Zenger's Newsmagazine: November 2013

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Transgender Day of Remembrance Draws Over 300

Somber Event Features March Through Hillcrest, Program to Honor Victims of Anti-Trans Violence

by MARK GABRISH CONLAN

At the Center, prior to the march

Lighting the candles for the march

“Vibes watchers” helped keep order

Leading the march with the banner

Marching

Carrying the Transgender flag

Candi Samples, reigning Imperial Court Empress

Holding the flag

A Sister of Perpetual Indulgence

Flying the Trans flag from the Pride flagpole

Leather leaders at the flag ceremony

The Blessing by the Sisters

Monica Helms

Todd Gloria

Todd starts the reading of the names

Volunteers lined up to read names

Kristin Beck

The altar set up to honor victims on the Day of Remembrance

“I don’t understand how this happens, and how we let it happen,” said self-described “warrior princess” Kristin Beck at the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance Wednesday, November 20 at the San Diego Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community Center. A veteran of the U.S. Navy’s elite SEAL Team 6 before she transitioned from male to female last year, Beck was speaking about the litany of names of over 65 Transgender people officially reported murdered throughout the world between November 2012 and November 2013. The names, read by volunteers from the audience (including this reporter) and punctuated by the solemn ringing of a bell after each one, are the centerpiece of the Day of Remembrance.

Day of Remembrance events occur throughout the world. People who want to put one on download the list of victims by logging on to the official Web site at http://www.transgenderdor.org/memorializing-2013 and organizing a public ceremony including the reading of names. “The event is held in November to honor Rita Hester, whose murder on November 28, 1998 kicked off the ‘Remembering Our Dead’ Web project and a San Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999,” the site explains. “Rita Hester’s murder — like most anti-Transgender murder cases — has yet to be solved.”

Though organizers of the San Diego event said they would be honoring as many as 101 victims, the official list at the Day of Remembrance Web site contained 65 names. Of these, 33 — more than half — were killed in Brazil, which tallies with other statistics. According to the Trans Murder Monitoring Project in Europe, of the 265 known murders of Trans people worldwide between November 2011 and October 2012, 126 took place in Brazil. The country with the next highest number of victims in the 2013 Day of Remembrance list was the United States, at 15, followed by Mexico (six), Turkey (three), Malaysia (two) and Colombia, Guyana, Venezuela, Honduras, Jamaica and France (one each).

The ways in which the victims of anti-Transgender violence were killed makes for even grimmer reading. Of the 65 victims listed on the site, 26 were shot, 17 were stabbed, 13 were beaten either with fists or blunt objects, seven were suffocated or strangled, four were burned, four were bound, four were stoned, three were beheaded, two were drowned, two were run over by cars or trucks, and one each was scalped, tortured, dismembered, hanged or thrown off a bridge. The cause of death of one victim, “Maiara” Castro da Silva of Porto Velho, Rondônia, Brazil, is unknown because her body was dumped, and by the time it was discovered it was in such an advanced state of decomposition it was impossible to tell how she died.

Those numbers add up to more than 65 because many of the victims were attacked in multiple ways. Perhaps the most shocking case on the list was that of Evon Young, age 22, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who was tied up, beaten with fists and other objects, choked with a chain, suffocated with a bag taped over his head, shot, set on fire and thrown into a dumpster. Cemia “CeCe” Dove, 23, of Cleveland, Ohio was stabbed multiple times, tied with a rope to a block of concrete and thrown into a pond. Dwayne Jones, 16, of Jamaica was beaten, stabbed, shot and run over by a car. The sheer viciousness of these crimes and the mix of murder methods suggests the combination of hate and fear motivating their perpetrators, their desire to be as brutal as possible and to vent their anger out on their hapless victims as extensively as they could.

