On Saturday, November 20, 2004, at 11:12 PM, Dorian Eder wrote:
The saddest thing about Dyna's post to me is the assumption that only GLBT members of our community would show up to pay their respects to those needlessly assaulted and killed by hate crimes.
I spent a good deal of time last night reading up on the holocaust, and highly recommend the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website at www.ushmm.org.
It is notable that when group after group was sent to the Nazi's death machine virtually no other group would speak out. Even members of the same group were complicit in the murder of their own- for example the Papacy promised the Nazis they would not interfere with Hitler's "final solution" while a full third of Polish Priests were rounded up and sent to the concentration camps. Many Jews attempted to flee Germany and were sent back by other nations including the United States. A rare exception was one German Jew that made it to our shores, was assumed to German spy, and despite his protestations was sent to a POW camp for the remainder of the war.
There should have been enough community members from all walks of life in attendance to deflect the cynical view that they all must be gay. Transgender people are the marginalized of the marginalized - even in happy, healthy and 'tolerant' Minneapolis. More of us should be concerned about our fellow Minnesotans who live in such danger day in and day out.
Nearly 10 years passed between the Nazi's first restrictions on the civil rights of Jews and the first extermination of Jews. During those years the Nazis gradually took away the jews opportunity to hold government jobs, practice their professions, travel, etc.. The current Republican administrations denial of driver's licenses beyond Visa expiration dates and denial of change of Social Security records to a transgendered persons chosen name and gender follow the same pattern as the Nazi's. The passing of Constitutional Amendments to restrict marriage in 11 states invalidated thousands of intersex folk's existing marriages and took away domestic partner benefits from thousands also. Again, our nation is eerily veering down the path to the gas chambers.
One would think the transgender folks themselves would note this trend and be getting their emmigration paperwork in order or at least a good 4 wheel drive vehicle to slip across the border in some cold night. But the families of the disabled that were the first victims of the Nazi's "final solution" were all too slow to question why shortly after sending them to the new "hospitals" they got back an urn of ashes and a note that their disabled kin had died. The gays and the gypsies appeared to put up little fight. And while a few wise jews escaped, there was no mass resistance until they were already confined to ghettos.
Some of the religious extremists that make up the Republican Party's base are already calling for the forced committment of gays to institutions to be "cured" of their "mental illness". Granted, the military's a bit overextended to round up a few million gay americans at the moment, but if the transgendered are dumb enough to publicize each others identities all over the web so they'll be easy to find they'd probably voluntarily turn themselves in for "treatment" too. Fortunately their are wiser folks in the gay and other vulnerable communities who are protecting their privacy and prepared to run for the border if neccessary.
With our history of protecting civil rights it is incumbent that our city provide sanctuary if needed for the targets of the next holocaust. We need to insure that our city and other agency's websites and conventional records do not needlessly out citizens and make them easy targets for Bush's stromtroopers. We need to be ready to feed and shelter gay federal workers that may be fired in another Republican "lavender scare" or immigrants that can't find a job because they weren't born here. And if worse comes to worse we may sadly be called to serve as conductors as Minneapolis becomes a station on a 21st century underground railroad.
hanging on in Hawthorne,
Dyna Sluyter
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