Cabradine

CeCe McDonald didn’t ask to be attacked, but she was. Some vicious assholes decided a transsexual woman of color was fair game for abuse. They assaulted her, they harmed her, and chased her down when she tried to flee. She had a pair of scissors in her purse. She took them out to ward off her attackers. One of them impaled himself on them, and died, and apparently self-defense and stand your ground don’t apply to transsexual women, because she’s now facing prison time for daring to live.

This is wrong on more levels than I can count.

Our society is tough enough on women lately. Misogynistic assclowns with barbaric notions of godly morality would like to see women reduced once again to the status of chattel, and are doing their level best to ensure that reproductive rights are taken away as a prelude to locking women away in their homes, where they can be kept as breeding stock for manly men of faith. And that’s bad enough. I certainly don’t want that life. But it looks like a cakewalk compared to what transsexual women face. Too many people, including those sworn to serve and protect and administer justice blindly, see them as disposable defects.

I want you to look at CeCe’s face. Look at her. There is a human being with hopes and dreams and love and laughter, who has been through plenty of tough times, and yet managed a brilliant smile. And because a group of men decided she was something less than human, and attacked her, and discovered they hadn’t chosen a completely helpless victim but one who fought for her life when cornered, she’s now being shipped off to prison. A men’s prison, mind you. How well do you think a transsexual woman will do there?

People who defend themselves from assault, who did their best to get away but couldn’t run far enough or fast enough and ended up cornered with no way out, people who chose not to become victims but to defend their lives, shouldn’t have to go to prison, where they’re going to be repeatedly assaulted and possibly killed, just because our justice system is horribly broken.

Sign the petition asking for her pardon. Write the governor who has it within his power to set her free. Support CeCe.

Let’s give back the life they tried to take.

widdershinsgirl:

polerin:

widdershinsgirl:

polerin:

There are varied accounts of what happened on June 5, but CeCe and the people she was with all agree on the following details.  Around 12:30 am, CeCe was walking to the grocery store with some friends, all of them young, African American, and either queer or allied. As they passed a local bar, the Schooner Tavern, a group of older, white people who were standing outside the bar’s side door began hurling racist and transphobic slurs at them, without provocation.  They called CeCe and her friends ‘faggots,’ ‘niggers,’ and ‘chicks with dicks,’ and suggested that CeCe was ‘dressed as a woman’ in order to ‘rape’ Dean Schmitz, one of the attackers. When CeCe approached the group and told them that her crew would not tolerate hate speech, one of the women said, “I’ll take you bitches on,” and then smashed her glass into CeCe’s face. She punctured CeCe’s cheek all the way through, lacerating her salivary gland. A fight ensued, during which one of the attackers, Dean Schmitz, was fatally stabbed.

The only person arrested that night was CeCe.  She is now being falsely accused of murder.

Short of CeCe herself, the best person to contact for information on how to help is Katie Burgess - she’s the executive director of TYSN (Trans Youth Support Network) here in Minneapolis.

Bold.  Signal boost?

With TYSN’s main web URL:

http://www.transyouthsupportnetwork.org/