The Day of Remembrance in San Diego consisted of a march that began and ended at the Center at 6 p.m. and was originally scheduled to loop through Hillcrest to Fifth and University, then return. The march leaders moved the line at a fast clip but instructed the marchers to stay on the sidewalks and obey all traffic signals, which slowed things down so much the turnaround took place several blocks earlier than scheduled. The rush was due to the need to get back to the Center by 7 for the formal program in the Center’s large auditorium, which featured an extended blessing by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and an appearance by San Diego City Council president and acting mayor Todd Gloria.

Apologizing for coming late to the event — “I’ve got citywide responsibilities these days,” he said — Gloria called on Lesbians, Gay men and Bisexuals to do more to support their Transgender brothers and sisters. “To the extent that the kind of violence that we are memorializing today is acceptable in some communities, it comes from the fact that we do not do enough to support our Transgender brothers and sisters,” Gloria said. “The fact that you are here tonight sends a strong signal that we do not support hate and violence against those in our community — our community — and we will stand up against it. When the unthinkable happens, we will remember those who are lost.”

Another featured speaker was Transgender activist Monica Helms, who designed the Transgender Pride flag — a series of alternating stripes of pink, blue and white — and who displayed the prototype during her talk. “The reason I created this was because the person who created the Bisexual pride flag said the Trans community should have a flag of their own,” Helms recalled. “I tried to figure out what I should do, and it hit me one morning exactly what it should be. The light blue is the traditional color for baby boys, pink is the traditional color for baby girls, and the white in the middle is for those who are undefined or neutral gender; those who feel they are either both genders or neither gender; and those who are transitioning.” Helms also boasted that, no matter how the flag is flown, its pattern is the same.

Helms spoke with a sense of pride in how far her creation has reached and in how many places it’s been flown. “Today I saw a picture of the Equality House that’s in front of Westboro Baptist Church [pastured by anti-Queer minister Fred Phelps], and they had painted it the Trans flag colors,” Helms said. “I’ve seen this flag flown in Pride parades in Finland, Serbia, Turkey, Taiwan and all kinds of other places in the world. I’m just flabbergasted that this turned out the way it did. I’m very honored and humbled that all of you have accepted it as our flag.” As part of the Day of Remembrance ceremony, the rainbow flag that usually flies from the Pride flagpole at University and Normal was briefly taken down and replaced by the Trans flag, which was then lowered and folded, military-style, and used as part of a memorial altar during the program at the Center.

“Injustice anywhere in the world is a threat to justice for all of us,” said Kristin Beck at the beginning of her presentation — paraphrasing the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “I look up on this board, and I look at the names, and I look at what’s happening to my brothers and sisters. I just weep, man. I’m just really torn up. As a veteran, I’ve lost a lot of my brothers and sisters in combat. But we were in combat. These are just young, innocent girls and boys. One was a 13-year-old. I don’t understand how this happens, and how we can let it happen.”

Transpeople Organize Rally Supporting AB 1266

Anti-Discrimination Bill Threatened by Radical-Right Referendum

by MARK GABRISH CONLAN

Alfie flies Trans flag at rally

“Support Trans youth”

James (center) & Cathy Mendonça (right)

Cathy with the “Black & Pink” banner

Crowd

James

Daniela

Trey (center)

“Binary thinking is obsolete”

Alfie Padilla

The Sister

“Trans children deserve love”

Ezekiel Reis Burgin

Flag bearer

The “spiral hug” that ended the event

Braving darkness, cold, the threat and — briefly — the reality of rain, 60 Transgender people and their supporters turned out in front of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Flag at University Avenue and Normal Street in Hillcrest Friday, November 22 for a rally in support of AB 1266. Also known as the California Success and Opportunity Act, this is a bill the California legislature passed this summer, and Governor Jerry Brown signed into law August 17, which would add to state law protecting public school students from discrimination the following: “A pupil shall be permitted to participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions, and use facilities consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil’s records.”

