Chris Christie's press conference

Right now, I'm watching New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's press conference regarding the George Washington bridge fiasco. He is pissed alright. But he is confronting this head-on and showing his anger, for good or ill, and Obama might take some lessons from him. Most assuredly, he is not letting the whole scandal fester and get uglier and uglier by the hour.

Obama habitually waits for things to boil over and then frantically tries to cover up the saucepan after the whole stove is already a huge mess.

Christie is talking talking talking... how long is this press conference going to go on?

Larry McShane and Leslie Larson report in the New York Daily News:

An unusually contrite Gov. Christie emerged Thursday to offer an apology for the George Washington Bridge traffic scandal — and to fire a top aide, insisting he had no knowledge of her actions and was "blindsided" by the damning emails publicized Wednesday.

“I come out here today to apologize to the people of New Jersey,” said Christie. “I apologize to the people of Fort Lee. I am embarrassed and humiliated by the conduct of some of the people on my team.”

The governor then announced the immediate dismissal of Bridget Anne Kelly, the top aide linked directly to the bridge lane closures she boasted were retaliation against Fort Lee, N.J., Mayor Mark Sokolich, who failed to endorse the GOP incumbent last year in his re-election campaign.

“I terminated her employment because she lied to me,” Christie said bluntly.

Christie had since September insisted his staff was in no way involved in the traffic tie-ups and ridiculed questions about the “Bridgegate” scandal.

A media horde descended on the Statehouse in Trenton for Christie’s first public appearance since the scandal was linked to his administration.

The first reporters and camera crews arrived at 7 a.m., and the room was soon packed to capacity.

Just moments before the press briefing was slated the start at 11 a.m., sources told the New York Times the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, a post previously filled by Christie, will open an inquiry into the controversial lane closures.

RELATED: CHRISTIE’S WATERLOO

Kelly and a long-time Christie pal appointed by the governor to the Port Authority were caught in an Aug. 13 email exchange planning the roadway retribution against the mayor. “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” read the email from Bridget Anne Kelly. “Got it,” responded David Wildstein, who went to high school with the governor — and was appointed by Christie to a $150,000-a-year position as Port Authority director of interstate capital projects.

The resulting shutdown of two traffic lanes from Fort Lee to the George Washington Bridge caused massive traffic tie-ups for four days in the small northern New Jersey town.

The gridlock also slowed emergency response times for local ambulances, including one responding to a Sept. 9 call for an unconscious 91-year-old woman — who later died.

Christie, speaking in a calm and direct fashion in his Thursday confessional, said Kelly had lied when directly confronted about the incident.

Kelly “betrayed my trust,” he said. “I would never have come out here four or five weeks ago and made a joke about these lane closures if I ever had an inkling that anyone on my staff would be so stupid to be involved and so deceitful.”

Christie, while insisting he was blindsided by the emails, said he took the blame for the whole incident: “Ultimately I am responsible for what happens under my watch, for good and for bad.”

RELATED: 'WORST EXAMPLE OF PETTY POLITICAL VENDETTA': SOKOLICH ON CHRISTIE GW BRIDGE CLOSINGS

He also promised a Thursday visit to Fort Lee to deliver a personal apology. Christie — who also announced that he told his former campaign manager, Bill Stepien, to withdraw his nomination as state GOP chairman — insisted he played no role in the shutdown. “I had no knowledge and involvement in this issue, in its planning and its execution,” the governor said at the end of his 20-minute statement. “And I am stunned at the abject stupidity that was shown here. ... This was handled in a callous way.”

Christie, known for his take-no-prisoners political style, also delivered a bit of self-defense.

“I am not a bully,” insisted Christie.

Christie, taking questions from reporters, said he accepted at face value the statements made by his staff and his appointee at the Port Authority.

“I was told it was a traffic study,” he said. “And there was no evidence to the contrary until yesterday.”

Christie acknowledged there was no denying the nefarious forces that caused four days of gridlock at the world’s busiest bridge.

RELATED: PRESIDENT CHRISTIE? CROSSING THAT BRIDGE

Wildstein and a second Christie-appointee to the Port Authority have already resigned over the punitive lane closings — bogusly billed in a cover-up as “a traffic study.”

“It’s clear now that in the minds of some people there were political overtones of political side deals in this,” he said.

