by Akiba Solomon, 05/04/12

Imagine that you’re taking a late-night walk to the grocery store. As you’re passing a dive bar, a group of White men and women standing outside call you and your friends n@#gers, f@#*ots, chicks with d@#s and suggest that by wearing what you have on, you’re out to rape one of the White men yelling the slurs.

Now, when you inform the bullies that you won’t tolerate their abuse, picture a White woman smashing a glass in your face, which cuts through your cheek and lacerates your salivary gland.

If one of the bullies pulls you toward him in the resulting melee and then receives a fatal stab in the chest with the scissors you’ve taken out of your bag to defend yourself, should you be the only person arrested?

Should you face two counts of second-degree murder and 80 years in prison? Spend a month in solitary confinement? Have your cheek swell to the size of a golf ball due to delayed medical care?

Should it require a national and international advocacy campaign to make it clear to the local prosecutor that a murder charge makes no sense in this case?

And, even with all of this support, should you feel so pressured by this prosecutor who maintains that “gender, race, sexual orientation and class are not part of the decision-making process” that you plead guilty to second-degree manslaughter, a change that carries 41 months in prison?

Read the full article here.

This week CeCe McDonald, the young black transgender woman on trial for murdering a white man who’d attacked her and a group of friends, shocked many of her supporters. Many thought she’d plead innocent to the second-degree murder charges, since the weapon was never found, and the case against her is largely circumstantial. But instead of pleading her innocence at the beginning of her trail, McDonald accepted a deal and pled guilty to a lesser charge of second-degree manslaughter.

This case, more than any other of the numerous cases of black LGBT people accused of crimes after getting the better of an attacker, seemed to galvanize not only the transgender community and allies, but the attention of national press outlets, including MSNBC, Democracy Now!, The Advocate, Huffington Post, Daily Kos, and many others. While many of us were hoping to see McDonald fight the charges and hopefully win an acquittal, I certainly hope that the transgender activists, the LGBT community and other allies don’t abandon McDonald, as is so often the case when the question of being “innocent” becomes the framework for the investment of sympathizers.

It is true that McDonald was not out looking for a fight. On the night of June 5, 2011, McDonald walked past a bar with four other black friends in Minneapolis. She and her friends were attacked by two white women and a white man, first with words, “niggers,” “faggots,” and “chicks with dicks.”

But the words, while enough to incite a response, were not the end of it. McDonald was struck in the face with a cocktail glass by one of the women, slicing all the way through her cheek. A fight ensued as more people joined in to attack the group of black folks, and eventually Dean Schmitz, the white man who was among the first to start harassing them, was stabbed and died later in the hospital.

Even if there is not physical evidence in place to secure the conviction the prosecutor originally sought, it doesn’t really matter. A black person who fights with white people, even when self-defense is clear, is going to likely be arrested. This is often true also in transphobic and homophobic contexts, even when the violence is between people of the same race. The burden to prove one didn’t deserve to die or be brutalized often falls on black, queer and/or trans bodies. In fact, McDonald’s judge ruled that the swastika tattooed on Schmitz’s body was inadmissible by her defense as evidence of his racist assault.

If McDonald in fact did respond to the verbal or physical assault, I certainly could not blame her, but too often this becomes the fault line that’s drawn for victims of racialized and/or gender-based violence. When a straight black man in New York City was wounded after assaulting seven young black lesbians one night in 2006, even the white gay newspaper the now-defunct New York Blade offered an editorial, calling the women a “gang” and questioning their right to defend themselves. I often wonder if Matthew Shepherd had gotten the better of his attackers, would the New York Blade and others have opined on the question of violence in the case of self-defense.

Last summer, when black queer punk performance artist (and a close friend) Brontez Purnell and bandmate Adal Kahlo were assaulted by some black Caribbean men in Oakland, a few people questioned whether Purnell had properly conducted himself in the moment.

