PhillySound: new poetry

Brandon Holmquest sent me this link (to an article & video) of a Memphis transsexual named Duanna Johnson being SEVERELY BEATEN AND MACED by a police officer while in custody at the station. It's OUTRAGEOUS! Click HERE

All over our country transsexuals are treated like this, even in Philadelphia where the MURDER of Erika Keels STILL TO THIS DAY remains on the record as an accident! Erika (let us NEVER EVER FORGET) had just celebrated her 21st birthday when she was forcefully ejected from the car on North Broad Street and run over four times. The medical examiner's report confirms witness statements that in fact she was run over four times, yet the police allowed her murderer Rolland Buttons to go free. Buttons is STILL free, and when many of us gathered to protest, the chief organizers of the protest were literally run out of town.

"What would kari edwards think?" I think when watching this video of Duanna Johnson's beating? kari's blog was a BLOODBATH of information just like this. No one culled the brutality against transsexuals in such a way, and in doing so kari let us see JUST HOW BLOOD THIRSTY the world is to harm this inimitable and invaluable part of our human community. Click HERE to see kari's blog. And on the sidebar are her other two blogs you'll want to check out as well.

I'm so SICK from watching this video. And it makes me think of kari, and how much I miss her. And makes me think of Poodles, Patches, Lily, and SO MANY OTHERS who died of AIDS, suicide, and murder since I moved to Philadelphia in 1986. My good friend Marie Fontini and I went to drag show memorials for drag queens who were shot and killed by skinheads at the corner of 12th & Spruce, and none of these murders were ever solved.

When I was a kid fresh on the scene here in Philly, it was the drag queens living in my building who took me under their wing, gave me advice, showed me how to have your eyes all around you when walking the streets. They were these older, wise goddesses, elegant, and like no one I had ever met, and most of them are now gone because they didn't see the bullets coming, or, or whatever else. But I feel a stronger, more beautiful person for having known them.

It's sad, and shakes me up when I realize how sanctioned such brutality appears to be!

CAConrad