Can We Make 2018 The Year We Free Ky Peterson?

One of the things I would love to see happen in 2018 is for Ky Peterson to be freed from his unjust incarceration in Georgia for defending himself

If you haven't heard about Ky Peterson's story.   He was living in Americus, GA and minding his own business on a fateful October 28, 2011 day waiting for his brothers to come out of a convenience store when a man approached and started asking him questions about his gender identity. 

Peterson, having been sexually and physically assaulted, began to feel  uncomfortable with the line of questioning and the man standing over him. 

As a result of the first sexual assault, he began carrying a gun in his bag.  The man standing over him raised red flads, so he decided to head home.   While cutting through a trailer park, he felt something hit the back of his head before blacking out. 

He awake to find himself in a trailer being raped by that man from the convenience store, screamed and hit his assailant.   The screams alerted his brothers, who pulled the man off Ky . 
The assailant ten charged at Ky who pulled his gun out of his bag and killed him.

Petersen ended up getting sentenced to 20 years in prison for basically defending himself from his rapist.  His first parole hearing isn't scheduled until July 2021 

Where is the NAACP on this case?   TBLGQ justice organizations?   Georgia gubernatorial candidates? I couldn't go a day without hearing about Chelsea manning, but there's silence about the unjust treatment of Jy Peterson.

Well, let's step up our human rights game. people   Let's work on getting Ky Peterson out of jail in 2018

Killing Black People Is As American As Apple Pie

Like many of you, I was disgusted about the miscarriage of justice in Minnesota and seeing another police perpetrator of a murder of a young Black man get off for his crime.

But as any African American can tell you, this isn't a new phenomenon.  Killing Black people and getting away with it is as American as apple pie.

Why am I saying that?   Because white people have been taught and conditioned because of 246 years of slavery and another 100 years of Jim Crow segregation to have little to zero regard for the lives of African descended people.

In order to justify owning another human being, you have to demonize them, and anti-Blackness did that.   Anti-Blackness is one of the negative legacies of America's original sin of slavery. When you spend 400 plus years demonizing African descended people, that negativity just didn't go away when the Civil War and slavery ended.

It is deeply embedded in the American psyche to hate Black people.  It is also a deeply embedded practice to kill Black people and face little or no punishment for it via lynchings and extrajudicial killings.

As an example, when Lawrence Russell Brewer, Shawn Allen Berry and John William King were convicted in 1999 for the July 7, 1998 murder of James Byrd, Jr. by callously dragging him behind a moving truck, when Brewer and King were sentenced to death, they were the first Texas white men in over 100 years to be sentenced to death for killing a Black Texan.


That's how rare it was for a white person in Texas to be sentenced to death for killing a white person

If you think I'm kidding about this or the title of this post is over the top hyperbole, there are pictures you can Google of Black people being lynched and the white citizens turning it into a joyous occasion they mugged for the cameras or deemed it suitable to take their precious children to.

Because of the ongoing demonization and othering of Black people by the with majority, we have sadly had a long history of other ethnic groups participating and marinating in that anti-Blackness in order to be 'more American' and attempt to set their ethnic group apart from Black people.
Even African descended immigrants from the Caribbean and continental Africa who should know better have engaged in bashing American Black people when they step on these shores.

Anti-Blackness is an international problem.  Note the popularity of skin lightening creams in Asia, the Caribbean and sadly even on the African continent because dark skin is considered 'bad'.

It also isn't new that African-Americans have had a long, negative and ugly relationship with oppressive police to the point where we say that it's Officer Oppressor who patrols our neighborhoods, not Officer Friendly.  

And police forces across the country sadly keep proving that point with every ugly incident that happens .  Eric Garner.  Tamir Rice. Michael Brown. Terrence Crutcher.  All killed by white police officers.   All those officers either were not indicted, or as sadly happened last month in the Crutcher case in Tulsa, found not guilty by predominantly white juries    

What will it take for a cop who kills a Black person to get punished for it?  

And miss me with that Blue Lives Matter 'be respectful to the cop' toro poo poo.  Philando Castile not only did exactly what you po-po loving conservafools screech at us,  as someone exercising his Second Amendment rights and being a licensed gun owner,  he even told Officer Yanez during the traffic stop for an inoperative tail light he had a gun and had no intention of reaching for it. .

