Lesbians In The News

[Kobi]

Pat Parker was born on this day in 1944 (to June 19, 1989) She was an influential African-American lesbian and feminist poet and activist.

Given the name Patricia Cooks at birth, Pat Parker was born in Houston, Texas, the youngest of four daughters in a Black working class family. Her mother, Marie Louise Cooks, was a domestic worker, and her father, Ernest Nathaniel Cooks supported the family by re-treading tires.

Urged by her father to take "the freedom train of education," Parker left home at seventeen and moved to Los Angeles, California, earning her undergraduate degree at Los Angeles City College, and followed that with a graduate degree at San Francisco State College. She married playwright Ed Bullins in 1962, but they separated after four years. Pat Parker settled in Oakland, California, in the early 1970s to pursue work, writing and opportunities for activism. She married a second time, to Berkeley, California writer Robert F. Parker, but decided that the "idea of marriage... wasn't working" for her.

Pat Parker began her service as the medical coordinator at the Oakland Feminist Women's Health Center, which grew from one clinic to six sites during her tenure from 1978 to 1987. Pat Parker also participated in political activism ranging from early involvement with the Black Panther Party and Black Women's Revolutionary Council to formation of the Women's Press Collective. She was involved in wide-ranging activism in gay and lesbian organizations and held positions of national leadership regarding women's health issues, especially concerning domestic and sexual violence. In 1979 she toured with the “Varied Voices of Black Women”, a group of poets and musicians which included Linda Tillery, Mary Watkins & Gwen Avery.

Parker gave her first public reading of her poetry in 1963 while married to playwright Ed Bullins. The challenge of "competing in a male poetry scene" as the wife of a writer, Parker notes, helped develop not only her voice but also her willingness to write about contemporary issues -- about civil rights and Vietnam as well as an emerging African-American lesbian feminist perspective on love and lust. Reading before women's groups beginning in 1968 brought Parker notice and satisfaction, especially as she joined Judy Grahn, a white working class Bay Area poet, to read lesbian poetry in public, arranging readings not only at women's bookstores, but also intermixing poetry with musical performances at local women's bars, coffeehouses and festivals.

Pat Parker and Audre Lorde first met in 1969 and became close friends. They continued to exchange letters and visits for twenty years, until Parker's death in 1989.

The ‘Goat Child’ of “Child of Myself,” Parker's first collection, chafes at the confinement and conformity she's expected to learn in marriage, and then tentatively comes out as a lesbian via several love poems to women. Often a bold speaker, the poet opens “Pit Stop,” a 1974 publication, with the line "My lover is a woman" in a poem that addresses interracial relationships. She also offers readers the sweet "I Kumquat You" and strident "Bitch! / I want to scream" in love poems that line up before the collection's long title poem addressing alcoholism: "a pit is a coward's suicide / a hearty drink to anything. " Pit Stop is also infused with dreams, "not [just] Martin's" or Malcolm's or those of political allies, but "a simple dream" that juxtaposes the dreams of human/racial equality with gay liberation: "In my dream - / I can walk the streets / holding hands with my lover" without fear of retaliation or disdain.

From all these stages of her life, Parker developed a narrative poetry, often taking on a call and response form recognizable in black oral traditions, and speaking of generations of women and men engaged in human rights battles. Parker's poetry generally escapes didacticism because of her deft use of humor, insistence on frank language, presentations of events long silent, and sharp analysis of injustices. The goal, Parker said is to "try to put the poetry in the language that we speak, to use that language, take those simple works and make out of them something that is moving, that is powerful, that is there."

Parker's five collections of poetry take their central images and process of self-creation as well as political analysis from autobiographical moments in Parker's life and from publicized incidents or community discussions related to race, class, gender, sexuality. The Firebrand Books' edition of “Movement in Black” - with its title poem and a collection of poems from three earlier Parker collections - is the only work by Parker that remains consistently in print. A well-crafted compilation, “Movement in Black“ reflects key patterns in Parker's work: "It is the moment of her creative impulse to communicate: the love, the anger, the fear, that powerful sense of justice (and injustice) the cynicism, the humor that she gives us," noted critic Cheryl Clarke notes in a review of this collection.

