On the road: Light Up the Night, San Diego

You might remember a post I did on Nov. 15 about the rally that took place outside the New York City Hall in protest of passage of Proposition 8 in California ("Girl, you did not just steal our rights. DID YOU. Seriously?"). Well, that was the result of a multi-state effort coordinated by Join the Impact.

Back then then the largest demo took place in San Diego, California, as was captured and described by Rex Wockner over on his blog ("Stonewall 2.0 - 25,000 in San Diego"). And, while Join the Impact has served as a conduit for some additional actions since then (most notably the recent "Day without a Gay" action which was promoted but not organized by them), tonight was supposed to be the big follow up to the Nov. 15 actions.

The idea? Light up the night for equality which called on people to hold candlelight vigils at shopping malls across the United States "for the rights of 18,000 same-sex couples who married and look forward to the day when those rights are available again."

Lucky be a lad tonight, Dec. 20th caught me visiting Rex here in San Diego so I tagged along as he went to cover one of the local vigils as a journalist (unfathomably, instead of calling for a vigil at a single mall here in San Diego, they called for vigils at six different venues!).

I'm not sure how it went in other San Diego sites, much less across the country, but at the Fashion Valley Mall, right in front of Bloomingdale's, a crowd of 150 to 200 stood in line holding candles and a few signs on a chilly evening.

It was a mixed crowd with some younger folk...

Some bears...

And a smattering of The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence...

I took a few more pictures and some of them are here. No real drama despite the man who shouted "Immorality!" as he sped by in a small expensive car.

As reports come from elsewhere, I'll also update this post with additional links to other Light Up the Night actions.

Rex Wockner's take - including more photos - available at "Light up the night for equality - San Diego version"). From his blog:

Join The Impact's next nationwide action is Jan. 10 - when the group has called for marches on the 50 state capitols to remind Barack Obama that he has promised to repeal the anti-gay federal Defense of Marriage Act, aka DOMA.

Related Blogs:

• San Diego: UTC San Diego (Pam's House Blend)
  
• NYC: Across the Universe (John Ozed)
• Miami: Light Up the Night (Knuckle Crack)
• Miami: Out of the Darkness (The Lair of the Okapi)
  
• Hollywood: Light Up the Night for Equal rights (Chisme Time)
  
• San Francisco: Light Up the Night (Love not H8)
  
• Dallas: Light Up the Night @ The Dallas Galleria (Why do we fail, sir)
• Philadelphia: Light up the night in Philly (Whiskey Mambo)
• Albuquerque: We'll never change hearts and minds this way (Byzigenous Buddhapalian)
• Chicago: Photo Essay: Light Up The Night (Chicago Gay Examiner)
  

Related media:

• NYC: Prop 8 Rally held in Midtown (NY1)
• Ithaca, NY: Food drive aims to link gay rights, faith-based charities (The Ithaca Journal)
  
• Eureka, CA: Prop. 8 protesters hold Eureka vigil (Eureka Times-Standard)
• Santa Cruz, CA: Hundreds ather for same-sex marriage vigil (Santa Cruz Sentinel)
  
• Vacaville, CA: Group takes narriage equality message to shoppers (The Reporter)
• Valencia, CA: A loud and clear message, quietly (The Signal)
  
• Boise, Idaho: Light Up the Night for Equality Draws Crowds (Fox 12)
  
• Asheville, NC: Asheville event protests prohibition on gay weddings (Asheville Citizen-Times)
• Charlottesville, VA: Gay rights advocates gather in C'ville (NBC29)
  

Two Sunday vigils in response to Bushwick hate crime

From a Facebook group page set up to announce a candlelight vigil taking place this Sunday in Brooklyn [h/t Joe.My.God] - click on image to make it bigger:

Early Sunday morning, two brothers from Ecuador were walking to their homes in Bushwick arm in arm. They were attacked by three men who shouted anti-gay and anti-Hispanic insults as they beat the brothers with an aluminum baseball bat and a broken bottle. Jose Sucuzhanay died Tuesday morning from extensive brain damage and skull fractures.

