Wow, that's so messed up I can't think of what to say except read this:

FREE THEM NOW! - Lesbians sentenced for self-defense All-white jury convicts Black women

By Imani Henry, New York, Published Jun 21, 2007 2:58 AM
http://www.workers.org/2007/us/nj4-0628/

On June 14, four African-American women—Venice Brown (19), Terrain Dandridge (20), Patreese Johnson (20) and Renata Hill (24)—received sentences ranging from three-and-a-half to 11 years in prison. None of them had previous criminal records. Two of them are parents of small children.

Their crime? Defending themselves from a physical attack by a man who held them down and choked them, ripped hair from their scalps, spat on them, and threatened to sexually assault them—all because they are lesbians.

The mere fact that any victim of a bigoted attack would be arrested, jailed and then convicted for self-defense is an outrage. But the length of prison time given further demonstrates the highly political nature of this case and just how racist, misogynistic, anti-gay, anti-youth and anti-worker the so-called U.S. justice system truly is.

The description of the events, reported below, is based on written statements by a community organization (FIERCE) that has made a call to action to defend the four women, verbal accounts from court observers and evidence from a surveillance camera.

The attack

On Aug. 16, 2006, seven young, African-American, lesbian-identified friends were walking in the West Village. The Village is a historic center for lesbian, gay, bi and trans (LGBT) communities, and is seen as a safe haven for working-class LGBT youth, especially youth of color.

As they passed the Independent Film Cinema, 29-year-old Dwayne Buckle, an African-American vendor selling DVDs, sexually propositioned one of the women. They rebuffed his advances and kept walking.

“I’ll f— you straight, sweetheart!” Buckle shouted. A video camera from a nearby store shows the women walking away. He followed them, all the while hurling anti-lesbian slurs, grabbing his genitals and making explicitly obscene remarks. The women finally stopped and confronted him. A heated argument ensued. Buckle spat in the face of one of the women and threw his lit cigarette at them, escalating the verbal attack into a physical one.

Buckle is seen on the video grabbing and pulling out large patches of hair from one of the young women. When Buckle ended up on top of one of the women, choking her, Johnson pulled a small steak knife out of her purse. She aimed for his arm to stop him from killing her friend.

The video captures two men finally running over to help the women and beating Buckle. At some point he was stabbed in the abdomen. The women were already walking away across the street by the time the police arrived.

Buckle was hospitalized for five days after surgery for a lacerated liver and stomach. When asked at the hospital, he responded at least twice that men had attacked him.

There was no evidence that Johnson’s kitchen knife was the weapon that penetrated his abdomen, nor was there any blood visible on it. In fact, there was never any forensics testing done on her knife. On the night they were arrested, the police told the women that there would be a search by the New York Police Department for the two men—which to date has not happened.

After almost a year of trial, four of the seven were convicted in April. Johnson was sentenced to 11 years on June 14.

Even with Buckle’s admission and the video footage proving that he instigated this anti-gay attack, the women were relentlessly demonized in the press, had trumped-up felony charges levied against them, and were subsequently given long sentences in order to send a clear resounding message—that self-defense is a crime and no one should dare to fight back.

Political backdrop of the case

Why were these young women used as an example? At stake are the billions of dollars in tourism and real estate development involved in the continued gentrification of the West Village. This particular incident happened near the Washington Square area—home of New York University, one of most expensive private colleges in the country and one of the biggest employers and landlords in New York City. The New York Times reported that Justice Edward J. McLaughlin used his sentencing speech to comment on “how New York welcomes tourists.” (June 17)

The Village is also the home of the Stonewall Rebellion, the three-day street battle against the NYPD that, along with the Compton Cafeteria “Riots” in California, helped launch the modern-day LGBT liberation movement in 1969. The Manhattan LGBT Pride march, one of the biggest demonstrations of LGBT peoples in the world, ends near the Christopher Street Piers in the Village, which have been the historical “hangout” and home for working-class trans and LGBT youth in New York City for decades.