Pat Parker wrote "Womanslaughter" after the murder of her sister by her husband and places the reader alongside Parker as the poet's older sister is murdered and the sister's soon-to-be ex-husband is put on trial. Convicted not of murder but of "womanslaughter" because "Men cannot kill their wives. / They passion them to death. " For this murder in Texas, Parker’s former brother-in-law served one year in a work-release program; three years after this murder in Texas, Parker vows "I will come to my sisters / not dutiful, / I will come strong. " Parker brought this crime to the International Tribunal on Crimes against Women in 1976 in Brussels.

Finally, “Jonestown and Other Madness”, considers what isn't - what love isn't, what liberation isn't, what justice isn't; and what is - love and alliances, family legacies and strength. This last collection was published before Parker's death in 1989 from breast cancer, and ends both with a desire for more time to write and a legacy to her daughters. At her death, Pat Parker was survived by her long-time partner Marty Dunham and two daughters, Cassidy Brown and Anastasia Dunham Parker. In "Maybe I Should Have Been a Teacher," Parker chronicles her struggles, and writes:

“Take the strength that you may wage a long battle.
Take the pride that you can never stand small.
Take the rage that you can never settle for less.”

The Pat Parker/Vito Russo Center Library at New Yorks LGBT Community Center was named in honor of Parker and fellow writer, Vito Russo. The Pat Parker Poetry Award is awarded each year for a free verse, narrative poem or dramatic monologue by a black lesbian poet.

We remember Pat Parker on this day in celebration of the 70th anniversary of her birth, and in deep appreciation for her thoughtful poetry, her feminist advocacy, and her many contributions to our community.

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

http://www.buzzfeed.com/skarlan/the-...yes-they-exist


Nightclubs, bars for lesbians is a dying breed. I use to party in Key West a few times a year, there was this amazing place that catered to (us). Well...this place has reinvented itself to allow het couples, men couples..... So, now what? You will not catch me staying there. My money and I will go elsewhere.

[Kobi]

Teaser for new internet show Old Black Dyke, starring Gaye Adegbalola. The show premiers February 24th at 9pm EST on Stageit.com. OBD will air every 4th Monday of the month.

[Kobi]

******TRIGGER ALERT******

U.K. man was sentenced to nine years in prison for raping a lesbian in a Bristol bar where he worked. According to an article in Gay Star News, 30-year-old Charles Franklin claimed that he met the woman on the street and invited her into his bar to charge her phone when "one thing led to another."

The woman, who had left a wedding at 1 a.m., said she was drunk and did not remember leaving the wedding. She said that she woke up to find Franklin raping her on the floor of The Somerset House pub in Clifton.

The woman, whose name has not been released for legal reasons, told British newspaper the Daily Mail that she had three times the legal driving limit of alcohol in her system.

"The next thing I remember was being on the floor of this pub with a guy," she told the Daily Mail. "He stripped me. He was trying to force himself on me. I was struggling quite a lot. He told me if I kept struggling he would break my neck, so I let him do what he wanted."


The woman said that after the attack Franklin sat at the bar and watched TV while she lay naked on the floor. She said she then managed to find her coat and pretend to be sleeping. She said Franklin brought her upstairs and tried, but failed, to have sex with her again.

When he fell asleep, the woman put on his jeans and T-shirt before climbing out a window to escape. She borrowed a mobile phone from a kebab stand and called her mother, who came to pick her up.

Prosecutor Tara Wolfe said, "The attack had devastating consequences on the victim’s life. She was forced to take medication after the attack and as a result she was unable to pursue her career for 12 weeks."

Mitigator Edward Burgess said that, "Mr. Franklin is a man of good character, as you heard from several witnesses in the trial."