Though the bill nowhere uses the term “Transgender,” nor does it specify that the “facilities” it mentions include school restrooms, most of the opposition has focused on the alleged “danger” of allowing students to use restrooms based on their sense of their own gender rather than their biological organs. “No 13-year-old girls should have to have the continued apprehension of a boy seeing them naked in the locker room,” said Brad Dacus of the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI), one of the groups currently organizing a referendum campaign to give the state’s voters a chance to decide whether or not to allow AB 1266 to take effect.

James, an activist with Canvass for a Cause (CFAC) and Black and Pink San Diego — two of the groups, along with SAME Alliance, that sponsored the November 22 event — MC’d the rally and explained the importance of beating back the referendum. “Already one of the most vulnerable communities as far as bullying and houselessness,” James explained, “Trans youth are now literally being driven to suicide and harassment by Transphobic organizations like the Pacific Justice Institute and the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). … Over the past few months, they have been running a media smear campaign against Trans youth and lying to get this issue on the ballot.”

The AB 1266 support rally was held November 22 because that was supposed to be the deadline by which the California Secretary of State’s office would be certifying whether the referendum made it to the ballot or not. But that was still up in the air when the rally took place. James announced that the referendum sponsors had turned in 547,984 signatures — short of the 620,000 they claimed in their press releases — and need 504,000 valid signatures to put the issue before voters.

Signatures can be invalidated for several reasons — the signer is either not eligible to vote or not registered at their current address, or the signature was illegible or didn’t contain enough information to verify whether the person was registered or not — and what the Secretary of State usually does it select some of the petitions at random, check them against voter registration records, calculate what percent of the signatures on the petitions they did check were valid, and apply that to the total. If there’s a near-miss, sponsors can ask for the time-consuming process of validating all the petitions, not just a sample. Given the tightness of the margin, 92 percent of the signatures on the anti-AB 1266 petitions would have to be valid to put the referendum on the ballot. That’s higher than usual, but not unachievable.

James said one purpose of the rally was to get people to sign pledge cards promising to be part of the campaign against the referendum if it makes it to the ballot, and to continue to defend AB 1266 if the referendum fails but the opponents keep trying to sink it. “There is a Plan B to Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) not being successful in getting AB 1266 to qualify for a referendum: it’s file a federal lawsuit,” states a post on the Transadvocate Web site, http://www.transadvocate.com. “And it appears that they’re ‘ambulance chasing’ for another Jane Doe to bully: they’re asking for potential plaintiffs to contact them.”

“We are up against organizations with ridiculous amounts of money,” James said. “I like to say they have a whole lot of dollars but not a lot of sense. But what we have is spirit and people power, which is a whole hell of a lot more than what any dollar can do. We need you to volunteer so we can counteract the negative media storm … the anti-Trans are pushing onto the public. We need to have face-to-face conversations and voter outreach to make sure everyone understands that this bill supports our youth.”

Rally organizers invited a few speakers and then opened the mikes for everyone who wanted to address the crowd — but they stipulated that only Transgender people would be allowed to speak at the event. The idea was to bring forward people who aren’t usually heard in public venues and allow Transgender people to speak for themselves instead of having Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual or straight supporters speak on their behalf. “I’ve never done anything like this in my life,” said Daniela, one of the first speakers. “I’ve given talks at schools, but I’ve never actually talked at a rally, so this is pretty exciting.”

After thanking the crowd for coming out despite the bad weather, Daniela said, “I’m really excited about AB 1266. It’s really awesome, because we are one step towards being more equal. But I would like to say that I really feel that none of us are equal unless all of us are equal. … Sometimes I personally don’t feel like I’m a strong, independent woman. Sometimes I feel like I’m being discriminated against. Sometimes I feel like I’m being harassed, especially when I’m kicked out of restrooms or I’m denied health care. A lot of people deny my gender identity. It’s tough. But right now at this moment, I definitely feel like a strong, independent woman. Because I am very strong, I am very independent, and I am very woman.”

