2010 World AIDS Day

It's December 1, and that means we have reached another observance of World AIDS Day    

Since the first observance of it in 1988 as a method of raising awareness of HIV and AIDS the disease has killed more than 25 million people worldwide since 1981, and it's estimated that 33.2 million people worldwide live with HIV.

It's also an issue in the trans community, which is why I'm writing about World AIDS Day.    Various needs assessments have documented infection rates in trans populations of up to 25%.    Some trans people contracted it through sharing needles due to silicone pumping party injections with an infected person, engaging in unprotected sex either with an infected partner or while performing sex work.   


The 2010 theme for World AIDS day is Universal Access and Human Rights.   In this current climate in which people with privilege arrogantly think they can run roughshod over the rights of others, it's even more important to stand up for folks who are fighting to live with HIV/AIDS and say 'hell no you can't'.


I have dear freind who are living with HIV, and have lost dear friends, classmates and family members  to AIDS.   So on this day I take a moment to think about the people we've lost, the folks struggling to live a quality life while battling HIV, and pray that a cure is found for it as expeditiously as possible.

New York's Greenwich Village Halloween Parade

As much as I traveled to New York during my Air Marshal days, I never got a chance to actually see live what has become a Halloween tradition, the Village Halloween Parade.

It was founded in 1974 by Ralph Lee, with assistance from George Bartenieff and Crystal Field of the Theater of New York and coordinated by the trio for its first two years.

The spectacle of people in over 100 masks, street performers, giant puppets and others winding their way through the narrow streets of the Greenwich Village neighborhood from West Street to Washington Square not only took the neighborhood by surprise, but many people joined in the festivities.

The open participation to anyone in a costume who wishes to march has helped it grow to become a wildly popular event in New York to the point where a non profit corporation was formed in 1976 to help coordinate it
Even after the 9-11 terror attack, when events were being canceled all over the city, this parade was one of the few events held in New York during that time period at the insistence of then Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and actually gave birth to another tradition, the Dancing Skeletons puppets that lead the parade.  



It was even used a a rallying point in 2005 for New Orleans Katrina evacuees staying in the area.   That parade featured a New Orleans style jazz funeral, secondliners, the Rebirth Jazz Band and lanterns depicting New Orleans landmarks and the Magnolia housing project in the Ninth Ward.

So what will the theme be this year?    You'll have to tune in to find out.

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Upcoming 'Swapping Stories' Event On U of L Campus

TransGriot Note: An interesting announcement of an upcoming event on the U of L campus from Brian Buford that I'd thought I'd share with you and my Kentuckiana TransGriot readers.

Next week we are kicking off an award-winning project we created with the Baptist Campus Ministries (BCM) to explore how people on opposite sides of an issue come together in respect and friendship. It's called "Swapping Stories" and the title refers to the common experience among people who identify as Christian or LGBT (or both!) of telling a story about their lives. If you are LGBT, it's your coming out experience. If you're Christian, it might be your spiritual transformation or testimony. If you identify as both, it could include elements of both stories from your life.

The world tells us that these two groups can never come together unless it's in conflict, arguments, and hurt feelings. But Swapping Stories is all about setting aside agendas and learning to listen to another person's story. This experience demonstrates that we more alike than different. It's social justice and peace making in their truest sense, challenging some of the most basic societal rules and assumptions that have developed from years of misunderstanding.

So how does it work? Here's a brief description:

Students who choose to participate will attend a kick-off session next Thursday, October 28, at 7 p.m. in the Cultural Center. After a short training on the principles of Swapping Stories, you'll be paired up with a lunch partner and we'll give you $10 to spend on a meal together. Your job is to go out to eat, share your stories with one another, and see what happens! It's as easy as that. Your assignment will be to listen without judgment, honor one another's experience, and look for common ground. Everyone will come back together for dinner on November 9 at 8:30 (right after commonGround and BCM meetings conclude that night) to talk about how it went and what we learned.

REAL change happens when we step outside our comfort zone, and I know that for many of us, this is a big step. Come learn more about it at the kick off, and hear from the leaders of both groups who practiced earlier this week, as well as those who swapped stories in 2008. We won a "Spirit of Diversity" award that year for this project, and we expect another successful year!

(One important addition: We are committed to making this a safe, affirming, positive experience for everyone involved and making certain that your identity is respected. If at any point you have concerns, the Office for LGBT Services is here to intervene and help you resolve them. Participation is voluntary and it's always your choice whether to continue or not.)

