Canaries In the Civil Rights Coal Mine

Over at The Bilerico Project, Nadine Smith posted this story about a Florida state legislator and minister who thinks 'the law is supposed to discriminate sometimes'.

The constitutionally challenged idiot who said this, Rev. Darryl Rouson, I'm sorry to say shares my ethnic heritage. What's even more shocking and disgusting is that he's a Florida state legislator.

Okay, so a man who is entrusted with the sacred responsibility to make law in the state of Florida feels the law should discriminate. It is unacceptable and morally reprehensible that in light of our own tortured civil rights history in this country, when we are only 150 years removed from slavery and only 40 years removed from the end of a long and bloody fight against Jim Crow segregation that an African-American, much less an African-American legislator would even part his lips to say that.



Dr, King and everybody who put their lives on the line to end Jim Crow segregation is probably rolling over in their graves right now over that beyond asinine statement.

But Rev. Rouson's comment speaks to one of the things that I have been majorly perturbed with over the last decade. African-American ministers being facilitators for and agents of oppression instead of fulfilling the historic duty and mission of the Black church to speak truth to power and fight for the oppressed.

It has irritated me to no end the ignorance that has been displayed in some quarters of the African-American community not only of our history, but it escaping some people as Dr. King so eloquently stated, that we are in an inescapable network of mutuality.

That means what hurts the African-American community hurts me as well and what affects me as a transperson of African descent does affect the greater African-American community.

I've always been blessed with the ability to look at an issue and see the big picture, or what peeps in the political world call 'vision'. Barack Obama is a politician that has that ability, but that's a subject for a future post.

One of the things that alarmed me when I first started paying attention to the Religious Reich back in the late 80's-early 90's was their absolute hatred of the 60's Civil Rights Movement. the separation of church and state doctrine, and the Constitution. They wanted a theocracy, and the only way to accomplish it was trash the constitution. They also remember from their readings of history that Germans voted Hitler into power and the old quote that when fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.

So like the Cylons, they had a multi faceted plan to do so.

They needed an enemy to focus on, and since 'godless communism' wasn't available, it got replaced by 'The Gay Agenda'. They wanted you to believe that if we didn't start oppressing gay people, our country would collapse. Knowing that most fair minded Americans wouldn't drink that Kool-Aid, they 'scurred' and duped many of you into believing that BS.

People see a videotape of a person getting roughly handled by the police during a protest and think they 'deserve it'. A person gets beat down in a police station and people shrug their shoulders because it was a transgender person taking the blows and not one of 'their' people.

In order to get people comfortable with the idea of voting to limit people's civil rights or eliminate them altogether, out come the ballot initiatives from 'concerned citizens'. There are constitutional amendments proposed with Orwellian language that state they're designed to 'protect marriage' or 'strengthen the family' but in reality they strip away not only GLBT people's rights , but the rights of straight people as well.

The sad part is that many of the folks now complaining about this didn't have any problem doing so on election day because they thought 'their' rights weren't on the chopping block. Some of them blindly followed what their pastor said in his homophobic sermon preached from his pulpit on Sunday after getting his faith-based bribe money. That sermon concluded with the admonition that voting for the latest 'Hate The Gays' constitutional Amendment or voting to repeal civil rights for GLBT people is not only your way to prove you're a God-fearing Christian, but a good American as well.

The problem with that attitude and the faith-based ignorance that feeds into this is that once civil rights are lost, it's difficult to get them back. These amendments are also being designed to have an impossibly high threshold to repeal them as well as being designed with deceptive wording when they are first proposed.

Back in the early 20th century, before the high-tech methane gas detectors were created, miners used to take a live canary into the mine and hang them in the areas where they worked. If that canary started showing visible effects, like swaying on its perch before dying, then the miners knew that the methane concentration in that area of the mine had built up to dangerous levels and they had to get out immediately.

To borrow an analogy Dr. Enoch Paige used in his speech to the Transgender Pride March back in June, we GLBT people are the canaries in the civil rights coal mine. The health of our civil rights determines the health of civil rights in our democracy in general, and right now we are swaying from the efforts of a decade of poisonous attacks on them.

We and our rights aren't dead yet, but there are plenty of warning signs the Reichers are coming after us, aided and abetted by cowardly constitutonally-challenged legislators such as Rev. Rouson and sometimes by our own allies.

We beat back an attempt here in Louisville in 2004 and won big when our Fairness Ordinance had to be reauthorized in the wake of the city-county merger. Our brothers and sisters in Montgomery County, Maryland are fighting to keep a transgender civil rights law that passed last year on a 9-0 vote. The Forces of Intolerance are using the bathroom issue as a wedge issue and trying various deceptive and deceitful tactics they will use to fight transgender rights laws elsewhere if they are successful in repealing this one.

This is a coordinated strategy that our enemies are using, and it will take a coordinated response from all sectors of it to beat it back.

It's also a fight we must win, or like the coal mine canaries, our civil rights will painfully expire right before our eyes. And to my fellow non-GLBT African-Americans, guess whose civil rights are next on the right-wing chopping block after they're done jacking with the GLBT community?

So we need y'all to step up to the plate and help some brothers and sisters out. The civil rights you save may be your own.

The Transgender Sista Among Us

Minister Lisa Vazquez at the Black Women, Blow The Trumpet blog had a very interesting post she wrote on July 17 entitled 'The Transgender Sista Among Us: Chaos or Community?'

Check this thought provoking post out, TransGriot readers.

