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.
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The Semantics of the Word "Feminist"

WCS Director Olivia Greer wrote an interesting article about the word "feminist" for YP4 following our "Why Women Center Stage?" event, at which the panelists (Jennifer Buffett, Gloria Feldt, Aisha al-Adawiya, Idelisse Malave, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, and Carol Jenkins) sparred over the relevance/usefulness/relative "good" of the word "feminist."

"Am I a 'feminist?'" asks Olivia, whose article explores the paradox of being white and an activist in the struggle of women's rights, a struggle in which non-white women feel left behind, estranged from the feminism of Steinem et al.

As a pro-rights-for-women dude, I just want to say kudos to Olivia, and to add that of course every person, man or woman, must internalize their own, idiosyncratically-connotative definition of the word "feminist," like any other word.

But as a semantics buff and serious word nerd, I have to point out that the word itself is not the problem; no one is "not" a feminist nowdays, at least in New York. The word "feminism" means simply "the ideology that men and women should have the same rights," or however you'd like to paraphrase it.

Perhaps some Texas good ole boys or Egyptian polygamists might not label themselves as "feminist," but the vast majority of Americans will, do, can, and/or should.

I was not at all surprised when, during the "Why Women Center Stage?" conversation, panelists argued about race. I agree, white ladies have left their not-white sisters in the dirt, in terms of socio-political advancement, work opportunities, etc.

But I grew confounded as the argument seemed to return again and again to that word - "feminist." What does it mean to be a "feminist" versus "someone who believes in equal rights for women?" Why is there so much confusion surrounding what should be a simple ideological signifier?

Think about this in terms of a different argument: When I tell a conservative that I am "pro-gay marriage," he doesn't ask what I mean. He doesn't say, "do you mean that you are pro-white gay marriage, or pro all-gay marriage?" That would seem ridiculous.

Yet many prominent non-white women feel that "feminist" somehow excludes them; they are not "feminists," could never possibly be "feminists," even if they very much self-identify (whether as social or political leaders, like Jenkins and Pogrebin, or as religious organizers, like al-Adawiya) as "believers in equal rights for women."

Here is the crux of the problem: The word will continue to mean just what the word means, for a time, at least. Is is not better to educate people as to the meaning of the word than to abandon the word, invent a new term for the same thing, and thus split the "feminist" old-school white woman-equalists from the "not-feminist" non-white woman-equalists?

I'm not kicking aside the very real problems brought up by those who feel excluded by the F-word; they should absolutely bring their concerns to the forefront of the women's rights debate. But they should also admit that they, too, are technically feminists.

The problem with trying to alter language politically is that, besides from ugly-fying a beautiful natural system of sound and metaphor and meta-metaphor, it doesn't work. In fact, it often backfires.

Think of Russel Simmons' quixotic quest to delete the N-word from the mouths of thugs across America. I still hear the N-word every single day. (Or Germany's campaign to suppress Nazi propaganda, which, while noble in intent, has produced a lot of German neo-Nazis.)

Rather than focus on a problem word, we should focus on problem ideas. Ideological battles cannot and should not be won semantically; that is, if women in the hood feel estranged from "feminism," women in the Upper East & West Sides should explain what feminism, in their view is; the hood women should explain to the rich women their problems with white feminism or what they see as white feminism. I bet the two groups will find more commonality than difference, at least in terms of gender-ideas.

In general, groups fighting for the same important human rights should embrace one another, not divide and subdivide based on, of all things, a four-syllable Latin piece of jargon. New labels and new words should and will pop up, of course. As new ideas come to the front of the collective watercooler debate-circuit, their jargon will replace the previous era's.

But what better option than "feminism" is floating out there right now? Perhaps there is one. If there is, please write to us and prove my earlier argument incorrect (or out of date). But think long and hard: Is being a "feminist" really so much worse than being a "transgenderequalist" or a "equagynovoterist" or a "grrl=boi-er?"

The question could be rephrased: How can we make "feminism" a better idea, and thus a better word, since we all basically agree on what it means and why we will continue to fight for it, in its name, by whichever name it takes?

Words about WCS on Women's eNews; Women on Words

Women's eNews has assigned a blogger to cover Women Center Stage. Thanks, guys.

Also, I ran into a wonderful lit-blog about women authors the other day called Modern Matriarch. Cheesy name; wonderful content.

Concerning literary ladies, all modern supporters of equal rights for both genders should read Woolf's very short, somewhat depressing A Room Of One's Own. (It's free.)

