Two things which are alike

[rozk]

Firstly a celebration of something that happened forty years ago:

STONEWALL RIOTS (28th June to 1st July 1969)
40th ANNIVERSARY
MARCH and CABARET

The 'Stonewall Riots' in New York from are remembered as the start of the global LGBTQ rights movement. This year is the 40th Anniversary.

That's 40 years of gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans and queer people fighting for our rights in the streets, in the courts, in the workplace, in communities around the world!

Be part of this story yourself! Join us for London's ONLY celebration of this key moment in our community's story, on Sunday 28 June 2009.

Stage 1: March from the London School of Economics, via Soho Square, to Central Station in Kings Cross.

Stage 2: Enjoy a FREE cabaret and consciousness-raising event.


Stonewall Inn, New York
…where it all started 40 years ago Central Station, London
…where we will be celebrating the
40th Anniversary

March from London School of Economics,
via Soho Square, to Central Station
Sunday 28 June 2009 (1pm to 3pm)

Estimated journey time: 1 hour 30 minutes plus 30 minutes in Soho Square.

1. Gather at the London School of Economics and Political Science at 1pm
2. Leave via Houghton Street at 1.30pm prompt
3. Turn right onto Aldwych A4
4. Turn right onto Drury Lane
5. Turn left onto High Holborn A40
6. Bear right onto Saint Giles High Street A40
7. Bear right towards New Oxford Street
8. Turn left onto New Oxford Street and walk a few yards to cross roads with Tottenham Court Road Tube on it
9. Go straight over traffic lights onto Oxford Street
10. Turn left onto Soho Street
11. Arrive at Soho Square, W1D 4

12. Walk completely around Soho Square. Take a seat in Soho Square, enjoy the sunshine, listen to the birds, have a chat about life, the universe and everything. A small group of (quick) marchers will split off to distribute leaflets on Old Compton Street. When they get back, we can move off again…

13. Go back down Soho Street to Oxford Street
14. Turn right onto Oxford Street
15. Turn left onto Tottenham Court Road A400. Walk up Tottenham Court Road (pass Goodge Street tube and Warren Street tube).
16. Turn right onto Euston Road. Walk along Euston Road (pass Euston Station, Fire Station, British Library, St Pancras Station, Kings Cross Station)
17. Continue onto Pentonville Road A501
18. Turn left onto Northdown Street
19. Turn left onto Wharfdale Road (A5200)
20. Arrive at Central Station on corner of Wharfdale Road and Balfe Street.

Cabaret and Consciousness-Raising Event
Central Station, Sunday 28 June 2009 (3pm to 8pm)

You are invited to a FREE cabaret and consciousness-raising event to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots on Sunday 28 June, from 3pm to 8pm, at Central Station, 37 Wharfdale Road, London.
http://www.centralstation.co.uk/directions.html

We have a fabulous line-up of performers, singers, dancers, poets, rappers and speakers...and we have the wonderful, witty, willing and beautiful Bird La Bird compering throughout this his/herstoric event!

AND IT IS ALL FOR FREE!
****

And then , tragic news which is potentially triggering.

I am sad and angry and so aware that I made it to 60 but might not have done.

Later I've been looking this morning for some sort of further confirmation on this and haven't yet found any. azalea has raised some important questions and she is not the only person who is worried about the truth or falsehood issue on this.

I'm still inclined to believe it, but I have less experience of faked internet deaths than some people.

Comments

[badger.livejournal.com]

I tried to follow the second link but it leads to a 404 error page on LiveJournal.

[rozk.livejournal.com]

I've set up a different link

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Oh, god. That poor little thing.

[azalaea.livejournal.com]

This could be sheer denial but I'm going to hope that last one might be too awful to be true. I can't find any more information on the web.

If it is true... Christ...

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

This was linked from Questioning Transphobia. The fact that some people on this forum knew her does tend to suggest it's true, I'm afraid: http://www.lauras-playground.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=8583.