There are also as of this date 36 comments that run the gamut of opinion as well. If you wish to comment on it, please do so first on Lisa's blog. I also don't mind if y'all want to leave comments here as well.

Ebony

TransGriot Note: It's been a while since I've been motivated to write a poem about something. I started writing the first draft of this one about Ebony Whitaker the day she was buried.

An MKR Poem


Ebony
Died violently
At age twenty
Because she was T

Tossed out at sixteen
Onto Memphis streets too mean
With pockets very lean
Because of her gender dream

So this lovely teen
To make her green
And fulfill her gender dream
Strut her stuff for sex fiends

Living a street life
Full of torment and strife
While evolving to be
Ebony

She died painfully and quick
At the hands of a horny trick
Out of hatred and pure meanness
'Cause he discovered she had a penis

No vagina between her legs
Was the reason he shot her dead
Thought that was enough justification
To facilitate her short life's termination

This beautiful young woman
The world didn't understand
That although she was born Rodney
She was never a man

Thank you HRC,
And Barney
Because you don't care about transgender me
There's no Ebony

To the Memphis media who refused to look
Inside their AP stylebook
Did these peeps even go to journalism school?
'Cause the coverage of Ebony and Tiffany definitely wasn't cool

And to the cowardly waste of DNA
Who callously took your life away
This monstrous crime will not stand
Justice for you we'll always demand

My dearest Ebony
Now your femme spirit's flying free
Wonder how your life would've turned out to be
With unconditional love from your family

Damned If We Do - Damned If We Don't

In the wake of the Angie Zapata killing in Greeley last week, the debate raging in the blogosphere and beyond that has emerged since her tragic and untimely death has depended on who's doing the interpretation of it.

For non-transgender people, we've heard the ludicrous she 'deceived' Allen Andrade, so he was somehow justified in killing her spin on many comments. Some can't even get the pronouns right, or are doing it to be disrespectful or sensationalist.

In the transgender community, the discussion has been all over the map. I had two of my young TransGriot readers take me to task over the dating safety post I wrote Saturday because they felt in their words it was 'condescending to young transwomen' and 'insensitive to Angie's memory' because of the timing of it, even though that wasn't my intent when I wrote it.

One point Megan was correct about was that I didn't highlight the core dilemma of all transwomen who embark upon establishing a satisfying romantic relationship with biomen: to tell or not to tell.

We transpeople agree with our biobrothers and biosisters that the logical and sensible thing to do in an ideal world and an ideal dating situation would be to just simply reveal your transgender status at a certain juncture in the courtship process. In our intracommunity discussions we've agreed that point would usually be just before getting intimate with that person. By doing so, you would give that person the option of staying or going.

But in the real world it's not that black and white. The dilemma we face and the questions we ask ourselves are - when is that point? What will be the bioman's reaction when you do tell him you're a transwoman and will you have a relationship, much less be alive after you reveal that personal bombshell?

It doesn't matter when or where she tells him, once she reveals the deep secret about herself, she's damned if she does and damned if she doesn't. She's also putting her life in jeopardy if or when she does.

If she follows conventional wisdom and she's fortunate, the worst she'll get on the lower end of the scale is getting embarrassed if she's out in public when she tells him because the guy cursed her out before storming off.

On the other end of the scale that far too many transwomen experience, is a violent reaction that ranges from a simple beatdown to murder. That is consistent irregardless of the transwoman's age, ethnicity, social status or whether she's pre/non-op or post-op. Even marriage won't protect you if you make the revelation to the wrong person. There was a case a few years ago in which a post-op transwoman came clean to her husband and was subsequently found dead.

The other problem is that once you disclose you're a transwoman, as far as some biomen are concerned, you may as well wear a scarlet 'T' embroidered on your clothing. If you don't, they will damned sure create a virtual scarlet letter for you since they will tell all their homies and a few of their biofemale friends for good measure.

So even if you show up in the club one night looking so fly you make all the biowomen in it look like your ugly stepsisters to your Cinderella, you not only won't be getting any play from the fellas if just one biomale or biofemale is around who knows your business, but by the time they've finished spreading the news, in some cases you'll be getting dissed by some of the biomen and biowomen hanging out in that nightspot severely enough to make you leave.

So what's a transwoman to do who's not into GLBT clubs, who's looking for love but also wants to survive the process as well?

While there are biomen who do wish to date us, want us as life partners, and will be perfect gentlemen about it, there are others, the 'tranny chasers' as we call them in the transgender community, whose perceptions of us are colored by too much exposure to transsexual porn sites. Get one of them on a date, and they treat you like a porn star or an object instead of a human being with feelings.

If you are a Latina, African-American or Asian transwoman, that problem is even more acute because much of the transgender porn disseminated these days disproportionately features transwomen of color.

For a transwoman, finding true love can be as elusive as an NBA playoff spot for the LA Clippers. But even the Clippers make the NBA playoffs from time to time. The trick for us is to find that true love without losing our lives in the process.

And sometimes, to avoid living the rest of their lives alone, some of my sisters will take that chance. If they find a guy they like, they'll cross that disclosure bridge when they come to it.

So we're damned if we do tell- damned if we don't.

Happy Birthday Barack!

Today is Senator Barack Obama's 47th birthday! On this date in 1961 the first African-American nominee for president was born in Honolulu, Hawaii.

He's going to celebrate in Chicago and at a campaign event in Lansing, MI.

It's already been a great and history making year for him already, but hopefully he'll be getting a late birthday present three months from now.



Hopefully next year we'll get to sing it Marilyn Monroe style!