Another speaker, Trey, recalled his own traumas coming out as Transgender in high school. “I sent my teacher an e-mail, actually,” Trey said. “I was under the naïve impression that being Transgender is no big deal. … I asked her to use the right pronoun and the right name, and she was more or less supportive. But it’s not just your teacher you have to worry about. It’s also the rest of the staff and the students. And I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one here who, when faced with public restrooms, feels panicked.”

Trey said his ability to function at school dropped when the supportive teacher “was removed from her job” and “replaced with another teacher who did not respect my pronouns and did not use my proper name. So while I was at school, I had either to avoid using the restroom or to use the women’s room, which made me feel like I was taking a massive step backwards.… If I had had the support then that I do now, I really would have had a lot smoother transition, and I would be a lot more at peace with my mental health now.”

Alfie Padilla, who unlike Daniela is an old hand at speaking at political events, used her turn to rally the crowd and call on them to get as “fired up” as the opponents of AB 1266. “See how many crazy people signed that petition?” she said. “That’s not good, not good. The opposition, they’ve not only got millions of dollars, they’ve also got a lot of churches in their pocket, which is not good. … One crazy church got 46,000 signatures alone. These people drove hours and hours to get these petitions in. Some people drove up to five hours just to go drop off these petitions to take Transgender kids’ rights away. I can think of much better things to do with five hours than taking Transgender kids’ rights away! Let me tell you, these people are active. And we need to be just as active. Actually, we need to be a little more active.”

According to Alfie, AB 1266 is important not just to middle school and high school students but “all the way down from kindergarten to 12^th grade. There are elementary school kids who need a place to pee! People need a place to pee! Jesus. Not only that, be all know how bad the bullying can get in the restrooms. You want to know what I did? I skipped! Because it’s awful. You know what I wanted? An education. And I didn’t really get it, because I skipped. And that’s what we really need to avoid. I read something today that one in six Transgender students drop out, and that’s three times more than the average dropout rate.”

Alfie also said that it wasn’t just “straight conservative people” who signed the referendum against AB 1266. “Part of the LGBT [Queer] community signed that petition!” she said. “We can all try to act like that didn’t happen, but it totally did. As I always like to say, there’s ‘G’ really big over here, and then ‘L,’ and ‘B’ over here, and then the ‘T’ is like somewhere really small, like over on another page. It’s like a different font. It’s a little like a comic strip, and this is serious. It’s like real life! So keep these conversations going. Keep it up. Keep it on Facebook, if you do that. Blog it. Keep it people’s mouths, because this fight has just begun.”

“I’m one of the older people in the community,” said an unidentified speaker in the nun’s-habit drag of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. “Back in the early 1990’s there was a TV show called Ally McBeal, and they only had one fricking bathroom! Anybody could use it. I don’t understand why people are worried over where people poop. … If you’ve felt uncomfortable for years, and now you accept who you are and need to poop in the ‘other’ bathroom, then you should poop there, because everybody poops, and should feel comfortable doing it. It’s a normal biological function.”

“We are in the heart of the Queerest area of San Diego, right? And I see a problem,” said Ezekiel Reis Burgin, a counselor who works with Transgender and Queer people and can be reached through the Web site www.socialjusticehealing.com. “There is Gossip Grill right there, and how many people are in there right now drinking their homoerotic drinks and eating their homoerotic food — I don’t know if any of you guys have read their menu, but they’re pretty homoerotic — but they don’t give a shit! They don’t give a shit about what’s going on in the Trans community! And that’s what we need to be doing. We need to be going to the Gossip Grills, to the Mo’s Café or whatever it’s called. We need to be reaching out to the community that supposedly includes us — but doesn’t — every day of the year.”

“Out of the bars, and into the streets!,” the crowd chanted in response — consciously or unconsciously echoing one of the earliest Queer liberation slogans from the 1970’s, when middle- and upper-class Gay men who frequented fancy bars thought themselves as distant from the Queer-rights struggles of the political radicals and gender outlaws that started the Queer liberation movement.

