Memorial Candlelight Vigil For Brandy Martell Next Week

For those of you in the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area there will be a candlelight vigil next Monday April 29 to commemorate the one year anniversary of Brandy Martell's April 29 death.   It will take place at the Franklin and 13th St. corner in Downtown Oakland where she was fatally shot

The waste of DNA who committed this crime as of yet still hasn't been brought to justice.  If you have information concerning this crime please contact the Oakland Police Department at 510-777-3333.    

The vigil is being organized by Tiffany Woods of the Tri-City Health Center and co sponsored by them and TransVision.   It will run from 7-8:30 PM PDT so if you can, take a moment to attend and remember one of our lost sisters.   If you need further information about it you can e-mail her at twoods@tri-city health.org or call her at 510-456-3521.

Brandy, know that Bay Area trans community won't rest until the person who took you away from us far too soon has been caught and is serving time for it.

Rest In Peace, Marcelle Cook-Daniels

I've been thinking about him recently, and when I Googled his name I stumbled across the obituary that reminded me on this date in 2000 the African-American and national trans community lost one of its major pioneering leaders in the person of Marcelle Y. Cook-Daniels. Cook-Daniels was born in Washington DC on March 1, 1960 where he resided until he moved to Vallejo, CA in 1996.  Marcelle worked for the Internal Revenue Service and a computer programmer/analyst and for Norcal Mutual Insurance.

He was also diligently working toward obtaining his masters degree in computer science at Golden Gate University. 

Marcelle during that time period was one of our early national transmasculine African-American  activists and leaders.  He was a quiet, principled and dedicated man who labored tirelessly to raise awareness about trans and LGB issues. 

He role modeled his personal values of family love, commitment, honesty, openness, and public service through being a loving son to his mother Marcella Daniels, supporting his longtime life partner of seventeen years Loree Cook-Daniels, and being a devoted father to his son Kai Cook-Daniels.

Marcelle's education and advocacy work on behalf of our community included presentations at the 1999 Creating Change Conference in Oakland (where our paths crossed but I sadly never met him), the 1998 "Butch-FTM: Building Coalitions Through Dialogue" event, several True Spirit Conferences, and numerous educational and advocacy events.

Marcelle was interviewed and photographed for the 'Love Makes A Family" book; the Dawn Atkins' book "Looking Queer: Body Image and Identity in Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay and Transgender Communities," and "In The Family" magazine.

He was an active supporter of COLAGE (Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere) and provided substantial material and volunteer support to the Transgender Aging Network, four True Spirit conferences, and the Maryland based transmasculine group The American Boyz that eventually folded.

He sadly lost his ongoing struggle with depression and took his own life.  His memorial service on April 26 was attended by family, friends, colleagues and all the people whose lives he'd touched during his 40 years with us. 

For you trans men who never had the opportunity to meet Marcelle, you definitely would have liked and admired him.  You are building upon the work he started and are walking in his footsteps, and I'm writing this post on the anniversary of his death to ensure that his contributions toward building the United States trans and transmasculine communities are never forgotten or disappear.    

Marcelle, you are still missed by all the people who had the pleasure of knowing you.  I'm saddened it didn't happen for us while I was in Oakland for Creating Change.  I hope as you look down upon us you are pleased to see the trans and SGL rights progress we have made since 2000, especially in your hometown of Washington DC and the state of California.

While we still have much work to do, your trans brothers and sisters are laboring mightily to live up to the high standards you set for us.  I still wonder at times how much farther down the path of trans human rights coverage we would be if you and Alexander John Goodrum were still here and had the opportunity to mentor mine and this current generation of transmasculine and transfeminine activists.

Rest in peace Marcelle, and say hello to Alexander for us.    

Camp Aranu'tiq 2013 Season

With the end of the 2012-13 school year coming in about seven weeks, the thoughts of many kids turn to summer activities and fun.  Summer camps spring up in some locales around the nation to provide those structured activities for a few weeks. .

But if you're a trans kid wanting that summer camp experience, it can be tough to find one that is culturally competent or inclusive enough to deal with your unique issues.

Enter Camp Aranu'tiq, the summer camp for trans and gender variant kids founded in 2010 by Trans 100 honoree Nick Teich that provides that classic summer camp experience at their undisclosed California and New England locations. 

The Camp Aranu'tiq tuition fees are $550 and they offer financial assistance to those who qualify. Travel is provided free-of-cost from the nearest airports to their California and New England camps.