And he was still killed for it with his fiance Diamond Reynolds and her then 4 year old daughter in the car as passengers and witnesses to this extrajudicial murder along with the world that watched her heart wrenching Facebook Live video shot to document for posterity what happened.

The Second Amendment is for conservative white people only.   The National Rifle Association's cricket chirping silence on the Castile case proves just how anti-Black and racist they are and always have been.

When the Black Panthers marched into the California state capitol building carrying their unloaded shotguns, it's interesting to note the NRA was quick to call for gun control legislation then.

Speaking of the Panthers, one of the major reasons the Black Panther Party formed in Oakland in October 1966 is because they and the Black citizens of the Oakland area were tired of being harassed and killed by police with impunity.

So what happened in the Philando Castile case isn't a new problem. It's just a problem that has never been properly addressed because of its systemic nature that the conservative white males and females in power don't want to deal with.because it isn't happening to 'their kids'

They also don't want to deal with it because they will not only have to do some deep introspection into their own roles of perpetuating the anti-Blackness, but having to come to grips with how they and their ancestors benefit from it.

In the meantime, because of their inaction, Anti-Blackness, especially when it is combined with a racist trigger happy cop, is killing my people.  .  

Now That Chelsea's Out Of Jail, Can We Do The Same For Ky Peterson?

Chelsea Manning is getting out of jail today and there is mixed reaction about that in many quarters of TransWorld.  I'll admit I'm conflicted about it because while I didn't like the harsh sentence she was given, neither do I condone what she did either.

So now that one of the last acts of President Obama in terms of commutation of Manning's sentence has happened, can we talk about and finally get the community focused on a really serious miscarriage of justice in the Ky Peterson case?

Peterson was a trans man living in rural Americus, Georgia with a supportive family whose world changed on October 28, 2011.

He decided to walk home ahead of his brother and while passing what appeared to be an empty mobile home trailer was hit in the back of the head, rendered unconscious and when he came to was being sexually assaulted by the stranger from the convenience store .

He shot his attacker in self defense who later died, but as you probably guessed, Stand Your Ground doesn't work for Black people.

He found himself being arrested for defending himself from the person who sexually assaulted him and finds himself in jail for 20 years as a result of it with a tentative parole date of July 2021.

It's time to focus our energy on getting Ky out of jail.

Here;s a petition to help get you started, and let's raise our voices to get the media talking about this case and the miscarriage of justice in this one.   You shouldn't have to go to jail for defending yourself against your transphobic rapist .

You can also keep up with what's transpiring in KY's case via the Free Ky website.

Let's step up our game and get justice for Ky Peterson.

Janet's Letter To Jane Doe

Still pissed off to hear through my contacts in Connecticut that 16 year old Latina trans teen Jane Doe is still unjustly locked up in an adult correctional facility.   

This is unacceptable, and a solution needs to be found NOW to end this unjust situation

On her blog Janet Mock has penned an open letter to Jane Doe that need to be read and signal boosted.
Here's a sample of it:

But my dearest Jane Doe this letter is about you, and as you sit in a lowly institution unsuited for a girl queen like you — all I want is highs for you.

In your letter, you said being brutally and wrongfully placed in that adult prison made you feel “thrown away.” You are not garbage. You cannot be discarded and disposed. You are life. Your existence gives me life. You are an unflickering fierce flame that reminds me every day that girls like you — the ones who have unjustly been forced to jump insurmountable hurdles — are the ones our leaders should be centering in our movements. You are worthy of all of our attention, care and resources.

You can read the entire letter by clicking this link

Monica Jones Guilty Of Walking While Black Trans In Arizona

Have another reason to not like Arizona despite some of the cool people who call it home.

Been keeping an eye on the ongoing case of ASU student Monica Jones, who was accosted on the street while walking in her Phoenix neighborhood during a sting operation and charged with 'manifestation of intent to prostitute' the very night after she spoke at a May 2013 rally denouncing Project ROSE.  .

Project ROSE is a program created with 15 partner organizations including the Phoenix Police Department with the goal of avoiding filing charges against adults engaged in prostitution, providing an opportunity for medical and social services and assistance in helping them exit the life of prostitution if they choose.  

In practice, the program and its profiled prostitution sweeps target trans, SGL and low income women far too often and has a 30% success rate, the same rate as a woman who goes before a judge and hasn't gone through the unjust Catholic Charities supported program.  

