Just like the triumph of a warrior’s journey
Just like the love and strength that I have given
Just like the rewards of a bee’s honey
I now have victory, because I have risen”
-Don Floyd

Sometimes I feel blank, like a canvas. Waiting for its oils and pastels and watercolors to help bring out its true colors. To become the Monet or Mona Lisa of this reality. I dream for the paints of life to create my beautiful existence. Where vibrant colors aren’t just seen, misunderstood. But taken for all their glories. Bright and Beautiful like you and I… we are the colors. And without the colors our lives will be blank. Like the untouched canvas, mundane and lacking.

Our canvases are created to be filled, which is condign. And the colors of our lives are to consume the canvas to express love, joy, individuality, growth and all the pictures that express our lives. And as we are the canvas, we are also the illustrator. And with every stroke of the brush, we decide how our art of life will be. Pictures full of lifes achievements and the possibilities. Creators of our own masterpieces, how will you depict your picture? Will you leave your canvas blank and unfulfilled, or will your tableaux show all that life as to offer?

And so, I ask that you all will not leave your canvases undone. Use every color imaginable to show who you are inside and out, for every tint and every hue counts. And as you create your picture remember you are the illustrator, so no one can create your picture but you. So make it the most precious and most beautiful picture that you can, with love, truth, and joy in every color.

Love,
Honee Bea

LET’S LET FREEMAN AND SENECHAL KNOW THAT WE WONT STAND FOR THE RACIST, TRANSPHOBIC PROSECUTION OF CECE!

While Chrishaun “CeCe” McDonald is being prosecuted for murder after being violently attacked for her race and gender, Freeman’s office recently declined to prosecute the killer of Darrell Evanovich, a black man who was shot dead by a white man after an alleged robbery. While no person should be thrown to the mercy of the soulless, so-called “justice” system, the fact that CeCe is on trial after being assaulted, while a white man who killed someone after chasing them down is touted as a “good Samaritan,” highlights the racist and transphobic nature of the prosecution of CeCe. Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman and Marlene Senechal have the power to drop the charges against CeCe. So far, though, he has implicitly sided with CeCe’s white supremacist attackers by failing to acknowledge the racist, transphobic assault that she survived as a mitigating factor in the unintentional death of Dean Schmitz.

When: Tuesday, February 21, ALL DAY
Where: From home, work, wherever you find yourself!
What: Call Michael Freeman at 612-348-5540, fax at 612-348-2042, and email at citizeninfo@co.hennepin.mn.us
Call Marlene Senechal at 612-348-5561, fax at 612-348-3061, and email at citizeninfo@co.hennepin.mn.us

Remember to remain polite but assertive. Some key points to mention in your calls, emails, and faxes are:

• Identify yourself as a supporter, friend, family member, or community member calling about Ms. Chrishaun McDonald’s case.
• Tell the County Attorney’s Office why you’re concerned: Ms. McDonald was the target of a hate crime, but she was singled out for aggressive prosecution after the attack.
• County Attorney Freeman has declined to press charges in cases like this at least three times already this year. Remind him that he has the power to drop the charges against Ms. McDonald.
• Tell Freeman and Senechal not to side with Ms. McDonald’s white supremacist attackers: drop the charges against Ms. McDonald.

Tell Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman and Assistant Attorney Marlene Senechal to take a stand against hate, racism, and transphobia. Tell Freeman and Senechal to DROP THE CHARGES against Chrishaun McDonald!

CeCe McDonald, a black trans woman, has been facing 2nd degree murder charges since being attacked last summer by a group of white adults.

CeCe and several friends, all black, were walking to the grocery store on June 5th, 2011 when white adults standing in the patio area of a South Minneapolis bar started screaming racist and transphobic slurs at the youth. CeCe, who is only 23 years old, approached the group and replied that she and her friends would not tolerate hate speech. In response, one of the white women said “I’ll take you bitches on” and smashed her glass into CeCe’s face. The broken glass sliced all the way through CeCe’s cheek. A fight ensued between the adults and the young people after this initial attack and one of the attackers, Dean Schmitz, was fatally stabbed.

As if it were not sufficiently tragic that a group of young people were subjected to such severe violence and that Dean Schmitz lost his life, police arriving at the scene arrested CeCe, denied her adequate medical treatment, interrogated her for hours, and placed her in solitary confinement. In the aftermath of being attacked, she was not treated with care, but launched into another nightmare. The only person arrested that night, she has since been charged with two counts of 2nd degree murder. Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman has the power to drop these charges, a choice he made in multiple other clear instances of self-defense this year, but he has not yet done so…

Continue reading here.