Sokolich, the target of the political payback, was never even “on his radar” during last year’s gubernatorial campaign. “Until I saw his picture last night on television, I couldn't have picked him out of a lineup,” the governor said. Christie’s choice as P.A. chairman, David Samson, was also implicated in one of the emails as helping to “retaliate” when the lanes were finally reopened. Samson issued a statement denying any knowledge of the nasty plan until it was over. The Port Authority, along with the New Jersey Legislature, is probing the act of revenge.

New Jersey’s Democrats have lambasted the bully-boy governor, charging that Christie was either lying or hiring people who lied to him. U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J), the former mayor of Newark, called the claims against Christie "deeply troubling."

He's still talking, and I've had two cups of coffee already.

I think this will be going on for awhile. The press conference AND the scandal itself.

Hear that sound? Its the sound of Governor Christie's presidential hopes crashing to the ground.

~*~

Biographical aside: As I briefly mentioned on the air when we covered this story yesterday on the radio show -- back in 1978, I was unceremoniously and rudely thrown off the George Washington bridge (no, not bodily!). We were hitchhiking at the bridge-entrance when cops told us to cease and desist, or else. My friend and I had to go all the way back to the bus depot and try to hustle a ride across.

"No hitchhiking in Joisey neithahh!" the New York City cop warned us.

Eventually, some of Tony Soprano's friends (jokey joke) offered us a ride across. They were very nice, but a bit scary to a Midwestern kid like me. Nonetheless, their East Coast-authenticity (and their very nice vehicle!) was exciting to me.

Seriously, every time I saw the beginning of the Sopranos, I thought about my ride across the bridge into Joisey, onto the NJ Turnpike... it was so similar; the sunshine, the scenery, and even the cigar. :)

Sherry Darling

This is what we used to call a "rave-up"--after much investigation, I still can't find out where it was recorded, but it sounds like it was performed live in some South Jersey saloon. The song was originally recorded for "Darkness on the Edge of Town"--but ended up on the subsequent album "The River" instead. The real puzzle is why someone didn't release it as a single and make trillions of dollars.

I challenge you to name the last rock song you heard in which a guy complains that he has to take his girlfriend's mom to the unemployment office and she's talking too much. Ahhh, working class Bruce, that is one reason we loved him.

Once upon a time, I played this tune every single day before I went to work ... it was as good as coffee. :)


Sherry Darling - Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

Stay safe!

Wishing all my friends up north, my very best!

Do what they tellya to do, okay? (I know, its hard to take advice from the likes of Chris Christie, but on this one occasion, listen to him!) There is actually snow in the North Carolina mountains before Halloween! That may be a first!

Love ya and stay safe.




~*~

Still at Sea, Storm Drenches East Coast (New York Times)

Hurricane Sandy grounds thousands of flights worldwide (CNN)

Hurricane Sandy speeds towards landfall (CBS News)

Damage from Hurricane Sandy could be catastrophic (USA Today)

Tracking hurricane Sandy: As storm 'zigs', it's also changing dramatically (Christian Science Monitor)

Greetings from Kudzu Nation

At left: Kudzu colonizes riverside on the Swamp Rabbit Trail.


My profuse apologies for the unannounced blog break. At first, it was a real live recreational break, complete with hiking my favorite section of our beloved Swamp Rabbit Trail ... and then our electricity went FIZZLE... and so did we.

Nightmarish!

After the storm this week, we were without electricity for a whole day. (Some areas got it much worse, too.) If you think that's easy in South Carolina summer heat, think again. We were careful to stay STILL and QUIET ... and I soon figured out the reason for the well-worn stereotype of southerners acting/talking S-L-O-W is likely because they were simply too hot to move for hundreds of years.

Made sick from heat, I barely got the laundry done. Thankfully, I think we've recovered now. (It took me a very nice birthday party to completely recover, but I have!)

Mr Daisy forced me to go see X-MEN FIRST CLASS, which wasn't half-bad. The black man sitting next to me buried his face in his hands when Darwin bought it early. Then he placed his head on the shoulder of the woman next to him, as if to weep. Yeah, the sole black man gets knocked off early, way before the bang-up finale, in which the X-Men stop the Cuban Missile Crisis! (and all this time you thought it was Bobby Kennedy!) I like to think I would have noticed this without my movie-neighbor's reaction, but it is possible I wouldn't have, so my hat is off to him for bringing it to my attention.

