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A Jewish man whose parents survived the Holocaust once told me that the only time he ever felt safe was when he was in Israel.
I mention that, not to take a side in the conflicts that tear that part of the world, but to relate something I thought about as I heard some more terrible news.
Taja DeJesus was raised in San Jose but moved to San Francisco because of the greater acceptance of transgender people found in the City By The Bay. Some in our community think of it as our Israel, if you will.
She was found with stab wounds on McKinnon Avenue in the city's Bayview district around 9 last Sunday morning. Authorities are not calling her murder a hate crime. According to anonymous sources, the suspect was found dead, an apparent suicide, behind a warehouse not far from where De Jesus's body was found.
Even in a city with a reputation like San Francisco's, there are areas--Bayview being one of them--where trans people aren't accepted or that are simply dangerous. Lord knows we have such places here in NYC. Even the "gayborhoods" aren't always safe for trans people. Actually, they can be even more dangerous because thugs come from other parts, and outside, of the city, specifically to get their thrills from bashing actual or perceived LGBT people.
Perhaps we need a place an Israel: You know, a place where we can go and be accepted for who we are--or at least be reasonably sure that we won't experience bigotry or bullying, or get killed, just for being who we are.
If I were more jaded, I'd say it's the same old story.
But since a life was ended in a horrible, brutal way, I won't be so blase.
Still, we've heard it too many times: A trans woman found dead in her apartment. Boyfriend is prime suspect.
This time, instead of Ridgewood (about two neighborhoods away from mine), New York, the scene is on the other coast: in the Van Nuys section of Los Angeles, California.
There, firefighters forced their way into an apartment. After quickly putting out a fire in a rear bedroom, they found the body of Michelle Vash Payne on the kitchen floor.
But, from the looks of things, her death had nothing to do with the fire: She had been stabbed and a murder weapon was recovered at the scene.
About an hour before the firefighters came, neighbors said they heard arguing in the apartment, into wich Payne and her boyfriend had recently moved. However, nobody called the police.
Perhaps I'm ignorant of police procedures, but I find it a little odd that the suspect's name or photo hasn't been released, although a physical description was given and he's said to be her boyfriend.
Just before 6 this morning, someone found a body in an alley.
The murder victim had suffered severe trauma.
Does it surprise you that she was transgender?
Does it surprise you that someone wants to give her killer a key to the city? Or that someone used the occasion as an excuse to say that Obama is coming out and admiting that Michelle is a "tranny"?
The victim identified herself as Mia Henderson. Her government-issued ID bore the name Kevin Long.
Police in Baltimore, where Ms. Henderson's body was found, said they couldn't yet tell whether her murder is related to a similar one committed a month ago.
Three days ago--the 20th--was our fifteenth annual Transgender Day of Remembrance.
Now, right here in New York City, we've had another reminder of why the day is necessary: the only person charged in the murder of Harlem transwoman Islan Nettles saw his case dismissed.
Now, it very well may be that Paris Wilson, the young man accused of killing her, is innocent. He was arrested after Nettles was found at the corner of 148th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard. She was lying on the ground, unconscious, with one eye swollen shut and blood on her face. For five days, she lay in a coma until she was taken off life support.
After Mr. Wilson's arrest, another young man came forward and took responsibility for the attack. That left the Manhattan District Attorney's office unable to pursue the case against Wilson even though the young man who claimed responsibility for the attack on Nettles' said he was too drunk to remember details of his crime.
Further complicating matters is the fact that in that upon his arrest, Wilson was charged with misdemeanor assault and harassment. Here in New York, someone charged with a misdemeanor must be tried within 90 days. If he or she isn't, he or she goes free. Since Wilson was arrested shortly after the attack on 17 August, he was sprung on the eve of Transgender Day of Remembrance.
Of course, one could argue--as the District Attorney's Office did--that had Wilson (or the young man who claimed responsibility) had gone to trial, there was a real risk of dismissal on some technicality or another. If I were a DA, I'd probably think the same way. And I certainly wouldn't want to see a killer--whether of a trans person or anyone else--walk free because the prosecutor's office "didn't have their ducks in a row". Still, it's frustrating and sad to think that Islan Nettle's murder could become another hate crime that falls through the cracks of the criminal justice system.
When's this shit gonna end?
A couple of days ago, I wrote about one hate crime against an LGBT person and a person of color. Now there's another. The only difference is, the LGBT person and the person of color are the same woman. And she's dead.
On Saturday night, 21-year-old trans woman Islan Nettles was out with a friend in Harlem when they were confronted by a group of young men.
I haven't been able to find details, but from what I've learned, an argument ensued after the young men learned that Ms. Nettles was born male.
One of the young men yelled anti-gay remarks, and punches were thrown. The friend ran to find help, and the young man was on top of Nettles.
When she arrived at the hospital, she was still conscious but soon fell into a coma and was declared brain dead. She was placed on a ventilator so family members could pay their respects and, tonight, police told NY1 that she'd died.
Police have arrested a 20-year-old male in connection with the case, but have not released his name because of a pending upgrade in the charges against him.