Hey Folks!
So WCS kicked off the festival last night with "why women center stage?" where five different women addressed the question of "why women center stage?". The event was a blast, setting up quite well what is to be the event of the summer. That being said, here are some other exciting events you can expect from WCS this coming week:

6/26: EMANCIPATE at the Knitting Factory (7:30 pm) EMANCIPATE is a series of musical performances done by women who are activists in their communities.
ST. JOAN (8:00 pm) A reivention of Brecht's savage masterpiece featuring original live music by Kelley McRae

6/27: BEAUTY ON THE VINE WITH OLIVIA WILDE (7:00 pm) BEAUTY ON THE VINE is a reading of Zak Berkman's Beauty on the Vine done by Olivia Wilde.
ST. JOAN (8:00 pm)

6/28: HARRY BELAFONTE'S THE GATHERING (8:00 pm) THE GATHERING is a pannel of activists and youth organizers organized to discuss the criminal justice system.
ST. JOAN (8:00 pm)
LENELLE MOISE (9:00 pm) An evening of jazz, queer theory, hip-hop, and movement in which Lenelle Moise speaks out about childhoon, masculinities, sexualities, AIDS, cultural hybritity, and reclaiming f-words.

6/29: STACEYANN CHIN (7:30 pm)"Def Poet" Staceyann Chin brings excerpts from her new book for TWO NIGHTS ONLY.
ST. JOAN (8:00pm)
TOWN BLOODY HALL (9:30 pm)

6/30: STACEYANN CHIN (7:30 pm)
ST. JOAN (8:00 pm)

7/1: AFTER INNOCENCE (5:00 pm)
BECOMING NATASHA (8:00 pm) A four-woman play that explores and exposes the economic and cultural influences behind the human trafficking industry.

Come and check out some, or better yet, all of these events: they are going to be spectacular. A calendar of all events this summer can be found at the cultureproject.org

Women Center Stage arrives!

It's here! It's here! With great fanfare and excitement, I present to you all...

...drum roll please...

...Women Center Stage!

WCS is our multi-disciplinary festival that brings together women artists, activists and thinkers whose work calls attention to human struggles globally.

Through July 17 we'll present Pulitzer Prize-winner Samantha Power, spoken word poet Staceyann Chin, Eve Ensler, Carol Gilligan to Azar Nafisi, a play about human trafficking, a film about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and a concert series featuring women artists who are activists in their communities.

What we're really looking to do here with Women Center Stage is to vehemently promote women’s work – in art, in action, and in imaginative and vibrant visioning of the future.

While I usually feel relatively icky about singling women out as "nurturers" or having more capacity for compassion than men, it has historically been true that women play a unique and potent role in innumerable struggles for social change - in large part because they tell stories that don't otherwise get told, they hold community memory, wisdom, and culture; and they bear witness and engage us all to respond.

Not to mention the fact that women remain consistently underrepresented in all arenas. So we're using this festival to gather artists, activists, thinkers and other important voices for justice - to build community and solidarity, share stories and ideas, and challenge one another to act and react.

Democracy is about action, and we are looking for a diverse audience of those who take action and those who will take action, who as audiences will take what they see, hear, and experience away with them - to carry the call further out into the world.

Thank you Wythe, for your fantastic appreciation of the Men's Equality Congress (who I would like to thank for giving me a good laugh last week), and thanks to Alternet for their kind words about us:

This summer, at a time when the media is dominated by bombastic male voices, New York City's Culture Project's multidisciplined festival of women voices provides a welcome antidote.

Imus is boring; Stringer rocks

C. Vivian Stringer, coach to the Rutgers women's basketball team sums up the state of the union pretty well, I'd venture:

Have we lost a sense of our own moral fiber? Has society decayed to such a point that we can forgive and forget because you know what, it was just a slip of the tongue? I'm going to suggest that bright, thinking people give thought before they speak.

She's right dammit. As tired as I am of all this Imus coverage, I'm equally tired of forgiving and forgetting. Call me PC, call me overly sensitive, but he's a jerk and I'm glad they fired him. Freedom of speech is one thing; turning a blind eye to racist and sexist "casual remarks" is another.

My colleagues may disagree with me...the door is open for debate...

But briefly, on another note, the Duke players were let off this week. It may go down in history as one of the most royally botched cases of all time. It was definitely the right move to throw out the case, but it does raise a red flag for those of us concerned with the cases of future rape victims. As the editors of Salon's Broadsheet write:

Those who see every rape charge as a probable false accusation may read the Duke case outcome as validating their position; assault survivors may worry that the Duke case outcome erodes their credibility...Going forward, we're hoping this unusual, unfortunate case won't become a cultural touchstone for future rape allegations -- but we're not terribly optimistic.