In Indiana just yesterday, a black gay high school student is facing expulsion because he brought a stun gun to school to protect himself from bullies. People will undoubtedly argue that his actions were “improper,” even though his mother reportedly gave him the weapon to protect himself. I am more twice his age, and my mother, often worried about my safety as a black gay man (and one of her best Black gay friends was murdered in 1986) has done the same.

But it’s not just black queers who have to deal with the question of innocence, or what is the so-called “proper” way for Black people to respond to incessant threats. In the case of Trayvon Martin, in all of the media that came in the wake of his murder, very little was discussed about the constant levels at which black people, particularly black young people, feel unsafe in the world, despite the fact that they are always portrayed as the thing creating the possibility of violence for others.

For example, it was reportedly said to McDonald that she was dressed in women’s clothing to “rape” Schmitz that night. But I would imagine McDonald, like many trans and cis-gendered women, live with the fear — and too often the painful memories — of sexual violence. As a gay man who has been threatened with abduction by men of varying races on the street or in passing vehicles, I wonder if that was one of the fears Trayvon Martin felt, when he first heard the heavy footsteps of Zimmerman treading behind him in cagey pursuit.

The black person’s fear of our own safety from violence (and certainly black mens’ fear of sexual assault as one potential kind of violent encounter by police or someone else, as in the case of Abner Louima, a black immigrant who was sexually assaulted with a broomstick by NYPD officers in a local precinct bathroom) is just not what Americans care to imagine. It’s as if all the work done to re-frame racialized notions of public safety and self-defense by Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party have been lost to history.

But the need for that framework is as necessary now as ever, considering the dozens (if not hundreds) of murders by police and white citizens of black people in recent years. McDonald may claim self-defense in the case of her manslaughter trial, but the legal strategy is not what interests me. She may have many reasons for pleading to the manslaughter charge, one of which, may be to just get this behind her, or feeling the inevitability of a “guilty of anything we choose” verdict. But what I hope is that whatever the reasons, and whatever her sentence will be, that LGBTQ activists and allies do not back away from supporting her over the question of innocence. She has the right to be free from violence, she has a right to defend herself, and we should continue to defend her too.

CeCe McDonald broke down in tears as her lawyer grilled her on the witness stand. “Is it true that Molly Flaherty and Dean Schmitz started making racist remarks and slurs including ‘niggers’ and ‘faggots,’ and did Dean Schmitz say, ‘Look at that boy dressed as a girl and tucking her dick in?’”

McDonald replied, “Yes.”

McDonald was in the process of pleading guilty to second-degree manslaughter in the stabbing death of Schmitz. It’s a case that has enraged transgender advocates, who say McDonald was defending herself from a racist and transphobic attack.

McDonald is a person of color– she’s black – and she’s also transgender, two facts that her attorneys argued motivated Dean Alvin Schmitz and his friends to initiate a confrontation with her, resulting in an altercation that would leave Schmitz dead and McDonald in custody charged with murder.

McDonald’s attorney, Hersch Izek, asked her, “Is it a fact that Molly Flaherty yelled out, ‘I can take on all of you bitches’ and smashed a glass of alcohol in your face and a fight broke out with Ms. Flaherty?”

McDonald replied, “Yes.”

Izek continued, “Is it a fact that eventually the fight broke up and you attempted to leave the scene, attempted to get out of harm’s way, and got as far as the intersection, and Schmitz followed you? And you reached into your purse and pulled out a pair of scissors and held them in a way that posed an unreasonable risk to Schmitz?”

Yes, said McDonald.

“And are you giving up your claim that you legally attacked him in self-defense?”

“Yes, I am.”

Read the full article here.

Within hours of CeCe McDoanld’s plea bargain with Minneapolis prosecutors to second degree manslaughter, members of her local support committee were gearing up for another round of media and an evening visit at the local jail. McDonald is a black transgender woman who was charged with second degree murder after a fight in June of 2011 at an area bar left one man, Dean Schmitz, dead. She and her supporters have argued that the case is one of self defense after Schwartz and his friends began attacking McDonald with racist and homophobic slurs. Sentencing is set to take place next month, but the plea deal stipulates that McDonald will spend 41 months — about three and a half years — in prison.