Jones believes she was unfairly targeted for arrest because of her outspoken criticism of Project ROSE.   A Change.org petition was created urging the Phoenix city prosecutor to drop the charges against her..    

The ACLU of Arizona joined Jones’ lawyer in contesting the constitutionality of the manifestation statute. Dan Pochoda of the ACLU explained in his arguments, “The statute eviscerates first amendment rights.”

In a packed Phoenix municipal courtroom this morning filled with supporters wearing “I Stand With Monica Jones: Stop Profiling Trans Women of Color”shirts, Judge Hercules Dellas found the 29 year old Ms. Jones guilty based solely on the statements of the police officer who targeted her. 

Gee why am I not surprised?   Jones' trial is also being monitored by the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders as an example of discriminatory policing and retaliation on activists organizing for human rights.

She is appealing the ruling because she faces time in the men's jails, and Maricopa County has a less than stellar human rights record in their penal system.  

Ms. Jones stated, “I am saddened by the injustice that took place at my trial this morning, but we are not giving up the fight. It’s time that we end the stigma and the criminalization of sex work, the profiling of trans women of color, and the racist policing system that harms so many of us.”

Hope she has better luck with her appeal.

What Else Is New? White Male Gets Away With Murdering Black Child In Florida

The reason you haven't seen much in the way of coverage of the Michael Dunn trial in Jacksonville on this blog is because I had the same sickening feeling it was basically going to be a replay of what happened in the Zimmerman case a few months ago. 

Same prosecutor in Angela Corey, same BS Stand Your Ground Kill a Black Kid With Impunity Law, and same cluelessness of the vanillacentric privilege White Americans walk in that considers the bigoted adult with the gun the sympathetic party and the unarmed African American teens as the scary aggressors.

The same white privileged cluelessness that allows the eight whites on the twelve person jury (the other jurors were two Black women, one Asian woman and one Latino) to believe that a racist butthole who fired ten shots at African-American teens listening to loud music in their SUV was 'a threat' to his life and his life was more valuable than the African-American kids he was emptying his gun clip at .

But Monica, some of you are probably saying, he was convicted of four of five felony counts.  Three of the convictions were for attempted second-degree murder of the other teens in the vehicle.  

Yeah true, but he wasn't convicted of the first degree murder charge that he should have gotten for killing Jordan Davis. 

And once again, prosecutor Angela Corey can throw Marissa Alexander under the jail for firing a warning shot through the roof of her home to defend herself and her children, but can't get convictions on two white men who killed Black children. 

As I said in the wake of the unjust Zimmerman verdict and will repeat once again, you want to get justice for Trayvon and Jordan?  Here's what must happen starting November 4. 

Vote the GOP bastards out in your state or area who support or voted for Stand Your Ground and voter suppression laws.  Vote out unjust Teapublican judges, DA's and prosecutors. Vote out Republifool congressmembers and senators in the 2014 midterms and beyond. 

Vote for candidates who will stand up for human rights and justice for all people. If you don't see those candidates, run for office your damned self.

Get control of your state legislatures and Congress back and fix what dictatorial Republican control, their Gilded Age 2.0 billionaire funders and a conservative Supreme Court broke.  

It's already galling enough to me this verdict happened the day before what would have been Jordan Davis' 19th birthday tomorrow.  We'll see what sentences gets handed down in this Dunn case before I decide how angry I really need to get over this verdict. 

Happy 19th Birthday, Trayvon!

Today would have been the 19th birthday of Trayvon Benjamin Martin if not for a fateful encounter with bigoted neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman in Trayvon's father's Sanford, FL. condominium complex.

And sadly, on Trayvon's 19th birthday we have more African-American parents who are awaiting the starts of trials of white males who felt they had the right to 'stand their ground' and kill Black children for the 'crime' of Existing While Black   

A jury is being selected in the case of Michael Dunn, who shot and killed Jordan Davis because he was in a vehicle with two friends at a Jacksonville convenience store, their music was too loud for his tastes and he 'felt threatened'

Theodore Wafer, another white man who 'felt threatened' has been chaged with second degree murder and is awaiting trail for November 2 shooting death of Renisha McBride.   She simply knocked on the door of a Dearborn Heights, MI house to get help after a traffic accident and paid for it with her life. 

The third white male, Randall Kerrick was wearing a CMPD police uniform when he shot and killed in September 2013 an unarmed Jonathan Ferrell ten times.  He has been indicted and charged with involuntary manslaughter.