TTPC-Prosecute Berry Murder As A Hate Crime

TransGriot Note: As Dr. King stated, we are in an inescapable network of mutuality. For those of you who continue to ignore the fact that transgender people are part of the human family and that crimes committed against us should get the same swift and sure punishment that you accord anyone else, here's a reminder of what some of the possible consequences can be to society if you don't.

Tiffany Berry's killer D'Andre Blake walked the streets of Memphis as a free man for two and a half years because the judge set a ridiculously low bond for her murder. Now a second person has died at the hands of the man who killed Tiffany, his own two year old daughter.


Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition Calls On Berry Murder To Be Prosecuted As Hate Crime

Last night (August 1), WREG-TV in Memphis reported that the man who was charged with the February 16, 2006, murder of Tiffany Berry, has now been arraigned on a second murder charge. On Thursday, authorities in Shelby County charged DeAndre Blake with the murder of his own two year old daughter.

At the time of this second murder, Blake was walking the streets of Memphis as a free man on a $20,000 bond. According to Berry's family, Blake admitted he had killed Berry because he did not like the way she had "touched" him.

"We believe these 'trans panic' and 'gay panic' defenses need to be rejected and that local law enforcement needs to begin aggressive prosecution of all such cases as hate crimes," said Dr. Marisa Richmond, President of the Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition. "If the judge had set a more appropriate bond, or if the Shelby County District Attorney had been more aggressive at scheduling a trial date, this man might not have been out walking the streets for two and half years and that child might still be alive," continued Richmond.

This latest tragedy is just one more in a growing number of anti-GLBT hate crimes across Tennessee. The Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition insists that the murder of Tiffany Berry be prosecuted as a hate crime. We also insist that the Memphis Police Department officers who brutally beat Duanna Johnson, an African American transgender woman, on February 12, also be prosecuted on hate crimes charges. We also urge the Memphis Police Department to step up its investigation of the July 1 murder of Ebony Whitaker, another African American transgender woman.

In other parts of Tennessee, we insist that local authorities aggressively investigate and prosecute additional hate crimes including the murder of Nakia Baker in Nashville on January 7, 2007, the ongoing harassment of a gay man at his home in McMinnville, and last weekend's tragic shooting in the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville. All of these events show that there needs to be increased education across Tennessee about the GLBT community, and a more serious look at hate crimes covering both sexual orientation and gender identity.

We also urge members of the Tennessee General Assembly to address the inadequacies of Tennessee's hate crimes statute in Tennessee Code Annotated 40-35-114 (23), as soon as they reconvene in January. This should include adding "gender identity or expression" to the language. It is also time for the United States Congress to pass the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act.

We also wish to extend our condolences to the other family members of the child who lost her life so senselessly this week.

(c)2008 Out & About Newspaper
All Rights Reserved

Role Model? For Real?

Main Entry: role model
Function: noun
Date: 1957
: a person whose behavior in a particular role is imitated by others

The first time I heard those words attributed to me was back in 1999. I was listening to 'After Hours' late one night back home and Sarah and Jimmy during one part of the show started talking about people in the Houston GLBT community that they considered leaders and role models. Vanessa Edwards Foster's and my name came up in the conversation, and after being in shock for a moment, I began to think about the gravity of what they just said on a 100,000 watt FM radio station.

Damn, I'm a role model now. There are times when I wonder if any one's even reading some of the stuff I post here on TransGriot or on the Bilerico Project.

When I look at my blog's hit counter I get my answer. I get my answer from the people who are moved enough to leave comments on the posts (hint, hint)

Sometimes those posted comments from transpeople and allies all over our planet tell me the same thing that Sarah, Jimmy and others have said over the last nine years, that they consider me a role model as well. While it's potentially head-swelling stuff and I'm honored that people think of me that way, I still keep it in perspective when I read it. I put my pantyhose on one leg at a time just like everybody else.

When it's not too damned hot to wear pantyhose, that is ;)

But there are times I hear it and burst into tears. Lola's comment kind of took me back to the time when I was in my late teens, a college student struggling with this issue.

Like many young transpeople, she's dealing with the transgender issues now and not allowing them to fester because they never go away. If you do that, before you know it ten years has passed and you have a spouse, kids and a career to factor into the transition equation.

There are times when I wonder if I'd had the type of information and positive role models available now like a Dr. Marisa Richmond when I was trying to transition, where I would be in my development path as a transwoman?

But I have to deal with the context of the times I grew up in in the 60's and 70's. While the information on transpeople was sketchy at best, there's a lot of positives connected with growing up in that time period as well.

It's that combination of influences plus the willingness to adapt and listen to the enlightened viewpoints of people who are wiser and sometimes younger than me that makes me at this particular point in time in August 2008 the person I am.

You have to concede that young people nowdays are a hell of a lot smarter than we were at that age. They grew up immersed in information thanks to the Internet, and sometimes they may have a better approach or a fresh way of thinking about an issue than their elders. But sometimes your elders have valuabe lessons they learned that you can incorporate into your own knowledge base as well. They are your elders and in your life for a reason, and they need to be treated as the historical resources they are so you don't repeat mistakes.

All I can do is strive to be the best person I can be, and if in the process of my own personal evolution it inspires some of you to do the same, then it's a win-win situation for us and the community as well.

Safety First - Especially When Dating

So far this year we've had four transwomen killed. Ebony Whitaker, Saneshia Stewart, Simmie Williams and now Angie Zapata.

Outside of the common denominator that they're all transwomen of color, the other thing they had in common is that all these transwomen were under age 30. Two of the four, Saneshia Stewart and Angie Zapata were killed by people they were out on dates with.