Franklin pled not guilty, but Gay Star News reports that sentencing Judge Michael Roach sentenced him to nine years in prison, and that he must sign the Sex Offenders’ Register, but also added that, "The sentence I am about to hand you should be in double figures, but your good character has reduced it to just under that."

http://www.edgeboston.com/news/inter...ears_in_prison

-------------------------------------------------------------------------



Um the man is found guilty of rape and gets a reduced sentence for "good character"? Kind of makes you wonder what the judge considers "bad character".

[lamuymuyfem]

RE: Pat Parker

i heard her read on more than one occasion. Very powerful!

[Kobi]

Marguerite H. Griffin has long been interested in rituals and ceremonies—and for the past seven years has turned her passion into her part-time profession.

She is a certified celebrant and non-denominational minister who was born and raised in Chicago, and she now calls the Chatham neighborhood home. Her business celebrates meaningful life moments and, naturally, her website is: Article Link Here

Griffin is a certified wedding and funeral celebrant who strives for authentic, meaningful and unique ceremonies to mark important life transitions, including anniversaries, memorials, baby blessings and more.

"We tend to move from one significant moment to another without really taking time to celebrate it, or truly understand how we've been moved by the occasion," Griffin said. "I heard about celebrants on NPR, an opportunity for individuals to create ceremonies—unique, hand-written to that event and the people involved."

Griffin, 47, who is lesbian, is a motivational speaker and writer, able to create the perfect mood for any ceremony—from sophisticated to intimate and sacred, from light and casual to overly flamboyant.

"I can suggest meaningful ways to personalize your ceremony using music, readings from secular, religious, spiritual or mythical traditions, and rituals that reflect your needs, your beliefs, your cultural, and your religious/spiritual background, and your values," she said.

"Your ceremony will express the great expectations and intense emotions that characterize the moments that have changed your life."

Griffin said the celebrant role has its roots in Australia, where it is most common.

"Things are going well," with the business, said Griffin, who, during the day, works at Northern Trust Bank. "This is something I do because I enjoy it. It is not full-time, and I don't ever expect it will be. It's a way for me to create value in the world, a way for me to give back, a way for me to be part of special moments for individuals and families, and use my skills as a creative writer and public speaker. That's what draws me to it."

Griffin has married about 15 couples per year, a total that no doubt will rise this year when gay weddings begin in June. She also has done baby blessings and house-warming celebrations. Plus, she has officiated memorial services for pets.

"I've enjoyed it, and really enjoy marrying gay couples," she said.

"I'm looking forward to what will be, hopefully, a busy wedding season [in 2014], which will include gay and straight couples. Now, gay couples can have a ceremony, mark the occasion, invite family and friends, have them learn more about each other, about their love, their hopes and dreams and more—just like a straight couple."

Griffin once performed a civil-union ceremony for two men who had been together for 40 years—and there was not a dry eye in the place, she said. "It was just so meaningful for them."

"For me, as a gay woman, to be able to marry a gay couple, it's very exciting; it's very hopeful and it just feels right," she said.

Griffin has performed countless memorial services over the years, such as the one she did for a terminally ill woman after being hired by the woman's children.

Griffin spent a couple of afternoons with the ill woman, to hear exactly what she had accomplished in her life, what she regretted, what she had wanted for her children, and much more. The woman passed away about four months later, and Griffin presented a perfect celebration of her life.

"For me, it was special to be a part of her journey, and also very meaningful to me that I was able to assist her children, so they didn't really have to spend the time wondering what their mom would have wanted," Griffin said. "It's wonderful work, a truly meaningful connection I have with the world."

[Kobi]

Cheryl Dunye has mastered the art of storytelling in a multitude of viewpoints pertaining to the Queer spectrum as it pertains to the African-American lifestyle within the rainbow. Dunye received her BA from Temple University and her MFA from Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts, but it was the school of life that most impacted the Liberia native.

Self-dubbed "director, screenwriter, filmmaker, creative consultant, and educator," Dunye is taking her talk to the streets of Chicago this Valentine's Day to tell her stories of love, loss, discovery and redemption. She participated in an email Q&A with Windy City Times.

Windy City Times: The Watermelon Woman is historically noted as being the first African-American lesbian feature film, and you wrote, directed and starred in it. What was the best part of that experience for you as a filmmaker and visionary?