Swapping Stories Kick Off
Thursday, October 28, 2010
7 p.m.EDT
Cultural Center

First preference for participating will be given to students who are members of the BCM or an LGBT student organization at U of L. Light refreshments will be served!

Why Is 'Errbody' Wearing Purple Today?

If you were wondering why there was an explosion of people wearing purple today and you were not in the Twin Cities on a Viking game day or watching a Washington Huskies game, there's a reason for it.

Today was designated as the day that the TBLG community and our allies would wear purple to rememeber all of our kids who have died at their own hands due to anti LGBT bullying.

On the rainbow flag the community flies, purple represents Spirit.    Wearing purple is a reminder to the BTILG kids out there to find that spirit within them and know that they aren't alone.  Times will get better and  you will meet people who'll love and respect you for the wonderful person you are.

Besides, your best revenge is to live a better quality life than your tormentors. 

On this day I'm thinking about and I'm with our kids in spirit.   I'm standing in solidarity as someone who was once bullied with all kids gay, straight and trans who deal with the nightmare of bullying and the parents who ceaselessly fight to be advocates for their kids to put a stop to it.  

It's time for our adult legislators in Washington D.C. and our fifty state capitals to stop acting like children, recognize that it's a problem that's killing our kids, affecting their ability to learn and pass the legislation necessary to deal with it.

A Flag Burning I'm Down With

When I see my own or any national flag being burned in protest, I have mixed emotions about it.

While it is a protected form of protest speech under the First Amendment, on another level it bothers me because I know a flag is a symbol for the nation that it represents.

But when it comes to the Confederate flag, it represents a failed nation founded by traitors during the Civil War. It was founded to not only perpetuate enslaving my ancestors, but with a cornerstone premise that me and my ancestors are not equal to whites and fought a war to continue enslaving people who share my African ancestry.

Thank God the Confederacy was defeated in battle. That flag also became during the Civil Rights Movement synonymous with bigotry and hate.

So yeah, this is one flag burning I am definitely down with.

A movement is popping up on FB that seeks to have happen on September 12, the day the Tea Klux Klan holds its rallies all over the country, to host Burn The Confederate Flag Day.

According to its website, Burn the Confederate Flag Day is a protest against the right wing's ramped up exploitation of racial prejudice for political gain.

The teabaggers are still pissed because they got their electoral butts kicked in 2008 and hate seeing the house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue my ancestors built with unpaid labor finally occupied by an African-American family.

It'll be interesting to see if this protest gets any traction or coverage from MSM networks overfocused on a small, loud group of angry vanilla flavored peeps.

2nd Annual LA TG Film Fest Coming Soon

The second annual TG Film Fest will be held at the LA Gay and Lesbian Center's Renberg Theater on August 28th, 2010

The festival kicks off at 11:30 AM PDT and runs until 9 PM. The TG Film Fest will feature four ninety minute screenings of trans themed films.

The films being presented this year include one that I had the pleasure of seeing during last year's U of L Pride Festival. It's a short film by Calpernia Addams and Andrea James called Transproofed.

Transpoofed will be part of the short films being show at 7:30 PM.

Another interesting movie that will be part of the 2010 is a Todd Holland film called The Believers, which is about the 2004 Outmusic award winning San Francisco based Transcendence Gospel Choir.

Suggested donation is $20, but people without funds will not be turned away. Outside the theater, in the center's courtyard there will be a DJ and live performances from 11:30 AM to 9 PM and vendors selling art and crafts.

The LA Gay and Lesbian Center is located at 1125 N. McCadden Place in Hollywood, CA.

Theta Beta Chi Anniversary Conference In Winston-Salem, NC

Theta Beta Chi Fraternity, Inc. is a non collegiate Greek letter fraternity of unique men that was founded in 2008.

Theta Beta Chi in conjunction with Church of the Holy Spirit Fellowship will be sponsoring their Unity and Understanding conference in Winston-Salem NC from April 22-25.

The event will include a Black tie awards dinner, workshops, and a Greek party along with on-site vendors.

The theme for the event is 'Recovering The Spirit That Is Within Me' and will also serve as a celebration of Transgendered People of Color.

I've been asked by one of the organizers to attend and I'd love to be there if my schedule allows me to get down to North Carolina.

One of the scheduled presenters is Kylar Broadus, the board chair of the National Black Justice Coalition. There's also another person I'm interested in meeting whose name I'd heard of thanks to one of my Dallas cousins, Min. Carmarion D. Anderson.