I realize that if they are attracted to the opposite sex, that a large part of living a normal life for these transwomen so inclined to do so is dating. I and everyone who's fighting for our rights want all transpeople to live as normal a life as possible and I will continue to unswervingly advocate for their right to do so.

I know that my young transsisters are no different than young biowomen in many ways. Like young biowomen, some of my transsisters not only are attractive and stunningly so in some cases, they have no problem garnering the attention of the opposite sex. They also want to test their ability to attract their attention and wish to explore their blossoming feminine sexuality as well.

But if you're going to date, you have to be cognizant of the fact that as a woman, you have to be more aware of your personal safety since you no longer have the male strength level to defend yourself you once had. Once you start taking female hormones, your muscles start elongating to create those feminine curves on your body. That results in a reduced strength level. I'm 6'2", but after 15 plus years of being an estrogen-based lifeform I have the strength level of a strong woman my size, not a 6'2" male.

If heaven forbid, I'm in a situation in which I find myself trying to fight off an assault, if they catch me by surprise, I will have a hard time fighting off a determined attacker. So one thing I learned early in my transition is that like my biosisters, for my own personal safety, I must have a heightened hyper awareness of my surroundings at all times.

That is something that biowomen grow up with from birth. It's a new experience for transwomen. Failure as a transwoman to think about your personal safety 24-7-365 (or 366 in a leap year like this one) can result in being assaulted or worse.

The dating rules also change, and you have special addendums to those rules as a pre-op/non-op (or even post-op) transwoman. You also have to extremely careful about online dating as well.

While there are some biomen who are secure enough in their masculinity to enjoy our company and appreciate us in all our varieties and flavors, there are far more out there who don't wish to date transwomen period, pre, non-op or post-op.

Some of those biomen who fall into the 'don't want to date transwomen' category are emotionally insecure about their own sexuality. They are the ones who will react negatively, even violently to a revelation by you deep into the date, relationship or before or after sexual relations that you are a transwoman.

So if you're going to date, the best policy is to let your potential date know upfront that you are a transwoman. It is vitally important to do that if you like this person enough to want to start a relationship with them.

If you want to get busy with them, you need to tell them before you fall into bed with them. Waiting until he slips his hand inside your panties and feels a neoclit tucked between your legs is too late.

I was once upon a time a teenager with raging hormones, so I understand that things happen. I'm aware that a young or newbie transwoman has the powerful desire and eagerly wants to test her ability to attract the opposite sex just like some biowomen do. Some of it is because she really likes the person, some of it is for ego boosting purposes, some of it is because she sees it as the ultimate test of their femininity, and sometimes it's simply to get her freak on. Sometimes it's all of the above or a combination of the above reasons.

But just as our biosisters have to be cognizant of the fact that they could get raped or worse if they aren't careful about the situations they put themselves in, transwomen have all the other security concerns of a biowoman and more.

One of the things that a transwoman has to be aware of, no matter what her age, is that we face a heightened risk for physical violence and assault. While it's most likely to happen in a dating situation, it isn't always the case. Amanda Milan had her throat slashed seven years just because she was standing up for herself seven years ago at a New York bus terminal.

There are transphobic people out there who think we 'deserve' what we get directed at us violence wise or that we're 'deceiving' them for living our lives. That's what makes dating for a transwoman dangerous and can possibly result in you getting seriously hurt or killed.

If they aren't already, young transwomen, and transwomen in general need to start being aware of the fact that they must take common sense precautions in order to avoid being added to the 'Remembering our Dead' list.

That's not 'blaming the victim', it's stating a fact.

August 2008 Villager's Black Blog Rankings

This month the Electronic Villager had the pleasure of ranking 1329 African-American blogs for this month's Black Blog Rankings. That's an increase of 60 blogs from the July 2008 ranking.

The AfroSpear is growing as well. I received the honor of being invited to join last momth along with several other blogs. The Black blogosphere even has its own blogging convention now with the just recently concluded Blogging While Brown Conference along with the 2008 edition of the Black Weblog Awards, which are now accepting nominations.

Some unexpected work schedule complications kept me from attending the inaugural Blogging While Brown Conference to my chagrin, but I definitely want to be in the house next year, assuming it's in the ATL.

So what's TransGriot's BBR ranking?

I achieved another short term goal and cracked The BBR Top 100 blogs! I jumped 30 spots from my July BBR ranking of 122 with a 95 Technorati ranking

As of August 1 TransGriot had a BBR of 92 with a 113 Technorati ranking.

That means I'm going to have to set another blogging goal. I mentioned in my July post I wanted to be at a 150 Technorati ranking by the end of the year. Let's add cracking the top 50 BBR blogs by January 1, 2009 to that as well.

So how am I going to do that? By simply doing what I do now. Continuing to write thoughtful commentary that you'll not only want to read and come back for, but link to as well.

Being an AfroSpear member, while I'm still a neophyte to it, I believe over time will be a compliment to what I'm doing now. I have a role to play by telling the stories of the transgender members of our African family, kicking knowledge to you and telling the stories of transgender people in general. I'm also happy to note that other African-American transgender voices now starting to speak on the blogosphere as well, and I welcome the added input and insights about being Black and transgender.

There are far more African-American transpeople than yours truly. I just happen to be one of the peeps with writing skills who's willing to talk about it.

So as you can see TransGriot readers, the blog is making major jumps up the BBR ladder, and I sincerely thank everyone who thinks highly enough of my blog to make it possible. But I've got much work to do. There's 42 blogs between me and the Number 50 slot and I have to add 37 points to my Technorati ranking for my target 150 ranking by January 1, 2009.

