In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Month: April 2009

Statement from Angie Zapata’s Family on Andrade’s Conviction

Via Monica of Transgriot is a video of the statement from Angie Zapata‘s family, on the trial of Allen Andrade. It is read by Angie’s brother, Gonzalo Zapata.

A warning that it is difficult to watch, and may be triggering or upsetting. Watching Angie’s family break down in memory of her, and in knowledge of her brutal death, had me in tears. But Andrade has ensured that Angie cannot speak for herself about what he did to her — I think it’s only right then to listen, if we can, to what her family has to say.

Monica also had a loose transcript of the video. I’ve updated it as best I can to make it a full transcript of the statement itself, and it’s below the jump:

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Breaking: Allen Andrade Convicted of First Degree Murder

Allen Ray Andrade, the man who murdered Angie Zapata (left), was just minutes ago convicted on the two main charges of first degree murder and bias-motivated crime (hate crime).  He was also convicted of the significantly lesser charges of vehicle theft and identity theft.

As far as I’m aware as of writing, those are the highest convictions on all charges against him.  And for his heinous crime, at 4:00PM MDT, Andrade will be sentenced to mandatory life without parole.

It took the jury only about 2 hours to deliberate.  Only about 2 hours.

The trans panic defense failed, seemingly by a landslide.  Like my co-blogger Jack and others, I am not convinced that this is actually justice for Angie — when a woman is dead and nothing can bring her back, I don’t really think there is such a thing as “justice” anymore.  But it is the best we could have hoped for in this particular case.  And I am in relieved shock.

h/t JusticeforAngie

Ways I Will NOT Be Celebrating Earth Day

By trying to figure out how to get my ass down to an arbitrarily approved size that will not result in my being accused of attempting to destroy the planet.

Of course, there is no discussion here of the fact that many “overweight” people do not overeat, do exercise, are vegetarians, and/or do not eat in a way that is necessarily or uniquely unhealthy as compared to “thin” people.  It also ignores the fact that there are plenty of ways to be “green” that don’t involve starving yourself through dieting (I’m quite sure that many overweight and obese people use public transportation, choose vehicles that are not gas-guzzling, support public policies that cut down on pollution, and more), or the fact that our personal environmental choices are important, but not nearly as much as those made by the world’s biggest polluters.

And best of all, in talking about what people who don’t meet a certain BMI requirement should be doing to end global warming, there’s no mention made whatsoever of the connection between obesity and poverty, how healthy foods can be downright unavailable in low-income neighborhoods, the way that our government subsidizes less healthy foods and therefore makes them far more affordable, or that while certain kinds of exercise may be “free” in a monetary sense, it does in fact cost time (which is something that not everyone, particularly those who are low-income, have).

No excuse is a bad excuse, it seems, to not-so-subtly shame fat people for the sin of existing.

Thanks to Rich for the link.

Air-Breathing, Water-Drinking Earthlings

Last night Ethan’s third grade class put on an Earth Day celebration, a “Prairie Home Companion” styled radio show, that was packed full of epic recorder songs and appeals to their parents to recycle and consume water and electricity in more responsible ways. Even though it was relatively standard in the school recital sense, what piqued my interest were the really slick rhetorical appeals, the kinds of environmental appeals about the health of the planet and its inhabitants that probably had all the Republican climate-change-naysayer parents in the audience squirming. For one, the aesthetic of the show was classically hippie. Between the twee recorders, marimbas and bongo drums, and the “We *Heart* Earth” posters with a heart-shaped Planet Earth in the middle, the musical and visual stylings of the show definitely borrowed the optimism from the early days of the environmental, one earth movement.

But what I thought was really slick and cool was the appeal for all of us to value and respect the rights of all “air-breathing, water-drinking earthlings,” an appeal repeated through the whole of the radio show, that was remarkably inclusive without being schlocky. The language of the show included all peoples, animals, and plants, all life on earth, as beings with inherent value and rights that should be protected. Talking with E after the show, it appeared that not only had their teachers put all the work into this complicated, rhythmic performance, but that the kids also had numerous lessons about the importance of maintaining ecological balance as a moral issue and reducing our footprint on the planet and its resources. But the language of inclusiveness — to me, that was so subtle and so amazing.

It’s not the first time I’ve seen this kind of subtlety employed in Ethan’s classrooms — he learns more and more about the U.S. civil rights movement every February, not only about Martin Luther King but Malcolm X, and they’ve begun to discuss the conflicts in the Thanksgiving narratives every November. I wonder, though, if part of it is that although he’s in a public school he’s in a very ethnically, racially, and religiously diverse public school, a rich school, with parents involved and vocal enough to devote time and energy to making sure their histories aren’t erased from the curriculum. I mean, I have friends and coworkers who were in school in the 70s and 80s who fondly remember their white teachers showing up at school in blackface to teach black American history. This year, when E’s teachers invited the kids to dress up as black leaders on Martin Luther King Day, I held my breath. I had a headache about it for two days, imagining the possibilities, the conversations I was going to have to have, but I cut out a little mustache, goatee, and bow tie from construction paper so E could dress like W.E.B. DuBois and teach his classmates about The Souls of Black Folk, a book I’d studied in college for a whole semester. I was ready to storm the school if a parent sent in a kid in blackface, but nobody did.

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Another 11-Year-Old Boy Commits Suicide After Homophobic Bullying

You’ve likely read about the tragedy of Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, an 11-year-old boy who committed suicide after being relentlessly bullied at school with homophobic taunts.

