Candlelight Vigil For Shante & Willie Friday

As the Houston Police Department talks to trans woman Serenity Colquitt, who turned herself into the police yesterday afternoon in the Shante Thompson-Willie Sims murder case, the planning continues for an upcoming vigil Friday evening to honor the victims of this heinous crimes.

Some of the eight people who viciously attacked are trans themselves, and HPD detectives are seeking a person of interest in the Thompson-Willis case.  .

The vigil will take place at Houston City Hall starting at 6 PM, and in addition to honoring the memory of Shante and Willie, it will be a call to action to end anti-trans violence.

In addition to speakers, it will also have a moment of silence for the person we have lost so far in 2016 to anti-trans violence.

Hope you can make it to Houston City Hall Friday night for this event.

 

50th Anniversary Of The Final Four Game That Changed History

The NCAA Men's Final Four comes to my hometown this weekend.  How apropos is it that we're hosting the game at NRG Stadium at a time in which we also are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the 1966 Final Four title game between Texas Western (now UTEP) and number one ranked Kentucky that changed not only history, but had a major impact of how NCAA men's basketball is played today.

The story is also depicted in the 2006 movie Glory Road.

That Final Four game played on March 19, 1966 pitted the number four ranked Miners against the Adolph Rupp coached Wildcat team that had NBA legends Pat Riley and Louie Dampier in their lineup.

It's also a point of pride for us in Houston because David Lattin, one of the starters in that historic NCAA title game is from here.  That game also marked the first time that five African-Americans started in an NCAA title game,and they were playing against a one loss Kentucky team with an all white lineup.  

While that is something we don't even think about in 2016, because the SEC and the now disbanded Texas-Arkansas based Southwest Conference were segregated and refused to recruit Black players, this was a big deal in 1966.  It was also a big deal because in addition to this seminal title game being played with the African-American Civil Rights Movement as a backdrop, there were less than complimentary stereotypes about Black basketball players at the time as well.   The Texas Western players also faced in their 27-1 title run racism from fans, other players and referees as they marched toward their date with destiny.

David Lattin, Bobby Joe Hill, Orsten Artis, Harry Flournoy and Willie Worsley shocked the world by upsetting the heavily favored Wildcats 72-65  It's also cool to note that David Lattin's grandson, Khadeem Lattin ( and whose mother BTW is WNBA Houston Comets legend Monica Lamb) playing for the Oklahoma Sooners, one of the four teams competing for the NCAA title here in Houston this weekend

 It is also fitting that during this weekend in which the Final Four returns to the Lone Star State, the 1966 NCAA championship team will be honored at halftime.on Saturday.

As I said in my 45th anniversary TransGriot post concerning that historic game, the Texas Western players that night in Cole Field House on the University of Maryland campus were playing not only for a title, they were playing for the dignity of a people.

They also ended up with their win,.changing NCAA college basketball forever.

Never Forget The People Who Died

Never forget the people who died.

That's what the TDOR is all about. To make sure we never forget the people we have lost to anti transgender violence.

We say people because we have folks on our list such as Willie Houston and Pfc. Barry Winchell who died because of ignorant perceptions as well. Barry died because he was dating Calpernia Addams and one of his fellow Fort Campbell soldiers had a problem with that. Willie died because the shooter's homophobia was triggered by him holding his fiancee's purse while she used the restroom.

But the bulk of the people on this sadly growing list are transpeople of color. Black and Latina people make up 70% of the Remembering our Dead list, and once again, the people we memorialize this year are disproportionately people of color.

12 of them resided in the United States, and are part of the 117 names worldwide we are sadly adding to this list.

As long as I'm living on Planet Earth and compile posts for TransGriot, it will be part of this blog's mission to ensure that I cover the TDOR and make sure our fallen transpeople are never forgotten.