So gotta get back to creating more interesting blog posts for you.

We'll see how close I can come to hitting my new end of the year goals next month.

New Computer!

Hey TransGriot readers!
Been offline for about 36 hours getting a new computer, and nope, it's not the Dell in the blog post picture.

Actually it's a 1.7 gig AMD one my roommate used to own that she used for gaming. It no longer suited her needs since she long ago bought a computer that dwarfs mine in capabilities and processing power to play WOW, but it definitely worked for me. It's far more powerful than the 500 speed Pentium III that I've been playing with since 2003 and best of all, it has Windows XP.

I talked about the problems that me and Polar had when we tried to upgrade that P-III and discovered that one of the legacies of a formerly corporate machine, especially when you buy one from a company that does tech support is a BIOS that doesn't allow you to change it without a password.

This one wasn't as painful because my roomie had a local computer shop build it, and was equipped with a kick butt user friendly BIOS that's easy for even a semi-computer literate user like me to understand and navigate. I also inherited from Polar's old computer that died the painful thunderstorm death the CD-DVD ROM player and the DVR-RW burner.


As for my old P-III, it's getting a makeover. Polar and I have a pile of computer parts to play with, and he thinks he's found a way around the BIOS lockout problem.
So if all goes well, the P-III will become a backup computer.

I'm still trying to get my sound calibrated, getting used to XP, test driving all the new features, downloading plug ins and finding and migrating all my old files since I now have two hard drives and 48 gigs of space to play with. I had only 8 GB of hard drive space on the old one, and 5 GB of that was taken up by my music and picture files.

I'm getting adjusted to it and like the stability so far. It's fun being able to play DVD's on my computer now and having the ability to burn things to a disk is cool as well.

Now if I could just get the new sound card figured out, things will definitely be copacetic.

Arrest Made In Zapata Killing

According to KUSA-TV, the waste of DNA who killed Angie Zapata has been found.

They are reporting that 32 year old Allen Ray Andrade, was arrested in Thornton on Tuesday and faces second-degree murder and aggravated motor vehicle theft charges.

He was on a date with Angie and when the suspect discovered she was was a transwoman, he killed her.

Andrade admits to police in an arrest affadavit obtained by KUSA-TV to killing Angie Zapata, who was found beaten to death in a Greeley apartment in the 2000 block of 4th Street on July 17. According to authorities Zapata had suffered fatal wounds to her head and face.

The affidavit says Andrade met Zapata on a social networking site, Mocospace, and the two arranged to meet July 15.

Zapata picked Andrade up in Thornton where he lived and the pair returned to Zapata's Greeley apartment together. Andrade told police Zapata performed a sexual act on him.

The following day, the affidavit explains, Andrade started to look at photos in the apartment and questioned Zapata's sex. That night, Andrade questioned Zapata directly, according to the affidavit, and Andrade says Zapata responded, "I'm all woman."

Andrade told police he grabbed Zapata in her genital area and felt a penis. He became angry and hit Zapata with his fist before grabbing a fire extinguisher and hitting her in the head twice, according to the affidavit.

Andrade explained to police that he thought he "killed it," referring to Zapata but when she made gurgling noises and started to sit up, he hit her with the extinguisher again.

He also admitted to police that he stole Zapata's car and drove away.

On the 17th, Zapata's sister, Monica Murguia, called police saying she had not heard from Zapata. She also went to her apartment where she found Zapata's body on the ground covered with a blanket.

Wednesday morning at around 1:45 a.m. Thornton Police responded to a noise complaint at Sierra Vista Apartment Homes in Thornton. There they contacted Andrade and linked him to the stolen car. He was arrested on outstanding warrants.

Andrade has a lengthy record that includes attempt to commit first-degree criminal trespass, attempt to commit theft from a person, possession of a contraband, attempted escape and attempt to commit theft by receiving. He served time for each of the convictions.

The Greeley Police Department is expected to hold a news conference at 2 PM MDT with additional information.

Can you smell the 'trans panic' defense Andrade's defense attorney will be cooking up?

Another Historic Denver DNC Convention

When the Democratic National Convention kicks off in Denver on August 25, African-Americans will make up a large portion of the delegates attending it. One of those delegates will be the first African-American transgender one.

We take it almost for granted these days that the Democratic Party has been the party of civil rights. Because of their role since the mid 60's as agents of change, it is the one we African-Americans have cast our political lot with.

But one hundred years ago when the first Democratic National Convention was held in Denver, the political script was flipped. The Republicans were the 'Party of Lincoln', the emancipators that African-Ameircnas enthusiastically supported in the wake of our 1865 post-Civil War emancipation from slavery. The Democratic Party, as the political home of the slave owners, had at the time attitudes and prejudices more akin to today's racist Republicans.

But in an eerily similar deja vu moment, there was a rising tide of anger building in the African-American community because many Blacks felt that the Republican Party was 'taking us for granted'.

Yo, Democratic leadership and fellow Dems, pay attention to the rest of this post so you don't repeat history. Moni's about to take y'all to school thanks to a major assist from Naomi Zeveloff and the Colorado Independent.

As I discovered in 1988 when I lived in Denver for a month to do some corporate training when I worked for CAL, Denver and the state of Colorado has an African-American community with deep historical roots. I didn't get the chance while I was there to visit the Black American West Museum that documents some of that history.

The Denver African-American community played a major role in some of that history, including laying the groundwork for our political shift from the Republican to the Democratic Party.

