Category — Speak Out!

Your voice(s) would be incredibly important to add to our chorus of support.  We just need to have written testimony submitted by this Sunday at 5pm and it takes no time at all to write. That’s tomorrow, so please jot something down if you can.

Here is a link to the Be an Advocate! page with hints on how to craft testimony, talking points for the bill, etc. http://www.ctequality.com/talk-to-lawmakers/

You can contact Pat directly through facebook or email: patrickcomerford1050@gmail.com (please put ctEQUALITY in the subject header).

This is such a crucial time for us, and we know that the Family Institute of CT will be our there at the hearing, so every voice counts…

Video of speakers Mongi Dhaouadi, executive director of the Connecticut chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Kashif Abdul-Karim, resident imam of the Muhammad Islamic Center of Greater Hartford.  A link to this story from AP can be found here.

No matter where you land on the issue of the separation of Church and State, the growing hatred and vitriol against Muslims in the US cannot go unanswered and we must stand with all our sisters, brothers and all those in-between to clearly state that Bigotry Should and Must Not Be Rewarded!  

Read this truthdig.com article (one of many) titled The Christian Fascists Are Growing Stronger where Chris Hedges writes about the growing right’s attempt at instituting Biblical law here in the US!

They came first for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

Statement attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group.

Repost of older but still very relevant piece from Trans Forming Media … Enjoy…

Today, July 2nd, is LGBT pioneer Sylvia Rivera’s birthday. Media Advocates Giving National Equality to Transsexual & Transgender People (MAGNET) and many LGBT people honor this heroic transgender woman, who is credited by historians as being the person who “threw the first heel” in the Stonewall Inn that fateful night in 1969, when the LGBT community decided to fight back against police brutality. Rivera and many other transgender and gender non-conforming people of color at the inn that night were “guilty” of having “gender inappropriate” clothing, which is the excuse the police used to exercise their prejudice with violence. The police were surprised when the guests at the bar decided to fight back! This riot catapulted the modern LGBT movement, and Rivera and other trans people were responsible for kicking things off.

Rivera continued to advocate for LGBT equality, particularly those disenfranchised and homeless. Sadly, after the gay establishment was done using her to get publicity to raise money, she was abandoned by the gay community, and actually died impoverished. They expressed that “transgender issues are too extreme”. The lesbian separatist “radical feminist” community would exclude her from women’s conferences, and she was even one time escorted out of a queer women’s conference by transphobic lesbians. She was banned from the New York Gay Center for publicly, and aggressively, asking them to take better care of homeless queer youth. When Rivera used her voice to call out the oppression of trans, poor and/or people of color from Gay Inc, she was blacklisted from many organizations, media outlets and social circles. Though the Gay Male Media Mafia tried to silence her truth telling, shortly before she died she foretold the future saying, “One of our main goals now is to destroy the Human Rights Campaign because I’m tired of sitting on the back of the bumper. It’s not even the back of the bus anymore - it’s the back of the bumper. The bitch on wheels is back.” [Read more →]

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 →]

Check out this great animation titled “Three Queer Mice” by Daniel

(from Youth Media Reporter)

In 2007, Daniel at SupaFriends and two other queer youth producers created an animation called Three Queer Mice. Their piece was based on their approach to, and research of, nursery rhymes. Daniel and his co-conspirators imagined what it would be like to have grown up hearing queer tales. So, they changed the words in the rhyme, revealing the stories of three queer “mice”-a gay mouse that leaves school “because his gender expression was in disregard,” a transgender mouse that gets arrested for using the “wrong” bathroom, and a mouse representing Sakia Gunn, who was stabbed and murdered in 2003 for being a lesbian.

Daniel, an 18-year-old queer Puerto Rican-raised-Muslim, dropped out of school in 9th grade because he felt constantly [Read more →]

I think the way a number of (but not all) QWB members feel about the marriage equality movement is either known or easy to intuit, with the same applying to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. There are also few amongst our ranks deluded by the inauthenticity of hope here. However, bullshit is bullshit, anticipated or not, and the latest bullshit is Obama’s justice [little j] department’s ruling on DOMA. Check it out: in the immortal words of Ice Cube, “Here’s what they think about you.“

You can find further commentary at Queers Against Obama. Yes, it is quite rude, but that’s much better than quite quiet, right?