Why do they do that? The old Star Trek TV-series used to do that, too... if there was a black guy in the landing party, you could expect the aliens to eat his innards first!

Left: Kudzu eats tree.


Delinquent in blogging, at least I've been collecting some pretty good links, so have at it:

:: Possibly, the blog post title of the year: Republican Senator Says “Fuck It”, Legalize Gay Marriage (Jezebel)

:: Asshole New Jersey governor Christie declares to voters that it's "none of your business" if he sends his kids to private school while enthusiastically gutting public schools... and if you thought otherwise, New Jersey folks, since YOU are paying his salary, well, he sets you straight in no uncertain terms. ((((fumes))))

:: My Ex-Gay Friend (The New York Times) Fascinating article about queer-theory junkie who turns into a fundie. This is the money quote:

It all sounded very much like the Michael I knew at XY, a young man who was fascinated by queer theory — namely, the idea that sexual and gender identities are culturally constructed rather than biologically fixed — and who dreamed of a world without labels like “straight” and “gay,” which he deemed restrictive and designed to “segment and persecute,” as he argued in a 1998 issue of XY. Though he conceded back then that it was important “to stay unified under a ‘Gay’ political umbrella” until equality for gays and lesbians had been achieved, Michael preferred to label himself queer.

As Ben and I reminisced, I couldn’t help wondering if Michael’s new philosophy might, in a strange way, be a logical extension of what he believed back then — that “gay” is a limiting category and that sexual identities can change. Ben nodded. “A radical queer activist and a fundamentalist Christian aren’t always as different as they might seem,” he said, adding that they’re ideologues who can railroad over nuance and claim a monopoly on the truth.

:: I have repeatedly attempted to blog about the whole Boeing fiasco in South Carolina, but every time I start a post, the situation just mushrooms further. I think I have finally found an article that explains it succinctly: 'Boeing retaliated' (Charleston Post and Courier):

Republicans on the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee questioned why the Democrat-controlled National Labor Relations Board sued Boeing over its decision in 2009 to locate the plant in North Charleston.

Democrats questioned if Boeing retaliated against the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers by putting the factory in mostly non-unionized South Carolina to avoid costly labor strikes.

On the hot seat during most of the nearly four-hour hearing was NLRB acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon, who reluctantly agreed to testify after being threatened with a subpoena.

"We believe the evidence will show that Boeing retaliated against its employees," Solomon said. "The decision to build a second line in South Carolina was in retaliation for the employees' right to strike."

And for you geeks who require labor-law details, please check out this post from the SC Green Party blog: NLRB and Labor Law: Discussion on C-Span

At left: Kudzu eats hill.


:: And just in case you wondered why our schools always place last (or near last) nationally? Greedhead Republican swine, especially the current governor:
Haley: $105 million should go for tax cuts, not schools. (The Columbia State)

Gov. Nikki Haley threatened Wednesday to veto a state Senate proposal to add $105 million to the state’s K-12 education funding, saying the money should instead be used for tax cuts or to pay off state debt.

Haley also said that, in the future, anytime a three-member panel of state economists increases its estimates of how much money the state will bring in, as it did last month, that money should go for tax cuts, rebates or to pay off state debt.

That position is certain to endear Haley to her Tea Party supporters, who say they are taxed enough already.

But it will upset others who say that, after cutting billions from the state’s general fund during the just-ended Great Recession, recovering state revenues should be used to restore services that were cut or can justify more support.

:: Announcing a South Carolina demonstration against the Libyan intervention, which our Senator Lindsey Graham thinks is just great great great. This has been organized by the Carolina Peace Resource Center:

Saturday, June 25 · 12:00pm - 1:00pm

Location: Five Points Fountain (Greene & Harden St.)
Columbia, South Carolina.

This is a great location, since you can shop afterwards at Hip-Wa-Zee (Hi Leslie!) and Loose Lucy's. Only a dullard could resist! Be there or be square! (Yes, I sometimes miss living in Columbia, which I did for about 7 months.)

And finally...

NO MORE Law and Order Criminal Intent after this weekend?!? (((screams in agony)))) NOOOOooooOOOO!!!!

They are taking one of my favorite binge-drugs away.