Like now, as the Democrats began to gather in Denver for the July 7-10 convention that put the young city on the national map, there was a spirited debate going on in the African-American community at the time about whether to cut our ties with the 'Party of Lincoln' or attempt to forge a relationship with the Democratic Party.

That disenchantment was fuelled by the Teddy Roosevelt administration's mishandling of the 1906 Brownsville Incident. Even though the Republicans had a small African-American civil rights plank in their 1908 party platform, there was major anger in the African-American community over the way this incident was handled. African-Americans were also perturbed about the way national Black leaders such as Booker T. Washington were dissed by the Teddy Roosevelt administration.

The African-American community blamed William Howard Taft, Roosevelt's Secretary of War and the 1908 Republican presidential nominee for the unjust treatment of the 170 African-American soldiers dishonorably discharged on trumped up charges.

The disenchantment levels with the Republican Party in the African-American community, combined with a growing perception that we had to be the agents for our own liberation and couldn't rely on the Republicans to do the right thing, had many Blacks seriously considering backing Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan. Bryan's professed populist broad approach to equality got the attention of some African-Americans while Republican loyalists in the community remained skeptical of it.


The spirited national debate was also heating up in Denver's Five Points neighborhood as well. One Bryan supporter who spoke up at a community meeting was prominent local physician and drugstore owner Dr. Joseph Peter Henry Westbrook. He'd risked his life by joining the Ku Klux Klan in order to gain intelligence on its activities.

Denver was also home to the National Negro Anti-Taft League, which sought to deny Taft the presidency and simultaneously persuade Bryan to live up to his soaring oratory and include African-Americans in his platform.

Colorado Statesman editor Joseph D.D. Rivers was a Hampton Institute classmate of Booker T. Washington and harbored no illusions that the early 20th century Democratic Party was friendly to African-Americans. He penned this July 18, 1908 pro-Bryan editorial in his paper called 'Signs Of Redemption'

"It is, of course, useless to expect that the Democratic party, as a whole, will so commit itself as to profess a sincere and wholesome regard for the welfare of the Negro citizen," the editors declared, "but the fact that the progressive element in the party has reached the point where it does not hesitate to make a general and impartial declaration upon the equal rights of all citizens of the United States, 'at home or abroad,' to enjoy the equal protection of law, must be regarded as a long step toward the elimination of racial controversies in politics when all parties interested are citizens of the United States."

After some heated editorial battles between the two Denver-based African-American newspapers and oratorical jousting amongst various influential people in the community, combined with Bryan's refusal to add an equal rights plank to his platform, both Denver African-American community papers endorsed Taft.

The Democratic Party missed a golden opportunity in 1908. African-Americans were primed and ready to make that seismic shift of support, but the Democratic Party didn't have enough courage to pull the trigger and do the one thing necessary that would make it happen.

It took another 60 years and the administrations of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, thanks to their increasingly aggressive stances on civil rights and pushing major legislation to achieve that progress, before the decisive shift of African-American allegiance away from the Republicans and to the Democratic Party that is part our current early 21st century political reality happened.

It seems fitting that one hundred years later, Sen. Barack Obama, the first African-American nominee for president will accept the Democratic Party's nomination here in Denver, the city that jumpstarted the process and played a major role in the national debate that eventually led to the African-American community's political migration from the Republicans to the Democratic Party.

If Denver's 1908 African-American population were around today, they would not only be astounded at the possible election of Sen. Obama to the presidency, they would be astounded at the numbers of African-Americans involved in this particular DNC convention in Denver.

They would also be pleased and proud to see that what they passionately debated during the summer and fall of 1908 has become a reality.

It's My Life, Not A 'Lifestyle'

One thing I hear from our opponents and people struggling to grapple with transgender issues as they come into contact with us is erroneously saddling us with the 'lifestyle' tag.

The recent comments of Greeley Police Sgt. Joseph Tymkowych, stating that Angie's murder was 'provoked by her lifestyle' are what triggered this post. Like Andres Duque at Blabbeando, I was bothered not only by Sgt. Tymkowych's comment, but by how the word 'lifestyle' was used.

In the context it was used, and especially in right-wing circles, they spin 'lifestyle' to imply by their use of the word that I or any transgender person chooses to be transgender. The only 'choice' in being transgender is choosing when you start your inevitable transition from your birth gender to your true gender.

You choose your friends, choose what clothes you're going to wear, choose what political party you support or even what church you're going to attend.

Contrary to what the scientifically ignorant Reichers tell you, you don't choose to be transgender. You just are.

I get tired of hearing that being transgender is a 'lifestyle'. Too many times in the GLBT community we help buttress that conservaspin in our own writings, conversations, and media interviews as a shorthand code for talking about being GLBT.

I have a suggestion. Instead of using 'lifestyle', try using the more accurate word 'life' to describe our reality.

The Final Four Olympic Bid Cities

While much of the world waits for the August 8 opening ceremonies for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing and Londoners are anxiously counting down to the August 29, 2012 start date of their Games, October 2, 2009 is a date circled in red on next year's calendar by the mayors of four cities.

On that date the International Olympic Committee will announce who will get the Games of the XXXI Olympiad.

The final four cities in the running to get the 2016 Olympic Games are Chicago, Illinois, USA, Tokyo, Japan, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Madrid, Spain.

Rio's chances are enhanced by the fact that a Summer Olympics has never taken place on the South American continent and they hosted the 2006 Pan Am Games. They basically ran it as if their chances to host the Games depended on it, which wasn't too far from the truth. While the Pan Am Games exposed some issues that are being rectified, the Brazilian Olympic Committee still chose Rio over Sao Paulo as their candidate city.

