An Appeal To LGBT/Queers of Conscience.

An Appeal to LBGT/Queers of Conscience from Furbirdsqueerly.

Come out and join this picket and informational gathering.

DROP ALL CHARGES!!

FREE BRADLEY MANNING.

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Hartford Federal Building, 450 Main Street, Hartford Ct.

4:00-5:30

>>>>After the picket join us at The Hartford Public Library

Media room 2nd Floor, 500 Main Street, Hartford Ct.

Preview a film by Queers Without Borders and join our open discussion.

We count Bradley Manning in a long line of our queer revolutionary heroes. From the early dances of the Mattachine expressing opposition to the laws of the church and state in European society, to Robin Hood and his merry men. To trans man Louise Michelle at the Paris Commune to the October Revolution of 1917. On to Magnus Hirchfeld, Emma Goldman, Harry Hay, Compton’s Cafeteria and to Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera at the Stonewall Inn and to the many freedom fighters thereafter. Queer folks have a long history of standing up against any societies beating stick, breaking the stick and freeing themselves and many others in the process.

Our people when faced with injustice have always stood up and fought back. We have always spoken truth to power. More times than not those who have spoken the truth have been jailed while the criminals have run free. It is time that we go forth, free all political prisoners, catch the real criminals and jail them.

Bradley Manning a gay man spoke truth to power and is in jail. We are proud to embrace Bradley Manning and join with others in the LGBT/Queer communities around the globe that call out, DROP ALL CHARGES!!! FREE BRADLEY MANNING NOW! Manning’s only “crime” was to pull the knowledge of the U.S. government’s criminal actions out of the closet. For that, Manning is a hero for the cause of liberation from oppression, for queer people and for all people. This is the true legacy of PRIDE. This is the true soul of our movement.

We stand up and out for the army whistler blower who has risked everything to give the public real facts about our government’s war in the Middle east and Foreign policy worldwide. We will not turn our backs on Bradley Manning just because it doesn’t play well with the Corporate Masters or with some in the LGBT Mainstream. We do not turn our backs on true revolutionary hero’s.

We stand in solidarity with others around the globe that live in fear of violence and oppression simply for being born into a particular group. We as a people know that violence, we know that fear.

Celebrate International Workers Day! A fundraiser for People’s World.

Sniffing money, money, money, art art art.

Charming the rich and pleasing the crowds, bring in that money boys.

If you got an art museum you know that you had better bring in the money or your sunk. You had better spend a lot of time smooching with the wealthy who love to be pampered and listened too, love to go out to dinner and love to tell other rich friends that they were out with you the director of the museum. But like all money given these rich folks want something in return. Maybe they give some bucks to host an exhibition then put their names up in lights. If they give some big bucks you can bet they want a gallery named after them. If they give you even bigger bucks then many a whole wing of the museum and if they give big, big big bucks or lots and lots of art then we don’t give a blast name the fucking museum after us. That’s part of the deal, raw or not. We don’t care how many years it was called “A” name it ”B” after me. It’s nice many people say that the rich love to give away their money to the arts and at least art isn’t killing people so they are a much need commodity. They love art and art loves them. We need the rich to help put on shows, pay the staff, make sure there is heat and lights, and a host of other things that the rich do for us. God Save The Rich! We Love Them and They Love Us! (see notes (1) These rich folks do get a lot in return. The institutions that they support get lots of money from various foundations which they most likely have their fingers mucking around in too. Money speaks for money, the devil for his own, as the song There is power in a union tells us.

During the occupy movement folks from this blog and our comrades belonged to the Queer Caucus. We wrote at that time a manifesto of sorts called Queer Eye for Occupy. In this written statement were these lines:

“We are fully aware that within 2 city blocks of Occupy Hartford people are living in severe poverty. We must fight to end the lording over of our city by The Hartford Insurance Company, Aetna, UTC, Bank of America just to name a few; and the silent acquiescence of the religious establishment. All the while the lines outside homeless shelters and food distribution sites grow longer and longer and food assistance is of a limited duration. Beds at shelters in Hartford run out quickly forcing people to sleep on the streets and further assaulting the dignity of people in need; while the 1% sleep soundly in their gated suburban fortresses.

Corporate giving is selectively doled out to theaters and museums whose primary beneficiaries are the white middle class employees of these corporations. This giving does nothing to create jobs in the neighborhoods surrounding downtown. This lack of jobs creates conditions in which many minority youth turn to selling drugs because they see no other options to survive.  Youth convicted of nonviolent drug offenses then become part of the school to suburban prison pipeline. Fathers and sons are taken from their families creating additional stress on minority communities. The criminal injustice system incarcerates minorities for petty crimes while ignoring the real criminals — bankers who sold families unaffordable mortgages and then promptly foreclosed on their homes and corporate CEO’s who see Hartford as nothing more than a cultural playground to feed their malevolent egos.” (2)

Who the fuck does this person and HRC think that they are!!!?

Bradley Manning and Guantanamo Prison

In today from the Gay Liberation Network of Chicago a film produced during a demonstration in Chicago on the 11th anniversary of Guantanamo Bay Prison  This protest took place on January 11,2013.

