While talking to my friend Ann a few weeks ago, I told her about the whole Copper Lounge boycott thing. Ann still lives in Albany, and apparently a similar incident of queer bashing occurred there, at a bar I used to hang out at across from my former office. Not long after that conversation, I heard of two other recent instances of queer bashing in Albuquerque.
Perhaps I'm being paranoid, but I thought it a little odd that I am personally connected with people who were subject to four separate hate crimes, all based on sexual orientation, in only the past few months. I just had to ask myself, could this have anything to do with Sept. 11?
Of course, the question didn't really make any sense. At least, I haven't heard any suspicions that queers are the real backbone of al Queda.
So I tried to do a little research to see if my conjectures were correct. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any actual statistics that recent. But I did find something else to shed some light on the subject: a really old press release about Jerry Falwell blaming the events of Sept. 11 on queers, among others.
Hmmm.
I wouldn't venture so far as to draw a direct correlation. It would seem more that, in an environment of intense and moralizing patriotism, some people will feel at liberty to take their prejuidice too far.
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And the police don't seem to be exempt from those taking advantage of this environment. This morning at 9 a.m., Hershe Michele Kramer is going to trial for protesting nonviolently. The sequel is coming on Feb. 5 at 9:30 a.m., with the trial of Tamara Moore.
These women were cited while demonstrating in front of the Copper Lounge protesting what they believe was a hate crime a the bar. In contrast to the extreme vigilance the police have kept over these protests, the officers who arrived on Nov. 2, the night of the incident, could hardly be prevailed on to fill out a report.
According to Janell, one of the women who was assaulted, when another woman approached an officer, he told her he didn't care because there is no hate crimes law in New Mexico. Kramer later found out that, while there is no state law, there is an Albuquerque city ordinance on hate crimes that includes sexual orientation.
It's pretty sad to think a police officer would lie or just not even know about local hate crimes law. Not particularly surprising, but sad.
As I said, though the police response to the assault was fairly lackadaisical, their response to the resulting protests has been quite the opposite. There's been an excessive police presence, often one officer to every five demonstrators.
In addition to the actual citations, the police threaten arrest almost every time they come. At the last demonstration in December, an officer even threatened to arrest everyone the next time, as soon as we arrived. So much for that whole bill of rights thing.
It seems that the factors that are bringing a rise in hate crimes - certainly against Muslims and people of Middle Eastern descent, if not against queers - are also giving the police the ability to get away with even more than the usual amount of suppression of freedom of speech. War has a way of doing that.
With this realization in mind, the boycott organizers called for a demonstration last Thursday. The protest drew a sizable crowd, with estimates ranging from 60 to 80 people. These people recognized that, as terrible as an assault is in and of itself, in the case of the assault of these three women, it is tangled in deeper and grimmer roots.
The kind of patriotism required to fuel a war has a way of producing toxic exhaust. This exhaust has side effects like bias-related violence and limitations on civil liberties. Perhaps it's time to clean up the environment.
by Sari Krosinsky
Daily Lobo Columnist
Please send crazed rantings and bursts of inspiration to Sari Krosinsky at michal_kro@hotmail.com.