It is a 501c3 organization founded in 2009, and you can give them a tax deductible donation on their website.




As for the dates, the California location enrollment is full for 2013, but they have begun a waitlist for the  Sunday, June 30 - Saturday, July 6, 2013 session.  The New England location (August dates) is full for 2013, and unfortunately the waitlist for it has been closed. 

So that means if you're a trans parent and think your child would benefit from the Aranu'tiq experience in 2014, you may wish to contact them and get a headstart on securing your spot in the California or New England locations with dates to be determined.

Camp Aranu'tiq
P.O. Box 620141
Newton Lower Falls, MA 02462

Have a ginormously successful 2013 camping season and hope it gets even bigger and better next year!
 

LA Times Meets With Local Trans Activists and GLAAD Over Transphobic Coverage

Been keeping an eye on Los Angeles and the unfolding story since February concerning the local trans community's outrage over a transphobic LA Times story featuring murdered transwoman Cassidy Vickers.

The story triggered a petition drive spearheaded by Gender Justice LA seeking a face to face meeting with LA Times officials to air grievances over the Vickers and  past misgendering articles.  They also wished to have the dialogue to suggest ways of improving coverage of the Los Angeles trans community and ensure transphobic reporting from their paper of record doesn't happen again.

The Times agreed to meet with the local activists, GJLA and GLAAD over the problematic coverage, and the meeting took place yesterday.  Hannah Howard was kind enough to send me a report of the meeting that she compiled.

1. The LA Times acknowledged mistakes in terminology and pronoun usage in the article about Cassidy Vickers
2. They acknowledged and apologized for harm this caused the community
3. They also acknowledge the need to provide context about trans discrimination when writing about crimes involving trans victims.
4. They acknowledged the need to attribute any terminology used by family members that doesn't match a person's chosen gender identity as their perspective and not representative of a neutral viewpoint.
5. They acknowledged they need to learn more about the community to accurately report on it
6. They committed to a trans sensitivity training for their staff
7. They gave us their internal style guide for talking about transgender issues for us to review and edit. Following edits, they committed to distributing it to their entire staff
8. They committed to distributing GLAADs updated style guide for talking about transgender issues when it is released next month to their staff.
9. They committed to using Gender Justice LA, GLAAD, and the TEEP program as a resources to check in with before publishing articles about trans issues.
10. We pitched to them a number of stories they might also consider writing about the LA trans community, including writing about GJLA's Theatre Of The Oppressed program and Transgender Leadership Development Program, profiling Trans 100 members and LA residents Bamby Salcedo or Michelle Enfield, documenting the state of talks between the trans community and LA County Sheriffs and incorporating it into ongoing coverage on the sheriff's department, and writing about the success of the TEEP program that serves as a model for trans-employment programs around the country and the world. Although they didn't definitively say they would do each of these, they were very enthusiastic about the stories in general, and they eager for us to help them dissever more stories they could write about the trans community.

Overall, I think it was productive meeting and they seemed very receptive. As with all these types of meetings, it is only a start and hopefully dialogue will continue over the coming months and years. But I think was a good start, and there is no way it could have happened without the grassroots response of so many amazing activists and allies over the past couple months. Everyone who signed the petition, came to the delivery event, publicized the issue, or otherwise contributed should consider themselves a true trans hero!

GLAAD is also publishing an article about the meeting and I will send the link when they do.

Thanks Hannah.  Will be interested to hear GLAAD's perspective on what took place yesterday. 

Your community fight was also important because like the New York Times, the LA Times is read far beyond the boundaries of your city and is an opinion shaping paper of record .  It's also why I was keeping up with what was transpiring on the Left Coast in these electronic pages.

It's important for our trans stores to be told in the media.  But HOW they are told matters.


I hope the Times does stay committed to what they outlined in yesterday's meeting and it does result in better coverage for trans people in Southern California and nationally  

Domaine Javier Files Discrimination Suit Against Cal Baptist

25 year old trans woman Domaine Javier, who was expelled from California Baptist University in August 2011 after appearing on an episode of MTV's “True Life”and revealing she was trans, has now filed a lawsuit against the Riverside, CA based school.

Javier was enrolled in CBU's nursing program, had been awarded a $3,500 academic scholarship and a $2,000 music scholarship until the show aired and they expelled her, claiming fraud and concealing her identity.  