Tokyo was the host city in 1964. It's a national capital and got high IOC marks for the technical aspect of their bid and the compactness of their venue plan. However, with this year's Games being held in Beijing, the IOC may not be looking to return to Asia so quickly.

Madrid has the same problem. It's similar to Tokyo in that it's a national capital. Although Barcelona was the host in 1992, the 2012 Games will be in London. The likelihood of the Games being on the European continent only a mere four years after London hosted them is remote.

Chicago's chances not only look good, some IOC insiders and knowledgeable people about the Olympic bid process consider Chicago the frontrunning city to land the 2016 Games.

The last time the Games were hosted in the United States was in 1996 in Atlanta. It's been a while since the Summer Games have been in the Western Hemisphere (12 years and counting), and people have raved about Chicago's game plan for a compact, traveler friendly Olympics with venues only 15 km from the Olympic Village. The IOC peeps like international cities with ample cultural attractions, and Chicago has that in abundance as well.

This isn't Chicago's first time as an IOC finalist city. Chicago actually won the bid for the 1904 Olympic Games by a unanimous IOC vote, but since the World's Fair was being held in St. Louis, the Games were moved there. Chicago was a finalist for the 1952 Games which were awarded to Helsinki and the 1956 Games which ended up in Melbourne.

Don't forget NBC's big bucks Olympic agreement runs through 2012 as well. The IOC is acutely aware that the North American based TV networks would pay major bucks for a TV friendly Games (Central Time Zone) in which they can show far more live events.
TV cash is one of the reasons that since 1992 the Summer and Winter Games no longer occur in the same year.

If Chicago is chosen, the Games would take place from July 22 to August 7. For purely selfish reasons, I'd love for Chicago to get the Games. I'd not only have a place to stay thanks to relatives and a few friends living there, I'd be only a five hour drive from the action, assuming I'm still living in Da Ville in 2016.

Chicago's stiffest competition will be Rio. IOC President Jacques Rogge has stated that he would like to see an Olympics staged on the South American and African continents, the only two that have never held them.

Timezone wise, Rio is only an hour ahead of Eastern time, so you'd have many events occurring live at a Rio based Games as well. The scenic backdrops would also be breathtaking as well, so if Chicago didn't win, it would be the next most favorable locale to the North American TV networks. While I agree with Jacques Rogge's sentiment, I have to admit that having an Olympics only five hours driving time away from moi appeals to me.

Whether Chicago gets the Games could hinge on the US presidential election in three months. There are a few IOC members who are not too happy about how Junior and his minions have treated the world during his presidency, and don't think that they won't factor that into their votes next year.

They might be more favorably disposed to vote for Chicago if a first term President Obama is sitting in the White House next year, and assuming Chicago gets them, was completing his second term at the time those Games were scheduled to kick off.

You can bet that the Final Four candidate cities will not only have representatives on hand in Copenhagen, Denmark a year from now making presentations and furiously lobbying for their respective cities, they will be on pins and needles until that announcement is made making them members of an elite group.

An Olympic host city.

WNBA Olympic Break

The Beijing Games motto is One World, One Dream. With the Games starting on August 8, a few players are closer to their dream of wearing an Olympic gold medal around their neck.

Others whose dreams were dashed will pick themselves up, refocus and aim toward the 2012 London games.

During Olympiads the WNBA not only doesn't conduct an All-Star game, they take a month long break to allow the league's players to join their various national Olympic teams for the Games.

While attention in the US will be focused on Team USA and its quest to win a fourth consecutive gold medal, other WNBA players will be working just as hard during the break to claim the basketball gold for their country.

Hamchetou Maiga-Ba will be headed from the Houston Comets to Mali to attempt to make her national team. Kelly Santos and Erika DeSouza will be headed home to Brazil to do the same thing.

In some cases a few players will be wearing some surprising uniforms as they do so. FIBA and Olympic rules allow you to play internationally for another country other than your birth one if you've never represented your birth country in any international competition.

Because Team USA is so deep talent wise, Becky Hammond, Kelly Miller and Deanna Nolan headed to Russia where they play during the winter in order to try to win Olympic gold. Only Becky Hammond made the squad, which includes former WNBA players Svetlana Abrosimova and Maria Stepanova

That's probably going to add a little fuel to the USA-Russia rivalry because the Russians knocked off Team USA in the semis of the FIBA tournament two years ago and gave them a major scare during the 2004 Athens Games as well.

The FIBA World Champion and 2004 silver medallist Aussies are the team many see as a major threat to Team USA standing on the top step of the Beijing victory platform. The Opals kept many of their best players at home training, but Opals Tully Bevilacqua and team captain Lauren Jackson opted to make the trip from Down Under to play this season in the WNBA.

Speaking of the WNBA, the biggest surprise to the so called experts is that the LA Sparks aren't running away with the Western Conference regular season title even with WNBA Rookie of the Year candidate and Olympian Candace Parker in the lineup.

It's the San Antonio Silver Stars who are sitting atop the WNBA Western Conference with the league's best record at 18-9, with the Seattle Storm a half game out at 17-9. The Sparks find themselves tied for third with the surging Sacramento Monarchs at 15-12 with my Comets hot on both teams heels at 14-12. While these three teams are jockeying for the 3rd and 4th Western Conference playoff spots, the defending WNBA champion Phoenix Mercury find themselves in the Western Conference basement right now at 12-15. The Minnesota Lynx are at 13-13 and still in the running for a playoff spot in the always tough WNBA Western Conference.