WHEN: 2PM

WHERE: Gather at 2PM at the corner of Myrtle Avenue and Grove Street (Take the L to Myrtle/Wyckoff).

We will then walk to the site of the attack (Bushwick Avenue and Kossuth Place) for a vigil at 4pm.

THE PREVIOUSLY PLANNED WALK AT 7PM STARTING IN FRONT OF THE ARCHIVE WILL NO LONGER BE HAPPENING. We hope you will join with us at the march and vigil organized by Make the Road. Thanks!

BRING: your friends. Spread the word! Let's all show our support for Jose's family in this tragic and difficult time.

I'm not sure if this vigil is allied with a second call for a vigil this Sunday but Boy in Bushwick reports that community organizations such as Make the Road By Walking and the New York City Anti-Violence Project have also sent out info about a vigil starting at the same intersection at the and at same time (see flyer above, click on it to make it bigger). From his blog:

As law enforcement officials continue to search for the men who allegedly left a Bushwick man brain dead in what they describe as an anti-gay and anti-Latino hate crime early Sunday morning, the Anti-Violence Project, Make the Road New York and a coalition of other community and activist groups have organized a march and vigil on Sunday, Dec. 14.

The vigil will take place at Make the Road's park on the corner of Grove Street and Myrtle Avenue in Bushwick at 2 p.m. Marchers will then proceed to Bushwick Avenue and Kossuth Place--the corner where police say a group of four men viciously beat Jose Sucuzhanay with a baseball bat and bottles and kicked him while his brother ran for help.

Alternatively, I also had gotten notice of a 2nd vigil taking place Sunday night:

Candlelight Vigil Planned in Response to Bushwick Hate Crime

As you've probably heard, last week two men were attacked and brutally beaten in Bushwick by men who yelled anti-gay and anti-Hispanic insults. One of them has since died of injuries from the attack. It's being investigated as a hate crime.

Local artist Meg Hitchcock has organized a vigil for Sunday, December 14th at 7 pm. They are meeting up at the Archive Cafe (49 Bogart Street, right by the Morgan stop on the L) and walking to the scene of the crime a few blocks away. They ask that people bring candles and "come show your support in protesting this horrible attack on a member of our community.

Update: SF vigil in memory of Ruby Rodriguez this Friday

PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release

Contacts:
Tina D’Elia, Hate Violence Survivor Program Director
(415) 777-5500 ext. 304

Alexandra Byerly, EL-LA Program Coordinator
(415) 864-7278

Community Mourns Murder of Latina Transgender Woman
Requests Attendance at Vigil to Demand Change

San Francisco, California (March 22, 2007) – A Nicaraguan transgender woman, Ruby Rodriguez, 24 years old, was murdered on Friday, March 16, 2007. Her body was found on the corner of Cesar Chavez and Indiana Streets in the Mission District of San Francisco. The murder is currently under investigation by the San Francisco Police Department. Community United Against Violence (CUAV), EL-LA, San Francisco LGBT Community Center, TRANS Project, allies, and community members will hold a community vigil in her honor on Friday, March 23, 2007 at 6:00PM, on the corner of 24th Street and Mission Street in the Mission District.

Organizers request that the community bring a white candle to the vigil. There will also be an additional altar set up on Cesar Chavez and Indiana Street, and community members are encouraged to bring flowers, photographs, cards and good wishes to this site. Let us not forget Ruby. She was an exceptional woman who was intent on improving her life. Ruby participated in various support groups and language classes, and idolized Chicana singer Selena.

This murder comes at the heels of at least two other violent deaths of transgender women of color in the San Francisco Bay Area over the past six months. Transgender people, particularly low-income transgender women of color, are disproportionately poor, homeless, criminalized and imprisoned as a result of systemic discrimination in our daily attempts to access safe housing, healthcare, employment, and education.