“No matter what happens with [AB 1266], our struggles are not over,” said James to wrap up the event. “Tonight is a call to action for us to talk to everyone we know and organize however we can to ensure and tackle issues for the Trans community: safe schools, housing and job discrimination, harassment and assault, and access to health care. Right now, we see that our youth need our support.”

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Over 200 Turn Out for Memorial to Gloria Johnson

Elected Officials, Community Activists Say Goodbye to Queer Feminist Leader

by MARK GABRISH CONLAN

Gloria Johnson (November 2012)

Rev. Kathleen Owens

Doug Case

Congressmember Susan Davis

Acting Mayor Todd Gloria. Assemblymember Toni Atkins and Center Executive Director Dr. Delores Jacobs

Former City Councilmember, Assemblymember and State Senator Christine Kehoe

Former City Councilmember Donna Frye

“In this tradition, we emphasize this life,” said Reverend Kathleen Owens, associate minister of the First Unitarian-Universalist Church in Hillcrest, at the start of the memorial service for veteran political activist Gloria Johnson November 7. “Gloria was a U-U member who lived her faith most actively in politics, who gave her time to make San Diego a place for equality.”

Just how hard Johnson worked to make San Diego a place for both women’s and Queer equality — and how successful she was — was shown by the stellar list of attendees at her memorial. Among them were six current or former elected officials, including all three openly Queer Democrats who have ever served on the San Diego City Council — Christine Kehoe, Toni Atkins and current acting mayor Todd Gloria. Other elected officials present included Congressmember Susan Davis, former City Councilmember Donna Frye, and current Councilmember and Mayoral candidate David Alvarez.

In addition, the program featured Dr. Delores Jacobs, chief executive officer of the San Diego Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center; Doug Case, current president of the San Diego Democrats for Equality — formerly the San Diego Democratic Club, of which Johnson was the president in the early 1980’s and remained active in for the rest of her life; Benita Berkson, who previously served with Johnson as the president of the San Diego chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW); and singer-songwriter Chris Hassett (also a former San Diego Democratic Club activist), who sang his song “A Woman Is My Friend” with newly-written special lyrics for Johnson and led the audience in a sing-along of Holly Near’s song “Singing for Our Lives” (written in 1978 as a memorial tribute to Harvey Milk) at the end.

Referring to Johnson’s famous diminutive size, Doug Case called her “the proverbial mouse that roared.” He rattled off a list of adjectives to describe her: feminist, Democrat, liberal, Lesbian, caring, dedicated, diligent, meticulous, loyal, tenacious, assertive, outspoken, candid, joyful and, above all, stubborn. The room was full of knowing chuckles at that one. “One word nobody used to describe her was ‘bipartisan,’” Case joked. “Today’s room has the appearance of a Democratic campaign event.”

“I met Gloria Johnson in 1992 at — what else — a Democratic campaign office,” recalled acting mayor Todd Gloria. “That started a long love affair that lasted until her death.” He noted that the similarity of their names had led her to joke that if they ever got married — not that that would ever happen, since he was about half her age and both were Queer — she’d be “Gloria Gloria.” Todd Gloria remembered Johnson’s “loyalty to whatever candidate she would support,” and said that during her first campaign for City Council — in which the San Diego Democratic Club had endorsed his principal Queer opponent, Stephen Whitburn — “she wore a T-shirt that said ‘Gloria for Gloria.’”

Todd Gloria recalled Johnson’s loyalty in other aspects than political campaigning. “After my mother, she was the most avid watcher of Channel 24” — the public-access cable channel that broadcasts the City Council’s meetings — “and after the meetings she’d send me an e-mail saying how she thought I did. The last time we spoke, she was in the rehab center, and she said, ‘The people here treat me well. The only bad thing is they don’t get Channel 24 in here.’”