McDonald’s case has sparked a national outcry in part because it’s so familiar. For many, the case is eerily familiar to that of the New Jersey 4, in which four black lesbians were charged with attempted murder and sent to prison after protecting themselves from a a group of white men who’d threatened to “fuck them straight.” Time and again, people of color whose gender identities fall outside of societal norms fall prey to a deeply flawed criminal justice system. When they’re feared, they become victims. When they fight back, they become criminals. 

On her blog, McDonald’s written candidly about the need to tackle hate. “No matter where you go, or community you live in, people will continue to discriminate,” McDonald wrote. “And as long as we do not stand up for our equality, we allow them to have the upper hand against us. I feel that is our duty to give these people the awareness and education about whom we truly are, and not whom they assume we are.”

Outside of the courtroom last night, McDonald’s supporters criticized the prosecution.

“[Hennepin County Attorney Michael] Freeman’s aggressive prosecution of CeCe was a continuation of the racist, transphobic assault that led to her being charged and resulted in the tragic death of one of the assailants,” said Kris Gebhard of the CeCe McDonald Support Committee. “We’ve been proud to stand with CeCe as she fought this unjust prosecution and will continue to stand with her as she fights for justice as a trans woman of color within the prison system.”

To bring that point home, Katie Burgess of the Trans Youth Support Network told a crowd of supporters outside the courthouse, “With the whole world watching, Freeman’s office consistently chose not to take the opportunity to stand up against racism and transphobia. Freeman himself said, and I quote, ‘The criminal justice system is not built for, nor is it necessarily good at, solving a lot of society’s problems.’”

I spoke with Billy Navarro of the Minnesota Transgender Health Coalition. Navarro’s been an active member of the Support CeCe Coalition, which has been working to spread the word about McDonald’s case and offer support to CeCe throughout her incarceration.

What has this case meant for Minneapolis’s LGBT community?

I think it’s definitely galvanized us in a certain way — for those of us who were paying attention to it. I’m not gonna front like everyone was paying attention to it. I think we saw the division lines between trans folks and queer folks on one side, and gays and lesbians on another side. It took a lot for us to get local, mainstream GLBT organizations and media outlets to pay attention to CeCe’s story. A lot of it was the push from the trans and queer community. If anything, it kind of brought some of those divisions to light and made the rest of us really, really come together.

The Support Committee is a bunch of different people who’ve never worked together and came from different parts of life and very different communities who came together for CeCe. So I think there are are some really big positives in that manner.

I’m just really excited about all the different people who came together to work with CeCe.

What kinds of local and national support has CeCe gotten?

I think she’s gotten a lot of national support from a lot of different organizations. Gay and lesbian and transgender; POC and white. There are labor unions that are not even part of queer or GLBT organizing that are behind it. Lawyer’s organizations — the National Lawyer’s Guild — put in a support letter a couple days ago. The support nationally and internationally has been super diverse amongst many, many different communities. Again, they’re coming together because they see this as an injustice.

One of the things that makes this case so sad is that it’s so familiar. For instance, there’s also the case of the New Jersey 4. What push are you making to confront institutional change?

I think a lot of what we’ve seen is that this work is seen as a reaction to what happened to CeCe. I think CeCe’s seen it as a bigger picture thing. It’s put a spotlight on what it’s like for trans women of color here in all these different systems — whether it’s the shelter system [PDF] or the prison industrial complex [PDF].

I think exposing that and talking about it and bringing into the mainstream media helps at least start the conversation to change those systems.

What happens now? What kinds of support are you planning for CeCe while she’s in prison?