So yes Trayvon, we have a lot of work to do to kill the ALEC-inspired Stand Your Ground laws that took you and Renisha's lives.  

And we will never forget what happened to you on the night of February 26, 2012 and how whiteness and white supremacy rallied to the defense (and still does) of George Zimmerman. 

We will commemorate the second anniversary of your murder with nationwide events, and we also won't rest until justice is served in not only your case, but Renisha and Jonathan's as well. 

We also won't rest until Kill A Black Child With Impunity Stand Your Ground laws are eviscerated. 

Happy 19th birthday, Trayvon. 
. 

Justice For Jewlyes

Now that Creating Change 2014 is receding into history, I have some time to refocus my attention on what's happening in the trans community while I was doing my part to make our Houston flavored event an off the charts successful one.

There has been increasing pressure being applied on the Contra Costa County DA's office to drop the case against Hercules HS transteen Jewyles Gutierrez, who is being charged with battery  for defending herself against three girls who were bullying her nonstop for several months .

And just in case you were wondering, outside of the three girls who bullied her being suspended from school for the fight, they aren't facing charges. 

A Change.org petition calling on Contra Costa County DA Daniel Cabrera to drop the charges has garnered almost 200,000 signatures and sponsorship from Transadvocate, and GLSEN (Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network) as of this writing.

If you wish to add your name to that list of people outraged over what is increasingly appearing to be charges based on a recommendation from a transphobic cis female detective, you can follow this link to add your name to this petition.

The lengthening list of people speaking out against these unjust charges also includes San Francisco Supervisor David Campos, who along with four co-sponsors introduced on January 28 a non-binding resolution  urging that the unjust charges be dropped. 

"What happened to Jewlyes Gutierrez is reprehensible," Campos told the SF Weekly. "Prosecuting Jewlyes for defending herself merely stigmatizes and bullies her again, this time in an official capacity and by the institutions who's duty it is to act as her protector. It is important that as a city, we in San Francisco stand for what is right and acknowledge that we must commit to protecting the most vulnerable among us and demand the same of communities around the country, especially in the Bay Area."

Will be keeping an eye on this situation.

Free Valjean Royal!

Black transpeople having negative and unjust encounters with the justice system is sadly not limited to our sister Cece McDonald.   While we are justifiably outraged about Ms. McDonald having to serve 41 months in jail for basically defending herself, imagine being in jail 40 years for two crimes you didn't commit.

Meet Valjean Royal, who was born in East Chicago, Indiana in 1953.  After a nightmarish childhood that included being molested and forced into being a child pron model by an uncle, being sent to a mental institution to 'cure' her of being trans, and being sexually assaulted in another jail, Royal found herself on the mean streets of East Chicago, IN, the south side of Chicago, Gary, IN, Detroit and Indianapolis doing survival sex work and as a nightclub dancer trying to get out of that situation and become the woman she was and desperately wanted to project to the world.

But an unsolved 1972 Indianapolis murder of church deacon James Burse would eventually throw another major complication into Valjean's life.  

Royal found herself arrested on June 9, 1973 for being in a bar while underage. That same fateful night Walter Banks was arrested by the Indianapolis Police and suspected of first degree murder.. Banks told the Indianapolis police during his interrogation that the 'he/she' knew something about the unsolved murder of Burse.

Everybody involved in the street life in Indy knew something about that case, because Burse was killed while passing out religious pamphlets and his body was found stuffed in a car trunk with a gunshot wound to his head.   Royal was asked by a Detective Dunn about it and initially denied she knew nothing more about the Burse case than anyone else.

But after slipping into depression while serving her 30 days for the underage bar arrest and fighting thoughts of suicide, Royal inexplicably summoned the investigator once again and made up a story confessing to a crime she didn't commit.   She was arrested, convicted of manslaughter as a result of her confession and sentenced to 2-21 years in prison. 

Royal managed to stay out of trouble and with good behavior, was on the verge of getting paroled in 1977 when buzzards luck struck again in 1976.  She was working in the laundry area and was sick in her bunk on the day an Indian Sate Prison guard working that area was killed.    

She was unfortunately fingered for that murder, went to trial for it in 1978 and on the strength of the questionable testimony of three inmates in front of an all white jury in Valparaiso, IN and was convicted of another murder she didn't commit.