Cheryl Dunye: For me, the best was and continues to be my ability to build community with my work: from cast to crew to audience.

WCT: There appeared to be a fair amount of investigative reporting on your part in The Watermelon Woman. Why was this real-life story so intriguing to you?

Cheryl Dunye: I am intrigued by the courage and resilience in the lives of marginalized people, in particular women of color. It was important to bring Fae's life to light so that folks could see, connect and empower themselves by knowing that their existence has value.

WCT: In addition to The Watermelon Woman, you've helmed Stranger Inside, The Owl and Mommy is Coming. What messages do you hope the audience will leave with when they walk out of the theater after seeing your films?

Cheryl Dunye: I want audiences to be intrigued, entertained and become better informed about the world. More importantly, I want them to become change agents in their lives and the lives of others. Life is to short not to.

WCT: Is there a specific Chicago-based audience "feel" when you showcase your work in the Windy City?

Cheryl Dunye: I guess it's a Windy City "We love and support your work and come back again" that I hope to receive on my visit.

WCT: What are you most looking forward to with your visit to Chicago in February?

Cheryl Dunye: Investors and collaborators for future projects [will be there]. I am in development on a new feature, launching a screenwriting contest, and have started a nonprofit media think tank called CLEVER.

WCT: Are there parts of Black lesbian life that have not been relayed on film yet that you hope to showcase?

Cheryl Dunye: I can't answer this question.

WCT: Why do you feel it is it taking so long to tell the collective stories we all live as a community? Is it lack of interest, lack of funding?

Cheryl Dunye: Both. But it looks like folks have turned their creative energies to collectively work it out on the small screen by creating web series, YouTube [videos], and a host of other new media storytelling programs and applications.

WCT: You currently serve on the board of directors for the Queer Cultural Center ( QCC ). Can you tell us a little bit about this community resource?

Cheryl Dunye: The QCC continues to be a huge support for both emerging and established Queer artists through our skill building workshops and community based events, which includes the National Queer Arts Festival, a month-long festival of queer arts every June. This year we are looking for work about the body. Check it out. It has been around since 1993 and keeps getting bigger and better every year.

WCT: Who/what aided you most in your own personal coming-out moments?

Cheryl Dunye: When I came out, I was living in Philly at the time. I had no one to turn to in my personal circle so I looked in the phone book and called the L/G hotline. They told me about a weekly youth group meeting. The rest in history ... or herstory.

WCT: What advice might you relay to young LGBT filmmakers of color?

Cheryl Dunye: Don't hesitate—create. Put your work out in the world. We need it.

Catch Cheryl Dunye on Thursday, Feb. 13, 5:30 p.m.-10:30 p.m. at Gallery 400 ( Lecture Room, 400 S. Peoria St. ) and on Friday, Feb. 14, beginning at 7 p.m. at Center on Halsted, 3656 N. Halsted St., with discussion following.

http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/l...Day/46201.html

[Jess]

you know the WCT must have a crappy editor if they let the faux paux in the opening paragraph slide. I never realized that being African-American was a "lifestyle"
But thanks for sharing the interview!

[CherylNYC]

I spotted what looked like an obvious lesbian in the photo accompanying the below article, and I found the journalist's perspective fascinating. There's very little weight placed on the young lesbian's orientation. In fact, it's ony mentioned matter-of-factly in a quote from her lawyer in the third paragraph; “I felt that if she could escape from that, she could transform her life. She has a wonderful aunt and grandmother and girlfriend who wanted to see her succeed.”

This simple nonchalance is very new in the mainstream press, even here in NYC, and it still gives me goosebumps.


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/12/ny...l?ref=nyregion

Facing Jail Time, Until a Lawyer With Survival Skills Helped Her Find Her Way
FEB. 11, 2014


The .22-caliber pistol was in her waistband, not only unlicensed but defaced, its serial number scratched or sanded off. She had not been to school in at least six months. Sitting in a detention cell in December 2010 at age 17, Jessica Williams of East Harlem realized she had been caught cold and was about to be cooked: a year in jail on a Class D felony, and then lifetime membership in the Rikers Island Alumni Association. “Reality didn’t hit me until I was in Rikers Island, and thought, ‘Oh my God, this is not my life,’ ” Ms. Williams said this week.