We’re gonna continue support, and we’ve always said that from the beginning. Whatever CeCe needs from us, that’s what we’re here for. However CeCe wanted us to be supportive of her, that’s what we’re here for. We have visitation with her this evening, so we’ll talk about what she wants us to do. But we’re ready. Ride or die, whatever she wants. We’re in this for the long haul, so if it’s visiting her in jail, or needing to get stories out about her — whatever she wants, whatever she needs. For as long as she needs it.

Statement of facts

• McDonald was with friends, all of whom were black, at her apartment the night of June 5th, 2011.
• McDonald is a transgender person transitioning from male to female.
• Around midnight, McDonald and her friends decided to leave her apartment to walk to the Cub Grocery Store to purchase food.
• On the way to the Cub, they passed the Schooner Tavern.
• Outside the bar were four white individuals, including Dean Schmitz and Molly Flaherty.
• Schmitz and Flaherty and maybe other individuals made racist and transphobic remarks to McDonald and her friends.
• McDonald elected to walk away but could not because Flaherty smashed a glass across McDonald’s face, cutting through her cheek and lacerating her salivary gland.
• McDonald later received treatment for her laceration at the hospital.
• McDonald ended up in a fight with Flaherty and had to defend herself.
• Schmitz entered the fight and McDonald also had to defend herself against him.
• McDonald tried to leave the scene to get help for her laceration and made it to the intersection.
• Schmitz ran after McDonald, who turned around to face him.
• McDonald was afraid when she saw Schmitz and pulled scissors out of her purse to defend herself.
• McDonald handled the scissors in a way that created an unreasonable risk to Schmitz. She understands that she introduced a weapon into the fight and that doing so always has the potential of causing a death. She further understands that she has the legal duty to handle a weapon in a way that no one is harmed.
• Schmitz pulled McDonald towards her and ended up with the scissors in his chest.
• McDonald understood that submitting this plea means that she was giving up her claim to legally acting in self-defense and was not saying that someone else did it.
• McDonald agreed that Schmitz died as a result of the stab wound he suffered.
• McDonald stated that she had never met any of the attackers before that night.

Several members of the support committee took detailed notes during CeCe’s plea hearing.

Chrishaun “CeCe” McDonald Accepts Plea Agreement to Reduced Manslaughter Charge
Racism, Transphobia in Legal System Continued Assault McDonald Survived, Supporters Charge

Contact: Katie Burgess, Executive Director, Trans Youth Support Network, transyouthsupportnetwork@gmail.com,
(612) 363-757 and Billy Navarro Jr, MN Transgender Health Coalition, mntranspr@gmail.com,
(612) 823-1152

Minneapolis, MN – Earlier today, Ms. Chrishaun “CeCe” McDonald accepted a plea agreement to a reduced charge of manslaughter in the second degree in the criminal case resulting from the racist, transphobic assault she survived last June that left one of her attackers dead. The prosecution had originally charged her with felony murder in the second degree. However, after entering into plea negotiations this morning, the defense and the prosecution settled on the reduced charge. McDonald will be sentenced on June 4th at 1:30pm under Hennepin County Judge Daniel Moreno to 41 months in prison. The executed sentence will be reduced by one third, for “good time” and credit for the time McDonald has served pending this resolution.

The plea agreement comes nearly a year after McDonald was arrested, interrogated, denied adequate medical care for a laceration she suffered during the attack and held in solitary confinement for a month for being a transgender person. During the pre-trial proceedings, supporters raised world-wide support for the charges against McDonald to be dropped. Last month, supporters delivered to Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman a petition for dropping the charges with over 15,000 signatures and dozens of letters of support for McDonald from organizations and prominent individuals from around the globe.

Freeman consistently failed to exercise his professional discretion and take a stand against racism and transphobia by dropping the charges.

“Freeman’s aggressive prosecution of CeCe was a continuation of the racist, transphobic assault that led to her being charged and resulted in the tragic death of one of the assailants,” said Kris Gebhard of the CeCe McDonald Support Committee. “We’ve been proud to stand with CeCe as she fought this unjust prosecution and will continue to stand with her as she fights for justice as a trans woman of color within the prison system.”