It's past time that the Royal case was reopened and justice be served in this case, especially since it hasn't been served far too many times in her life.

Cece McDonald Talks About Trayvon And The Justice System

Definitely signal boosting this one.  Cece McDonald writes a post in which she discusses the Trayvon Martin case and the injustice system entitled 'Injury and Insult: Trayvon Martin, racism in the system and a revolution amongst us.'.

Here's a taste of it:

Highlighting on the injury to insult, many right-winged conservative foot-mouthed assholes, which include Zimmerman’s defense team, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill O’Reilly, who have tried to justify Trayvon Martin’s killing by demonizing Trayvon by saying “he was wearing what most criminals wear,” referring to his hoodie or that his toxicology report came back with positive test results of marijuana so “he was up to ‘no good’.” So I guess that means that wearing hoodies and smoking pot, going to the store and walking home talking to a friend on the phone is deemed “suspicious” and therefore someone can follow you and kill you and because you seemed suspicious, your death will be overlooked. But we all know that this was more than hoodies and marijuana–it was about racial profiling and the (implicit) racism that still exist in what’s supposed to be a post-racial “color-blind” society.

You can read the rest of Cece's post by clicking this link.

Told Y'all

Told y'all this was how the trial in Sanford, FL was going to go down.  And to be honest, if it hadn't been for the protests last year, Zimmerman wouldn't have been arrested, much less even gone to trial in the first place.

Told y'all that The Seminole County, Florida jury with no Black people on it would find George Zimmerman not guilty.   I predicted that on Thursday even before I heard the closing argument of Mark O'Meara Friday.  

After the defense delivers their closing argument tomorrow and the case goes to the jury, what Black America fears is the visual when that jury comes out of deliberation and delivers the verdict in front of the unblinking eye of the media's television cameras, a 'not guilty' verdict will be read.

We will then in Black America have to painfully watch as George Zimmerman exhales, cheers and he, his family and friends plaster cheesy grins all over their faces in victory while Tracy Martin, Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon's brother Jahvaris Fulton and their family, friends and supporters have stunned or disconsolate looks on their faces as the sickening realization sinks in that Zimmerman just got away with murdering their loved one.

Can you say 'nullification' people?   Thought you could.

If you thought I was kidding or being overly partisan about saying the GOP and conservatism is the political arm of white supremacy and FOX Noise is its megaphone, congratulations, last night was your wake up call

And yep folks, now that Georgie boy got off for killing Trayvon Martin, next task for white supremacy AKA the conservafool movement and their FOX Noise megaphone is coming to the rescue of Michael Dunn. 

Last Thanksgiving weekend he shot and killed 17 year old Jordan Davis in Jacksonville for the crime of being in an SUV in a gas station parking lot in which music was played that was too loud to this white man's tastes.  Expect the conservative demonizing of Davis to start as soon as the trial date gets closer.

Anyone want to lay early odds that Dunn gets acquitted in that case? 

As Marissa Alexander painfully found out, 'Stand Your Ground' wasn't designed by ALEC for Black people with guns, only white ones.  

I wanted to be proven wrong on this Zimmerman case.  I wanted to tell myself that my cynical reaction based on a lifetime of not too pleasant interactions with whiteness and white supremacy in America wasn't warranted.  I wanted to believe that it's the justice system and not the 'Just-us' system.  I wanted to believe that a Black life is just as valuable in the United States as a white one.
 
The courtroom in Sanford, FL and that verdict just pretty much verified and summed up what I've been saying for seven years on this blog in various ways when I talk about race, race relations, whiteness and white supremacy. 

Whiteness and white supremacy trumps Black lives.   It also made me ponder once again if elements of white people really believe what Chief Justice Roger B. Taney wrote in the Dred Scott v Sandford case back on March 6, 1857 and that's what you really think of us.



"...beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

Do I or any other African-American have no rights you as a white person are bound to respect?  That's the message the Zimmerman jury verdict sent last night.
 
So no, I don't want to hear the bull feces about this case 'wasn't a race issue', this wasn't a Black-White issue or 'I'm tired of these Black-white issues' or 'I'm tired of identity politics'.   Not today, tomorrow, the rest of this week, the rest of this month or the rest of this year. 

This case was most certainly was about race.  White supremacy has been fracking with African descended people for over 400 years and isn't showing any signs of slacking off or getting tired of coming up with new ways of accomplishing the task.