Turns out she was right.

On Thursday, Ms. Williams, now 20, will take the day off from her job at a CVS drugstore and turn up for graduation from Manhattan Comprehensive Night and Day High School. Among the speakers on the commencement program are the lawyer who decided that she was worth another chance and the judge who decided to give it to her. And cheering her on will be school advisers who helped her get a driver’s license and have her poised to start a training program with U.P.S. next month.

“She hadn’t been through the system,” said Eliza Orlins, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society who represented her. “I felt that if she could escape from that, she could transform her life. She has a wonderful aunt and grandmother and girlfriend who wanted to see her succeed.”

For all that, nothing about Ms. Williams’s case is much out of the ordinary, except that enough people made the effort to help her way to redemption. Ms. Orlins, a graduate of private schools in Washington, is dedicated to her work, but that is not a rarity in the Legal Aid Society or in the offices of New York City’s district attorneys. (Though, it should be said, Ms. Orlins apparently is the only public defender in New York to have appeared twice on the reality TV show “Survivor.”)

As a teenager, Ms. Williams had a dreadful record in school — cutting classes, getting suspended, a fib-a-day for her parents — but none whatsoever of violence, or, for that matter, any criminality. She had a clean rap sheet.

She grew up in the Jefferson Houses projects in East Harlem, raised by her mother and stepfather, living with “five other siblings — one brother, one sister, two nephews, one niece,” she said. After attending Bayard Rustin High School for a few years, she effectively dropped out.

“I was hanging out in the projects, partying, running around, doing negative things,” Ms. Williams said. “I was, like, popular.”

One afternoon in December 2010, she said, she and some friends found the gun near a trash can on 119th Street. “I thought it would be cool if we kept it, and that night — I don’t know why — I decided to take it outside,” she said. The police rolled up. She explained that she had thought it might be worth a few dollars by turning it in at a police station house. “The officer said if I was going to take it there, I should never have had it in my waistband,” Ms. Williams recalled.

A minimum of a year in jail is the formula applied by New York State as a hedge against the history of misery associated with guns; when it turned out that the gun was not working, and that its possession was therefore not a felony but a misdemeanor, the Manhattan district attorney’s office stuck by its demand for a year in jail. Even a broken gun is a source of havoc. Then again, so is too much jail.

In Brooklyn, the Red Hook Community Court has taken drastically different approaches and has shown that some problems are better solved by not locking people up. It accepts criminal cases from three police precincts and, under a single roof, manages to steer people into drug treatment, alternative schools, and other places besides jail. Its recidivism rate is lower than that in the rest of the city, and it saves up to $15 million a year in incarceration costs, according to a recent study.

But what is routine in Red Hook demands special agility elsewhere. Ms. Orlins told Ms. Williams to get back into school if she wanted to have any hope of avoiding jail. After getting advice from others at Legal Aid, Ms. Orlins approached Judge Lynn Kotler, who was hearing the case, and asked that Ms. Williams be given a chance to work with Bronx Connect, a mentoring program to help young people stay out of prison. After a few stumbles, Ms. Williams wound up at Manhattan Comprehensive, where Judge Kotler and Ms. Orlins will speak at graduation on Thursday.

Had being on “Survivor” helped Ms. Orlins navigate the court system?

“You mean being starving and miserable and dealing with people who are cranky and miserable?” Ms. Orlins said. “It’s the perfect preparation for criminal court.”

[ProfPacker]

very touching speech by Ellen Page (Juno)

I was moved by her honesty. Wish I could have been so eloquent when I was her age.

I know that Juno for kids is like a cult film. Hopefully her coming will have an impact on LBGTQ youth.

here's the link

[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqJThFrFXh4"]Ellen Page Comes Out As Gay At Human Rights Campaign Time to Thrive Conference - Full Video - YouTube[/nomedia]