Because of growing gentrification in recent years, young people of color, homeless and transgender communities, LGBT and straight, have faced curfews and brutality by police sanctioned by the West Village community board and politicians. On Oct. 31, 2006, police officers from the NYPD’s 6th Precinct indiscriminately beat and arrested several people of color in sweeps on Christopher Street after the Halloween parade.

Since the 1980s there has been a steady increase in anti-LGBT violence in the area, with bashers going there with that purpose in mind.

For trans people and LGBT youth of color, who statistically experience higher amounts of bigoted violence, the impact of the gentrification has been severe. As their once-safe haven is encroached on by real estate developers, the new white and majority heterosexual residents of the West Village then call in the state to brutalize them.

For the last six years the political LGBT youth group FIERCE has been at the forefront of mobilizing young people “to counter the displacement and criminalization of LGBTSTQ [lesbian, gay, bi, two spirit, trans, and queer] youth of color and homeless youth at the Christopher Street Pier and in Manhattan’s West Village.” (www.fiercenyc.org) FIERCE has also been the lead organization supporting the Jersey Seven and their families.

The trial and the media

Deemed a so-called “hate crime” against a straight man, every possible racist, anti-woman, anti-LGBT and anti-youth tactic was used by the entire state apparatus and media. Everything from the fact that they lived outside of New York, in the working-class majority Black city of Newark, N.J., to their gender expressions and body structures were twisted and dehumanized in the public eye and to the jury.

According to court observers, McLaughlin stated throughout the trial that he had no sympathy for these women. The jury, although they were all women, were all white. All witnesses for the district attorney were white men, except for one Black male who had several felony charges.

Court observers report that the defense attorneys had to put enormous effort into simply convincing the jury that they were “average women” who had planned to just hang out together that night. Some jurists asked why they were in the Village if they were from New Jersey. The DA brought up whether they could afford to hang out there—raising the issue of who has the right to be there in the first place.

The Daily News reporting was relentless in its racist anti-lesbian misogyny, portraying Buckle as a “filmmaker” and “sound engineer” preyed upon by a “lesbian wolf pack” (April 19) and a “gang of angry lesbians.” (April 13)

Everyone has been socialized by cultural archetypes of what it means to be a “man” or “masculine” and “woman” or “feminine.” Gender identity/expression is the way each indivdual chooses or not to express gender in their everyday lives, including how they dress, walk, talk, etc. Transgender people and other gender non-conforming people face oppression based on their gender expression/identity.

The only pictures shown in the Daily News were of the more masculine-appearing women. One of the most despiciable headlines in the Daily News, “‘I’m a man!’ lesbian growled during fight,” (April 13) was targeted against Renata Hill, who was taunted by Buckle because of her masculinity.

Ironically, Johnson, who was singled out by the judge as the “ringleader,” is the more feminine of the four. According to the New York Times, in his sentencing remarks, “Justice McLaughlin scoffed at the assertion made by ... Johnson, that she carried a knife because she was just 4-foot-11 and 95 pounds, worked nights and lived in a dangerous neighborhood.” He quoted the nursery rhyme, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” (June 15)

All of the seven women knew and went to school with Sakia Gunn, a 19-year-old butch lesbian who was stabbed to death in Newark, N.J., in May 2003. Paralleling the present case, Gunn was out with three of her friends when a man made sexual advances to one of the women. When she replied that she was a lesbian and not interested, he attacked them. Gunn fought back and was stabbed to death.

“You can’t help but wonder that if Sakia Gunn had a weapon, would she be in jail right now?” Bran Fenner, a founding member and co-executive director of FIERCE, told Workers World. “If we don’t have the right to self-defense, how are we supposed to survive?”

National call to action

While racist killer cops continue to go without indictment and anti-immigrant paramilitary groups like the Minutemen are on the rise in the U.S., The Jersey Four sit behind bars for simply defending themselves against a bigot who attacked them in the Village.