On the boardwalk in Atlantic City, life will be peaches and cream

Don't miss the fabulous ATLANTIC CITY (1980) tonight at 11:15 PM on Turner Classic Movies.

According to several of the movie-fangirl-type books I have perused over the years, Burt Lancaster was not a nice guy. He acted like a stereotypical, spoiled, studio-pampered movie star, bragging in Hollywood meetings about what he had been able to convince various women to do. And I've never had any trouble believing that. After all, this is the man who brought Elmer Gantry to technicolor-life. This is the man who embodied conniving JJ Hunsecker. Rich, famous and handsome, there was nothing that was not his, at some point.

What is so hypnotizing about Atlantic City is Burt's old age, and the way he inhabits it. He was 66 when he starred in Louis Malle's second American film, and he doesn't hide it. He huffs and puffs up the stairs; he coughs. One senses in the way he wears his hat, the way he carries himself on the boardwalk, the way he peers through the window of his seedy apartment to watch Susan Sarandon... this is a man who once had as many women as he could shake a stick at. This is a man who once had money and status, who was on top of the world. Watching this man now reduced to running numbers all over the forgotten neighborhoods of Atlantic City, we are saddened, even though fully aware that this is, after all, Burt Lancaster. But of course it is, that's the whole point: Burt Lancaster is an old man who was once a king. But no more. The way of all flesh. This man was a Matinee Idol, as they were then called. He was an old-style Hollywood star. And now, as Lou, impoverished bookie, he sits alone in a dark room and simply wants to sleep with the pretty young waitress next door. (I wondered, is this the way he felt about his own old age, or is this the way we all feel, eventually?) We get the Hollywood-persona and the movie-role all mixed up. Which is exactly perfect.

Throughout the movie, Atlantic City is being landscaped, paved-over and re-arranged for the Donald-Trump-transformation of the 80s. This movie lovingly gives us the old Atlantic City, and is something of a Valentine for days gone by. Just as Lou/Burt and his crew have gotten old, so has Atlantic City. And Old is Unacceptable, as Lou feels that HE has become unacceptable. The movie makes actual building construction an ongoing reality of the film. Blasts of noise and half-constructed parking garages constantly intrude and serve as background and plot devices. To Europeans like Louis Malle, the constant construction going on in the USA is a metaphor; we don't like it, we pull it down and start over. And Lou wonders, why can't he do that, too?

Left: Susan Sarandon and Burt Lancaster, photo from The Villager.


If we are truthful, we've all wondered what would happen if a large sum of money was suddenly dumped in our laps. Lou acts out some of our dreams for us. We don't actually begrudge him his con-artist routine, acted out on sweet Sally (Susan Sarandon) from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. We grit our teeth, waiting for payback.

As the shit hits the fan, watch Lou. Watch the pro, Burt Lancaster. He is having a good time. It's better than sitting in the room, doing nothing. It's better than watching the world go by, rather than participating in it.

Atlantic City is filled with fabulous performances from Robert Joy, Kate Reid, Hollis McLaren and Al Waxman, as well as the magnetic leads. As if to punctuate the passing of Atlantic City, even the late Robert Goulet shows up. Most of the hotels in the film were gone within two years of filming.

"The Atlantic Ocean was something in those days."

FREE THE NEW JERSEY 4!

I found the story of the women known as "the Lesbian 7" (now the New Jersey 4) rather hard to believe... I mean you know, "rampaging lesbians"? The last ones I remember seeing were in the movie THE WARRIORS.

Nonetheless, that is how the prosecution presented these women, and the tabloids obediently went apeshit, complete with unflattering, spazzy photos and purple-prose descriptions of "the seething, Sapphic septet" (who writes this stuff? John O'Hara? Raymond Chandler?) --bringing to mind the attack of the nymphos in SHOCK CORRIDOR.

A bit of a sexual thrill, then, yes? Is it also sexually titillating to put these uppity, physically-capable gals in their place?

All of the above?

BRAWL & BAWL: GANG-BASH LESBIAN WAILS AT SENTENCE
By Laura Italiano, NY Post

June 15, 2007 -- The pint-sized ring leader of a gang of seven rampaging lesbians collapsed shrieking in a Manhattan courtroom yesterday as a judge sentenced her to 11 years in prison for the brutal beat-down and stabbing of a man who promised to turn them "straight" in Greenwich Village last summer.