Published on Jan 13, 2013

Brent Holman-Gomez of the Gay Liberation Network discusses the valuable human rights contribution that Bradley Manning made when he allegedly shared U.S. gov’t documents with wikileaks that showed that the United States was torturing people at its Guantanamo Bay Prison. Comments made in Chicago at a protest on the 11th anniversary of the Guantanamo Bay Prison, January 11, 2013.

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To Protect the Planet and Meet People’s needs, Get profits out of the energy insdustry!

To protect the planet and meet people’s needs, get profits
out of the energy industry

By Stephen Durham, write-in candidate for U.S. president

As Hurricane Sandy bears down on the East Coast and my home state of New York, after leaving a trail of devastation and death in Haiti and the Caribbean, bloggers are asking, “Will this finally force Obama and Romney to talk about climate change?”
While no specific hurricane can be blamed on global warming, the general spike in violent weather is one way that the headlong consumption of fossil fuels ravages the environment. Global warming was a campaign issue for Obama in 2008, when his purported vision of hope and change included a bold new future powered by renewable energy sources.

But that was then and this is now. The loyalty of both candidates to the monster fossil fuel corporations is clear. Not a peep was said about climate change during the televised debates, and nothing will be said now.
Mitt Romney’s energy agenda is at least straightforward. Cancel any regulations that interfere with anything the industry wants to do in its pursuit of profits. Stick to the plan of guaranteeing these profits with $113 billion in federal subsidies for oil, gas, and coal over the next decade. Rationalize all this with the drumbeat of how desperately the U.S. needs energy independence in the interest of its “national security.”

Obama hears the beat of the same nationalistic drummer. He now has an energy policy widely dubbed “all of the above.” It embraces solar, wind, and other renewables; biofuels; the chimeras of “clean” coal and “safe” nuclear; and new drilling for oil (domestic oil production reached a 17-year high this month). After Obama raised hopes that he would nix the dangerous Keystone XL pipeline bringing tar sands oil from Canada to Texas refineries, his administration went ahead and began handing out permits to bulldoze a path for the pipeline’s southern portion.

For our young queer and anarchist revolutionaries

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By punkpink (with thoughts from Herbert Marcuse, Ursula Meyer and writers of AFQOTP.)

Revolution, like life, is an art, and it is up to each of us to live it like an artist. Here’s to all our young sisters and brothers who fight as we say the good fight, each taking the turn that presents itself. No action is better or worse than the next in the ongoing process. To be an artist practicing the art of changing the world, by changing life. In the streets, in the market place, in the cities and towns, on the road, in the department store, in the fields where honest work is not paid with honest wages, in our homes and our groups we express our revolutionary thinking, our ways of living, our build a new day.

We can not except the old way of thinking as we are not people of the past.  Our revolution strikes at the roots of capitalism as we become the liberating force in the struggle for freedom. Nothing in our actions can be said to be petty, childish, stupid, or juvenile. No one should call these actions as such.  This blog, our writers and contributors stand in full support of our young queers and anarchists fighting for liberation not assimilation. Fighting the fight that takes us to many places, many thoughts, and pushes us to a new understanding. To our sisters we dedicate this piece. To our brother we tip our hat and take a bow. To our queer anarchist young fighting kids we say thank you from these old coots, punkpink, richard, emma furbird, cassey role and many others we are sure. To the powers that be we say you do not trouble us we are too old with too many years of fighting behind us to be alarmed. Even if you fuck us over, hack our e-mail accounts and blogs, virus our computers, infiltrate our groups, tap our lines, arrest us for trumped up illegal activity, beat our heads with clubs, pepper spray our face and drag us to jail, you will never win.

to all of those who try to make our life hell

Beware the shadows, beware the movement of darkness, beware the clammy fog, the spinning moon, the dropping sun. We are one in this fight and one we shall be forever.

We would like to post Allen Ginsberg reading his poem America. For fun, for thinking, for all.

Oh yes as Ginsberg says, There is going to be trouble.

REJECT PRESIDENT 1%

In Today from the Gay Liberation Network of Chicago.

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 A hot wind is blowing through Florida this week. 

…and we’re not talking about Tropical Storm Isaac.

While the Republicans use their convention to rant about “family values” and using the American military to dominate other peoples of the world, people are out in the streets demonstrating for civil rights and against war. They are demonstrating against the Republicans and their candidates, Romney and Ryan, for their support of the 1% and their pro-war, pro-Wall Street policies.  The demonstrators are spot on.

But on September 3-5, when the Democrats meet for their convention in Charlotte, NC, the main left-of-center demonstration will have a very different tone.  The North Carolina demonstrators have chosen to focus on what they call “Wall Street South” – going out of their way to directly confront the Barack Obama and the Democratic National Convention.

After 3-1/2 years of the Obama administration, with its escalated wars, bank bail-outs, attacks on civil liberties and nationally coordinated attacks on the Occupy Movement, this is a disgusting abrogation of political responsibility.