Should be an interesting weekend down in Winston-Salem

If you need further information you can also dial 336-833-6435

Wanda Sykes Whacking Wingers

I watched it live Saturday on C-SPAN the White House Correspondents Dinner and not only enjoyed the president poking fun at himself, but loved Wanda skewering the right-wingers.



The remarks of President Obama



They were sipping Republican Red Hateraid Sunday morning on Faux News, right wing talk shows and some of the talking head shows. It's also going to be fun to see how much airtime Rush Limbaugh kills today spewing hateraid at Wanda and the prez for making fun of him.

Waah. The right-wingers can't take a joke because they are walking comedy routines and punch lines.

Keep on speaking truth to power Wanda, especially if it makes us laugh in the process.

2009 State Of The Black Union-LA

Been watching the 10th Anniversary edition of the State of the Black Union live from Los Angeles. I enjoy watching Black thought leaders engaged in thoughtful conversations across an entire day on various subjects and the conversation being televised on C-SPAN.

Well, Round Two is about to start, and this panel will have two of my fave peeps, Dr. Cornel West and Dr. Julianne Malveaux on it.

2009 New York Spring Fashion Week- Will The Blackout Continue?

Fashion Week cranked up in New York yesterday and one of the things I and other interested observers will be scrutinizing is not if they use a transgender model like they did in Brazil, but how many African descended models participate in the various fashion shows in the mid town Bryant Park tent village that's Ground Zero for the event?

In the wake of last year's biannual shows that were overwhelmingly melanin free and Italian Vogue doing an all Black models filled July 2008 issue to highlight the racist reluctance of designers and advertisers to use Black models, the question that we'll be pondering is did the designers and advertisers get the message, or will the catwalks continue to be overrun by Eastern European glamazons and little or no models of color despite a historic presidential election here in the States?

There was an event held by the African Fashion Collective last night that starred Grace Jones and a diverse lineup of models from a dozen countries that included Ethiopia, Namibia, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Russia, China and the Netherlands. It also included male supermodel Tyson Beckford, and runway supermodels Alek Wek and Chanel Iman.

The show featured an array of African inspired collections and presidential prints by designers Xuly Bet from Mali, Nkhensani Nkosi who designs the South African label Stoned Cherrie, and Nigerians Fati Asibelua of Momo and Tiffany Amber.

Now after the African Fashion Collective showed them how it's supposed to be done and threw in some flava as well, will the rest of the fashion world's designers follow suit, or will it be the same tired-ass business as usual as Fashion Week continues?

The IFGE-TransEvents Split

For several years the IFGE convention was managed by a group called TransEvents. While IFGE focused on its nuts and bolts educational mission, TransEvents, founded by S. Kristine James and Alison Laing organized and ran the convention.

IFGE is the International Foundation for Gender Education, one of the oldest national gender groups in existence. It publishes Transgender Tapestry magazine and is the creator and presenter of the Trinity and Virgina Prince Awards honoring the transgender community heroes and sheroes.

It has come to my attention thanks to a Phyllabuster I recently received that a split occurred a few months ago between IFGE and TransEvents. As of yet no one knows why, but I'll have to contact my sources inside IFGE to get their side of it and hopefully hear from someone representing TransEvents as well.

The official IFGE convention has already been scheduled for February 2-8 2009 in Washington, D.C.

But that split will lead to an additional transgender convention in 2009. The TransEvents folks are putting on what they are entitling Transgender 2009-The Liberty Conference that will take place in Philadelphia from April 30-May 2.

If I had to pick one, the IFGE event appeals to me on multiple levels. I am a Trinity Award winner who enthusiastically supports the education mission of IFGE, and I occasionally write pieces for publishing in the pages of Transgender Tapestry magazine. Supporting this conference helps IFGE continue that mission.

Being in the Washington DC metro area gives me the opportunity to hit Capital Hill while I'm there to lobby the new 110th Congress on an inclusive ENDA and hare crimes issues. But conversely, since those bills haven't been filed yet, until I get a bill number and actually see how it's worded, it's hard to lobby for a bill you haven't seen yet.

The Philly event would allow me another opportunity to visit the city, hang out with Dionne, engage in more stimulating discussions with her and chat with Alison Laing again.

But judging by the separate conferences for this year, unless some behind the scenes conversations are taking place between the two parties I'm not cognizant of, it looks like the IFGE-TransEvents split may be a permanent one.