Capitalism at its very core is a racist, sexist, anti-LGBT system, sanctioning state violence through cops, courts and its so-called laws. The case of the Jersey Four gives more legal precedence for bigoted violence to go unchallenged. The ruling class saw this case as a political one; FIERCE and other groups believe the entire progressive movement should as well.

Fenner said, “We are organizing in the hope that this wakes up all oppressed people and sparks a huge, broad campaign to demand freedom for the Jersey Four.”

FIERCE is asking for assistance for these young women, including pro-bono legal support, media contacts and writers, pen pals, financial support, and diverse organizational support. For details, visit www.fiercenyc.org.
Articles copyright 1995-2007 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

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Cue the vacation

ABC has just announced that intel says Al-Qaeda is planning a "spectacular" attack this summer with chatter as high and alarming as the summer of 2001. I guess the President should be starting his two month vacay any second now....

Crock... Of... .... I Can't Even Think Of Something Foul Enough

The Times publishes yet another voice in the war against freedom of expression, art, and my sanity.

One wonders: Has Mr. White seen Old Boy? Does he like it?

Old Boy is certainly better written than School Of Rock, no offense to that fine work of moral certitude, but I haven't seen Year Of The Dog (which is about the death of a dog and obviously inspired my cat to run away last night), making any criticism of the author's own screen-endeavors premature.

I have a question for Mr. White, should you, sir, ever read this: I know the mutants in The Hills Have Eyes II inspired me to brush my teeth and eat granola yesterday morning, but did Ghostbusters II inspire me to order a chai tea latte instead of a house coffee this afternoon?

I was thinking Ghostbusters II has inspired me to many acts of madness and malice over the years, and you, sir, seem to have an uncanny finger on the pulse of which movies do what, exactly, for society.

Perhaps I languish in a world of ignorance, but I don't think Old Boy is to blame for anything except a good fucking time.

Decide for yourself:

May 2, 2007
"Making a Killing"
By MIKE WHITE

Los Angeles

THE first movie I ever made was called “Death Creek Camp.” It told the age-old story of a group of teenage guys who set out on a fun-filled wilderness excursion only to be stalked and murdered by a psychopath disguised in a hockey mask and a blue kimono. It was no masterpiece of cinema.

Most of the scenes played out the same way — one of the fresh-faced hikers would get separated from the group. He would hear a noise in the bushes. “Bob? Jerry, is that you? Charlie?” Suddenly, from behind a tree, the stalker would pounce and blood would fly.

Why the killer wore a blue kimono was never explained nor why he wanted these nice campers dead. He was a deranged monster and that’s what monsters do. As the filmmaker, I was more interested in how the ketchup would drip off the victim’s cheek and where to plunge the retractable knife. I was 12.

The inspirations for this home movie (and the centerpieces of many Saturday night sleepovers) were slasher films like “Friday the 13th,” “Halloween” and “Terror Train.” My friends and I would eat junk food, drink soda and watch these cinematic bloodbaths until we dozed off, visions of gore and mayhem dancing in our heads.

Even though we all came from religious families — my father was a minister — it was rarely questioned whether our adolescent minds should be exposed to this kind of gruesome material. And clearly, we were the intended audience. My parents never sat and watched, nor did my sister, for that matter. The movies were titillating, shocking and dumb — and we teenage boys thought they were so cool. We devoured them and they, in turn, juiced us up.

After the horrific events at Virginia Tech, the relationship between violence in our movies and violence in our realities is being examined once again. Was Seung-Hui Cho inspired by a movie (the South Korean revenge flick “Oldboy”) when he murdered 32 of his classmates and teachers? Was Mr. Cho a deranged predator in a horror film, or was he a lost kid who could have been reached?

Hollywood and defenders of violent films dismiss Virginia Tech as a “unique” event, arguing that Mr. Cho was profoundly alienated from our culture, not at all a product of it. They assert that there are law-abiding, sane American moviegoers who love the thrill of a visual bloodletting, and then there are mentally disturbed people like Mr. Cho, constitutionally wired to do damage — and never the twain shall meet.