CBU claims they discovered it in a routine background check, but neither they or their attorney would issue statements commenting on this case..   

Discrimination based on gender identity is barred in California under the state's Unruh Civil Rights Act.  While private institutions like CBU aren't covered under the act, because CBU is open to students of all faiths and offers degrees in secular fields, Javier's attorney Paul Southwick argued that because California Baptist is open to people of all faiths, functions as a business establishment offering services to the general public and primarily offers degrees in secular fields, it is covered under the Unruh Civil Rights Act.

“We’re not talking about a private seminary or Bible college,” he said. “Just because Cal Baptist is a religiously affiliated institution doesn’t give it a right to discriminate.”
 
Javier's suit that was filed in Riverside County Superior Court on February 25 accuses Cal Baptist of violations of California anti-discrimination laws, breach of contract and asks for $500,000 in damages.



She is now enrolled in the Riverside Community College nursing program

Stay tuned, this case is going to get interesting.  I've always argued that all institutions need to be covered under civil rights laws whether they are secular or religious.   Religious liberty does not give you the right to ignore local, state and federal state and human rights laws or hide behind Scripture to discriminate against people you don't like.

Petition Delivered To LA Times-Meeting Soon

I posted a story about Gender Justice LA along with other trans people in the LA area being more than a little pissed off  about the disrespectful reporting in their paper of record concerning a recent article by reporter Sam Quinones that disrespected the slain Cassidy Vickers.

Hannah Howard brought to my attention the effort to not only collect signatures on a petition to be delivered to the Los Angeles Times offices asking the paper to use more sensitivity and care when it comes to covering transgender people and trans issues, they were also seeking a meeting to discuss community concerns about that coverage.

"The use of male pronouns, birth names, and terms like 'men with women's breasts and clothes' to refer to transgender women brings up painful memories for many of us in the transgender community," the petition states.  "Throughout our lives, people refuse to acknowledge our gender identities, use our birth names and birth genders to refer to us against our will, and respond with varying degrees of harassment and violence when we protest."

The petition containing over 300 names was delivered on Friday, and the Times agreed to meet with community members and GLAAD to discuss those issues.

Will keep you posted on this unfolding story..

LA Area Transwomen Pissed About Transphobic LA Times Article

Just as New York area transwomen were extremely ticked off about the transphobic reporting of the New York that came to a head in the story that was done on Lorena Escalera, our West Coast sisters are highly pissed off about the transphobic reporting in the West Coast's paper of record that has now come to anger raising levels with Sam Quinones' recent LA Times article about Hollywood's sex workers that focused on the murdered Cassidy Vickers.

The Quinones article disrespectfully referred to Vickers and the other trans sex workers as “male hookers dressed as women” and “men with women's breasts and clothes”.

It repeatedly referred to Cassidy in violation of the AP Stylebook guidelines for reporting on trans people by her old name and male pronouns.  It also disrespected the murdered Cassidy by asserting she was 'a gay male who dresses for attention and money.'   And as you wise readers probably guessed,  the trans person in question that was disrespected in death by the article was survey says, African-American. 

Note to the Los Angeles Times and their writers, check the AP Stylebook if you have questions about how to write about a transperson.

transgender-Use the pronoun preferred by the individuals who have acquired the physical characteristics of the opposite sex or present themselves in a way that does not correspond with their sex at birth.   
If that preference is not expressed, use the pronoun consistent with the way the individuals live publicly. 

The pissivity of the West Coast girls like us over the article has triggered a petition drive that seeks to gather a modest 1000 signatures.  

In addition to the petition drive that seeks a retraction of the Quinones story, LA trans activists are also seeking a face to face meeting with LA Times officials to air grievances over past LA Times misgendering articles and ensure they don't ever see such a blatantly transphobic article written again. 

Hope GLAAD will also be there in support of the Los Angeles area trans community if and when they have this meeting. .

Kylan, You're Still A Winner In Our Eyes

Miss California USA 2013 was crowned last night, and it's safe to say it wasn't our girl like us Kylan Wenzel.

We would have known if that had happened because it would have shunted most of the Golden Globe Awards media overkill coverage to a secondary story.

The website for the Miss California USA pageant hasn't been updated yet as I write this with Mabelynn Capeluj's photo and still haven't discovered as of yet if Kylan made it to the 20 semifinalists that competed last night.

