In Berkeley, California, two local organizations, Berkeley Copwatch and Coalition for a Safe Berkeley, have for the past two months been calling for the Berkeley Police to release information on the trans woman's death.

From an earlier article I wrote about the situation:

"She made friends easily, she was very charismatic," said Elysse Paige-Moore, of her stepdaughter. "It was typical for her to call here five or six times a day, and talk with us. We cared for her dearly. We have no retirement money because we just did what we could for our child. And she loved us."

On the night of February 12, Berkeley police officers were dispatched to Moore's apartment for a mental health evaluation. Neighbors reported hearing screams, then abrupt silence. By just after midnight on the morning of the 13th, Moore was dead.

It's no secret that cops have earned a bad name when it comes to conduct with trans, disabled, and black people. Moore was all three.

In Minneapolis back in June, according to the Free Cece solidarity group:

Outraged supporters took to the streets, blocking traffic for over an hour in protest of the violent abuses McDonald has faced at the hands of our legal system. Feinberg joined demonstrators in making noise loud enough to be heard within the facility McDonald is currently being held at, and marching through the streets in a show of love and solidarity with CeCe McDonald and with all incarcerated individuals. Feinberg was the only person arrested, and is excited to draw more attention to McDonald's story and to the prevalent racism and transphobia within the criminal system.

Bilerico's Jillian Weiss has an excellent post on Cece's case.

Leslie Tumblr'ed a message to supporters this morning is after the break.

John Aravosis of AMERICAblog, which is also blocked, has been covering the story. As a result of Aravosis's reporting, the Department of Defense was moved to issue a statement saying that the clearly discriminatory practice may be the filtering software's fault. But it's not like the Pentagon hasn't had time to fix the problem. When Mother Jones magazine talked to the gays-in-the-military organization OutServe, the group's spokesperson said that since Don't Ask, Don't Tell was repealed in 2011, its members have told Pentagon commanders repeatedly, to no avail. The DOD only publicly responded after Aravosis started pushing it out to the media.

From Mother Jones:

According to Aravosis, one of the DOD's site-blocking programs was developed by Blue Coat Systems, an American company whose wares have also been used by the repressive regime in Syria. On Blue Coat's website, the LGBT category is defined, not as housing sexually explicit content, but as containing "websites that provide reference materials, news, legal information, anti-bullying and suicide-prevention information, and other resources for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender ("LGBT") people."

(As an aside, what better time than now for a re-visiting of Bilerico contributors Ryan Conrad and Yasmin Nair's Against Equality and its anthology Don't Ask to Fight Their Wars?)

Strangely, the DOD also noted in its public response that military policy gives commanders the authority to optionally "restrict access to personal pages for operational security reasons."

So, Bilerico: national security threat?

For those out of the loop, Cece McDonald is the black, trans woman who is in prison in that state for acting in self-defense against a white, straight, male attacker. For more, see Jillian Weiss's May post "Death & the Maiden", written at the time McDonald took a plea deal.

According to Workers World (where Feinberg's a managing editor):

Despite being in poor health, Feinberg traveled to Minnesota to visit McDonald in jail prior to her sentencing, and again for McDonald's June 4 sentencing. A large "noise" protest took place outside the county jail that night to let McDonald - and her state captors - know she was not alone.

Feinberg was arrested and jailed for three nights without bond for hir participation in the actions outside the jail. Mass pressure on the county attorney resulted in Feinberg's release and the dropping of felony charges.

In Minnesota, a gross misdemeanor can get you up to one year in prison and a $3,000 fine. You can read Leslie's statement about the charges here, and find contact information for the Minneapolis City Attorney's office here.

Whatever the official reason for re-charging Feinberg, you have to assume that the fact that ze wouldn't keep quiet about Cece McDonald's case has something to do with it. Ze'll be in court on September 13, and asks that people who show up wear purple to show their solidarity with McDonald.