Cece McDonald stood up to bigots and survived a hate crime. Now she’s in the county jail waiting to be tried for second degree murder.

This is a story about intersectionality – what happens when a young trans woman of color goes up against white supremacy, misogyny and transphobia. It’s a story about what happens when you have to fight for your life.

**
It began last June, the night of the 5th, when Cece and her friends – all young, black and queer – decided that they wanted to walk to the grocery store.

The grocery store in question is in south Minneapolis just off Lake Street, the busy, polluted, vital artery running from the wealthy white neighborhoods by the lakes through blocks of working class, multiracial, immigrant businesses before it ends in upmarket gentrification at the river. The grocery store is between the police station and the the light rail in a historically contested neighborhood where communities meet, mix and sometimes contend: the older white working class who bought in during the seventies and eighties meets immigrants from Mexico, Somalia and Central America who came looking for work or for political refuge; Native people still under the gun of colonization; African-Americans who’ve lived in Minneapolis for generations or arrived from Chicago or New Orleans in the last few years; students, punks and radicals, mostly but not exclusively white, gentrifiers or born in the neighborhood.

To get to the store, the group had to walk past a dive bar called the Schooner.

Dean Schmitz and his friends were standing outside the Schooner’s side door. All were older – Dean was 47 – and all were white. When they saw CeCe and her friends walk by, they started yelling – “faggots” “chicks with dicks” “n*****s” – a litany of vile abuse targeted at a group of much younger strangers.

CeCe McDonald has a strong sense of justice – she decided to confront Dean and his friends. So she and her group walked toward the bar.

**
Before we go any further, let’s talk about CeCe.

She’s 23, a college student in fashion design, a trans woman, Black, femme, very funny and widely known to be a generous person – a woman who housed and took care of her chosen family of younger queer and trans folks. Her friends call her Honee Bea.

CeCe is someone who fights for social change who even from jail has been urging her supporters to help other victims of white supremacy – including the family of Jaime Gonzalez, who was killed by the Texas police while he was at school.

She is someone who has faith in herself, in her community, in her values. “Love is inevitable and overcomes any and all things,” she writes.

CeCe and her friends are brave and tough, strong enough to walk around being visible in a world that attacks and criminalizes you if you’re young and African-American, and doubles the assault if you’re young and African-American and trans and femme.

You probably know – if you’re trans you definitely know – that trans women of color face incredible, staggering rates of violence and homicide. In most places it is essentially legal to discriminate against trans people in housing, employment and social services. As a result, trans people, especially trans women, are socially vulnerable in all kinds of ways – and vulnerable turns into “criminalized”, whether it’s because you can’t change your legal documents to match your gender or because you’re homeless and panhandling or because you’re doing sex work to make the rent…or because you have to fight to keep yourself safe

Trans people are ten to fifteen times more likely to have been incarcerated than cis people. Nearly half of all African-American trans people have spent time in the prison system.

Seventy percent of the GLBTQ people murdered in 2010 were people of color. Forty-four percent were trans women.

If you’re vulnerable, you have to wonder – will someone assault you? Will you survive? Will anyone help you? That’s a pretty heavy thing to carry around in the back of your mind every day.

***
CeCe and her friends knew the statistics, but they still dared to rebuke hatred when it spoke. They walked up the Dean Schmitz and his group, and CeCe told him that her crew would not tolerate hate speech.

But hatred hits back. One of Dean Schmitz’s friends told them, “I’ll take you bitches on,” and smashed her glass into Cece’s face, puncturing her cheek and badly lacerating her salivary gland.

There was a fight. Multiple people were involved. At the end, CeCe was on the ground in a pool of her own blood. Dean Schmitz was dead.

***
When the cops came, Cece was the only one they arrested. They took her to jail, withheld medical treatment, and sometime in the small hours got her to sign a confession. She recanted it as soon as she was able to do so.

Later, the medical examiner discovered a swastika tattoo on Dean Schmitz’s body.

***
Let’s talk about white supremacy, because this it haunts this case.

White supremacy is a system, and it runs on routine plus terror. The routine is the dull grind of discrimination – the stop-and-frisks of youth of color in the hope of finding something to get their fingerprints are in the system, the heavy policing in black neighborhoods and the heavy discipline in schools when kids of color are involved, the biased, expensive court system, the unspoken but obvious job discrimination and always, always the white supremacist narrative in mainstream culture saying that people of color deserve what they get.