“I’ve known her at least 30 years,” said Congressmember Davis. “I’m trying to remember what election campaign it was when we met. We’ve already talked about Gloria being vertically challenged, but you always knew when she was in the room. … She was a pillar of support for me. I was so proud of the work she did getting women and Gay and Lesbian people elected to office in San Diego. It’s hard to imagine that those things would have happened without her.”

“I have a hard time realizing that Gloria isn’t with us,” said Toni Atkins, former San Diego City Councilmember and current 78^th District California State Assemblymember — both jobs to which Johnson helped elect her. “I didn’t imagine today. It didn’t occur to me.” Atkins said the news of Johnson’s death hit especially hard because it happened on September 22, 2013 — the same day the San Diego Democrats for Equality held their annual Freedom Awards reception, the club’s biggest and most prestigious fundraiser.

Like Todd Gloria, Atkins recalled that “you always knew when Gloria was in the room. Gloria would wear purple and every other color together with no sense of fashion. She was an iconic person 26 years ago. She was a community leader, and a mentor by virtue of her example. She was a proud and vocal feminist and advocate for Lesbian/Gay equality. She was fiercely loyal. She’d be the first person to push the pro-choice question, she was proud to elect Christine Kehoe [the first openly Queer person ever to hold elective office in San Diego], and she loved Donna Frye.”

Though Atkins eventually won office with Johnson’s help, the two women met before Atkins ever considered a political career. It was in the 1980’s, when Atkins was a staff member for the embattled Womancare women’s health and family planning clinic in Hillcrest. The clinic was under assault every Saturday morning by anti-choice activists staging pickets and harassing patients. Atkins met Johnson when she agreed to help organize counter-demonstrations to step between the picketers and the patients and protect their right to choose. [This author often went to Womancare in those days to march on the pro-choice side.]
“She changed our lives,” Atkins said. “She changed my life. The California Assembly did a beautiful memorial booklet. I celebrate her life, but I’m going to miss a friend.”

“Gloria dedicated her life to liberating women and LGBT [Queer] people,” said Christine Kehoe. “Gloria lived her life with her heart and her beliefs on her sleeve. She believed all people deserved respect. No political campaign for Democrats in San Diego in the last 30 years or more failed to win her support, probably her active volunteer commitment, and usually financial support as well. … I was one of the candidates who got her loyal support. But I knew Gloria before I ran for office. When I worked at the AIDS Assistance Fund in the late 1980’s, Gloria was one of the few social workers who understood. She would navigate the social-service network to get people with AIDS at least some of the help and support they needed.”

Kehoe recalled how Johnson was honored by the California legislature in 2010. “She came in in her familiar multicolored jacket, and was surrounded by eight Lesbians in law enforcement in San Francisco. She leaned over to me and said, ‘Retirement might not be so bad.’”

Former Councilmember Donna Frye said she “looked for a sign that Gloria was up in heaven raising hell” — and found it in the fact that the day of her memorial, the U.S. Senate passed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), forbidding discrimination in employment on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Ironically, given Frye’s prominent role in driving former San Diego Mayor Bob Filner out of office on the grounds that he was sexually harassing women in his office, Frye said her first meeting with Johnson was when she sought help for a sexual harassment complaint against her own then-employer.

But, Frye said, her relationship with Johnson didn’t stay at that level. “It was not long before she had me volunteering for the Equal Rights Amendment,” Frye recalled. “Anyone who knows Gloria knows it’s impossible to tell her no. When I ran for office, Gloria was always there. She could work more volunteer hours and show up in more campaign photos than anyone else. This past January Gloria got an award from Bob Filner. Our last conversations brought us back to our first meeting, when we talked about sexual harassment and job discrimination issues.”

