

Every day, people who live at variance to expected gender norms face violence, abuse, rape, torture and hate crime all over the world, in their home as well as in the public arena. Though most cases of violence never get documented, we know that in the first weeks of 2009 alone, Trans women have been murdered in Honduras, Serbia and in the USA. Trans men are equally victims of hate crimes, prejudice and discrimination despite their frequent social and cultural invisibility. [Read more →]

A really great piece is reposted below and all readers of qwb are encouraged to check this piece out! Also reference some other qwb written postings: Viability of an LGB”T” movement and Tyranny of the State and TransLiberation.

By Alexander Lee and MC Ettinger @ LeftTurn.org

People often fail to realize that although the contemporary gay rights movement is currently utilizing much of its resources for marriage rights, it is a movement that has rebellious, even revolutionary roots. Even fewer people realize the crucial role that multi-racial, mostly working class, transgender and gender variant people played in this history.

The notorious shoe which set off New York’s now famous Stonewall Riot in 1969 was slung by the legendary Sylvia Rivera, a Latina transgender woman. One year later, Rivera co-founded Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (STAR), which organized transwomen of color in New York until the mid-90s. Rivera was also a member of the Young Lords, a Puerto Rican revolutionary group that was part of the growing anti-imperialist movement in the US at the time. Now deceased, Rivera was an agitator and activist who pioneered gay and women’s rights issues within the Young Lords, alongside other powerful anti-imperialist women of color. She continued to be very active in the radical queer liberation movement in New York City until her death.

The context in which Sylvia Rivera and other transwomen of color rebelled that day was as a response to intensive police profiling and targeting. However, the gay movement has forgotten that our roots of activism came out a moment of anti-imperialist consciousness and action characterized by the Anti-Imperialist Movement, the Women’s Liberation Movement, and the Black Power Movement of that era. While the words to describe the conditions have changed over the years, gay people, led by those of us most visibly challenging the gender oppressive conception of “normality” and “decency” which privileged whiteness and class, were fighting for our civil and human rights against state oppression. [Read more →]

Michaelangelo Galloza at the memorial for Sylvia Rivera noted that he and Rivera had been “lifted up by  the Young Lords and the Black Panther Party.” He said the oppressors “still haven’t realized that all the oppression fuels the flames of desire. Galloza described the common ties that he and Sylvia Rivera shared with their revolutionary heroes, including Pedro Albizu Campos, Lolita Lebron and Marsha P. Johnson. What they shared, he said, is that “we are survivors of a war against us, a war we were born into.” With a call to continue the struggle for liberation, Galloza concluded, “We have to work on what separates us from our own spirits by the tools of the oppressors. … By following the truth, we will win.”

[Excerpt from Vicente “Panama” Alba]

Forty years ago this summer the presence of the Young Lords came into the consciousness of all New Yorkers.   What had

On Sunday, August 23rd, at 12 noon, many of those who made up this movement will gather at the First Spanish Methodist Church on 111th St and Lexington in NYC’s El Barrio.  This is an invitation to our friends and allies to join us. [Read more →]

A great piece and a MUST READ of why as Queers we cannot hand over increasing power of our bodies, lives and essence to the [Tyranny of the] State.  There is no liberation from such efforts. 

From our comrades over at blackandpink.org

Many liberal, and even self-proclaimed progressive, organizations are fighting for “hate crimes” legislation nationally and state-by-state. The Senate just voted in favor of the “Matthew Shepard Bill”. Challenges and critiques are made over and over again by queer/trans/gender non-conforming folks, people of color, low-income/poor folks, and others most impacted by the many tentacles of the prison industrial complex, yet the campaigns continue on. This document is intended to be a bullet point compilation of materials put out by the following organizations (in no particular order): Sylvia Rivera Law Project, Audre Lorde Project, FIERCE, Queers for Economic Justice, Peter Cicchino Youth Project, Denver Chapter of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, Denver on Fire, and the article “Sanesha Stewart, Lawrence King, and why hate crimes legislation won’t help” by jack. The intention behind this document is to present a somewhat simplified critique that can inspire a desire for more information.

If a particular crime is deemed a hate crime by the state, the supposed perpetrator is automatically subject to a higher mandatory minimum sentence. For example, a crime that would carry a sentence of five years can be “enhanced” to eight years.
Plain and simple, hate crimes legislation increases the power and strength of the prison system by detaining more people for longer periods of time. [Read more →]

**** PUBLIC SCHOOLS CLOSING, CHARTERS OPENING ****

“Without education, you are not going anywhere in this world.” — Malcolm X

>: JOIN THE CIPHER! :<

WHO: Youth 13 - 24
DATE: Thursday Aug 20, 2009
TIME: 5 - 7 PM
There will be refreshments!

St. Katherine Drexel Parrish
175 Ruggles St
Roxbury, MA.

>: Do you know the difference between Boston Public Schools and Charter Schools?
>: Why is Corporate America so invested in public education?
>: Do you feel like your voice is being heard?
>: Do you think there is a connection between the drop out rate and youth violence?
>: Do you know about the School to Prison or the Military Pipeline?

If you have answered yes to any of these questions …. [Read more →]

Hello all, if you hadn’t heard yet, there will be a dinner, panel
discussion, and small break out groups to discuss the G20 and
resistance to it this September.

The event description and bios for the speakers (more may come) are
below.

Event: G20 Rock Out!!

Date: Thursday, August 13th

Time: 5:30 pm-Dinner
7:00 pm-Participatory Panel Discussion (mostly Question and Answer format)
8:30 pm-Break out groups and other activities

Place: The Discovery Zone, 74 Dwight St., New Haven, CT.

The event description is below and the flier and bios for the speakers
(more may come) are attached. For more info contact
irongoddessofmercy@riseup.net. Tell your friends and pass this event
on to groups or folk who might be interested.

Come on out!!

Globalization has promised us better lives, not for just the United
States, but for the world. The free movement of goods, ideas, and
people across borders should be something that enriches lives and
communities globally. Instead the IMF, World Bank, WTO, G8, G10 and
G20 have imposed the worsening of living, working and environmental
conditions globally, and threatened the independence and
self-direction of communities. Here in the United States, many
industries and jobs are moving abroad to take advantage of the
desperate circumstances corporate globalization has created.

[Read more →]