And then there’s terror. Whether it’s the Jim Crow South or the modern North, it’s the knowledge that at any time you can be attacked, hurt, killed and no one will do anything. That your body, your life, your friends’ lives could always be on the line.

Terror keeps the machine humming. If you act up – if you talk back – anything might happen to you.
***
An interesting thing about prosecutor Michael Freeman: in the last year, he’s dropped charges against three people who killed accidentally while fighting for their lives. But he’s leaning on CeCe to plead guilty, and he initially persuaded the court to set her bail at an outrageous $500,000 – as if CeCe, the injured survivor of a hate crime, was some kind of risk to her community.

The court system isn’t neutral.

If you haven’t been on the wrong end of the legal system, it’s very easy to assume that the courts will sort everything out. Privileged people – white people, middle class people, cis people – can grow up identifying with the court system and with the idea of “neutrality” – especially when articulate white men in nice suits are talking. Something happened, privileged folks think, and the courts will figure it out, they’ll assign blame correctly, someone will pay a debt to society, and all’s well that ends well.

Here is what really happens: CeCe is in jail. Visiting is severely restricted, so getting a trans activist in to see her so that her friends can find her a trans-friendly lawyer is difficult. That lawyer has to work for free, because CeCe doesn’t have enough money and neither do her friends, and all her support committee’s money is going for bail. It takes a month to get meaningful treatment for injuries from the night of the attack, so her cheek swells up with a lump the size of a golf ball. She gets put in solitary “for her own protection” – which means ‘because she’s trans’ – and the support committee has to organize call-ins to get her out.

In order for a prisoner to be able to call you, you have to pay a monthly charge to a phone security service, and her friends are struggling to get work. So money has to be found for that. And the trial date has been moved once. Every time a trial date is set, her support committee mobilizes people — thirty or forty people have taken vacation days or changed their schedules so they could show up. Will it be moved again?

It’s easier and cheaper for the court system when people plead guilty, and it results in a politically-useful higher conviction rate. In the United States, the number of plea-bargains has skyrocketed in the last two decades and the number of actual trials has gone way down.

This is how the courts get people to take a plea – prisoners get tired and worn and confused and low in spirits, so they plead guilty just for a little certainty and an end to the ordeal. And many, many of those are people of color.
***

This isn’t just about CeCe. It’s about the way young women are harassed and assaulted every day in every city. It’s about the way trans women are treated as disposable and the way black youth are criminalized. It’s about the constant social violence by which white supremacy, transphobia and misogyny are maintained.

And it’s about whose experience counts. When we believe CeCe, we’re saying that we hear trans women, we hear youth of color and we believe what they say about their own lives. We name racism, we name violence, we name prejudice – and we refuse them with all the strength we have.

***
We need to get the charges against CeCe dropped. There’s precedent, the prosecutor has the authority and a victory here would be a victory for so many people – for CeCe, for her community and friends, for youth of color and trans youth who face violence and hatred. To do this, we need to get Michael Freeman to listen. We need voices. We need media.

We need to make it clear to Michael Freeman that this case is visible – we aren’t going to forget about CeCe no matter how often the trial gets moved, and we aren’t going to forget about any miscarriage of justice, either.

You can call Michael Freeman at 612-348-5540, fax at 612-348-2042, and email at citizeninfo@co.hennepin.mn.us

Remember to remain polite but don’t be afraid to be assertive. Some key points to mention in your calls, emails, and faxes are:

*Identify yourself as a supporter, friend, family member, or community member calling about Ms. Chrishaun McDonald’s case.

*Tell the County Attorney’s Office why you’re concerned: Ms. McDonald was the target of a hate crime, but she was singled out for aggressive prosecution after the attack.

*County Attorney Freeman has declined to press charges in cases like this at least three times already this year. Remind him that he has the power to drop the charges against Ms. McDonald.

Tell Freeman not to side with Ms. McDonald’s white supremacist attackers: drop the charges against Ms. McDonald.

For more information and new developments: www.supportcece.wordpress.com

LET’S LET FREEMAN AND SENECHAL KNOW THAT WE WONT STAND FOR THE RACIST, TRANSPHOBIC PROSECUTION OF CECE!