Bonus Bullshit! From Pam’s House Blend- More on fair-weather progressive ‘friends’ selectively defending DOMA

Hartford is facing one of the most difficult challenges in many years in formulating its municipal budget.  Administrators, elected officials, and the community must answer difficult questions and make hard choices.

• What services are most important?
• What needs should City Government address?
• What is the price we are willing to pay?

Hartford residents, property owners, and business people are invited to participate in a 3-hour workshop that will educate, engage, and enlighten you about the City Budget.  You will be provided with simplified but accurate information about City services and funding and will work in small groups to create a balanced budget for Hartford City Government.  The priorities you set and the choices you make will be provided to City officials as input to their decision-making process.

Please let us know, by March 27th, that you will attend by calling 547-1663 X21 or by emailing Htfd2000@aol.com.

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Now here’s a debate you can’t miss, if you are free on Wednesday Evening, March 11th.  (Many thanks to Tessa for the cc)

The Executive Director of NARAL Pro-Choice Connecticut will be debating the Executive Director of the Family Institute of Connecticut Peter Wolfgang at the Lincoln Theater on the University of Hartford’s campus. Doors open at 7 p.m.  To see more details, click this link.

From the NYC Bailout the People Movement

Realizing the Fightback - Some Perspective and Plans ~ Download PDF

The following was adopted at the Jan. 17 Fightback Conference in NYC. It is a work in progress.

In many ways, the U.S.-financed genocidal siege of Gaza that many of us have been demonstrating against in recent weeks is a harbinger of the widening war against the workers and oppressed peoples of the planet that is sure to intensify this year. In 2009, more and more lives are going to be devastated by the biggest global economic crisis since the depression of the 1930s.

This crisis is the challenge of a lifetime for those of us who have made a commitment to fighting for the rights of people. What we do or fail to do will prove decisive in the coming battle over whose interests in society shall prevail. [Read more →]

Protest the continuing bombing and possible ground invasion of Gaza by the Israeli army.

Wednesday, December 31, 2008

12 Noon

Federal Building, 150 Court Street, New Haven

• Call on President-elect Obama to break his silence and condemn this human rights atrocity!
• Call for an end to all US economic and military aid to Israel until it respects Palestinian human rights.
• Call for a just peace in Palestine based in part on:

Israel’s full withdrawal from land seized in 1967;  The right of return of Palestinian refugees; An end to the segregation and second class status of Palestinians who are Israeli citizens.

Sponsored by the Middle East Crisis Committee.

Take a visit on over at Rowland’s site, “By Any Means Necessary,” to read one of the best postings on Rick Warren. Rowland’s post “No Bigots At The Inauguration,” begins, “I really hate to say “I told you so,” often because it seems to relate to something that is not so positive, but, unfortunately, this seems to be another case of “I told you so.” Despite the illusions of some people on the “left” about him, this past week President-elect Barack Obama has continued down the path he has cut that demonstrates his ultimate faithfulness to the politics of the ruling-class in the United States. He has done this with every single one of his post-election decisions, beginning with his choice of cabinet officials and now continuing with his announcement that the right-wing evangelical pastor Rick Warren will be his choice for delivering the invocation at the presidential inauguration ceremony on Jan. 20, 2009.”  The full posting can be read by clicking HERE.

Another posting follows. [Read more →]

Jennifer Gale of Austin Texas was found dead on a walkway of the First English Lutheran Church where she slept most nights.  Jennifer ran for almost every public office in Austin and was a regular at City Council meetings speaking up for the homeless. In Austin as in many cities in America our Trans sisters and brothers have a real problem to find room at the Inn. According to news reports and blog pieces the Salvation Army in Austin is the only shelter that accepts women. (damn now that is another problem where are women suppose to go to sleep in a cardboard box?) The policy at the Salvation Army shelter is this. Jennifer would have to be grouped with the homeless men showering and sleeping with them, they would make her use her male name in disregard of who she is. 