And for those of you Black people who irrationally hate on me and other Black transpeople, y'all better chill with that shyt right now.   It's nation time and we Black people of all varieties have work to do
.
As I've told your clueless behinds more than a few times Black trans issues are Black community issues and now more than ever we need to close ranks and unite.

They see my Black skin first before the trans issue even comes up.  Exhibit A of that is CeCe McDonald, who is in a Minnesota prison on a 41 month sentence for the crime of being a Black Trans Person Walking and defending herself against a white supremacist.  The white female who instigated the attack only received 180 days in jail.

That unjust Zimmerman case verdict basically said that Black kids, and especially Black male kids like Trayvon Martin can be shot and killed with impunity by white people.   But don't you Black people dare do it to our precious white kids or else. 

Don't even try coming on here in the comment threads and pointing out Zimmerman is half Latino.  You will get clowned, called out and embarrassed.  He wasn't claiming that half Latino heritage the night he got out of his car and hunted down and killed Trayvon. 

Neither was he claiming that heritage as he basked in the vanillacentric privileged glow of his father Robert Zimmerman, Sr., white folks gleefully rushed to his defense and showered him with defense fund cash in six figure amounts during this entire sorry episode.

Even now you vanillacentric privilege wielding peeps are all over the Net either gloating about this verdict, spewing racist comments or trying to whitesplain and justify a grown ass white man man killing an unarmed 17 year old Black child.   So George Zimmerman is all yours. Can't throw him under the bus now because he's a concrete example of and a window into what whiteness and white supremacist thinking does to you peeps and deep down what you really think about us.

But the people I really feel for at this moment are Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton.  Keep them and their family in your prayers. 

But while Zimmerman won this legal battle, the legal war will continue.   The feds haven't weighed in on this case yet, and you can bet there will be a civil lawsuit he'll have to deal with.  

After you finish venting, do what I will do.  Wake up, get organized, and prepare for the legal, political and civic engagement battle we must now wage to total victory over the forces of whiteness and white supremacy which are ensconced in their political arm, AKA the Republican Party. 

You want to get justice for Trayvon?  Vote the GOP bastards out in your state or area who support or voted for Stand Your Ground and voter suppression laws.  Vote out unjust Teapublican judges, DA's and prosecutors. Vote out Republifool congressmembers and senators in the 2014 midterms and beyond.  Vote for candidates who will stand up for human rights and justice for all people. If you don't see those candidates, run for office your damned self.

Get control of your state legislatures and Congress back and fix what dictatorial Republican control and a conservative Supreme Court broke.  

The struggle continues. So we have to be just as tough minded about taking on whiteness and white supremacy.  And we as African descended people in America have to deal with the reality that just about everything in America sociopolitically is a Black-White issue, has been for over 400 years and must be analyzed first from that context.  

Until we (and White people too) deal with the reality that America is still dealing with (or refusing to deal with) the poisonous post-traumatic aftereffects of slavery, with one of the prime ones being the devaluing of Black life, we are not going to even begin to make progress on permanently changing the negative paradigm.
  

Alberta Transgender Rights Tipping Point?

The abolitionist Frederick Douglass once stated in 1892, "Find out what people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them."

It looks as though the Conservative dominated provincial government is learning that they've gone past the level of injustice that Alberta's transgender community will tolerate.

Sometimes the 'I've had it' tipping point can be something small. Other times it's something so blatantly egregious you just can't stomach it anymore. You decide to fight and it leads to not only an end to the problem that led you to mobilize to fight the injustice in the first place, but empowers people through your example to fight for greater civil rights protections.

While some Albertans decry their rep within Canada as 'Little Texas' (and I feel their pain being a progressive from Texas) there are times when the idiots in my birth state and the province of Alberta go out of their way to justify and live up to every stereotype assigned to them.

The recent delisting of SRS funding from Alberta's provincial health plans has galvanized the Albertan and Canadian transgender community and their allies into coordinated action to reverse this odious ruling.

Could it be that we south of the border peeps are witnessing the dawn of a 'mad as hell' moment in Wild Rose Country that will lead to the Canadian transgender community organizing on a national level and getting more visibly active to codify, protect and expand their civil rights coverage?

That's up to our Canadian cousins to analyze the conditions in their homeland and decide if such an option is feasible and warranted, but I support whatever decision they make once this current battle is concluded.