The 2008 Louisville TDOR Ceremony

Just arrived back home a little over an hour ago from the sixth annual local observance of the Transgender Day of Remembrance at the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

The mood was a little more somber than usual because one of our own was on the list. Nakhia's cousin Yana and twin sister Nicole were also some of the 40 people in attendance here along with our friends, LPTS students and allies.

After a welcome from LPTS Dean David Hester (no joke, peeps) the service began with remarks from Sienna (the local gender group) president Christina.

There was a prayer read before the reading of the names part of the ceremony commenced. As I silently read the list of names, many of them whose stories I've chronicled in this blog, I felt this feeling of sadness washing over me.

But what I was feeling probably paled in comparison to Yana and Nicole's reactions when their late relative's name was read aloud and the candle was lit for her.

We had a wonderful rendition of We Shall Overcome after the reading of the names performed by pianist Harry Pickens, an inspiring speech from Beth Harrison Prado, prayer and an additional song from Carol Kraemer.

Once the TDOR service concluded, we moved to the Winn Center for a reception and the announcement of the 2008 Butterfly Award winner.

It's a new award that the LPTS Women's Center began presenting last year to the person doing outstanding work in the local transgender community. Beth was surprised and pleased to learn that the award would be going home with her.

Beth in her short acceptance speech for the Butterfly Award hit the nail on the head about the purpose for the TDOR's.

While we mourn the people tragically taken away from us, it's also a celebration of the fact we are openly and truthfully living our lives as transgender people.

The ceremony reminds us that in any struggle in which oppressed minorities fight for their full citizenship rights, people will lose their lives along the way before the majority of them reach the promised land of equality.

We must keep fighting and pushing for that day while never forgetting the ones who paid the ultimate price for being their authentic selves.

The best way to encapsulate what I'm thinking and feeling right now is to close this with some words from Maya Angelou that were on the front of our TDOR program.

You may shoot me with your words
You may cut me with your eyes
You may kill me with your hatefulness
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Sleep well, my fallen brothers and sisters. You have risen to a better place. We who you left behind will continue the fight to make this a better world for us and future generations to live in.

A Day At The St. James Art Show

One of the things that I missed about home was the Westheimer Colony Art Festival which took place in the spring and fall in Montrose.

Back in 2001, I'd only been in Louisville for two weeks, was severely homesick, job hunting and depressed about my situation. Just to get me out of the house and change my routine, since it was the first weekend in October, Dawn and AC took me to Louisville's version of it, the St. James Court Art Show.

I got to wander around the several blocks of art, crafts and food vendors ensconced in this Old Louisville neighborhood and for a few hours forgot about my problems and how much I missed home.

When I attended the 2002 St. James I discovered another element of it. Since upwards of 200,000 people are walking around the area and it happens four weeks before election day, if you're running for political office, it's a must attend event. For several hours you get to press the flesh, meet the constituents, and have your staffers pass around stickers and sign up volunteers. You also get to chat with a wide demographic of peeps from Louisville and the surrounding area.

So since it was a gorgeous, sunny, cloud free 80 degree fall day, I decided to get out of the house and attend the 52nd annual edition of the show since I didn't go last year. I got out of bed, threw on my Obama shirt and jeans and rolled to Old Louisville to check out this year's edition of the St. James Art Show.

It's a prestigious, judged event that over 750 artists travel to Da Ville to participate in and sell their crafts. I didn't have any cash budgeted to buy stuff this year, but did for snacks. I ran into more than a few friends wandering around and the armies of volunteers working on behalf of the local, state and national politicians running for office.

As I ambled through the art show I noted I was getting either positive comments or thumbs up from a wide ethnic cross section of people about my Obama shirt. I also noted that the majority of people supporting the McPalin ticket and wearing Anne Throwup stickers were predominately white.

Anne Northup is trying to get back the congressional seat she held for ten years before she got her butt kicked by John Yarmuth in 2006. We've gotten light-years better representation in Congress since we got her Bush anus kissing butt out of there.

Dawn left the house at noon to attend the St. James and told me after I got back home that both were there in full effect.

I'd missed them by the time I arrived around 2 PM, but I killed two hours taking a leisurely walk around the hundreds of booths,sampling much of the wide variety of food available before I finally had enough and headed back to my Crescent Hill hood.

I am looking forward to next year's edition of the show and hope the weather is just as beautiful as it was today.