The War on Women Continues: This morning I woke up to disturbing news about a woman who was shot to death while riding her bike near Longfellow school in Berkeley. I’m not sure why she was killed nor do I know her name but what immediately came to mind were the two teenage girls, Bobbie Sartain and her best friend Raquel Gerstel shot over 40 times in Oakland the other week…
What also came to mind was the recent kidnap and sexual assault of an 16-year-old autistic girl, with the mental capacity of a 6 year old. She got separated from her youth facility in East Oakland and was preyed upon by a man who kept her in bondage for 3 days.. Police eventually caught up with 36-year-old Gary Steven Atkinson, who was long known to be a predator…But the damage is done. Trauma has been inflicted..
All this is compounded by a wave of assaults both within and outside the borders of our city. They range from the recent shooting death of a unidentified woman in Fruitvale 10 days ago, to an attempt by a young man in Fremont, (Cali) to hang his girlfriend in his backyard after an argument, to shooting death of 25 year old Samantha Holderman of Antioch (Cali ) to a man who beat his wife to death in Staten Island, NY, before taking his own life. I can go on and on listing atrocities.
Locally all that I mentioned is underscored recent Facebook status update of long time Oakland activist and mother Needa Bee who posted up a warning about ” a psycho raping and torturing women at gunpoint in Funktown (East Oakland) . Homeless, hookers, crackheads. 2 of the women have gone to the police. And the police have done nothing“. Needa recently update us to note that word on the street is there is some sort of pimp war going on resulting in these men shooting and trying to take out each others girls..Femicide on a whole other level.
Needa Bee’s warnings are frightening because not only have the police been absent but not too many of us in the community are speaking on what she reported, but then again many of us are pretty silent on the two girls shot 40 times..Very few of us are asking and how and why? …Sadly, not a whole lot of us are talking about Kasandra Perkins, a young mother shot 9 times in front of her 3 month old child and his own mother…No one is talking about the fact that Kasandra may have been pregnant again…
Kesandra Perkins
What we are talking about is Jovan Belcher, the Kansas City Chief football star who killed his girlfriend Kasandra and later himself in front of his coaches. What we are talking about his how the KC Chiefs demonstrated ‘inspiring courage‘ and how they ‘played valiantly‘ less than 24 hours after this horrific tragedy…Far too many of us were quoting media talking points about how the Chief’s win was a triumph and start the “healing process”
Personally I thought it was in bad taste for the NFL to have allowed that game to be played. I don’t know if any sort of healing was really started.. If anything, I think it prolonged our collective silence.. The least we can do is shed light on the victims and remember their names…
We should also not numb or allow ourselves to be distracted from these recent assaults. They should weigh heavily on our hearts and minds and move us to find ways to end violence against women. Anything less is an indication that we are stepping away from our humanity.
Remember, Reflect, and Revolutionize
I totally disagree in regards to Jovan Belcher. I think they should’ve still played just like they did and to hell with him!! he’s a coward who made a coward move, now his daughter have to grow up parentless because he took it upon himself to take her mother’s life and then gonna cowardly shoot himself all over his emotions he couldn’t control!! I don’t feel sorry for him, nor do I want to remember him. On the other hand I do feel deeply sad for the victim which is Kasandra, to me ..he was no victim,..he was an asshole for killing that girl like that!! period!…—pink
@Iam Bee Closing is not in respect for Jovan..Its done as a sign of respect for the GF who did work for the organization.. Its also done to give everyone time to reflect.. If you recall bc people were in shock many described Jovan as a hero.. Now we know he was a cheater and abuser.. The NFL needs to clean up their act .. This is the 3rd suicide they’ve had in 2 years and maybe the 4 or 5th killing/assault in the past 5…
Maybe but they can do something later. They don’t have to stop the game. (RED)
if your coworker at your job dies. Does the company close for a day and still pay all employees. We had a case at my other job where he committed suicide.. They did not close down or anything.. Just another day (RED)
Actually yes they do… It’s happened twice at two different companies I been at…and I doubt if the NFL will do anything
Okay,..I am so far away from this scene investigation, that I can only mention some tri_ball stuff on these hate concepts of ‘other_ing’ the invisible role modes of womyns history X and the never ending story of emotainment the scales of the less abstraction capabilities of so many young mens.
To start now in essay_ing in queer_feminist theory concepts will failed by standards the language of Urban areas in the Northern Americas still narrates the language turn in capital_Ism lawsuits. Thats wrong on a left militant perspective. Also the concepts of white womyn for the right to define sexual violence has its ends by sanctioning the hetero violator indeed as low cost body.
But one suggestion about more self defense womyn rights I have in narration:
It seems clear that anxieties about greatness in literature are closely tied to anxieties about national, political, and cultural greatness, and that the more anxious the government, the more pressure is placed on the humanities to textualize and naturalize the category of the ‘great.’ and a strange assortment of other “left-wing” pastimes (such as the noncompetitive game of jump-rope and the “feminist interest in witches”). There the critical Davey D. host on womyns rights and hate crimes opens each chapter of Telling the Truth with an epigraph from George Orwell’s 1984; what follows is inevitably a campaign of misinformation, redefinition and other rhetorical maneuverings. So the lyrical literature of the ‘other_ing’ states in her acknowledgments, “The challenge is hereby issued: Try to show I am mistaken if you wish, but do so with sound evidence and sound reasoning. Invective and accusation will merely serve as evidence of the low status into which the truth has fallen in our time.
My sentiments….
Reblogged this on BROTHA WOLF.
The story was so sad. – peach
This is sad on so many levels. My heart goes out to the family. 🙁
good info, http://www.globalhhb.com, green
good article (yellow)
I read someting that the NFL gave one of the kids 1 Million Dollars (RED)
Thank God the Kanas City Chiefs are taking care of their baby! #10