While Chrishaun “CeCe” McDonald is being prosecuted for murder after being violently attacked for her race and gender, Freeman’s office recently declined to prosecute the killer of Darrell Evanovich, a black man who was shot dead by a white man after an alleged robbery. While no person should be thrown to the mercy of the soulless, so-called “justice” system, the fact that CeCe is on trial after being assaulted, while a white man who killed someone after chasing them down is touted as a “good Samaritan,” highlights the racist and transphobic nature of the prosecution of CeCe. Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman and Marlene Senechal have the power to drop the charges against CeCe. So far, though, he has implicitly sided with CeCe’s white supremacist attackers by failing to acknowledge the racist, transphobic assault that she survived as a mitigating factor in the unintentional death of Dean Schmitz.

When: Tuesday, February 7, ALL DAY
Where: From home, work, wherever you find yourself!
What: Call Michael Freeman at 612-348-5540, fax at 612-348-2042, and email at citizeninfo@co.hennepin.mn.us
Call Marlene Senechal at 612-348-5561, fax at 612-348-3061, and email at citizeninfo@co.hennepin.mn.us

Remember to remain polite but assertive. Some key points to mention in your calls, emails, and faxes are:

• Identify yourself as a supporter, friend, family member, or community member calling about Ms. Chrishaun McDonald’s case.
• Tell the County Attorney’s Office why you’re concerned: Ms. McDonald was the target of a hate crime, but she was singled out for aggressive prosecution after the attack.
• County Attorney Freeman has declined to press charges in cases like this at least three times already this year. Remind him that he has the power to drop the charges against Ms. McDonald.
• Tell Freeman and Senechal not to side with Ms. McDonald’s white supremacist attackers: drop the charges against Ms. McDonald.

Tell Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman and Assistant Attorney Marlene Senechal to take a stand against hate, racism, and transphobia. Tell Freeman and Senechal to DROP THE CHARGES against Chrishaun McDonald!

On the night of June 5th 2011, an African American Transgender woman named CeCe McDonald was walking with a group of her friends to the grocery store. Everyone in her group was young, black and queer. In the immediate proximity to the grocery store there’s the Schooner Tavern. Some Schooner patrons (without being provoked) began hurling racist, homophobic and transphobic slurs at her group. When CeCe bravely approached them, she was attacked with a glass beer mug. Her cheek was punctured all the way through to her salivary gland which was lacerated in an assault that one could easily describe as a hate crime. Dean Schmitz, who instigated this attack, was stabbed and died in the resulting fight.

The only person arrested that night was CeCe. She was picked up out of a pool of her own blood, given 11 stitches and taken to an interrogation room. Sleep deprived, reeling from the traumatic events of the night, and manipulated by the detectives interrogation techniques, she waived her right to an attorney and was taken to jail. CeCe would spend the next several months incarcerated, where she was denied adequate medical attention. The wound she obtained from the assault abscessed to a golf-ball sized lump, she experienced extreme pain and pressure in her eye and ear even after it was finally drained.

If her treatment so far is any example, CeCe McDonald will not receive a fair trial in Hennipen County. This is why ever increasing pressure must be put on district attorney Michael Freeman to drop the charges. The American legal system is a constant source of injustice for many people, transgender women of color among them. While cis-men of color are the predominant target of the ever-expanding prison industrial complex, transgender women (particularly trans women of color) are also disproportionately targeted: By police*, are more often incarcerated** and face drastically higher incidents of sexual assault*** while incarcerated. Transgender women in prison are routinely denied hormones and other vital healthcare****. Personally, I can attest that hormones alleviate suicidal tendencies and other self destructive behavior.

More injustice

A defendant who is a trans woman of color will not a face a jury of her peers. As a trans woman, the vast majority of the people I encounter on daily basis are completely transphobic in the most literal sense and tend to have vastly more issues with trans women. They are uncomfortable around us; think we are weird, crazy and perhaps even deceptive sexual predators. And while most people probably don’t think of themselves as racist, many white people either think that institutional racism is a far less prevalent problem than it really is or outright deny its existence. This is ironically, is a major way institutional racism, transphobia, cis and white supremacy is perpetuated.

The jury selection process in this country is designed to weed out those with distrust for the legal system or oppose any unjust laws or charges. The result is jurors tend to come from a somewhat privileged background. They haven’t experienced the brunt of prejudice and because of this they assume that everyone gets a fair trial and that bad people go to jail where they belong. They are also likely to believe that police don’t arrest innocent people, and that it if someone is charged with murder they are probably a murderer. This tends to cancel out any notions of innocent until proven guilty.