These commentators insist there’s no point debating which came first, the violent chicken or her violent representational egg, since no causal link has ever been proven between egg and chicken anyway. Besides, violent images can be found everywhere — on the news, in great art and literature, even Shakespeare!

For those who believe that violence in cinema consists of either harmless action spectacles or Martin Scorsese masterpieces, I might suggest heading down to the local multiplex and taking a look at some of the grotesque, morbid creations being projected on the walls. To defend mindless exercises in sadism like “The Hills Have Eyes II” by citing “Macbeth” is almost like using “Romeo and Juliet” to justify child pornography.

The notion that “movies don’t kill people, lunatics kill people” is liberating to us screenwriters because it permits us to give life to our most demented fantasies and put them up on the big screen without any anxious hand-wringing. We all know there’s a lot of money to be made trafficking in blood and guts. Young males — the golden demographic movie-makers ceaselessly pursue — eat that gore up. What a relief to be told that how we earn that money may be in poor taste, but it’s not irresponsible. The average American teenage boy knows the difference between right and wrong and no twisted, sadistic movie is going to influence him.

My own experience as a teenager tells me otherwise. For my friends and me, movies were a big influence on our clothes and our slang, and on how we thought about and spoke to authority figures, our girlfriends and one another. Movies permeated our fantasy lives and our real lives in subtle and profound ways.

It’s true nobody ever got shot in the face in my backyard, but there were acts of male bravado performed in emulation of our movie anti-heroes that ranged from stupid to cruel. And there were plenty of places where guys my age were shooting one another all the time. There still are. Can we really in good conscience conclude that the violence saturating our popular culture has no impact on our neighborhoods and schools?

The calamity at Virginia Tech is unfortunately not as unique an event as we’d like to think, but the sheer number of victims has grabbed our attention and inspired some collective soul-searching. As responsible Americans put their heads down on their desks and reflect, should the scribes of popular entertainment be excused to the playground? We screenwriters may be overgrown teenagers who still want to be cool, but we aren’t 12 years old anymore. Maybe we’re not responsible for Mr. Cho’s awful actions, but does that abrogate our responsibility to the world around us?

Most of us who chose careers in this field were seduced by cinema’s spell at an early age. We know better than anyone the power films have to capture our imaginations, shape our thinking and inform our choices, for better and for worse. At the risk of being labeled a scold — the ultimate in uncool — I have to ask: before cashing those big checks, shouldn’t we at least pause to consider what we are saying with our movies about the value of life and the pleasures of mayhem?

Mike White is the screenwriter of “School of Rock” and, most recently, “Year of the Dog.”

Did Oldboy "Inspire" Me To Feed My Cat This Morning?

Oldboy is not the problem. Hostel II--as poor an example of art or taste as you may ever see--is not the problem. Movies, books, television shows, and Marilyn Manson are not turning America's little ones into gun-toting psychopaths.

From Michael Cieply's "After Virginia Tech, Testing Limits of Movie Violence," today's NYTimes:

Given [Hostel II's] subject matter and the marketing campaign that has already come with it — posters featuring a woman’s severed head and other grisly images are now scattered on the Web — the Lionsgate film is emerging as a test of continued audience enthusiasm for such onscreen brutality, which some commentators have connected with the Blacksburg gunman Seung-Hui Cho’s video and its possible echoes of the Korean revenge film “Old Boy.”

“What might have been traditionally acceptable exploitation in one period can be seen as stupendously bad taste in another,” said Martin Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California, which examines the links among entertainment, commerce and society.

We know some commentators will always say some funny stuff about media and violence.