"Noooo!" 4-foot-11, 95-pound Patreese Johnson wailed after learning her startling sentence - the highest several defense lawyers had ever heard of for a nonfatal stabbing.

"No!" she sobbed. "Please! Nooooo!"

Johnson, 20, fell to the courtroom floor and was carried out kicking and screaming.
She and her three co-defendants, who were also sentenced yesterday, were convicted of second-degree gang assault during a sensational trial in April.

Renata Hill, 25, was sentenced to eight years in prison; Venice Brown, 19, got five; Terraine Dandridge, 20, got 31/2.

The gang's remaining three women are serving six-month prison terms after pleading guilty to lesser charges in the attack on Queens filmmaker Dwayne Buckle, 29.

Johnson had been additionally convicted of first-degree gang assault for stabbing Buckle in the gut, and could have received anywhere from five to 25 years.

The women claimed they attacked Buckle in self-defense after he lunged at them during an argument in which he allegedly said sex with him would turn them straight.
Surveillance video belies that story, the prosecutor said in court.

It shows at a brief lull in the brawl - and then the seething, Sapphic septet striking anew.

"They didn't run away," Assistant District Attorney Sharon Laveson told Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Edward McLaughlin. "They didn't call the police. They were not fearful. They were emboldened."

Buckle claimed on the witness stand he merely said hello to Johnson, who he told jurors was "the slightly pretty one" in the group.

The women took the stand to counter that Buckle actually said, "I want some of that," as he pointed to Johnson's crotch.

Whatever Buckle may have said doesn't matter, the judge said.

"Insulting words, stupid words . . . don't justify criminal conduct, don't justify hurting a human being, don't justify group assaultive conduct," he said.

Not quite.

Here we have another account, from One People's Project:

FOUR WOMEN CONVICTED OF ATTACKING HOMOPHOBIC AGGRESSOR

Written by One People's Project
Sunday, 29 April 2007

Oh, this is just flat out wrong. A few years ago in Newark, NJ, a 15-year-old girl named Sakia Gunn was killed by a man trying to hit on her and her friend. He got pissed when she said she was a lesbian. Last year the same thing happened again, and although the four girls in this case were also from Newark, this time they were in Greenwich Village in New York City when they were approached by another man who attacked them when the lesbians spurned him. The difference was they kicked his ass. It should have ended there, but instead of the man, Dwayne Buckle going someplace to lick his wounds and learning a lesson from all of this, it is four of the women who are going to pay. A few weeks ago, they were convicted of gang assault and are looking at 25 years. For defending themselves. It was insanity in the courtroom when the verdict was read, and needless to say there are a lot of angry people. These women need support, and they need to go back home. They don't deserve to be treated as if they were the villians in this case. The only villian here is Buckle, who if his Internet Movie Database profile is of any indication is going to go on with his career as if nothing wrong. Nope, sorry. We are going to be on this one. Like one of their lawyers said, this is not over.

Four young women from Newark were convicted of gang assault April18 in the beating and stabbing of an independent filmmaker in Greenwich Village last summer, the jury rejecting their contention that they were defending themselves against an anti-lesbian attack.

But one of the women, Patreese Johnson, 19, was acquitted of attempted murder, the most serious charge in the case. Prosecutors said she had stabbed the filmmaker, Dwayne Buckle, in the abdomen with a steak knife that she carried in her purse. Ms. Johnson contended that she had only tried to cut Mr. Buckle’s arm to keep him from choking two of her friends.

Along with gang assault, the jury found Ms. Johnson, who is 4-foot-11 and weighs less than 100 pounds, guilty of first-degree assault, which carries the same penalty of 5 to 25 years in prison as the attempted murder charge.

The young women sobbed and wailed “No-oo!” “Mommy!” and “I didn’t do it!” as Justice Edward J. McLaughlin of State Supreme Court in Manhattan ordered them jailed until their sentencing next month, but it was almost impossible to tell who was saying what as they were led away in handcuffs by court officers.

Ms. Johnson, who worked as a night cashier at Wal-Mart, turned and mouthed “I love you” to a sister, brother and cousin in the spectator seats.

The trial attracted attention because both sides, though in opposite ways, framed the case as a bias attack involving lesbians and a straight man. The other three defendants, Renata Hill, 25; Terrain Dandridge, 20; and Venice Brown, 19, were convicted of second-degree gang assault and face 3 ½ to 15 years in prison.