Why Do We Need Transgender Day Of Remembrance? Well…

TransGriot Note: My latest post for Global Comment

If you’ve been perusing my home blog and other transgender-themed blogs across the Internet recently, you may have noticed the TDOR acronym pop up, and wondered what it means.

TDOR stands for the Transgender Day of Remembrance. For the last eleven years, every November 20 we memorialize and call attention to the people we’ve lost due to anti-transgender hatred and prejudice.

The Transgender Day of Remembrance began in the wake of the November 28, 1998 murder of African-American transwoman Rita Hester of Boston, MA. Rita’s murder was the impetus for San Francisco based activist Gwen Smith to begin the Remembering Our Dead web project and organize a vigil in San Francisco on the one year anniversary of Rita’s murder.

The 1999 San Francisco vigil quickly morphed into an event that was observed on November 20 in various locations around the world. This year in addition to TDOR events taking place in numerous locales across the United States and Canada, TDOR events will take place in Australia, England, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Malaysia, The Philippines, The Netherlands, Norway, Scotland and Sweden.

The Remembering Our Dead Web Project not only compiles the names of people from around the world who have lost their lives to anti-transgender violence, it keeps statistics as well.

There are non-transgender people on the list such as Nashville’s Willie Houston. He was murdered in 2002, because the shooter considered him gay after seeing him hold his fiancé’s purse. This resulted in a verbal parking lot altercation near the General Jackson steamboat that tragically ended in death.

Pfc. Barry Winchell is another non transgender person on the list. In the early morning hours of July 5, 1999 the Fort Campbell, KY was killed because he was dating a trans woman, Calpernia Addams. That story is told in the movie “Soldier’s Girl.”

At this year’s TDOR ceremony we’ll be adding Michael Hunt’s name. He was murdered along with his transgender girlfriend, Taysia Elzy

The core part of any TDOR service is reading the list of names of people we lost from the time after we held the previous year’s event to the current one. As that list of names is read, a candle is lit in remembrance of that person.

Sadly, according to Ethan St. Pierre – who compiles the statistics and in 1995 lost his aunt Debra Forte to anti transgender violence – we will be lighting candles for 117 people. One of the other glaring statistics that Ethan points out is that 70% of the Remembering Our Dead list is made up of trans people of color, and that pattern sadly continues with the people we are memorializing for 2009.

Read the rest here.

Ten Years-400 Dead...And Counting

Today is the tenth anniversary of the Transgender Day of Remembrance. It's the day transgender people around the world pause and remember our fallen brothers and sisters along with our allies and friends.

It's also a day of mixed emotions for me. One of the people we'll be remembering this year is one of my friends.

Instead of lighting 30 candles on her birthday cake next month, instead we'll be lighting one candle for Nakhia 'Nikki' Williams at our 7 PM EST ceremony in the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary's Caldwell Chapel later tonight. She unfortunately is one of the 27 transpeople killed this year due to the senseless anti-transgender violence directed at us.


Since the night ten years ago that Rita Hester's lifeless body was found in her Boston area apartment and outrage over the disrespectful way the gay and straight news media covered it triggered the first TDOR ceremony in 1999, we have read the names of 412 people over the last ten years of TDOR ceremonies according to the Remembering Our Dead web project site.

The 412 names listed are disproportionately transgender people of color, encompasses 38 states, 130 US cities and several nations. It also includes non-transgender people such as Nashville's Willie Houston and Barry Winchell, who was killed by a fellow soldier because he was dating transwoman Calpernia Addams.

This year's ceremony is a mixed bag of emotions for me. I'm angry about the continued loss of valuable lives. I'm saddened by the fact that one of my friends is on the list this year. I'm shocked but not surprised after reading the stats that we lost so many people this year.

But at the same time, I'm hopeful that with the increased media coverage of transgender people over the last year and a half combined with the upcoming change in presidential administration, we finally have the conditions in place to pass hate crimes and an inclusive ENDA.