But the New York Times and its staff should better understand and, more to the point, since I'm sure they do understand, better represent the origins of art that deals with bloodshed. As I wrote earlier, there have always been works of art about violence because there has always been violence. Old Boy does not advocate, prescribe, inspire, or even really comment on violence. It is a movie about revenge (and incest, and potstickers, and eating raw octopus--again, a great movie). So is Kill Bill. So are many other movies--good, bad, and stupid.

We hope the Times more carefully addresses artistic violence in the future. For my part, I'm not going to see Hostel II, but not because I believe it will inspire me or someone I know to go on a shooting rampage. I'm not going to see it because it's going to be poorly written, badly acted, and probably more than a trifle boring.

(Kill Bill Vol. 3, on the other hand...)

Points Missed Amid Other, Stupider Points

From A. O. Scott's "Drawing a Line From Movie to Murder" in today's Times:

“Oldboy,” Stephen Hunter wrote in The Washington Post on Friday, “must feature prominently in the discussion” of Mr. Cho’s possible motivations, “even if no one has yet confirmed that Cho saw it.” If he did, Mr. Hunter notes, “he would have passed on the subtitles and listened to it in his native language” and perhaps developed a feeling of kinship with its persecuted, paranoid hero.

WTF?

Scott goes on, in his toothless, meandering way, to down-play the role of movie violence in "inspiring" shootings like the one at Virginia Tech.

But an over-arching note of connection between movies and violence persists.

It is as if Oldboy--a wonderful retelling of The Count Of Monte Cristo by one of the world's great living directors, Chan-Woo Park--could really somehow be blamed for the actions of a single confused young man.

Oldboy, for the record, isn't about shooting schools, or shooting anyone at all. It's about revenge. (Well, and incest.) Its hero uses, among other weapons, a hammer. It's mythic, hyperbolic, beautifully made, and a little ridiculous (with intention). It is not any more violent than the Iliad, or than The Red Badge Of Courage. If the same confused young man who saw Oldboy had been born one hundred years ago, perhaps he would have frequently referenced Poe, or H. G. Wells, or Melville instead of C.-W. Park.

Many people, in fact, abuse metaphors and misappropriate symbols every day. When I say "I was as sad as Gilgamesh when my first cat, Oscar, died," I know that I was not really as sad as that mythic Babylonian king was when his best friend died. I know that the two events are only related symbolically. I am simply very sad. Did Gilgamesh "inspire" me to be sad?

Ask yourself: Did a movie about revenge make the VA Tech killer take revenge? (On whom was he taking revenge? Why?) How could a popular movie, a movie I and many of my friends have seen several times, have "inspired" anything so epic? Had it not existed, would perhaps the Iliad--a tale all about revenge, insane, civilization-breaking revenge--have "inspired" the same actions?

We walk a very slippery, stupid slope when we conflate metaphors with the things they describe. The Deconstructionists pointed this out often, and I think it's worth remembering now. Oldboy no more "inspires" violence than the Iliad, or than Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Art, it has been known in all cultures throughout all times, is cathartic. It essentially fights against violence by allowing us to live the arc of anger, release, and forgiveness without actually having to, say, invade Ilium, or to defeat Shredder.

Stupid people will always misuse art for evil purposes (see Germany, the late 1930s, or listen to Fifty Cent), and other stupid people--not necessarily Mr. Scott of the Times, but many people who read his piece today--will misuse the fears of the masses against art.

Because we cannot control all the information that our children absorb every day, we must teach them to discriminate between the true and the untrue, the loving and the dangerous. We must explain why Achilles fought in the Trojan War, why we root for Donatello to dismantle Shredder's Terrordrome, and why the titular Oldboy is not a model of morality, though neither is he a totally unsympathetic murderer.

Oldboy is like all of us: He would rather not get in a fight... until he's pushed "to the limit." What pushed the VA Tech shooter past his limit, what made him feel akin to Oldboy (who, like the Count of Monte Cristo, had been truly and horribly wronged--had been given a clearer grounds for revenge than the young man who murdered his classmates), I do not pretend to know.

But I don't think we should blame--or even hint around blaming--artists Mr. Park.