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[jwhite.livejournal.com]

HOW ARE YOU DIFFERENT?

SPEAK UP NOW -- BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE

In Germany, they first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me -- and by that time there was nobody left to speak up. --Martin Niemoller

Ideas have effects. It is clear that as transgendered men and women, we face two kinds of violence each day. One is the larger violence, that perpetrated by straight society on our bodies. It has taken from us people like Brandon Teena and Marsha P. Johnson. We recall that before he was shot in the back of the head, Brandon was repeatedly raped by two men bent on demonstrating to his girlfriend that he was “really a woman.” Ideas have effects. -- Riki Anne Wilchins

TO THE TRANSGENDER COMMUNITY OF NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY, BOSTON, AND THEIR ALLIES:

It is a dangerous world for transgender people. Thousands of transgender people worldwide have been violated and killed They didn’t die because they are transgender. They died because of prejudice. Prejudice silences us. Prejudice kills. Prejudice is death. And Northeastern University stinks with the atmosphere of prejudice. They have tried to ignore us, hoping we will just go away. But we will not rest until Northeastern University has a policy that protects transgender people and all people, and its community learns respect for difference.

For more than two years now, transgender people at Northeastern University and their allies, including the President’s own GLBT Advisory Board, have been respectfully attempting to get the University President, Richard Freeland, to agree to a transgender policy. They have politely tried to educate University officials, meeting with delay, ridicule and stonewalling. This university is not a safe place for trans students, faculty or staff. This university engages in illegal discrimination. We have been ignored. But we will not rest until Northeastern University has a policy that protects transgender people and all people, and its community learns respect for difference.

MEETING THURSDAY, JULY 31

6PM, CURRY STUDENT CENTER, NORTHEASTERN U

PROTEST DISCRIMINATION AT NU

Northeastern University, one of the largest private universities in the United States, has been home to dozens of transgender students, faculty and staff. Some have been hounded out of the University, others remain closeted in fear. Others have borne various humiliations, being forced to leave campus housing, being embarrassed in public by ignorant officials, no respect for our names and our genders, and inability to use the bathrooms or the student recreation center. One transgender student was embarrassed in front of a meeting room full of people by the University President, Richard Freeland, who asked her directly: “Don’t I have a responsibility to protect students from those who would arrogate to themselves the right to choose their gender?”, telling her to go to the men’s room.

Dean Martell bluntly told a male student that he was really a female and would have to room with females, and that the university had “no interest” in helping transgender students. Ignoring the Boston law that permits transgender people to use the bathrooms and dressing rooms of their actual gender, the Director of Residence Life, M.L. Langlie, said “Since they [Northeastern University] are a private institution, they can do whatever they want….” She also said that transgender students are “encouraged” to move out. A trans university instructor who called Langlie for clarification was told that the student “is a female,” and when that was pointed out to be incorrect, she angrily said that transgender students don’t “deserve” accommodation. We are here to do our jobs and get our degrees. But we are forced into activism. We don’t want a faceless, heartless, bureaucratic University to force us out by its indifference and so we have remained silent. But we are being ignored. Now we will not rest until Northeastern University has a policy that protects transgender people and all people, and its community learns respect.

The issue here is not only about disrespecting transgender students, faculty and staff in their living and working conditions. It is allowing prejudicial attitudes to flourish in an atmosphere of ignorance, the same kind of prejudices held by the perpetrators of violence and death to transgender people all over the globe. These are the same kind of prejudices that the Army permitted to flourish at Fort Campbell, which encouraged Sgt. Barry Winchell’s fellow soldiers to beat him to death with a baseball bat because he was dating a transgender woman. The same kind of prejudice that a small-town sheriff in Nebraska encouraged when he let two rapists go free to beat Brandon Teena to death. That allowed paramedics in DC to laugh and joke about Tyra Hunter, a transwoman injured in an auto accident, allowing her to bleed to death. That made onlookers clap when Amanda Milan was stabbed to death in Times Square.

After a story appeared in the Northeastern University News about the University’s disrespecting a trans student, another student wrote a letter to the editor, saying that he could “frankly care less” about it, and “for the love of God, do you really think Northeastern students care whether a ‘transgendered student’ can find adequate housing?” Do they need a murder here before they take action? We will no longer be ignored. We will not rest until Northeastern University has a policy that protects transgender people and all people, and its community learns respect.

Whether you are part of the Northeastern University community or not, whether you are transgender, lesbian, bisexual, gay or straight, whether you are Latino, African-American, Asian or white, Catholic, Muslim or Jew, if you are different in any way, this is about your right to be an individual in the face of bureaucratic ignorance and indifference.

Don’t let a faceless system and faceless bureaucrats create an atmosphere where people are hated because they are different.

Because the system will come for you one day too.

HELP STOP PREJUDICE AND HATE

AT NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY.

see hometown.aol.com/jtweissny

We will be conducting email, fax and telephone campaigns and various other protest actions. Please help however you can, even if it is by just telling your friends. Don’t let the system triumph over the human spirit.