Transgender Day of Remembrance

**
The Transgender Day of Remembrance was set aside to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. The event is held in November to honor Rita Hester, whose murder on November 28th, 1998 kicked off the “Remembering Our Dead” web project and a San Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999. Rita Hester’s murder — like most anti-transgender murder cases — has yet to be solved.

Although not every person represented during the Day of Remembrance self-identified as transgendered — that is, as a transsexual, crossdresser, or otherwise gender-variant — each was a victim of violence based on bias against transgendered people.

We live in times more sensitive than ever to hatred based violence, especially since the events of September 11th. Yet even now, the deaths of those based on anti-transgender hatred or prejudice are largely ignored. Over the last decade, more than one person per month has died due to transgender-based hate or prejudice, regardless of any other factors in their lives. This trend shows no sign of abating.

The Transgender Day of Remembrance serves several purposes. It raises public awareness of hate crimes against transgendered people, an action that current media doesn’t perform. Day of Remembrance publicly mourns and honors the lives of our brothers and sisters who might otherwise be forgotten. Through the vigil, we express love and respect for our people in the face of national indifference and hatred. Day of Remembrance reminds non-transgendered people that we are their sons, daughters, parents, friends and lovers. Day of Remembrance gives our allies a chance to step forward with us and stand in vigil, memorializing those of us who’ve died by anti-transgender violence.

** from the Facebook group: Transgender Day of Remembrance



International Transgender of Remembrance website



An article in todays Pink News on the Transgender day of Remembrance



A statement from Gordon Brown on TDOR



An article by a London trans activist in the Pink Paper from the 16th of November


The London event...

*From 2.15pm on Saturday 21st November at the 52 Club, Gower Street, London, trans people, their friends and allies will be remembering those who have died during the last year through violence or suicide because they were trans. If you can’t make it on the day, it would be lovely if you can take time out from whatever you are doing at the time and spare a minute or two thinking about those trans people who have died. If you encounter a transphobic incident, please take time to address it, whether it be reporting it to the police, writing in to a paper and making a complaint, signing a petition or just taking time out to learn more about the issues which trans people face. All challenges against transphobia will help, in the long run, towards reducing the harassment, discrimination and deaths of trans people.

Streetmap link for the 52 Club

* borrowed from the Pink News article above

Home Office Bars US Artist From Arts Festival in East London

Cristina Winsor, a US citizen and talented artist from the downtown East Village New York scene innocently arrived in London on Sunday 6 September to visit friends and take part in a free five day art festival in the respected east London venue The Foundry only to be detained for 9 hours in a detention centre at Heathrow airport and escorted on an outbound plane back to New York by armed security guards. Her crime? Carrying 2 small paintings under her arm, which she wished to exhibit at the festival and with a bit of luck, sell for a few hundred dollars.

Statement from Cristina Winsor. "The immigration officials told me that selling my work was illegal without a business visa, and took me to the detention centre for further questioning. I told them I wouldn't sell my paintings if it was against the law, and even offered to leave them at the airport so that I could at least stay in the country and see my friends, and pick them up on my way out. They said they couldn't trust me to have changed my mind so fast, and that they couldn't show me favouritism by holding my paintings until my return flight four days later. I then sat in the immigration detention centre for 9 hours and was escorted to an outbound NYC flight by security. They only gave me back my passport once I disembarked in JFK airport in NY. I opened my passport to see a little 'barred entry' symbol."

Michael Bucknell, curator of the five day international arts festival, The Meaning of Art said: “we are shocked that someone should be refused entry to the UK because of our festival. It is particularly ironic that the meaning of art should turn out to be 9 hours detention, and a flight back to the USA.”

Cristina Winsor is the latest victim of the new immigration regulations which took full effect in November last year, wreaking havoc on international arts events across the UK, preventing artists, poets and musicians from taking part in numerous festivals and other arts projects. Invited artists from the non-EU area are now required to be “sponsored” by a UK organisation at considerable cost under the new points-based system. Copies of official documents, such as passport and biometric identification are required to be kept by the host, and should the invited artist’s whereabouts become unknown, the host is legally obliged to inform the UK Borders Agency. Phil Woolas, Minister for Borders and Immigration introduced the ludicrous new Business visitors rules on 16 October 2008, stating that with the introduction of “an Australian-style points based system for selective migration, it makes sense to tighten visit visas at the same time.”

Manick Govinda, artist producer at Artsadmin and campaigner for the civil liberties group, The Manifesto Club who set up a petition against the Home Offices restrictions on non-EU artists said: “In the past, artists had no problems entering the UK for short visits to participate in arts events. Yet again, these draconian immigration rules criminalize invited artists who pose no security threat and are not robbing British artists of work, yet these are the reasons that the Home Office have given for imposing these jackboot style laws – to prevent terrorism and safeguard British jobs. Phil Woolas and the UK Borders Agency have lost all sense of reason.”