“Our community lost a great legend and a great teacher,” said Center director Jacobs, whose recollections of Johnson seemed to center around Johnson’s efforts to pin her down politically even though Jacobs was running a 501 ( c ) (3) non-profit corporation that isn’t allowed by law to endorse candidates. “She’d call me and ask, ‘You do support a woman’s right to choose, don’t you?,’ and she’d ask me exactly how I stood on the Democratic political issue of the day,” Jacobs remembered. “I’d tell her that what I stood for wasn’t what a 501 ( c ) (3) organization could stand for, but she’d say, ‘I know all that, but where is your heart?’ And if my answer wasn’t affirmative, I’d get another call the next day.”

“Gloria marched and rallied and volunteered for a better tomorrow,” said Rev. Owens at the close of the event. “On our last visit Gloria said, ‘I’m not ready to die. There’s so much left to do.’” Then the church’s sound system played the Fleetwood Mac song “Don’t Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow),” which Johnson had learned to love when both Bill and Hillary Clinton used it as the theme song of their Presidential campaigns. Offered as a song summarizing Johnson’s own life, it brought the audience at her memorial to their feet as they clapped along to its driving rhythm and savored its optimistic message: “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow/Don’t stop, ’cause it’ll soon be here/It’ll be here better than before/Yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone.”

Zenger’s would like to acknowledge former San Diego Democrats for Equality president Craig Roberts for pointing out some errors in the original version of this post, which have been corrected above

Queer Puerto Rican Authors Appear at Centro Cultural

Rice-González, Xavier Present Powerful Works on Ethnicity and Sexuality

by MARK GABRISH CONLAN

Charles Rice-González

Emanuel Xavier

Caleb Rainey

“It’s a really big deal for authors from one part of the country to speak to another,” said Charles Rice-González at the start of his appearance at the Centro Cultural de la Raza Friday, November 8. The event featured readings by two openly Queer New York authors of Puerto Rican descent — “Nuyorican,” as the current argot goes — and was presented by an organization with the tongue-twisting name “San Diego Multicultural LGBT Literary Foundation.”

Born in Puerto Rico and raised in the Bronx — where his novel Chulito, from which he read at the event, takes place — Rice-González is a writer, long-time community and Queer activist, and executive director of BAAD! (Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance). In addition to the novel, he’s written several plays whose titles reflect his split artistic priorities: What Carlos Feels, Pink Jesus, Los Nutcrackers: A Christmas Carajo, and I Just Love Andy Gibb. He’s the co-editor of From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction and a board member of the Bronx Council on the Arts and the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture.

Also featured on the program was Emanuel Xavier, of Puerto Rican and Ecuadorian descent, who has also published one novel, Christ-Like, but at the Centro chose instead to read from his self-published books of poetry. Like Rice-González’s, Xavier’s titles reveal both his artistic and sociopolitical agenda: Pier Queen (1997, republished 2011), Americano: Growing Up Gay and Latino in the U.S.A. (2002, republished 2012), “If Jesus Were Gay” and Other Poems (2010), and his most recent publication, Nefarious (2013).

Unlike Rice-González, who gave a short lecture introducing his reading, Xavier let his work speak for itself, though he did say he’s been steadily self-publishing his poems since 1996. Xavier has also produced a CD of his readings, Legendary, and has been featured on two seasons of Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry programs. Xavier created the annual Glam Slam poetry competition, held in New York from 1998 to 2008 but now based in London.

“I’ve always loved to write,” Rice-González said. “I remember writing when I was really young. I was 13 and had a 16-year-old boyfriend — an ‘older man’ — and the first time you fall in love, it’s so urgent your life revolves around it. When we broke up, my heart blew up into a thousand pieces. I started writing a novel when I was 14 and it was about us, though I made it a boy and girl — and made myself the girl.”

Writing about their Queer experiences in heterosexual drag was a common dodge for Queer writers throughout the 20^th century — authors as diverse as Tennessee Williams, W. Somerset Maugham and Noël Coward did it — but as Rice-González grew older, he got stronger both as a writer and a person and was able to draw on his youth for inspiration without de-Queering it. “The world existed and the energy was in me to write Chulito,” he said.