Now, I'll tell you what might be the most outrageous part of this killing: It happened right across the street from a police precinct house.
What does that tell us when haters and other thugs can assault and kill trans people with such abandon?
Every Transgender Day of Remembrance event I've attended has included a reading of the names of people who were killed for their gender identity or expression. Usually, there is a procession to a lectern or microphone, and each person reads the name of one victim, the way he or she was killed (or where his or her body was found) and, sometimes, whether or not the perpetrator was caught.
No matter how many times I participate in those readings, I'm always shocked at just how brutal hate-fueled murders of transgender people are. I remember reading the name of one victim who was shot and stabbed multiple times. And then her body was burned.
But, along with the shock I experience on relaying the brutality of their murders, I feel anger over how too many of those murders are treated. The killer of the victim I mentioned received, if I recall correctly, a one-year susupended sentence. Still, that's more justice than a lot of other murdered trans people get: I've heard of too many cases in which the authorities didn't bother to investigate at all, or simply dismissed the killing as the result of a "lover's quarrel" or as a suicide.
So, it actually seems something like justice when the killer of a young trans person gets a 30-year sentence and is required to serve 80 percent of that sentence before becoming eligible for release.
That was the sentence meted out to Virgin Islands native Sama Quinland for killing transgender college student DeAndre N. Fulton-Smith in South Carolina. Quinland stabbed her 22 times and shot her twice in the head.
As awful as that killing was, it's not even close to being the most brutal murder of a trans person. On the other hand, as I mentioned, Quinland got a longer prison sentence than most killers of trans people. Both facts are simply outrageous.
Have standards at journalism schools declined even more than I'd imagined?
I'm asking that question after seeing the way a major metropolitan newspaper--one that was once one of the most respected in all of journalism--covered the murder of a transgender woman.
For starters, Cleveland Plain-Dealer reporter John Caniglia used male pronouns in referring to Cemia "Ci Ci" Dove. He also referred to her as "Carl Acoff" in his dispatch on 29 April. The male pronouns have since been removed but, in the story, she is still identified as "Carl Acoff." Mr. Caniglia very cleverly got around having to use female pronouns by referring to her as a "self-identified transgender woman."
Oh, but it gets better. This Caniglia person simply had to tell his readers that Ci Ci was dressed in a Betty Boop tank top, three black bras and a light hooded jacket. As if this isn't enough to trivialize her, he also mentions that she was naked from the waist down. I don't think I have to tell you what sort of picture he and his editors were trying to paint.
Also, he mentions some previous criminal activity. I neither condone nor excuse such behavior, but trans people--especially the young--are often driven to desperate measures, especially if their families and former friends and acquaintances have disavowed them. I suspect that such was the case for Ms. Dove for, as Caniglia reports, attempts to contact her family were unsuccessful.
After such sensationalism, the fact that she died so brutally and lay at the bottom of a pond for, probably, a month or more, is almost lost by its placement later in the article. What's really sad is that, as awful as it is to be repeatedly stabbed, tied to a block of concrete and dumped into a freezing pond, it doesn't even come close to being one of the most gruesome attacks ever committed on a trans person.
To add insult to injury, it wasn't bad enough for Caniglia to simply be sensationalistic and to trade in stereotypes. His editors brought the quality of his story even further down with this headline: "Brutal Slaying Marks Clevelander's Fight for Acceptance."
What the fuck? The stabbing ended Ci Ci Dove's life, at age twenty. I mean, if we follow that editor's line of reasoning and have his or her command of the English language, we would say that the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 marked the end of his Presidential campaign.
What the hell are they teaching (or not teaching) in J-schools these days?
The other day I commemorated the tenth anniversary of Gwen Araujo's brutal murder.
During the four years I've kept this blog, I've also written about the murders of Amanda Gonzalez-Andujar, Rita Hester, Coko Williams and Thapelo Makutle.
Apart from the fact that they were transgender women and the sheer brutality of their killings, what else did they have in common?
You might have guessed: They are all women of color, nonwhite, or whichever term you want to use.
Reports from Interpol and other investigative agencies show that no one runs a higher risk of being a homicide victim than a transgender person. And, in the United States at any rate, people account for a disproportionate number of the corpses in the county morgue.
I was reminded of these facts by an excellent article someone passed on to me. In it, Kimberly McLeod reports that, according to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence programs, violence against LGBT people rose 23 percent from 2009 to 2010, with people of color and transgender women being the most common victims. Of the LGBT people who were murdered in 2010, 70 percent were people of color and 44 percent were transgender women.
As it happens, the murders of people of color and transgenders are also the least likely to culminate with the arrest and conviction of the person(s) responsible. In many instances, no more than a perfunctory investigation is done, if any is done at all.
What further exacerbates the dangers and inequities faced by trans people of color is that many trans people are, essentially, alone in this world: Their friends, families, communities and employers have cut ties with them, or they had to leave those people and places to escape harassment and in the hope of escaping violence. And, of course, killings of people of color are simply not a high priority in many police forces and communities.
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