Art luminaries, writers and theatre directors such as Antony Gormley, Rachel Whiteread, Jeremy Deller, Benjamin Zephaniah, Blake Morrison and Nicholas Hytner have signed the petition. “We’re on course to reaching our target of 10,000 signatures – nearly 8,000 people have already signed up,” said Manick Govinda. “When we have the 10,000 we will send a delegation to Downing Street to submit the petition. (Sign it here, if you haven't already)

The Home Office needs to seriously reconsider these pernicious rules, which are seriously stifling international cultural exchange.”

Notes to editors

Cristina Winsor is a 32 year old artist living in the East Village, New York, who has exhibited her work across theUSA, most recently at the New York Studio School in April, and Patton and Boggs, NYC in June.

The Meaning of Art is an international, interdisciplinary five day, free art festival. Artists from all five continents band together to dissect and reframe ‘The Meaning of Art’ through art objects, seminar discussion, video and sound art, drama workshops, music, poetry and performance. It opened on 9 September at The Foundry, 84-86 Great Eastern Street, London EC2A 3HY and continues until Sunday 13 September. Curated by Michael Bucknell and Annouchka Bailey: <http://www.luxurygoodslondon.com/>

The Manifesto Club launched the petition against the Home Office’s restrictions on non-EU artists and academics with a letter to the Observer on 22 February and a news story: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/22/immigration-arts-gormley> The campaign launched a report: UK ARTS AND CULTURE - CANCELLED, BY ORDER OF THE HOME OFFICE documenting 100’s of incidents where the new immigration rules have devastated arts events <http://www.manifestoclub.com/files/UKArtsCancelled.pdf>. The report was launched in a major news story in June 2009 in The Times: <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6418997.ece>

Phil Woolas MP made a public response to protests against the regulations in The Guardian’s Comment is Free:
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/14/phil-woolas-border-controls>

Further information and images contact: Manick Govinda, Artsadmin: 020 7247 5102 or 0790 535 7213,

Facebook group here

...you had to be there....

...from a song...



Investigate the meaning of your sentence

What is it telling you ?

Where does it begin and where does it end ?

Question the nature of your orders

Question the nature of your orders

Question the nature of your orders

What do they want from you ?

A rendezvous upon the sound

The cars rev up the word goes round

The words are weapons of their will

Their words can hurt

Their words can kill

A burning phrase can burn a town

A syllable can bring you down

Their languages are coded

Your image is eroded

Listen to the sound you heard

Learn to fight against their word

Vocabularies of death

Destruction in their breath

They use the lie

They use the myth

Seek only to confuse

And liberty abuse

The lies they tell are pretty

And blow up another city

They steal away your freedom

And your love

Their sentimental calling signs

Are calculatingly designed

To rob you of your mind and time

And still you listen to

The lulling drone of reassuring voices

Tunes to take away your choices

Make you slaves to fancy words and phrases

Until you're pushing up the daisies

They steal away your freedom

and your love

¿amor y cólera? ¿dolor y placer? ¿cuál es su odio?

Theres a difference I feel these days. It ebbs and flows, often stronger when I'm tired at the end of the day.

I've taken a pause, sat and waited, watched and remembered.

The insight I've had as I have remembered long forgotton events and people has shook me. Illusions and denial that last that long have a habit of doing that.

Why on earth did I think that? Why did that person allow my ignorance to continue? Did he seriously think I wouldn't one day remember? Did she think I was the buffoon, the fool, the retard for real?

Someone I know has recently had it confirmed that they are Aspergers. What they re thinking now, must be like shaking the snow globe and seeing it still with the room instead full of flakes. Past experiences, encounters revisited, perhaps re evaluated. Life begins again, possibly with knowledge but a differed view of the past.

I could be completely wrong, as who knows what goes on in a mind not their own, but I mention it because it is certainly akin to how I feel at times now.

I could get all metaphorical about broken spectacles and seeing clear, but as my current pair are held together with duper glue new improved formula and whatever else comes to hand I'll avoid the bad line, I'm wearing my purple/red shaded specs....a touch of style by accident maybe....

gut feeling
know your own self
trust what you know

folly becomes stupid second time around

to think that people that long ago abandoned friendship, who double talked and lied and turned their back on me....why the fuck would they be a true friend after all this time albeit folly facebull friends......strike me senseless with an old Night Train bottle if I didn't waste my time there.

Almost certainly I'm not alone, illusion is very familiar with time and the energy it takes to keep goin.

time to write some letters
forget texts
dig out some addresses from scraps of buried paper, it'll be pen n ink.

lick some stamps
practise my handwriting
and remember some more.


oh and support your post workers on strike!