The Sparks are also going to have the problem along with the Detroit Shock of holding on while various players serve the rolling suspensions issued by the league office in the wake of the brawl that happened in Detroit last week.

Speaking of Detroit, they are at 16-11 and trailing the Eastern Conference leading Connecticut Sun (16-10) by a half game. The New York Liberty is also in the mix for the Eastern Conference regular season title at 15-10 and also a half game out as well. The Indiana Fever are sitting on the last Eastern Conference playoff spot, albeit at this juncture with a sub .500 12-14 record. The expansion Atlanta Dream has won 3 games after starting the season 0-16. The Chicago Sky, last year's expansion babies are 8-17, but had Big Syl out of the lineup for a few weeks due to an injury and the need to rest her for the Olympics. The Washington Mystics are 10-16 and only 2 games out of the final Eastern Conference playoff spot.

Soi when the WNBA resumes on August 28 after being put on pause for the Games, there will be a lot of exciting basketball left, especially for this Comets fan who's still patiently waiting for the Drive For Five to be completed.

My girls have caught fire after a slow start and have won their last five games in a row going into the Olympic break, and I and other Comets fans hope that trend continues.

In the meantime I'll be rooting for both Team USA's to bring home Beijing gold.

Oh, Hell No! 'Girlfriends' Cancelled

My Girlfriends, there through thick and thin. My Girlfriends, there for anything.
My Girlfriends.

After eight seasons and numerous award nominations, we won't be hearing Angie Stone sing that theme song on Sunday nights any longer because Girlfriends has been cancelled.

One thing that is bothering many fans of the show is the knowledge that once again, Hollywood is following the trifling formula for building startup television networks that NBC used to rebuild its viewership when it was slipping in the 80's, Fox used to build itself from scratch in the 90's, and now UPN/the CW.

What is that formula you ask?

Put together a bunch of well written, sophisticated shows with an ensemble cast of African-American actors that we will watch. That ensemble cast can either have a well known actor or two or fresh faces. Once those shows have built ratings, name recognition, buzz, award nominations and enough ad revenue for your network to turn a profit and the network's survival is assured, then you cancel the African-American oriented shows and start putting shows that cater to white viewers in those time slots.



Now sadly, Girlfriends is being kicked to the curb. Other bloggers have commented on it, now it's my turn.

I've watched Girlfriends since it started back in 2000. I was on vacation and flipping channels one Monday night when I first stumbled across it. I noted that Mara Brock Akil was producing it and Tracee Ellis Ross, the daughter of legendary singer Diana Ross was one of the actors on this show along with cast members Reggie Hayes, Persia White, Golden Brooks, and my fellow Texan (from Dallas) Jill Marie Jones.

I tuned in and fell in love with Joan Clayton, Maya Wilkes, Toni Childs, Lynn Searcy and 'honorary Girlfriend' William Dent as gainfully employed professional people who shared my ethnic heritage discussed life, love, work, sex and relationships while weaving in social commentary about being Black in America. It was also cool to see the parade of guest stars that ranged from Jill Scott to Jenifer Lewis hilariously playing (what else) Toni's mother.

I'd been starving for that type of television show since A Different World and Living Single went off the air and didn't want to miss a minute of it. As a writer I love TV shows which not only realistically reflect my culture and the reality I deal with, I love intelligently written realistic dialogue and characters. I started taping the show since I was working Monday nights at the time.

Since I know as a writer that television shows on some level sometimes reflect the reality of the people that create them, I also looked at it as a transwoman as an entertaining opportunity to get a glimpse of how biowomen interact with each other, since I was in the process of looking for and building my own similar circle of girlfriends.

I love Girlfriends so much that I buy the DVD releases almost as fast as they become available. I even started watching The Game not only because it's a spinoff of Girlfriends and it's also produced by Mara Brock Akil, but it has Tia Mowry and Wendy Raquel Robinson as cast members.

I've always loved Tia Mowry, her twin sister Tamera and Wendy Raquel Robinson in their various shows and projects. Tia's The Game character Melanie Barnett was introduced on Girlfriends as Joan's cousin.

The CW had already irritated many African-American viewers when it cancelled Half and Half, the second highest rated African-American show behind Girlfriends amongst African-American viewers in the wake of the UPN/CW merger.

But the thing that I and many Girlfriends fans are upset about is that we're not going to get a proper farewell show because the CW is disrespectfully citing costs as a reason they aren't doing it.

Okay, this show helped make the UPN/CW millions thanks to 172 quality episodes. It built a loyal predominately African-American viewership and was the Number 1 rated show amongst African-Americans. It garnered numerous NAACP Image Award nominations, but you can't break down and spend the cash to do a farewell show.

If it stays on that long, I doubt the CW will cite the same fiscal concerns when it comes to a show like One Tree Hill or leave its fans hanging when they cancel it.

As I mentioned earlier in the post, Girlfriends was on for eight years. It deserved a farewell show.

Well, I'll have The Game and the Girlfriends DVD's to look at. But I'll still wonder if Joan and Toni will finally settle their differences and get their longtime friendship back on track. Did Lynn get out of her recording contract or resolve her creative differences and eventually start making hits? What was the gender of the child William and Monica finally had? Did Maya finally get her writing career back on track? Did she and Darnell survive shepherding Jabari through his teen years and are they going to have or adopt another child?

But the $64,000 question all Girlfriends fans want to know is did Aaron not only survive his deployment to Iraq, but did he and Joan finally get married?