The Gay Liberation Network is therefore part of those calling upon all those in the Chicago area and beyond who want to confront the sitting pro-war, pro-1% President and his party, to participate in an open organizing meeting to put together action(s) against the Obama National Campaign Headquarters in Chicago during the Democrats’ national convention.

Here is what and why.

At the start of the Democratic National Convention…

 Reject President 1% 

- End Obama’s wars on the world’s 99% -

While President Obama throws himself a big commercial during the DNC in North Carolina, we will be presenting a Bill of Grievances against his administration at the Obama National Campaign Headquarters in Chicago.

ABROAD
This President has escalated most of George W. Bush’s wars — Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, a new American military force on the African continent. He has continued to arm Israel while it robs even more Palestinian lands.

He has threatened, and carried out, new illegal wars on other nations.  He violated the War Powers Act to launch a sustained war on Libya.  He looks the other way while the brutal Saudi Arabian dictatorship foments civil war in Syria.  He refuses to rule out war, including use of nuclear weapons, against Iran.

He supports dictators and military coups against elected governments abroad.  He recognized and arms the military coup governments in Honduras and the Maldives, and the “constitutional” coup in Paraguay.  He arms the Saudi Arabian monarchy as it brutality suppresses its own people and invades Bahrain to support that dictatorship’s crushing of its pro-democracy movement.

He sends troops to occupy countries that don’t want them there.  U.S. troops occupy 130 countries, violating the wishes of the vast majority of most nations they occupy.  Obama’s drone attacks far exceed those of George W. Bush.  His “enemies list” of people to kill abroad and assassinations of them represents an escalation on Bush’s “extraordinary renditions” of people to torture chambers run by U.S. secret forces and U.S.-allied dictators.

He neglects the urgent needs of the 99% at home and abroad while spending a record amount on the military.  He enthusiastically supports the world’s largest-ever military alliance, NATO, while spending 67% of the federal budget on current and past wars. He spends as much on the U.S. military as the rest of the world combined, while half the world’s people live on less than $2 a day.

Queer Interrupted.

You gotta check out the article Queer Interrupted. It is indeed one of the better essays that we have read in a long time. Thanks to Deric for sending the article our way.

Here is the opening:

In February, the San Francisco Police Department released their contribution to the It Gets Better phenomenon.Watch it here. In it, SFPD officers tell their life stories, cry, celebrate their jobs, and offer words of encouragement to queer youth. Each officer speaks of the painful silence of closeted life, suicidal tendencies overcome, the excitement of coming out, and final deliverance into a rewarding career as a police officer. The officers each assure us that it gets better, if we are only patient enough. Then they urge queer youth to call on them for help, insisting that until it gets better, SFPD will be there. Having survived the daily misery of growing up a fag in a conservative Midwestern farm town, I get sick watching these police officers attempt to identify with the pains of queer youth. Even revisiting the video, I’m confronted by an enemy who offers sympathy and solidarity to people who’ve struggled against police in similar ways.

The ending reads like this:

Queerness is the name of our combat with policing in the here-and-now, but also of what binds us to a tradition of combat and interruption. Through this dialectic between queerness and policing we can then begin to materially understand exactly what the half-critique of assimilation grasps at. Assimilation is not a departure from the liberating progression of history, it’s the reassertion of the police order which progressive teleology guarantees. Assimilation is the constant return to the police. It is the closure of these moments of queer interruption. If this is our standard of queerness, those assimilated subjects must be understood as not queer at all, because they are fully subsumed within the function of the police. This is the context which exposes It Gets Better as utterly absurd: The police who solicit our patience to wait for it to get better are structurally bound to the police who ensure that it never will.

read the rest HERE.  http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/queer-interrupted/

Queering Anti-Imperialism: Stories of Queer Resistance Against Empire

This in today from comrade Saffo.

Call For Proposals: Queering Anti-Imperialism: Stories of Queer Resistance Against Empire

PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY

Call For Proposals:
Queering Anti-Imperialism: Stories of Queer Resistance Against Empire

Queers have always been involved in anti-imperialist/ anti-colonial struggles— including both queer folks who have endured empire/ colonialism themselves as well as queer folks involved in solidarity campaigns. However, the stories of queers involved in combatting empire are often left untold. This both results in, and is fueled by, the false notion that anti-imperialism and queer liberation are “separate issues.” The result is that the complex ways in which gender and sexuality are intertwined with empire, militarism, and settler colonialism, often get ignored. This anthology, Queering Anti-Imperialism, will be dedicated to telling the stories of queer resistance against imperialism and colonialism, as well as queering the ways in which we think about empire.

The terms “empire” and “imperialism” refer to many different kinds of violent practices. We welcome proposals about queer people involved in campaigns against any of these kinds of practices. These practices can include, but are not limited to: settler colonialism, non-settler colonialism, war and militarism, US/ European cultural hegemony, globalization and neoliberalism, economic sanctions, gentrification, military occupation, US “aid” to repressive regimes, international “development” work, incursion on and destruction of communities by invasive NGOs as well as academic researchers and other “well-intentioned” outsiders, water and land privatization, resource extraction, ecological destruction, cultural assimilation, and “population control.”