This year, the group reads the LGBT police officer's association; censorship-happy media giant Clear Channel; and the US's biggest LGBT film fest, Frameline, which accepts funds from the Israeli consulate as part of that government's campaign to "pinkwash" the apartheid happening in Palestine (likewise, Alice Walker, the bisexual author of The Color Purple, told everyone how she feels about the issue yesterday).

Some entities notorious locally in San Francisco also make the most-hated list: Supervisor Jane Kim, who made headlines around town by giving a big tax break to Twitter (which recently built a new HQ in the SoMa district, bringing more gentrification to central SF), and the city's Sit-Lie policy that further criminalizes poor people.

As summer Pride floats back up traffic on streets across the USA, it's a good reminder that while the world needs any excuse to get wasted on (official sponsor) Bud Light Lime while taking in the performances of straight pop acts of yesteryear, Pride actually started as a day of political action called Christopher Street Liberation Day.

Don't forget it.

Chrishaun "CeCe" McDonald is a young African American transgender woman who is charged with two counts of "second degree murder" after an incident that began when she was violently assaulted because of her gender and race. We say NO to racism and transphobia, and call on HennCo Attorney Mike Freeman to DROP THE CHARGES!

Mainstream attention to the case has been next to non-existent, although recent Cece supporters include the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and Stone Butch Blues author Leslie Feinberg, and Democracy Now! ran a Cece segment last week.

Yesterday, activists brought Ms. McDonald's fight to the May Day protests. In Oakland, people with absolutely no fear of heights restyled a Geico billboard with a pink "Free Cece" triangle; the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP) rallied against transphobia in New York City; Seattle's queer Pink Bloc carried signs; and tags went up in Minneapolis, where a purple-clad pro-Cece contingent showed up to court. Jury selection made for a slow day there, but that's scheduled to end this morning. The purple crew (they chose the color after Judge Daniel Moreno outlawed "Free Cece" shirts in the courtroom) will likely grow today, with SRLP founder Dean Spade scheduled to stop by.

Both Support Cece and Pretty Queer have daily updates from the trial.

Update 11:43 a.m. PST: Cece took a plea deal this morning.

(Top photo via Facebook: FreeCece McDonald; lower photo by Gabriel Foster.)

Today she walks dogs for a living and has a family, but the movie focuses on the Hole years, which turned dark due to addiction and music-industry sexism. Patty came out publicly as lesbian in a 1995 issue of Rolling Stone.

The interview covers life with Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love, reality TV, and the latest, mostly-loathed incarnation of Hole, which is Courtney plus "a bunch of dudes."

The movie premieres in San Francisco this Friday. Trailer after the jump.

"Without the AIDS epidemic," said the New York Times' religion columnist in 2008, Hay's empire "wouldn't exist." (Today there are over 35 million copies of Hays' book You Can Heal Your Life in print. Her website also offers astrology calendars, iPhone apps, and audio CDs about feng shui.) But it's clear that Hay and many followers truly believed that her methods were something of an alternative to political change and medical innovation.

Through paintings depicting the Hayrides, sculpture (including body casts of queer people who lived through the first-wave AIDS crisis), and clothing (one particularly striking piece: T-shirts proclaiming "PEOPLE HAVE AIDS."), Jason Fritz Michael and Matt Momchilov look at "the limitations and failures of self-help, fashion, art, and other media," which in the 1980s tended to conflate queerness with illness and stood in for "real advocacy, activism and transformation."

Evan and I talked recently about moviemaking, teen angst, and size obsession.

Are these characters based on real-life people?

Evan: Not at all, but it is based on a story from my teenage years. A group of friends were throwing around a basketball one night, and the subject of measuring came up. We were divided on the topic - some had measured, some hadn't measured, some didn't see a need. Off to the side, I heard one reply, meekly, "Well, I measured with a comb once." It really puzzled me. There's not a standard comb size or anything, so it left a lot to the imagination. I wasn't out to myself or my friends at that time, but I began having daydreams of looking for this comb at this friend's house. I never did find it. But the story just grew out of that and the idea of how certain objects can be infused with misplaced eroticism.