In our culture the idea of finding justice through law & order is far more prevalent than the reality: At its best, the legal system could be seen as a morally ambiguous bureaucracy with a failure rate of around 100%. Anyone who has knowledge of “criminal justice” knows that prison doesn’t deter crime or violence, nor does it serve to “rehabilitate” prisoners. At its worst prison is just the capitalist solution to bodies that are not economically viable and an extension of American slavery.

CeCe’s is a cut and dry case of self defense but as a survival method I’ve learned not to underestimate peoples’ prejudice. Justice cannot be found in a courtroom. CeCe’s fate should not be left in the hands of people who don’t know or care about her or her community.

What can you do?

1. Please sign this petition!
2. Call, e-mail and fax District Attorney Michael Freeman and Assistant Attorney Marlene Senechal and demand he drop the charges against CeCe.
   Call Michael Freeman at 612-348-5540, fax at 612-348-2042, and email at citizeninfo@co.hennepin.mn.us
   Call Marlene Senechal at 612-348-5561, fax at 612-348-3061, and email at citizeninfo@co.hennepin.mn.us
3. Encourage your community and organizations to publicly support CeCe!
4. Stay up to date at her website!

—————————————————————–

* “Twenty-two percent (22%) of respondents interacting with police reported harassment by officers. Higher rates of harassment were reported by Black (38%). multiracial (36%) and Asian (29%) respondents.”
pg 160. Grant, Jaime M., Lisa A. Mottet, Justin Tanis, Jack Harrison, Jody L. Herman, and Mara Keisling. Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey. Washington: National Center for Transgender Equality and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 2011.
** “ Black and Latino/a incidences of being incarcerated due only to gender identity/expression were much higher than the overall sample’s experience, at 41% and 21% respectively.
– pg. 163 National Transgender Discrimination Survey 2011
*** “Thirty-eight percent (38%) of Black MTF respondents reported being sexually assaulted by either another inmate or a staff member in jail/prison”
– Pg. 168 National Transgender Discrimination Survey 2011
**** “Black and multiracial respondents, those with low household incomes, and transgender women all reported higher incidences of hormone and routine health care denial than the full sample.”
-Pg. 169 National Transgender Discrimination Survey 2011

The students at Carleton College are letting County Attorney Michael Freeman know that they won’t stand for the racist, transphobic prosecution of CeCe McDonald!

Contact: Katie Burgess, Executive Director, Trans Youth Support Network (TYSN) transyouthsupportnetwork@gmail.com, (612) 363-7574; and Billy Navarro, Jr., MN Transgender Health Coalition, mntranspr@gmail.com, (612) 823-1152

Minneapolis – This afternoon, Chrishaun “CeCe” McDonald appeared in court with her community packing the courtroom in continuing support. On Wednesday, January 4, she turned herself in after her parole officer issued a bench warrant for her arrest. McDonald’s parole officer alleges that for twelve hours starting on December 28 through December 29 the electronic monitoring device she is required to wear was tampered with. On December 29 McDonald was required by her parole officer to take a drug test. She tested positive for THC, after passing all prior drug tests since she was conditionally released in September 2011. The results of the drug test are considered a violation of the terms of her conditional release, which include no alcohol or drug use.

In court the defense argued that, in spite of the accusation that McDonald tampered with her electronic monitoring device, it was in fact a mechanical issue. McDonald’s lawyer, Hersch Izek, argued that the court could not prove that McDonald had anything to do with the device failing. The defense asserted that this was McDonald’s first violation and that in drug court it takes at least two positive drug test results for an arrest warrant to be filed. He asked the court to consider lowering her bail from $500,000 so her community would be able to raise money again for her release; given that McDonald is not any more a threat to society then she was before the alleged violations. The defense reminded the court that McDonald already has a job working at a local café and has been trusted to go to and from doctor’s appointments and work in the past with no problems.