But now, to make matters even worse in the only way they could possibly get worse, a second 11-year-old boy has also committed suicide (h/t).  Jaheem Herrera, too, hanged himself after being bullied at school. Seemingly, the taunts were also homophobic in nature.

Jaheem Herrera, a fifth-grader at Dunaire Elementary School in the Atlanta area, hanged himself in his room after enduring extreme daily bullying that included antigay taunts. His 10-year-old sister discovered his body.

Herrera’s mother and stepfather say they were aware of the consistent bullying, although their son tried to hide the extent of it. His mother, Masika Bermudez, complained to the school, reports WSB-TV, and she talked with his best friend about the situation.

“He said, ‘Yes ma’am. He told me that he’s tired of everybody always messing with him in school. He is tired of telling the teachers and the staff, and they never do anything about the problems. So, the only way out is by killing himself,’” Bermudez told WSB-TV.

Jaheem was an excellent student who moved with his family to the Atlanta area last year from St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, said stepfather Norman Keene.

I don’t know what to say to this.  There are few things to say.  The parallels between these two stories are so many that it’s frankly eerie, and absolutely stomach-churning.  And clearly, we need to wake the fuck up.

We need to have broad conversations about bullying in schools and homophobia in our society, and we need to have specific conversations about the homophobic nature of many kinds of bullying.  And we need to do more than just talk about it, we need to make sure that things change.  Schools need to be held accountable and forced to take action against bullying, and they need to find ways to prevent it in the first place.  Right now.  Before even more children see no other way out other than to take their own lives.

Earth Day

Tomorrow is Earth Day — and according to the New Yorker, it isn’t what it used to be:

The first celebration of Earth Day, on April 22, 1970, was a raucously exuberant affair. In New York, Fifth Avenue was closed to traffic. People picnicked on the sidewalk; dead fish were dragged through midtown; and Governor Nelson Rockefeller rode a bicycle across Prospect Park. Students in Richmond, Virginia, handed out bags of dirt (to represent the “good earth”); demonstrators in Washington poured oil onto the sidewalk in front of the Interior Department (to protest recent oil spills); and in Bloomington, Indiana, women dressed as witches threw birth-control pills into the crowd (no one was quite sure why). All told, some twenty million Americans took part—far more than the man who thought up the occasion, Senator Gaylord Nelson, Democrat of Wisconsin, had expected. “That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day,” Nelson later said. “It organized itself.”

I have a sneaking suspicion that were the Earth Day of 1970 recreated, Feministe readers would be the witches throwing out birth control pills (and in Indiana at that. Hmm).

So other than tossing birth control pills at unsuspecting crowds, what are you all doing to honor Earth Day? Any big plans? Any small environmentally-friendly efforts?

Troy Davis Appeal Denied

Over time, Jack and I have put up quite a few posts about Troy Davis, a Georgia man on death row despite serious questions about his conviction, no physical evidence tying him to the crime, and claims that another man actually committed the crime in question.  So it only seemed appropriate to post an update with the latest news.  And sadly, it’s bad news.

On Thursday the 16th, the 11th Circuit Court denied Troy Davis’ appeal for a new trial, and granted him a 30-day stay so that he can file another petition with the Supreme Court (which has already refused to hear his case).

The decision came down two to one, with dissenting Judge Rosemary Barkett writing the following:

In the affidavits, seven of nine key trial witnesses recanted their testimony which pointed to Davis as Officer MacPhail’s murderer. The two remaining non-recanting witnesses were Sylvester “Red” Coles, who was himself alleged to have been the shooter in affidavits, and Steve Sanders, who identified Davis at trial two years after the incident, despite admitting to police immediately following the shooting that he would not be able to recognize the shooter.

The majority of the affidavits support the defense’s theory that, after Coles raced to the police station to implicate Davis, the police directed all of their energy towards building a case against Davis, failing to investigate the possibility that Coles himself was the actual murderer. For example, none of the photospreads shown to eyewitnesses even included a picture of Coles. Additionally, three affiants now state that Coles confessed to the killing.

To execute Davis, in the face of a significant amount of proffered evidence that may establish his actual innocence, is unconscionable and unconstitutional.

As Amnesty International said:

If Troy Davis’ request had been granted by the Court, he would have had the opportunity to ask for an evidentiary hearing.  An evidentiary hearing would allow the witnesses to be heard and examined in a court of law – which is what Davis has asked for all along.

So, now we wait again.  A new petition will be filed.  A new execution date might be set.  And all a man is asking for is a proper fucking trial.

In the meantime, you can send yet another letter to the governor of Georgia, asking him to support clemency for Troy Davis.  I couldn’t more strongly encourage you to do so.

Trans Panic Defense Underway in Trial for Angie Zapata’s Murder

I have been very closely following the Twitter feed by JusticeforAngie, which is live-tweeting the trial of Allen Andrade for the murder of Angie Zapata. The details of the case have been absolutely engrossing; they have also made me feel quite physically and emotionally ill, particularly on the day that opening arguments began, and the defense’s strategy became clear.

Close to the time that Angie Zapata was murdered last July, I wrote a post about the clear signs that the defense was going to use the wildly bigoted “trans panic” defense — in which someone is supposedly and“understandably” so enraged upon learning that another person is trans that they murder that person — to excuse Andrade’s actions. That educated and easy to make guess has indeed come to fruition.

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