But that's not important right now because even if she didn't, she made a dream of hers happen and while doing so made a little trans history along the way 

We are proud of you Kylan for following your dreams, representing us with class and dignity and giving all the girls like us in the States and around the world something positive to talk about this past weekend..  

Know that you're a winner in our eyes.   I wish you much success in whatever you choose to do from this point forward. 

Kylan Steps On The Miss California USA Stage Today!

Kylan Wenzel makes history today when she steps onto the Pasadena Convention Center stage along with 229 other contestants vying for the Miss California USA title.

She's the first ever out trans person in the United States to compete in the Miss Universe pageant system and has the goal of attempting to become the first trans Miss USA and trans Miss Universe. 

But the first and hardest leg of the journey happens today as she tries to become one of the 20 women left standing for Sunday's semifinals.

She was interviewed on Anderson Cooper's talk show yesterday, and here's the video from it.



Good luck, Kylan!

Meet Kylan, The First Ever Trans Miss California USA Pageant Contestant

Remember when I wrote the post last week stating that we not get our hopes up of seeing a trans contestant in a state level Miss USA system pageant, Miss USA or Miss Universe this year?  

Scratch that.  

The 2013 Miss California USA pageant starts its preliminary competition tomorrow, and one of the 229 women competing in this year's edition of the pageant at the Pasadena Convention center will be a girl like us.

When 26 year old Kylan Arianna Wenzel of Century City, CA noted that transwomen were now eligible to compete in the Miss Universe pageant system thanks to Jenna Talackova breaking that pageant glass ceiling in Canada, Kylan decided to go for her long held dream of being a pageant contestant confidently attempting to win the trifecta of Miss California USA, Miss USA and Miss Universe . 

She left her job as a Jamba Juice shift manager and moved up her surgery date six months to have it in August 2012 in order to compete in this year's event.

“The first time I watched a beauty pageant was when I was 11, in 1997, when Miss USA won Miss Universe. And ever since then, it’s kind of been implanted in my brain,” Wenzel told Frontiers during a January 3 phone interview. “I wasn’t sure how it would happen for me, but it was something I put out there.

“You have to put it out to the universe—what you want to do—and you have to follow up on it,” Wenzel continued. “So, let’s say for transgender individuals, even if you haven’t had your sex change and you’re not sure, you have to act like you are Miss Universe or you are the woman you see yourself being. And you do that in everyday life. So I just worked really hard. I saved for surgery. I started getting procedures early like laser hair removal—things like that. It really is about believing in yourself. But you also need people to believe in you, because you can’t really get that far, sometimes, when you don’t have that kind of support.”

Wenzel's already made some trans history by being the first out transperson to enter a state level pageant anywhere in the United States and the first trans Miss California USA contestant.  

Her attempt to win Miss California USA starts in tomorrow's preliminary round in which the 229 contestants will be whittled down to the 20 semifinalists who will compete in the Pasadena Convention Center on Sunday, January 13 starting at 4 PM PST.  

If she does emerge victorious, we'll get to see her attempt to make more pageant history in June when she will represent California at the Miss USA pageant.

But first things first.   Good luck this weekend, Kylan! 

California GOP An Early Sign Of Nationwide GOP Collapse?

There an old axiom in American politics that states, 'As California goes, so goes the nation'..

There's an interesting article in the New York Times that discusses the current state of the California Republican Party.   The same party that produced presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and gave Sen.Dianne Feinstein the scare of her political life during the 1994 midterms is now a weakened shell of its former self.

They have shrunk to the point in which the state is a Democratic political bastion and despite the 2010 Teapublican wave, couldn't break through and lost high profile races for the governorship and the US senate.

Registered Republicans have fallen to just 30% of the electorate, and that's not enough to win a statewide race when 43% of the electorate in California is made up of registered Democrats and another 21% is made up of independent voters.

“The institution of the California Republican Party, I would argue, has effectively collapsed,” said current MSNBC commentator Steve Schmidt, who once worked as a senior adviser to former governor Arnold  Schwarzenegger (R).

“It doesn’t do any of the things that a political party should do. It doesn’t register voters. It doesn’t recruit candidates. It doesn’t raise money. The Republican Party in the state institutionally has become a small ideological club that is basically in the business of hunting out heretics.”