Here's hoping.

dispatch from Nairobi

This is a bit belated - it's a re-post from a piece I wrote for openDemocracy about the World Social Forum in Kenya, which I attended in my capacity as producer of Women Center Stage, Culture Project's annual multi-disciplinary arts festival focusing on women artists who are calling our attention to issues of social justice globally.

Growing up a young white woman in New York City, my world was comfortable, it was integrated, and my feminism was without a name and assumed. I say with not a small amount of shame that it was only very recently that I understood acutely enough that only for white and privileged women is feminism about reproductive rights, glass ceilings and the stiletto-or-not debate. And I am looking for deeper connections, for wider, meaningful work.

In 2007, there is a palpable paradox: women take leadership positions from Chile to Germany, as women from Ukraine to the Dominican Republic are trafficked into prostitution and the right of women in the United States to sovereignty over their bodies is carefully dismantled. Countries like Mexico and South Africa allow employers to keep women from work due to pregnancy; in Morocco, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, women’s legal rights belong to male family members. Each day, in every part of the world, women are beaten in their own homes.

The World Social Forum has made this co-existent diversity and commonality of experience palpable.

Arriving in Kenya, my first trip to any African country, I found myself enraged (at myself? at my schooling?) by how little I know about the world, and even about my own country. I have so little real information, know so little about real people and their experiences. And so I began to understand that my job in Nairobi was to listen.

So I’ve tried to pull out themes that emerged in the sessions I’ve been to:

The first is a call from women in all parts of the world to shake off the limitations implied by our attachment to the language of patriarchy. That, in re-visioning the world, we continue to use and accept assumptions asserted by an old standard. It is within our rights – perhaps our responsibility – to re-work the vocabulary and the assumptions as we work to make change. As a young woman said at a Young Feminists meeting, “we are not just a women’s movement, we are women in movement.”

The second point follows closely: as women in movement, generational disconnects seem to come up again and again. In a youth circle, an older woman thanked younger women for carrying the torch in a long speech, but left the room as soon as younger women began speaking; in a session on women elected leaders, young women lamented a lack of mentorship and begged for more guidance and support; older women observed that younger women don’t seem to have a sense of their history or a tie to any coherent movement. And these things were expressed across barriers of country, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, what-have-you.

A third, related, point is that, as women, we can tend to fight to be in the space we have, rather than fighting to expand the space. Women talked a great deal about competition between one another, and a barrier between generations and classes of women, and called strongly for more solidarity. They brought up, in every session, the importance of “knowing each other better,” learning from each other, and supporting each other – and expanding the space so as to be able to stand together.

Finally, women globally are calling the world’s attention to a wide range of social justice issues in their regions and homes. Women fight side by side with men, and with a unique worldview, in the labor movement, in the environmental movement, in the immigration movement and in countless other struggles of countless other people and communities. The global women’s movement is a call to action for equality and safety for all people, everywhere.

By the closing of the World Social Forum, I felt deeply all the beauty and contradictions of the event. For 7 days, I walked through the most diverse throngs of people I’ve ever seen – people from African countries in tribal dress, people from African countries who would blend in anywhere in the U.S., women in saris, endless types of headdress. I saw a woman in a full burkha, but openly holding hands with the man she was with – no gloves even!

What if the world really looked like this! And of course, it’s a small oasis and not without its problems and complications. Many Kenyans protested the Forum because even the reduced price for them was a day’s wages and not at all affordable. And once we were all safely home, two of these citizens - young boys - were executed for their efforts. Yes, they were executed.

One afternoon, as I was admiring the number of men wearing t-shirts that read “women are not property,” I was approached by a young man from Sierra Leone who wanted to chat. He told me that he works as an anti-mining activist, and we talked about Sierra Leone and the Appalachian coal-mining region in the U.S. And then he said, “I would like to bring you to my country,” to which I replied, “I’d be very interested to see it.” He said, “Yes, you will marry me and come to live in my country.” When I explained that wouldn’t be possible he thought for a moment and then asked if I have a sister. I told him that she is sixteen. “Ah,” he said, dead serious, “the perfect age for marrying. Very obedient. You will give her my picture when you go home.”

But what an extraordinary event this was! I quickly came to relish being in the minority for a period (I’m sure tempered by the fact that it was temporary), reminding myself to listen and not to hold tight to my own views and experience. I loved seeing so many different colored people engaged in real conversations, and to see that there is work going on constantly, at the most local, grassroots level, as well as in global partnerships. As a woman said in the last day's final Women’s Forum, the World Social Forum gives us a moment to take the work we’ve done and put it on the world table. And in the end – to sum up the parts of the whole as best as I can – as we meet and grow in our work, we make another world possible.