Unfortunately, Ruby’s murder is not an exception, but an everyday fear for many transgender people who are targeted and brutalized by institutions and society at large. Our communities mourn Ruby’s death and ask for a renewed commitment to real safety for transgender communities. It is vital that the Mayor’s Office, the San Francisco Police Department, and the District Attorney’s Office work to end the cycles of criminalization, poverty, and violence in transgender communities and communities of color.

Please direct any questions about the vigil to Tina D’Elia or Alexandra Byerly. If anyone has any information regarding Ruby’s murder, please contact Inspector Karen Lynch at (415) 553-1388 or Inspector Tom Cleary at (415) 553-9569 of the SFPD Homicide Unit.

---
Community United Against Violence works to end violence against and within the LGBTQQ communities, providing free and confidential counseling, advocacy, and education in English and Spanish. CUAV’s crisis line is (415) 333-4357.

Michael J. Sandy and so many others

Something that was said at today's City Hall press conference (2nd from top) in response to the senseless death of Michael J. Sandy last week stuck with me: We have been here before.

Whether it's Michael last week (holding the crystal ball above); Kevin Aviance (3rd from top making his first public appearance after being assaulted at an anti hate-crime march this summer); Rashawn Brazell (his mom, Desire Brazell, 4th from top, at a Brooklyn vigil this summer to draw attention to her son's murder); Nelson Torres (an employee of the Hispanic AIDS Forum, 5th from top, who survived an attack in 2005); my friend Eddie Garzon (that's his family holding a memorial prayer on the sidewalk where he laid bleeding five years ago this summer, 6th from top), Sakia Gunn, Rodney Velazquez, Dwan Prince, Julio Rivera, it's as if history keeps repeating itself.

This must stop. Unfortunately, I have the feeling that it won't be long 'til we see more of the same. Please help me to make sure that it does not.

NOTE: More photos of today's press conference at my Fotki site (if you want to post or reproduce them please ask for permission by writing to blabbeando@gmail.com).

Other observations:

• Gathering in Michael's name (Bejata, Oct. 17, 2006)
• NYC Hall Press Conference for Michael Sandy (Brotthaluva Cafe, Oct. 16, 2006)
  

My New York: A Bangladeshi 9/11 Vigil

So it's 9/11 once again and, at least in New York, it's wall to wall coverage. You tend to tune-out the obligatory pumped-up CNN "we all feel the pain" oratory and stick with some of the other coverage including the moving reading of the names at ground zero and the low-key New York 1 recount of how the channel covered the attacks as it happened five years ago. The blogosphere is awash in commentary so let me just point out to this thoughtful piece posted on Keith Boykin's site and Bernard Tarver's comments on why, five years later, he is finally able to deal with the tragedy.

Us? Well, earlier in the week I noticed the poster above which invited people in the neighborhood to gather at 37th Avenue and 75th Street at 8:30pm for a candle-light vigil. The poster had a Bangladeshi flag super-imposed on top of a United States flag but the website address on the poster didn't lead to a working website. No problem! I thought! It seemed just as appropriate a place to honor 9/11 with other communities in my neighborhood.

So the boyfriend and I made our way to the gathering place and by the time we got there, a group of 40 to 50 men were holding American flags and copies of the poster I had seen earlier. There were a few women, but, like us, they didn't seem from Bangladesh. Others were passing out candles and we took some and joined the crowd.

One group started leading the gatherers towards 74th Street until they were angrily stopped by other men who diverted the participants up towards Roosevelt Avenue on 75th. Photographers had also shown up as well as some men with video-cameras. A debate seemed to further delay the vigil as a couple of men stood in front of the banner and others got shouted out of the front position. The dispute got angrier and all of a sudden two of the men started shouting for cameramen to stop taping or shooting pictures. "No cameras! NO cameras!" probably realising that the growing anger between organizers was being captured by media. They managed to take a walk around the block without the dissipation of vigil marchers but, as I took some photos of the those up-front, I saw my boyfriend approaching me with a stunned face, candle in hand, telling me: " I can't believe it! I just got thrown out!"

Apparently one of the marchers had noticed him and wouldn't stop telling him "Bangladesh only! Leave!"