Judge Moreno ruled against CeCe and her bail will stay at $500,000. Her trial is not set to start until April 30, 2012. Supporters expressed concern for McDonald’s safety while she waits in jail for her trial to begin, noting that prisons and jails are notoriously unsafe for transgender people especially for transgender woman of color. “This is yet another example of the ways that the legal system has failed to take CeCe’s safety into account,” said Lex Horan of the Trans Youth Support Network. “First, the Hennepin County Attorney charged her with murder, ignoring the violent, racist assault she experienced; and now Judge Moreno is putting her back in jail without taking into account the risk to her safety. The deck has been stacked against CeCe since the moment of her arrest. People of color & trans people experience harsher treatment in every arena of the legal system, from arrest to bail costs to treatment in the courtroom to sentencing. CeCe being sent back to jail is just another example of how she’s been set up all along.”

Although McDonald was given less than 24 hours’ notice of today’s court proceedings, around twenty of her family members and supporters filled the courtroom to remind the prosecution and the judge that McDonald has strong community backing.

“This decision is ridiculous,” said Billy Navarro Jr. of the MN Transgender Health Coalition. “The court can’t even say definitively that CeCe tampered with her monitoring device. All they know is that it wasn’t working right for twelve hours. This is her first violation: there is no way she should have to stay in jail from now through her trial. She should be home with her family and community!”

“I did not think the judge’s ruling was just in this case.” said Ethan Turcotte. “This young woman has developed a network of support that was evident in the courtroom today. I’ll continue to support CeCe and stay connected as she fights the system from within.”

Supporters will continue to spread the word about the injustice McDonald is suffering in the legal system and demand that Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman drop the charges against her. Visit http://supportcece.wordpress.com or email mpls4cece@gmail.com for more information. For a media packet with resources for press coverage of McDonald’s case, see http://supportcece.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/cece-mcdonald-media-packet.pdf.

###

CeCe could use some support! Send her some mail!

CeCe can receive books in jail. All books mailed to CeCe need to be *new* paperback copies sent directly from a publisher or an online bookstore.  CeCe can also receive newspaper and magazine subscriptions.  CeCe is very interested in drawing, music, fashion, dance, and pop culture.  Please keep CeCe’s interests in mind when sending her reading materials.  The following is a list of items CeCe would like to read. Please  email mpls4cece@gmail.com if you send her a book or magazine  so we can avoid sending duplicates.

A subscription to the Star Tribune

Twilight (New Moon- Book 2) by Stephenie Meyer

Twilight (Eclipse-Book3) by Stephenie Meyer

Books and other printed materials  can be sent to:

Public Safety Facility
Attn: Chrishaun Reed McDonald #2012000296 
401 South 4th Avenue
Suite 100
Minneapolis, MN 55415

Books and magazines must be addressed using CeCe’s full information above, including the inmate number. The Bureau of Prisons website notes that publications should not be “detrimental to the security, discipline, or good order of the institution, or facilitate criminal activity” so use your best judgement about what you send into the jail.

CeCe would also love to get a letter from you (sent to the address listed above)! You can also organize a letter writing party! If you live in the area, you don’t even have to worry about paying for postage–bring your letters to the drop box for at The Exchange and we will mail them for you.  Keep the following regulations in mind:

Inmates are not allowed to receive packages, including photographs.  Packages will not be accepted and will be returned to the sender.  Photographs will be removed from the envelope and returned to the inmate at the time of release.  Please note that all letters sent to the jail are opened, read, and inspected by jail staff. Use good sense about what you say in your letter, and don’t write about anything that is likely to get you or anyone else in trouble with the cops.

Thank you for your continued support!

-The CeCe McDonald Support Committee-

On January 4th, CeCe McDonald was told by her attorney that a bench warrant was issued for her, for two alleged violations of her conditions of release. Her PO alleges that she tampered with her electronic monitoring device for twelve hours; it was argued in court that this could have been a mechanical issue and that the state hasn’t provided evidence that CeCe was responsible. And though on previous occasions CeCe has passed the random drug tests she’s been required to take, she tested positive for THC on December 29th. On the afternoon of January 4th, CeCe turned herself in to the court and on January 5th, she appeared for a hearing on these allegations in a courtroom packed with supporters.

Judge Moreno heard arguments from both sides. The defense asked for the lowering of her bail so CeCe’s community could raise money for her release, and reminded the court that CeCe is not any more a threat to society than she was before the alleged violations. The defense also reminded the court that McDonald already has a job working at a local café and has been trusted to go to and from doctor’s appointments and work in the past, with no problems.

Judge Moreno ruled against CeCe, and set her bail at $500,000. Her trial is not scheduled to start until April 30, 2012.

Supporters will continue to spread the word about the injustice McDonald is suffering in the legal system, and to demand that Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman drop the charges against her.