Susan's Place Transgender Resources

Rights groups mum on beating

By Wendi C. Thomas (Contact), Memphis Commercial Appeal
Sunday, June 29, 2008

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2008/jun/29/rights-groups-mum-on-02/ (http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2008/jun/29/rights-groups-mum-on-02/)

When the videotape of a since-fired Memphis police officer beating a black transgender woman surfaced earlier this month, the outcry from the GLBT community (that's gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender, for the unfamiliar) was swift and loud.

And it was the Women's Action Coalition that brought together about 50 people last Monday in support of Duanna Johnson, who was beaten and sprayed with tear gas in February while in the booking area of the jail.

WAC convenes again Monday to firm up its plan of action against police brutality.

But from the folks who rally the troops when police brutality rears its head, especially when the officers are white and the victim is black (as was the case in the Feb. 12 incident), well, the silence was deafening.

It's nice to know that it isn't only tran people, women especially, who are speaking out on this. I understand that organizations have a base that they want and need to support. But Ms. Johnson was part of that base. That there is a deafening silence, not from the people of Menphis and it's suburbs, but from SCLC, NAACP, assorted black pastors who always weigh-in with support and appeals to end at all costs the terrible spectre of beatings, lynchings and violence against African-American humans, is simply appalling to me.

Are their hearts and minds so tightly closed, so convinced that there are no 'real' transgender or homosexual' African-Americans that they refuse even to issue any statements at all about this beating? For me, they lose a lot of creditability through their disregard of Duanna Johnson.

Nichole 

Rights groups mum on beating

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2008/jun/29/rights-groups-mum-on-02/
6/29/2008

"When the videotape of a since-fired Memphis police officer beating a
black transgender woman surfaced earlier this month, the outcry from
the GLBT community (that's gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender, for
the unfamiliar) was swift and loud.

And it was the Women's Action Coalition that brought together about 50
people last Monday in support of Duanna Johnson, who was beaten and
sprayed with tear gas in February while in the booking area of the
jail."

silence from pastors? not a shock to me at all!!!!!


Warrior Princess Mickie