When the church is empty and the graveyard full

what a difference a day makes?


upsdownstubulurswingleftturnrightand stop

breathe

and continue

lets make it more interesting now....what saves you is now the problem

the medicine becomes the disease pain becomes more than a feeling in senses and a ghost to believe in or not

is there another way to turn? cancerdiabetesdvtstrokes just casual conversation

talking of getting back, recovering, feeling as the few left after a violent storm, shaking the leaves from our hair looking round at the new light

it is always there just as it has to be...lets talk of entropy and push it away in safe distance, not flesh and bone but errosion of some distant shore

face it
breath it in
smile back and kick it in the nuts

is that all you can do? I've dreamt of you since before I could remember, you hold little but a weary feeling of deja vu now

no more of this
plain boring
im coming back and im choosing the game im putting on the records i want to hear and singing the words out loud enough of this waiting till tomorrow we all live and die in the same moment jump through the mirror see the wizard steal his clothes and crank it up to 11

fuck em if they can't take a joke

sometimes its all in a song.....

PRAY TO THE JUNKIEMAKER - Fishbone


Pray to the Junkiemaker through all types of weather
You will be a slave to the Junkiemaker forever
Fiend 4 the means while it taxes your mind...
You're on the road to the "Tombstone Commode"

Fiend like a hype as you suck the glass pipe
Your soul is cast into a Hellish hole
And as you're on your knees tryin to feed your disease
The Monkey's on your back got you "beggin' please"

Pray to the Junkiemaker
Take a hit wit yer lips
Pray to the Junkiemaker...WHOA !

You're jaded the light you no longer see
Burned out, broke down in your misery
Drop to less, you'll soon confess and "assume the position"
"Constipated asphyxiated concludes in Purgatory as stated !"

Pray to the Junkiemaker
Pray to the Junkiemaker
It's the death ticket, "Can I get a witness !"
Pray to the Junkiemaker
"Take a hit, Wit yer lips !"
Pray to the Junkiemaker
"OOOOOOOOOH, WHOAH !"
Pray to the Junkiemaker
"Take a hit, sit and piss !"
Pray to the Junkiemaker
WHOAH !

I ain't talkin' 'bout a physical addiction but a mental spell
It's a moral to this story so listen well
I relate the life I live in full of shit and sometimes Hell

And you will C that the pipe is your reality

Pray to the Junkiemaker !
Mental shitty, Ho !
Mental shitty in the city YEH !
Pray to the Junkiemaker !

And you will find you'll be a junkie with a zombie mind
Suck the pipe, take your life and you will die
All because you wanted to get high !!!!!!

YEH !
In a cold sweat you will
In a deep need you will
In the rock house you will
With a dick in your mouth you will
In a mental rage you will
When your body craves you will
Demonic let's make a deal
In the hospital you will
P.M.R.C. you must be
In the business office you will
In the limousine you will
In the White House in a !
In the school house you will
In the church house you will Yes !
In the police station they do
Shippin' to the ghetto you Devils
As long as you're married you will
Rocked up in the kitchen you're trippin'
Sellin' your child for the rock pile
In a straight jacket in a !!!
Forced for a divorce of course
In the jail house you will
Way black in the plantation
Trippin' in the bum bus station
Mental m-m-masturbation
50 Skylab Station
And the astronauts got to cop
Killin' off the brothers and sistahs
Twitchin' down six feet under
Crack gettin' under my dunder
Mr. Lucifer him chuckle
Mankind under his buckle

...aint that the truth.....

no cataclysm

its the little things that can make that difference .....a minute can dictate a day or more

Yesterday, on good faith I ventured out of my way only to find I was being taken for a ride, someone playing the fool at my expense only I didn't feel like being a fool, so I smiled and laughed about it instead....or maybe that was the point ?

today, with a workload that's like juggling lots of slippery and annoyed fish whilst not being any good at juggling at all, I somehow managed to arrive at an equilibrium and well.....get it sorted to my own satisfaction ...as well as managing to fit in a plate of chips and beans as well :D


...and now tonight, following my gut instinct on something I renew contact with another person who made me smile then, and it has made me smile all the more now....kinda vague all this, eh? :)

still

I had a tough decision to make, followed my own feelings and struck home, hit paydirt, landed on my feet and all those other spot on, right on target etc ways of saying ...Y.E.S! ..cue punching air with fist and grinning bit

which brings me to the idea I was thinking of...yesterday was about buddhism....literally, as I was going to find out more about it....and well, maybe I already have, at least it sounds like the idea ive heard friends speaking of....

now karma, not so sure bout that yet but well, we will see. For now, I'm happy to be be 'at one with my self' at least when it comes to trusting my head and heart...

there you go, no cataclysm just my thoughts....

:D