If one can believe the outpouring of grief by city officals and the talk at this time then hopefully something will be done about these problems, as Jennifer was well respected in political circles according to reports from Equality Texas and an article posted on Queertoday.com, written by Vanessa Edwards Foster. For the article, “Having A Blue Christmas click HERE. 

For a another article about Jennifer from Bash Back News click HERE.

[Read more →]

On Tuesday, December 16th, there was a rally held in Boston in solidarity with the uprisings all over Greece. We protested outside the Greek consulate in a show of solidarity with all vicitims of state violence. This is the speech that I gave. (If you’ve been reading my posts you might notice that some of it was lifted from my speech at the Transgender Day of Remembrance.)

Dear comrades, it’s incredible to be here today! My name is Saffo, and I am a radical queer tranny from Providence, Rhode Island. I am part of the upcoming What Queer? radical queer collective in Providence. As I’m sure you all know, on Saturday, December 6th, 2008, the cops in Athens shot and killed a 15-year-old boy named Alexandros Grigoropoulos. I want to start by offering a moment of silence for the memory of Alexandros. (Thank you). To many of us, the violence of the Greek police is something that rings true to our own lives and experiences with the police in the United States and elsewhere. It is, in part, this commonality that brings us here today. This solidarity that we feel for those who are brutalized by the state, by any state, anywhere. We know that this kind of violence happens every day. But this time, the people struck back! These are incredible times we are living in. For instance, if you had asked me 2 years ago if I thought that today we’d see a union successfully occupying a factory in the United States, I would have said no way. I would have said, things like that happened in Argentina, but they would never happen here. But they did it! If you had asked me a year ago, would a group of queers ever dare to take direct action against a right-wing churhch, I would have said no. But they did! So here’s to the workers in Chicago. Here’s to Queers Bash Back! And here’s to the masses of anarchists, university students, high school students, and youth who have taken to the streets in Athens, Thessaloniki, Patras, Crete, and all over Greece. It’s looking more and more every day that a revolution may really be just around the corner. [Read more →]

Response to Susan Gaertner, (Today’s) Hearing - Press Statement
December 17th, 2008

The following was read at the December 17 press conference by a member of the RNC 8 Support Committee. It is in response to that day’s court appearance by the RNC 8 and a press statement released earlier that morning by Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner, which follows our statement.

PRESS STATEMENT

As you may already know, early this week members of the RNC 8 were notified that they are now facing three new felony counts for a total of four. Along with their previous charge, Conspiracy to Commit Riot in the Second Degree in Furtherance of Terrorism, they are now facing: Conspiracy to Commit Riot in the Second Degree, Conspiracy to Commit Criminal Damage to Property in Furtherance of Terrorism, and Conspiracy to Commit Criminal Damage to Property. [Read more →]

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 In the final days of its “Shock and Awe” attacks on agency regulation changes that are dismantling public protections, the Bush Administration has granted  sweeping  new protections to health care workers who can refuse to provide care if  it violates their personal beliefs.  Lord knows what this will mean the next time I seek health care treatment as an openly out trans person!

The Department of Health and Human Services published in yesterday’s (12/18/08) Federal Register the final version of its “conscience rules” that protect health care providers who have moral or religious objections to performing or furnishing particular services. (see HHS News Release.) The Federal Register release titled Ensuring That Department of Health and Human Services Funds Do Not Support Coercive or Discriminatory Policies or Practices in Violation of Federal Law provides that the new rules take effect January 20, 2009– just before the change in administrations.  This 127-page rule, was issued just in time to take effect in the 30 days before the change in administrations so adding to the growing list of last minute rules Bush is implementing before he finally leaves office.  And sadly this is simply one of many agency regulations over the last month or so that have dismantled so many public protections or put another way “Bush’s rendition of a Nightmare before Christmas!”

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