What caused the fall of the once mighty California Republican Party?    The self inflicted troubles go back to their political high point in the state in 1994 when Governor Pete Wilson (R) and California Republicans successfully pushed the anti-Latino Proposition 187 that was later found to be unconstitutional.  While it unified the GOP base, it pissed off Latinos just as their numbers were exploding as a critical voting bloc in the state and Republicans have paid for it in statewide races ever since.

The increasingly batturd crazy Southern based national GOP is also alienating California independent voters they need to win in those state, county and local races in addition to the Latino and African-American ones they already pissed off. 

Being on the wrong side of  gay rights, environmental issues, immigration, and abortion.also doesn't help them in this state either. 

Starting with this 2012 presidential election cycle, California is now worth 55 huge electoral votes through 2020.  The Democratic presidential candidate having that many electoral votes as a building block in their electoral vote calculations is a major political headache for the national GOP.

Today the Republicans in California are a shell of their former selves with no Republicans in statewide offices, and the California state legislature, both US senate seats a majority of the states US congressional delegation, and the governor's mansion in Sacramento firmly in Democratic hands. 

The deep bench of young, diverse political talent in California has the Democratic label, and the Republicans have become so focused on ideological purity that whatever moderate candidates they do have left in the party are leaving or running as independents.

While that's music to my ears as a Democrat living under the opposite political reality situation in Texas that demographics and a resurgent Texas Democratic Party are slowly climbing out of, democracy is served best when we have two healthy parties competing honestly and vigorously for everyone's votes.  .

The question I'm pondering is this.   Is what happened to the California GOP a tale that is about to replicate itself at the national GOP level and in other state Republican parties?

Or is this just a temporary situation they can come back from?   That's a question political scientists and political junkies will also be keenly interested in observing over the next few election cycles.
 

Rest In Peace Rodney King

From Renee of Womanist Musings

The beating of Rodney King was an example of police brutality that rang throughout the African Diaspora.  Watching the video, we knew that all that separated us from King was a simple matter of time and place.  I remember seeing the video for the first time and believing that finally, cops would be held accountable for their actions in the Black community, only to be horrified when the not guilty verdict was delivered.

As a Canadian, I remember most the smug reporting of our media on this issue, as though Canada does not have its own history of police brutality against people of colour, or its own history of criminalizing driving while Black. There was a failure to understand why this event resonated so deeply with us and it was cast repeatedly as an American issue, rather than an issue of race, which evenly effects all of the descendants of the African Slave trade.

It was with a heavy heart that I learned King was found dead at the bottom of his pool on Sunday.

King was not the perfect victim we were reminded repeatedly, as though one only had to be good  to avoid his fate, as though Blackness in and of itself doesn't have a history of being marked.  To even go down this road, one would have to ignore the impact of living in a White supremacist state as a person of colour. He was reared in a world that told him repeatedly that he did not matter and the verdict itself proved this to be true.  No matter what King was guilty of, no one deserved to have their civil rights violated like this, yet the excuses kept coming.

As Los Angeles erupted in righteous rage, King begged for peace, asking famously, "can't we all just get along?"  The answer then, and the answer now is no.  There is no getting along with White supremacy because it preys on our lives, it preys on our children and it preys on our souls.  Police brutality continues to be a problem in our communities. Racist Stop and Frisk policies continue to disproportionately target Black and Latino communities, and yet we are told that this is a public good and that it's about safety.  Is the world really that much safer believing the lie that only POC commit crimes? What about the psychological effect of  knowing that your race is enough to make you a target?

Our clothing and our manner of presentation is at fault and threatening we are told and yet, even wearing a suit and leaving rehearsal, Giancarlo Esposito of Breaking Bad and Once Upon a Time was recently stopped and frisked at gunpoint.  What could he have done differently?  How should he have been less threatening?  He isn't even the only celebrity of colour to receive this treatment, just the latest. There is no rich enough, or good enough, to avoid being a target of racism.  When you have a cop bragging that he "fried another nigger,"  how exactly is this stop and frisk policy doing any good?  You'll all be relieved to learn that he isn't a racist though. This is why we can't just all get along.

There is some suspicion surrounding King's death and the statements of his girlfriend.  How and why he died is something that will be debated and questioned for some time to come I suspect.  At this moment however, what matters to me is the legacy that he left behind.  He inspired an entire generation to put behind its apathy and fight.  Many still view the riots as simple rampant lawlessness, rather than a result of a community in so much pain that it had no choice but to implode.  The beating of Rodney King revealed to the world the truth of what justice means when you are a person of colour and all of these years later, not a damn thing has been done to fix this situation.  Despite a Black president, and protests by Black civil rights leaders nothing has changed.