Mr. Buckle, 29, of Queens said he was sitting on a fire hydrant and handing out DVDs of one of his films outside the Independent Film Center at Avenue of the Americas and West Third Street just before 2 a.m. on Aug. 18 when the women walked by him and he made a flirtatious remark.

He testified that they then attacked him without any physical provocation on his part. While recovering at St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan, he told The New York Post that he had been “the victim of a hate crime against a straight man.”
The defense scoffed at the idea that Mr. Buckle was just sitting on the street trying to promote his films.

The women contended that Mr. Buckle made crude sexual advances, and when they told him they were not interested because they were lesbians, he spat at them, threw a cigarette and tried to choke two of them.

Ms. Johnson’s lawyer, Alan Lippel, said the jury appeared to believe at least some of her testimony. “I think they were not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that she intended to kill the guy,” Mr. Lippel said.

Susan V. Tipograph, who, along with Laurie Cohen, represented Ms. Hill, said after the verdict, “We’re disappointed.” She said that although “nobody takes any satisfaction in what happened,” the four women had come to New York to have a good time and never anticipated anything like what happened.

Ms. Tipograph’s presence on the defense team was, perhaps, one indication of the passions stirred by the case. Although she often defends obscure indigent defendants, her clients have also included former Black Panthers and Lynne F. Stewart, the leftist lawyer convicted in 2005 of aiding terrorism by smuggling messages out of prison for a client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman.

Ms. Tipograph said she had volunteered to defend Ms. Hill pro bono after learning through the National Lawyers Guild that the young woman was seeking a lawyer. “It was pitched as it is,” Ms. Tipograph said. “She was one of a number of women who had gotten harassed on the street.”

But she added: “I certainly didn’t get involved in this as part of a cause. She was a decent young woman in a jam, calling out for some help.”

Many of the defendants’ female supporters in the courtroom wore long robes and head scarves, and Mr. Lippel said that his client’s sister was a practicing Muslim.
“It’s not over,” said Kevin G. Roe, a lawyer for Ms. Dandridge, saying the defense would appeal.

The jury of 10 women — many of them not too much older than the defendants — and two men, reached its verdict after only about five hours of deliberations.

The defense contended that a mysterious man in a pink shirt, shown in a surveillance videotape joining the brawl, had actually stabbed Mr. Buckle.

The police searched for the man in the pink shirt but never found him, a police officer testified.

And finally, some political background from Imani Henry:

On Aug. 16, 2006, seven young, African-American, lesbian-identified friends
were walking in the West Village. The Village is a historic center for
lesbian, gay, bi and trans (LGBT) communities, and is seen as a safe haven
for working-class LGBT youth, especially youth of color.

As they passed the Independent Film Cinema, 29-year-old Dwayne Buckle, an
African-American vendor selling DVDs, sexually propositioned one of the
women. They rebuffed his advances and kept walking.

“I’ll f— you straight, sweetheart!” Buckle shouted. A video camera from a
nearby store shows the women walking away. He followed them, all the while
hurling anti-lesbian slurs, grabbing his genitals and making explicitly
obscene remarks. The women finally stopped and confronted him. A heated
argument ensued. Buckle spat in the face of one of the women and threw his
lit cigarette at them, escalating the verbal attack into a physical one.
Buckle is seen on the video grabbing and pulling out large patches of hair
from one of the young women. When Buckle ended up on top of one of the
women, choking her, Johnson pulled a small steak knife out of her purse. She
aimed for his arm to stop him from killing her friend.

The video captures two men finally running over to help the women and
beating Buckle. At some point he was stabbed in the abdomen. The women were
already walking away across the street by the time the police arrived.
Buckle was hospitalized for five days after surgery for a lacerated liver
and stomach. When asked at the hospital, he responded at least twice that
men had attacked him.

There was no evidence that Johnson’s kitchen knife was the weapon that
penetrated his abdomen, nor was there any blood visible on it. In fact,
there was never any forensics testing done on her knife. On the night they
were arrested, the police told the women that there would be a search by the
New York Police Department for the two men—which to date has not happened.
After almost a year of trial, four of the seven were convicted in April.
Johnson was sentenced to 11 years on June 14.