In a press conference after the plea agreement was accepted in court, Katie Burgess of the Trans Youth Support Network addressed the crowd of supporters filling the steps outside the Hennepin County Courthouse. Burgess said:

“Over the past 10 months I have witnessed the legal system isolating and attacking another young trans woman of color in our community, CeCe McDonald. And over the past 10 months, I have also witnessed our community say very clearly, ‘You are not alone, CeCe! And we have had enough!’

“With the whole world watching, Freeman’s office consistently chose not to take the opportunity to stand up against racism and transphobia. Freeman himself said, and I quote, ‘The criminal justice system is not built for, nor is it necessarily good at, solving a lot of society’s problems.’

“We know that this system is not designed to deliver justice to young trans women of color. We are going to continue to support CeCe as she goes through this process and continue to stand for justice for all trans people and people of color so that this is the last time a young trans woman of color has to go through this.”

Supporters will pack the courtroom for the sentencing on June 4th and continue to rally support for McDonald and to demand justice for all trans people and people of color.

For further updates, visit http://supportcece.wordpress.com and follow @Free_CeCe.

###

Transgender women of color experience the highest rates of hate violence among the LGBTIQH community. A reportby the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs documented that people who were both transgender and of color were almost 2.5 times more likely to experience discrimination and nearly twice as likely to experience intimidation as non-transgender white individuals. Transgender women represented 44% of anti-LGBTIQH murders in 2010 even though they only represented 11% of the total reports of hate violence. And tellingly, 48.3% of transgender people of color reported that police were indifferent when responding to their attacks. Queer and trans people of color regularly document being targeted by police and experiencing police violence based on gender non-conforming appearances. Many transgender women recount being charged with prostitution simply for walking down the street or carrying condoms, while police grope them in frisks and carry out strip searches for the purposes of gender assignment.

As in similar cases involving self-defense by LGBTIQH individuals of color, Ms. McDonald has not been afforded the same presumption of innocence, nor the same immunity for self-defense, that protect other victims. After her arrest she, like many transgender detainees, was treated discriminatorily, held in solitary confinement and denied – for over two months – follow-up medical care for the injuries she sustained during the attack. The Hennepin County Attorney, who has been a staunch advocate for the rights of domestic violence survivors, continues to punish Ms. McDonald for staying alive.

CCR encourages supporters of CeCe McDonald and other queer and trans victims of violence to sign the petition at http://www.change.org/petitions/free-cece-we-re-looking-at-you-michael-freeman-drop-the-charges-against-cece-mcdonald. Read more about the case at http://supportcece.wordpress.com/.

The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.

While that lacks excitement look at this picture that was just posted out of Manhattan. Thanks supporters, FREE CECE!

In court, the judge ruled on several remaining motions. The defense moved to exclude a photo of the t-shirt Dean Schmitz, the deceased, was wearing June 5th on the grounds that it could unfairly prejudice the jury. This motion was denied.

In the discussion of this motion, the prosecution stated no weapon had been recovered from the scene. They also acknowledged it remains unclear what the weapon which caused Schmitz’s wound was.

The defense continued with a motion to sequester, or isolate from the proceedings, two Hennepin County Witness Coordinators during the examination of the witnesses they had interviewed because they were also potential witnesses. This motion was granted.

The defense moved to allow other expert witness testimony on transgender issues. The judge will make a final decision about allowing expert witness testimony after further deliberation.

The defense moved to allow CeCe more than the one change of clothes generally permitted. This motion was granted. (Today she wore black skinny slacks with a magenta button-down, black and grey paisley sweater and absolutely superb grey pumps.)

We are not aware of a decision that has been made regarding whether Dean Schmitz’s swastika tattoo will be admitted as evidence during the trial.

Jury selection will begin Tuesday, May 1st.