They may be just laws to some of you, but for the transgender community they are literally life and death issues. They are symbols that we matter, our lives are respected and valued and when you read the 'We The People' in the Constitution's preamble, that includes transgender Americans as well. .

The TDOR also ensures that how and why our fellow transpeople died never fades from our memories.


crossposted to The Bilerico Project

Open Letter To The CBC

Dear Congressional Black Caucus,
When the 110th Congress was gaveled into session back in January it made history on many fronts. The members of the CBC for the first time would not only chair many subcommittees, but important committees such as Ways and Means and Judiciary.

An African-American would serve as the Majority Whip for the first time in a decade. It would even include not only its first representative from Minnesota, but that representative would be a Muslim as well. And the thing I am most proud of is that a CBC member of the Senate is not only running for president, but has a serious shot to win the Democratic party nomination for the job next year as well.

Yes, the CBC has come a long way since its founding in 1971 and it's not called the 'Conscience of the Congress' for nothing.

So as an African-American who happens to be transgender, I would like to appeal to that conscience and humbly ask why some members of the CBC aren't voting to expand civil rights to their fellow African-Americans who happen to be transgender.

I'm not naive to politics. I'm a student of history who is painfully aware of our tortured history in this country and how long it took civil rights for African-Americans to pass.

But I fail to understand why some CBC members are balking at expanding rights to people who desperately need them in the name of 'pragmatic politics'. There are over 300 organizations including the National Black Justice Coalition and the International Federation of Black Prides that support an inclusive ENDA.

I understand that the misguided ministers of the Hi Impact Leadership Coalition and others in Congress are placing tremendous pressure on some of you to vote NO not only on the Baldwin Amendment that would fix the problems in Rep. Barney Frank's HR 3685, but on HR 3685 as well.

But looking at our history, you can well understand why as an African-American transperson I'm imploring you to vote YES on the Baldwin Amendment and include people in this legislation that should have never been cut out of it in the first place.

Over 70% of the people listed on the Remembering our Dead List, which memorializes victims of anti-transgender violence are African-American or other people of color. Many of you were in Washington when Tyra Hunter was denied emergency medical treatment by an African-American EMT and subsequently at DC General that would have saved her life. The hate for transgender people is so palpable that several years ago Willie Houston, an African-American who was helping a man cross a Nashville street was shot and killed because he happened to be holding his wife's purse at the time.

I thank the CBC for standing tall on the hate crimes bill that passed the House May 3 and I and others expressed that sentiment to many of the CBC offices I was able to visit then. But what is more vitally important to transgender people like myself is having job protections.

It does me no good to have hate crimes protection if someone feels that they have a God given 'special right' to mess with my employment, fire me because I transitioned, or deny me or any person gay or straight a job we have the qualifications to do because we don't fit their impressions of how a man or woman is supposed to act, walk, talk or look.

I have already felt the sting of employment discrimination because I'm transgender. I need a roof over my head, food to eat, and clothes on my back. I have to earn money to pay for those necessities of life and that requires a job. Since medical care at the moment is tied up in gainful employment as well, an inclusive ENDA is a life or death issue to us.

The late Barbara Jordan, a fellow Texan, one of my heroes and a distinguished member of the Congressional Black Caucus once stated,

"One thing is clear to me: We, as human beings, must be willing to accept people who are different from ourselves."

As a transgender American of African descent that's all I and any other transperson is asking for. All we want is an expansion of the 'We, the People' in the Constitution to include us. All we are asking for is an opportunity to be able to use our talents to work and live our lives free of harassment. All we want is an equitable opportunity to do our part to help build our country. Because the Forces of Intolerance are arrayed against us now, we can't wait decades for a separate transgender-only ENDA to pass.

In short, we're asking for nothing more than you would want for yourselves or your children: First-class citizenship.

Whether we get that will be determined in large part by the actions of the Democratic Party and the members of 'the Conscience of the Congress.'