Even with Buckle’s admission and the video footage proving that he
instigated this anti-gay attack, the women were relentlessly demonized in
the press, had trumped-up felony charges levied against them, and were
subsequently given long sentences in order to send a clear resounding
message—that self-defense is a crime and no one should dare to fight back.

Imani asks the pertinent question, which was on my mind: Why were these young women used as an example?

At stake are the billions of
dollars in tourism and real estate development involved in the continued
gentrification of the West Village. This particular incident happened near
the Washington Square area—home of New York University, one of most
expensive private colleges in the country and one of the biggest employers
and landlords in New York City. The New York Times reported that Justice
Edward J. McLaughlin used his sentencing speech to comment on “how New York
welcomes tourists.” (June 17)

The Village is also the home of the Stonewall Rebellion, the three-day
street battle against the NYPD that, along with the Compton Cafeteria
“Riots” in California, helped launch the modern-day LGBT liberation movement
in 1969. The Manhattan LGBT Pride march, one of the biggest demonstrations
of LGBT peoples in the world, ends near the Christopher Street Piers in the
Village, which have been the historical “hangout” and home for working-class
trans and LGBT youth in New York City for decades.

Because of growing gentrification in recent years, young people of color,
homeless and transgender communities, LGBT and straight, have faced curfews
and brutality by police sanctioned by the West Village community board and
politicians. On Oct. 31, 2006, police officers from the NYPD’s 6th Precinct
indiscriminately beat and arrested several people of color in sweeps on
Christopher Street after the Halloween parade.

Since the 1980s there has been a steady increase in anti-LGBT violence in
the area, with bashers going there with that purpose in mind.
For trans people and LGBT youth of color, who statistically experience
higher amounts of bigoted violence, the impact of the gentrification has
been severe. As their once-safe haven is encroached on by real estate
developers, the new white and majority heterosexual residents of the West
Village then call in the state to brutalize them.

And then there is the sensationalist matter of the so-called "hate crime" against a straight, professional man--a moviemaker, no less--the sort of upper-crust, artist-type fellow they WANT in the Village these days:

According to court observers, McLaughlin stated throughout the trial that he had no sympathy for these women. The jury, although they were all women,
were all white. All witnesses for the district attorney were white men,
except for one Black male who had several felony charges.

Court observers report that the defense attorneys had to put enormous effort
into simply convincing the jury that they were “average women” who had
planned to just hang out together that night. Some jurists asked why they
were in the Village if they were from New Jersey. The DA brought up whether
they could afford to hang out there—raising the issue of who has the right
to be there in the first place.

The Daily News reporting was relentless in its racist anti-lesbian misogyny,
portraying Buckle as a “filmmaker” and “sound engineer” preyed upon by a
“lesbian wolf pack” (April 19) and a “gang of angry lesbians.” (April 13)
Everyone has been socialized by cultural archetypes of what it means to be a
“man” or “masculine” and “woman” or “feminine.” Gender identity/expression
is the way each individual chooses or not to express gender in their everyday
lives, including how they dress, walk, talk, etc. Transgender people and
other gender non-conforming people face oppression based on their gender
expression/identity.

The only pictures shown in the Daily News were of the more
masculine-appearing women. One of the most despiciable headlines in the
Daily News, “‘I’m a man!’ lesbian growled during fight,” (April 13) was
targeted against Renata Hill, who was taunted by Buckle because of her
masculinity.

Ironically, Johnson, who was singled out by the judge as the “ringleader,”
is the more feminine of the four. According to the New York Times, in his
sentencing remarks, “Justice McLaughlin scoffed at the assertion made by …
Johnson, that she carried a knife because she was just 4-foot-11 and 95
pounds, worked nights and lived in a dangerous neighborhood.” He quoted the
nursery rhyme, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never
hurt me.” (June 15)

All of the seven women knew and went to school with Sakia Gunn, a
19-year-old butch lesbian who was stabbed to death in Newark, N.J., in May
2003. Paralleling the present case, Gunn was out with three of her friends
when a man made sexual advances to one of the women. When she replied that
she was a lesbian and not interested, he attacked them. Gunn fought back and
was stabbed to death.

For more information, and to send messages or other support to the women, please see FIERCENYC, an organization fighting to keep this case in the public eye and dedicated to achieving real justice for these 4 women.