Gretchen Rachel Blickensderfer, Windy City Times
September 17, 2014
Like any 22-year-old growing up in a country that has historically prided itself on opportunities available to all, Eisha Love had dreams. On a website, she showcased photographs of herself, saying she was looking to get a start in life. "I am a hard worker and a fast learner," she wrote. "I know I was born to model."
But as a transgender woman of color living in Austin, a neighborhood on Chicago's West Side, Love was a part of an entirely different world that hardly anyone outside of those streets seemed to either care about or notice at all.
It is one of hopelessness, with few if any public services available to those who want to escape from a cycle of brutal daily violence in which the lives of transgender and queer youth are considered dispensable, subjected to ferocious attacks and murder from those who control the neighborhood and—in the opinions of many LGBTQ people living there—harassment from a police department who seem more invested in profiling them than solving any of the savage crimes to which they fall victim.
So it was that—on March 28, 2012, at approximately 10:55 a.m.—Love was read her Miranda rights at the District 11 police station on Harrison Street on the city's West Side. She had reportedly been involved in an incident that started when she was harassed and physically assaulted at a gas station, and allegedly ended when she hit one of the attackers with her car while she was fleeing from them.
The arrest report the Chicago Police Department ( CPD ) filed says she told the arresting officer, "I was the one that was in the car accident." The police used her birth name of Darveris and male pronouns in the arrest report that charged Love with aggravated battery, driving on a revoked license and driving without insurance. She was transported to Cook County Jail's Division 11—a medium security facility—and assigned a defender from Cook County Public Defender A.C. Cunningham Jr.'s office.
A little more than one month later, a grand jury indicted Love on charges of first-degree attempted murder and aggravated battery. She was transferred to the maximum-security, all-male Division 9 and placed in protective custody. She has remained there for almost two-and-a-half years, locked in her cell for 22 hours a day with a male roommate.
Read the entire feature story at: http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/lgbt/Trans-woman-claims-self-defense-in-case/49008.html (http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/lgbt/Trans-woman-claims-self-defense-in-case/49008.html)
Wow. Just wow. Still, it's better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6.