Since the CBC's founding you have never failed to lead on civil rights issues before. Please don't let failing to expand civil rights protection for transgender Americans become the first stain on that impressive and morally principled record.

Sincerely yours,
Monica Roberts
2006 IFGE Trinity Award Winner

Shut Up Fool Awards- Post 2014 Midterm Election Edition

Well peeps, the election didn't go the way we wished it to go, and we now have to deal with when the 114th Congress starts in January the specter of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

For all you liberal progressive people who didn't vote, for all you didn't do on Election Day, the new GOP majorities on Capitol Hill are the result.  

So when they gleefully start repealing the 20th century over the next two years, don't look at me because I and other peeps tried to warn you what was coming if they got their paws on the Senate in addition to having control of the House.

And I'll be saying, "I told you so."

Okay, so while I'm traveling to the Windy City for the Representing Trans* Symposium that's happening on the University of Chicago campus tomorrow (and hope to see you Chicago peeps while I'm there) let's get to my usual Friday 'bidness' of calling out the fool, fools or groups of fools who deserve to get lambasted for their arrogance, stupidity, and jaw dropping WTF level ignorance.

Honorable mention number one goes to 'errbody' eligible to vote in the 2014 midterms who came up with whatever weak ass excuse NOT to do so.   

I'll will repeat this again:  If you're eligible to vote, there is NO acceptable excuse for sitting out an election.   Every rime the GOP majority does something that you don't like and you start complaining about it, the first question out of my mouth will be "did you vote in the 2014 midterms?"   If you didn't you'll be getting cussed out and the sideeye from me, so get ready for it.

Honorable mention number two goes to every white woman in Texas who voted for Greg Abbott.  Texas Black and Latina women voted for Wendy Davis, and you voted for your oppressor instead of one of your own?

Honorable mention number three goes to Anthony in San Diego, who called C-SPAN as part of the post mortem over the 2014 midterm and let loose the real reason why the GOP won the midterms: racist hatred of President Obama.

Thanks for giving me the ammo to prove once again that the Republican Party and the conservative movement is nothing more than the political arm of white supremacy.

Honorable mention number four goes to all the  Democrats who failed to run on the ACA, societal fairness. and embrace President Obama.  Gee, how did that work out for you on election night?

I can tell you that those House and Senate candidates who did embrace Democratic values and didn't run from the president won Tuesday night.

Honorable mention number five is Joe Rogan, who once again ignored the mounting evidence and went back to transphobically bashing Fallon Fox. 

Joe , you owe my talented WMMA homegirl an apology which I suspect will come the same time that Ronda Rousey's transphobic behind gets into the cage with Fallon

Honorable mention number six is a local fool in Houston Pastor Willie Davis, who while christopimpin' for his GOP massas opened his mouth and said the HERO would take away rights from heterosexuals?

Conservakneegrow please!  Pay very close attention.  One of the 15 categories the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance bans discrimination on is RELIGION.   But I guessed you missed that point while you were kissing Dave Welch's and Max Miller's behinds.
 .  
This week's Shut Up Fool winner I go straight (pun intended) to New York City for in Pastor James David Manning, the head of the ATLAH hate church there who is making a late run for the 2014 Shut Up Fool of the Year.  

He gets this week's nod for a double shot of homophobic coonery and buffoonery.

First he parted his lips to say that 'upscale sodomites' make Starbucks a 'Ground Zero for Ebola'.

Then Uncle Ruckus, er Pastor Manning took another shot at Starbucks by claiming their lattes are flavored with 'sodomite's semen'.   Hmm, wonder if the good pastor is doing wide stances in his office, because he sure does spend an awful lot of time and what little brainpower he has fixated on the LGBT community.

Any takers on how soon the cease and desist defamation legal papers should be hitting the ATLAH World Church doors from Starbucks?

Pastor James Manning, shut up fool.

Moni's On 'Queer Voices' Again Tonight

Didn't have to wait as long for another invite to appear as a guest on Queer Voices this time.

For those of you in the Houston area or within the over the air broadcast range of KPFT-FM 90.1, our local Pacifica network station, yours truly will be back in the Montrose area studios of the station as a guest on tonight's Queer Voices broadcast at 8 PM CDT.

It's to talk about last week's murder of Shante Thompson and Willie Davis and hopefully other issues affecting the trans community in the time we have allotted for that segment, but we'll see how that transpires starting at approximately  8:35 PM.

They do livestream the show for those of you who would like to hear it, and you can go to this link to do so.

Hope y'all check it out.

TransGriot Update: My appearance on Queer Voices also depends on whether I can get to the station because of the widespread local flooding.  

It will happen.  Will call in for tonight's show.

.

Atlanta Thrashers Are Soul Powered

I like watching hockey and one of the first games I attended as a child was the World Hockey Association inaugural game featuring the Houston Aeros and the Howe family squaring off against the Chicago Cougars.

Like any sport that is played in North America, despite the perception that it is a white man's sport, hockey has also been influenced by the creativity and presence of  the African descended people who played it.

The Nova Scotia based Coloured Hockey.League was the forerunner of the younger and white dominated National Hockey League that wasn't founded until 1917.  According to the book Black Ice, many of the things you see in the modern game in terms of the speed of play, the acrobatic goaltending styles to the slapshot created by Eddie Martin of the Halifax Eurekas were innovations created by Black hockey players

It wasn't until 1958 when Nova Scotian Willie O'Ree became the first Black player to break the color line in the then six team NHL when he joined the Boston Bruins and played in his January 18 debut game against the Montreal Canadiens.

But this bit of sporting Black history slipped under my radar.   The Atlanta Thrashers became only the second NHL team since the  2000-01  Edmonton Oilers to start five Black hockey players.

The ATL has a 31% African American population, and a large concentration of middle class affluent African Americans.   With rumors flying that the team may be headed for the same fate as the Flames, the previous Atlanta based NHL team that moved to Calgary in 1981, an ownership that admits they've been trying to sell the team since 2005 and attendance numbers that  rank 28th out of the 30 NHL teams, the Thrashers are seizing on an opportunity to introduce hockey into an untapped market for the NHL in terms of African Americans in a bid to keep professional hockey in the ATL..

As Thrashers management knows and I discovered in 1972, once you see a hockey game live, you're hooked.  The team is not only highlighting that factoid in advertising geared toward Black media outlets in the Atlanta area, Thrashers leading scorer, Minnesota native and NHL All-Star defenseman Dustin Byfuglien was interviewed this morning on the nationally syndicated Tom Joyner Morning Show.  The team is also reporting anecdotal evidence of increasing numbers of African Americans in the stands at Philips Arena as the word spreads about the Thrashers in the community and their efforts to grow the game pay off.. 

Interestingly enough, one of the Thrashers African descended players, Vancouver born winger Evander Kane, is named after former heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield who lives in the Atlanta area.

The 19 year old Kane also has the distinction of being the highest drafted African descended player in NHL history when he was selected as the number 4 overall player picked in the 2009 NHL Draft.

The other African descended Thrashers players are defenseman Johnny Oduya from Sweden, and Canadian born wingers Anthony Stewart and Nigel Dawes.

The Atlanta Thrashers have made history a few times this NHL season.   There have been a few occasions this season in which a Thrasher goal and the two assists on the play setting up the goal were tallied by Black players.  


But if they are going to draw more fans in the ATL period regardless of ethnicity, they will need to step up their on ice play.   They are at the time I compile this languishing in the NHL's Southeast Division in fourth place with a 25-26-10 record.   Only the top eight teams in each conference make the Stanley Cup Playoffs and they are number 11 in the Eastern Conference standings four points out of the last Eastern Conference playoff spot

Here's hoping they get on a winning streak that gets them a playoff spot and I get to see one of the few soul powered NHL teams playing for the Stanley Cup..