One 16-year old youth was kicked out of his northern Georgia home by his own mom.

"When all of his couch surfing opportunities had expired, he went to local police to ask for help. They called his mother to come pick him up, to which she replied that she did not want 'that fag' in her house. The police explained that she was legally responsible and could be arrested if she didn't pick the kid up. She came and got the youth, locked him in an unfinished basement for 24 hours with no bathroom and a Pop-Tart for food. He found us through the internet and contacted us at 4 a.m."

Every kid's story is different, but they all share one thing in common: the experience of oppression based on their gender and/or sexuality. Rick (a.k.a. Sister Rapture Divine Cox) explained the organization's mission, and how the rest of us can help.

Interview after the break.

Reina Gossett described trans revolutionaries Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson's struggles in the 1960s and '70s with STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries). The group's first occupation happened at NYU's Weinstein Hall, when the school refused to allow two queer dance parties and called in the NYPD to get rid of protesters. Many people left when the cops arrived. Later, STAR released an impassioned statement: "All that we fought for at Weinstein Hall was lost when we left upon the request of the pigs, you people run if you want to, but we're tired of running. We intend to fight for our rights until we get them."

Rivera also helped organize New York's first Gay Pride, then called the Christopher Street Liberation Parade. The parade ended at a women's prison in protest of the mass incarceration of queer and trans people - a fact lost on most people who attend today's corporate Pride celebrations.

We Were Here revolves around the stories of five people who lived in San Francisco during the first-wave AIDS epidemic. For them and many other people, few friends from that time are alive today. In addition to being a total tear-jerker, it's also an anger-inducer, because it's a reminder that if the crisis had happened to people with a little more political pull, life-sustaining care would have come sooner. Instead, almost an entire population died out, pushing the historically queer Castro neighborhood of SF to become what it is today: a place you go to buy Diesel jeans and sip lemongrass-tinis.

On the upside, you hear about the way HIV/AIDS brought previously very divided gays and lesbians together, plus you learn about the San Francisco health care model. It's still the only big city in the United States that provides free health care to locals.

We Were Here is playing in Palm Springs, New York, San Francisco and Toronto right now, with more screenings across the United States coming up soon.

A video from the film is after the jump.

Why do you believe there are more LGBT people in prison, per capita, than heterosexual people?

Smith: Queer people, women-identified people, people of color, poor people, and immigrants are the majority of people who are in prison. We are all in prison because we are the people who are most policed, who in being kept poor, jobless, homeless, and imprisoned ensure the ruling of everyone else and the power of those in control. We are in prison because the LGBT movement is more interested in who can get married, not who is allowed to work, or what kind of work we are allowed to do. We are in prison because we are Other, and Other is not allowed participation, nor are we allowed to challenge the tenets of what participation forces us to do -- marriage, the military, policing each other, playing by the rules of the state.

Drawing on the murders of queer people such as Rashawn Brazell and Scotty Joe Weaver, which were barely covered by the mainstream media - or any media, for that matter - Stanley speaks about how the law can help to further reproduce an environment in which violence toward queers is an everyday occurrence; the idea of "overkill" as a way people express hatred beyond what plain, old killing can accomplish; what constitutes "life" when life, as in Scotty Joe Weaver's case, can be taken away so shockingly by a best friend - and yet not shock the world into caring the way it cared for, say, Caylee Anthony; and the effect of class differences on much of this.

Available now for summer beach reading, there's Joey Mogul, Andrea Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock's Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States; Dean Spade's Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law will follow in September.

Out August 15 is Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex, to which Bilerico's own Yasmin Nair is a contributor. She and activist Ralowe T. Ampu spoke with one of the book's editors, Eric A. Stanley, about the historical and ongoing criminalization of queer bodies. I recommend reading the entire interview, but for those accustomed to reading in blurb format, here are a few highlights: