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Chicago Police Bash Cornell Queers, May 30th |
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Written by Aly T. Blum
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Friday, 19 June 2009 |
Chicago Police Attack Queers at Bash Back! written by Max Montana
Chicago Police attempt to re-enact Stonewall by rioting against queers. On Saturday night, May 30th, a group of approximately 100 queers disembarked the red line train at the Belmont stop into Chicago's Boystown area. Intending to march around a bit, the crowd found themselves too large to fit on the sidewalk (especially in an area where bars are frequent and patrons and tables spill out the front doors). Most of the crowd moved into the street, walking around cars and allowing cars to pass in the middle.
A few blocks down, the crowd took a left turn, and the police showed up from behind. In attempting to get their cars around the crowd, they repeatedly ran into people's legs, in some cases knocking the victim onto the hood of the car, then slamming on their brakes to cause the person to fall to the ground.
During this time a few queers at the back of the crowd moved one newspaper box and one trash can (without spilling the trash) into the road in front of cop cars. A few other queers, yelling things like "no!" and "this is nonviolent!" moved the items back to the sidewalk (see sibling article, "What Happened at BashBack?" for more details on this incident).
[ Note: In my opinion this was fucked up and endangered people in the street by providing a clearer path for the cops to attack and target people from behind, which is what happened. Discomfort with certain tactics is totally okay, but in these situations please disengage and direct your energies to something you feel more comfortable with, separate from the other action!!! Damn. ]
As a few cop cars got to the front of the crowd. The first car in the line stopped and the cop jumped out and ran at the crowd, which parted down a residential side street. The cop stopped, shook his baton at the crowd, then went back to his car. The first few cars followed the crowd onto the side street. More cops parked and began running into the crowd, grabbing queers seemingly at random (although they did catch a high percentage of non-gender-conforming folks) and proceeding to beat them with batons and extendable asps. At this time, there was a scream from the middle of the crowd, and then people shouting, "he just ran her foot over!" The patient was helped out of the fray and a medic took over her evacuation.
During this time, at least 8 cops were involved in the beating of at least 10 queers in the crowd. |
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LGBT Students Demand Voice |
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Written by Aly T. Blum
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Sunday, 22 February 2009 |
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Cornell’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer/Questioning community has gone without a permanent director or an office manager of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Questioning Resource Center (LGBTQ RC) since the summer, and without an assistant dean of Students/Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer/Questioning Outreach (LGBTQ) for a year and a half. “As a community, our members are disproportionately more likely to be homeless, lack family support at home (both financial and emotional), and are disproportionately more likely to abuse substances and be prone to suicide than non-LGBT peers … These facts are not meant to pathologize or degrade our community — but they are meant to make the obvious point that we need administrative support,” Ashley McGovern ’09, Courtney Finerty ’09, Aly Blum ’09, Olivia Tai ’10 and Jen Inloes ’09, LGBT organization student leaders, stated in a joint statement. |
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 22 February 2009 )
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All LGBTQ Cornell Students: CALL TO ACTION |
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Written by Aly T. Blum
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Saturday, 07 February 2009 |
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ATTENTION: ALL LGBTQ CORNELL STUDENTS!
PLEASE READ: This is a Call to ACTION-- LGBT Student Resources are at stake.
Three years ago LGBT Students had the following staff resources...
- A permanent, full time Director of the LGBT Resource Center
- A second permanent full time staff member, Assistant to the Director
- A third, permanent staff member- Asst. Dean to LGBT Students; who advised Haven- along with the sponsored groups that fall within Haven- CU Gay Straight Alliance, LBQ, Zap!, OUTReach, Mosaic, Ga'avah, and FaQ (lgbtqcornell.blogspot.com), each of which bring social and educational programming and outreach to the community with the help of the Asst. Dean
Today LGBT Students have the following administrative resources...
- ONE Temporary staff member (hired in the Fall)-- an Interim Director for the LGBTRC who has had to take on the task of minimally advising student groups because of an obvious inability to take on three jobs as one person.
*The Permanent Director position was not/has not been posted, even before the University wide hiring freeze
*The full time LGBTRC Asst. position was not/has not been posted, even before the University hiring freeze
*After over a year and a half of meetings with the Dean of Students and many other administrators/staff, the Assistant Dean position for LGBT Students, despite strenuous and largely behind the scenes efforts by myself and other student leaders, has not been filled. The position was not even posted until a year after the former Asst. Dean left. Attempting to push the process along at a faster pace, for the sake of our community, has been an incredibly frustrating process, which at many points has been disempowering for the students involved. We have been told to wait. We have been told to be patient. And we have been told, at some points, that we do not know what is best for our community... that administrators, not us, are more capable of understanding our position within the University and what benefits us as a community.
THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE.
(read on!) |
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 07 February 2009 )
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Discrimination enshrined in California, Arizona and Florida constitutions |
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Written by Administrator
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Friday, 07 November 2008 |
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On Tuesday, as the United States broke one barrior by electing the first African-American president of the United States, voters in California, Arizona and Florida chose to amend their constitutions to institute discrimination against gays and lesbians in . While all hope is not lost and we will eventually get the equality we deserve, that goal has without question been pushed just a little further back. "Struggles over civil rights never follow a straight trajectory, and the ugly outcome of these ballot fights should not obscure the building momentum for full equality for gay people, including acceptance of marriage between gay men and women. But the votes remind us of how much remains to be done before this bigotry is finally erased."
Equality's Winding Path, New York Times More on the challenges to Proposition 8 . |
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