OMG! I could't believe it! A public peaceful candle-light vigil that turns contentious! Calls for media to leave when things turn not so peaceful! My boyfriend being asked to leave because he wasn't Bangladeshi! It was so over the top ridiculous that I started to laugh! My boyfriend, recovering from feeling shocked and insulted, started to laugh with me. "Kicked out of a 9/11 vigil!" I kept saying, and it only made me laugh harder. Only in New York, kids! Only in New York.

In any case, I did some research on the organizers and lo-and-behold, I found out a bit more. No wonder the whole experience seemed like a set up for some sort of patriotic and political photo-op rather than what vigils are supposed to convey.

5th Annual Memorial Mass and Vigil in honor of Eddie Garzon

It was five years ago today that Eddie Garzon died from injuries suffered when he was attacked as he walked home from a night out at the Queens gay bars with friends.

Yesterday, friends and family gathered at the Elmhurst Hospital Center's chapel for a memorial mass that drew thirty to forty people that came to show support to Eddie's parents, Leonor and Armando Garzon. Among them democratic District Leader Danny Dromm and New York State Senator John Sabini, both of whom also participated in the massive vigil some of us organized five years ago to demand justice for his murder (a first arrest came earlier this summer).

After the mass, as has been the tradition during the last few years, a few us us followed Eddie's parents to the place where he was felled to lay down candles and flowers. Once there, Mrs. Garzon led the congregation in prayer. Marlene Forero, her son, some of Eddie's closest friends and members of the Colombian Lesbian and Gay Association were also there. There had been tears in the chapel but by the time we gathered on that sidewalk there were also smiles and some gentle laughter bred by familiarity and friendship born out of a tragic loss. Mrs. Garzon, who has been in Colombia taking care of other family matters, wanted to make sure that members of the LGBT community in Queens and elsewhere who have kept the memory of her son alive knew just how grateful they are for the support. Mr. Garzon, in his quieter manner and demeanor, also expressed his gratitude. Both seemed to draw strength from the crowd.

Among the things that the Garzons had prepared for the sidewalk memorial was a board with clippings reflecting their son's life and events since his murder. Glued to the board was a photo of Eddie at 16 years of age when he first came to the United States and a note typed in Spanish by his mother. The note reads:

A FRUSTRATED DREAM

Every mother builds a great illusion with each and everyone of her children, from infancy to adulthood. She dreams of creating an integral being: Physically, spiritually and intellectually worthy of belonging to a family nucleus and to a society so that, with their exemplary behavior in society and in the neighborhoods in which they develop during the different stages of life, we all can make a reality of the goals that we have set for ourselves.

This was the dream that my husband and I idealized with each of our three children. In the case of our son, Edgar, who had 35 years and led an exemplary life here in the city of New York, [the dream] was frustrated on the 15th of August of 2001 when there was a heinous attempt on his life.

From a young age, he traveled to the United States with the same dreams and goals carried by each of the millions of immigrants worldwide. As an adolescent, he had already faced the great monster called New York, a monster that not even his young mind could imagine through the storybook tales and videos that he hungrily enjoyed so much as a child. How distant from imagining it and even further from experiencing it must Edgar have been, as also were we, when a few soulless murderers evered that fantasy dream that Edgar was making a reality, with courage, effort, self-drive, sacrifice, shames and glories, throughout twenty years in New York, where he made himself and lived as a citizen.

It was a nefarious day, a cruel day never expected, a day in which horrible images and thoughts crossed our confuses minds, because it was impossible to come to accept such a cruel reality.

Whom, how and why did those - to date - anonymous assassins take his life? Why is the investigation so slow? If his family and a whole community that was affected await with anxiety for resolution and that those guilty of such an irreparable loss be captured.

We the Garzon Jimenez family and the unanimously demand for a prompt and effective response.

The note was written before this summer's arrest and, though the family knows that the trial ahead might be difficult, it is clear that it has brought a sense that some answers might come, finally, after five long years.

More photos of yesterday's vigil here.