Rodney King was not a perfect man and such an expectation is not only unrealistic, it is victim blaming. His life has been dissected and twisted much in the same way that every single Black victim of White supremacy has experienced.  I don't seek now to re-envision him as a paragon of goodness because even that would be disrespectful.   If we remember one thing about King, we need to remember that he was human and respect all that this entails.  His humanity should have protected him, it should have made the brutality perpetrated against him unthinkable and but for the colour of his skin, it might very well have.  King deserved better than life gave him and I hope that in death, he finds the peace he was never able to achieve in life. For the rest of us, there can be no peace, as long as we understood to be sub human.

Rest In Peace, Brandy

For those of you in the Bay Area, Brandy Martell's funeral will take place today.starting at 11 AM PDT in Oakland. 

It will take place at the C.P. Bannon Mortuary and once again the address for those of you in the Bay Area wishing to pay your respects to Brandy, it is located at 6800 International Blvd,. Oakland, CA. 94621.

As of yet, haven't heard any news as to whether the waste of DNA who shot and killed her has been apprehended yet, but hope that happens soon and he is brought to justice.

Please consider packing the room for Brandy if you can make it..  She was one of four transwomen that lost their lives last month and helped organize the local Transgender Day of remembrance services in the Oakland area.   She deserves as big a homegoing crowd as y'all can muster.

Those of us who aren't in the Bay Area may consider doing a silent prayer in remembrance of Brandy starting at 2 PM EDT, the exact moment her service starts on the West Coast.

Rest in peace, sis.   You were taken from us way too soon.  You life mattered to us, you fellow African descended travelers on th path of trans femininity and we will lift you up even if no one else does.

We'll resolve to make certain that no one forgets your name either.
 
 

The 20th Anniversary Of The LA Riots

Today is the 20th Anniversary of the LA Riots that broke out for several days across the city in reaction to the acquittal of four LA police officers accused of beating Rodney King during a March 1991 videotaped traffic stop

The epicenter was the then predominately Black South Central LA neighborhood (now called South LA) where the anger and frustration at the LA po-po's policing tactics was at the highest along with anger over the acquittal.

The riots that lasted until May 4 resulted in 53 deaths, with 10 of those deaths being people shot and killed by the LAPD.and caused and estimated billion dollars in property damage.

Once order was restored, it led to major changes and reforms in the Los Angeles Police Department..

But the 'a riot is the language of the unheard' Dr. King quote from his March 1968 The Other America speech  is echoing through my mind as I think about what happened in LA twenty years ago.   

Twenty years later the structural inequalities and negativity aimed at African-Americans still hasn't been addressed, is continuing to be ignored, and we still have to deal with a 'just-us' system that negatively impacts us.   Combine that with a Republican Party so bankrupt of ideas their only play is to exacerbate racial tensions to win an election against an African-American president, increasing tension over the Trayvon Martin case and sadly, we may see another manifestation of the 'language of the unheard'  breaking out in some American city in the near future. . 

RIP Alexis Rivera

Another powerful trans activist has passed away.  Los Angeles area activist Alexis Rivera died March 28 at age 34 due to compilations from HIV.   She was loved by all who got to know her on the West Coast and became an amazing advocate for our community.  

For those of you on the Left Coast who wish to pay your respects to her, a memorial service for Alexis Rivera will be held at Fiesta Hall in Plummer Park on Sunday, April 1 at 12:15 PM PDT.   Location is 7377 Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood, CA.    Viewing will be Monday, April 2 from 1-3 PM PDT at Abbott Abbott and Hast Mortuary.

A memorial service for Alexis will be held for her in San Francisco on April 7 at the SF LGBT Center for 3-5:30 PM PDT.  Location of the center is 1800 Market Street  

She worked for the Transgender Law Center and here's video of Alexis speaking at a 2007 gender conference.    Rest in peace sis.  You will be missed by your activist peers and all who loved you.

When Are The Po-Po's Going to Use Pepper Spray On The Teabaggers?

Interesting to note that the Tea Klux Klan rallies last year had armed protesters, and you saw not one po-po in riot gear or using strong arm stormtrooper tactics to break up those protests.

Now compare and contrast how po-po's handle unarmed protesters at an OWS event on the UC Davis campus.



Hmm.