The book revolves around two Gay teens in a largely Puerto Rican section of the Bronx, in which there’s a sort of Greek chorus of garage owners crying out “AUTO GLASS!” — competing to attract the attention of passing motorists with cracked or shattered car windows. The central characters are Chulito and Carlos, two boys who grow up together but get separated when Carlos gets a scholarship to go to a mostly white school outside the barrio — and returns with fancy non-ghetto clothes and a white boyfriend. Chulito’s dilemma is over whether to stand with his homophobic, reverse-racist neighbors and harass Carlos or stand by his friend. It’s complicated when Chulito starts to realize he’s not only Gay himself, he’s physically attracted to Carlos.

Rice-González chose to read three portions of Chulito. Two were relatively realistic. The third was a dazzling dream sequence involving a huge circle jerk involving just about every male in Chulito’s neighborhood, that ends in an unforgettably lubricious image.

“I’ve known Emanuel for many years, and it’s wonderful traveling with him,” said Rice-González when he was obliged to introduce Xavier following his own reading. “But Emanuel is also a writer who really broke a lot of barriers for Queer Latinos in the Nuyorican movement when there weren’t many ‘out’ Queer Latinos. Even though he’s younger than I am, he inspired me. I met him once when his first Queer poetry collection came out. He was sitting at a table, reading it. I bought his poetry collection, went home and read it to my partner at the time.” (He rather ruefully admitted that he’s now single.) “It’s so amazing to read work where you’re reflected positively, and that’s part of my admiration and love for Emanuel Xavier.”

Starting with “Runaway,” from his most recent collection Nefarious, Xavier read 10 poems from throughout his career, including the early “Tradiciónes” from Pier Queen, a deliberate mashup of English and Spanish in which the writer says he’s going to defy the “traditions” of machismo and settle on his own identity; “Commonwealth,” a tribute to a recently deceased Nuyorican poet in which Xavier uses Puerto Rico’s in-between “commonwealth” status — neither a U.S. territory nor a full-fledged state — as a metaphor for his own struggles to find his own identity; and “Children of Magdalene” from Americano, a defense of multiculturalism inspired by a protest against his reading at Towson University in Baltimore by Youth for Western Civilization (YWC).

This group, Xavier explained, “basically does not like Gays or people of color, so I was obviously their perfect target.” Though Xavier described YWC as if it were still a going concern, a September 5, 2012 post from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) (http://blog.adl.org/civil-rights/former-youth-for-western-civilization-leader-promotes-white-student-union-at-towson) notes that it “has been relatively inactive as a national organization since its founder, Kevin DeAnna, stepped down as president of the group in February 2012.” According to ADL, the president of the Towson University chapter, Matthew Heimbach, disbanded it in March 2012, reorganized and now heads a White Students’ Union at the school. A photo of Heimbach on the ADL post shows him standing in front of a Confederate flag.

Other poems Xavier read included “El Hair Espray,” “The Thing About My Pussy,” and “Step-Father,” also from Nefarious; the title poems from If Jesus Were Gay and Americano; and an unidentified slice-of-life poem about the barrio which began, “When Mexicans shined the white man’s shoes … ”

The program ended with a short but moving speech by the San Diego Multicultural LGBT Literary Foundation’s executive director, Caleb Rainey, about the importance of Queer literature.

“I grew up in a really conservative town in Colorado,” Rainey recalled. “My dad was a Baptist minister, and I grew up with a daily dose of self-hatred because I was Queer, and really noticeably so. I’ll never forget taking my first women’s studies class. We had an anthology that contained a Gay Latino short story. I can’t tell you the name, or who wrote it, but it was about a little boy whose dad also hated his voice and bullied him, and how he had to survive in that space. It was the first time ever that I had read anything that even approximated that experience for me. That was really a transitional moment in beginning to work on self-love and also recognizing the absolute, critical importance of literature and art in general on our lives. Especially for LGBT kids of color, it’s important that we have these available.”