[azalaea.livejournal.com]

I saw that. But, people do fake deaths - often especially dramatic and tragic deaths - quite regularly on the internet, and cause a lot of hurt even to people who, in the online sense, know them well. I've been thinking some more and certain aspects of this story do strike me as decidedly odd. This could be ignorance on my part, but some of those details don't add up right to me. I'm about to post something about it.

But I say this very cautiously, and in awareness I could be kidding myself.

[azalaea.livejournal.com]

I've just spoken to Roz - for now I'm sending her an email about my reservations rather than posting on her LJ.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. It's certainly one to keep an eye on, either way.

[azalaea.livejournal.com]

Short version, since I think that perhaps dropping dark hints like that and then going completely silent is a bit unfair: if it's true, then two days after such a horrifying murder of someone so young there is no coverage in the news at all. That's strange, but could be explicable. But I find it odd that in the absence of such coverage the writer (writing yesterday, less than 24 hours after the death) could possibly know so many details - down to the exact timing of the attack, the length of time the girl spent crawling to help, the weapon used, the condoms, the absence of fingerprints, etc. Would even the police know all that yet? Who would have told the writer these things, especially that last?

Furthermore, when I was trying to find more information, I stumbled onto this (http://http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/blog-entry/4473/very-difficult-me-say). A remarkably similar case, down to the (surnameless) name, sledgehammer, condoms used by the rapist - but two years ago and resulting in a coma rather than a death.

There is an internet phenomenon known as "pseuicide."

It's a horrible possibility to even raise but given that the alternative - that it's true - is worse, I hope I'm right.

[rozk.livejournal.com]

I entirely take your point about this. My gut makes me fear it is true, though, because the level of violence, which might normally make it less likely does seem to be a feature of hate crimes against trans women.

And there's this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3vOCA-EQRY

which gets the Juillard right where some of the other posts got it wrong and called it Juliette.

[rozk.livejournal.com]

The Bilerico project have picked up the story from the same original sources and there's still no press coverage.

[azalaea.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I'm only getting more and more suspicious, and if anything that video makes me more so not less. When people do this they quite typically have a number of sockpuppets poised and prepared to confirm and mourn the death. (http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/1032470.html)

Juillard/Juliette doesn't strike me as particularly important either way, a truthful acquaintance could quite easily get that wrong, especially under the stress of such awful news. But the tone isn't right. The flow of information, from victim to [???] to the original writer isn't right. The account requires a chain of conversations to have happened, very quickly, and each link of that chain strikes me as highly unlikely. And explaining the lack of any news report as "the family doesn't want to do a press release yet"? That smells to me like a rather inept attempt at covering tracks. Murders don't make the news because the victim's family decides it's time to do a press release. And if the family (the doubly-bereaved mother fades oddly out of the original story anyway) want privacy why are these people splashing the horrific, intimate details over the internet anyway?

Grr. I'm going to look like such a bitch if I'm wrong, but the fact that it looks to me as if it's playing on your and other trans people's quite reasonable fears of extremely violent hate crimes is making me angry.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, you've got me more or less convinced. About the likelihood, that is - I realize you're not flat out calling it a hoax.

[azalaea.livejournal.com]

Today, in the continued absence of any mainstream media confirmation, I 99% am flat out calling it a hoax. No one ever, ever gives a mechanism for how they know all this. There's no "I just heard from X, I can't believe it..." Laura presents the news as a quote from... someone, without ever saying who. Yet the accounts come with omniscient third person narrator privileges. And there's a total absence of genuine, terrified shock. There's no sense of "...What?? It can't be." The writer goes straight to reflective if angry resignation, despite the fact that s/he is supposedly very young and has supposedly just received the most harrowing news possible about a friend.

Some commenters on the A.E Brain site have pointed out something that also stuck out to me, - there would not be "trials" in relation to a car crash that happened only a month ago.

"They" would not have found the bike first, in a dumpster, and then the girl. Bloody girls crawling along the road call attention to themselves, bikes in dumpsters do not. And who's checking dumpsters? She'd only been missing a few hours. That's something that might perhaps have been found during the investigation of her murder, not in the early stages of a search for a missing person.

And then, surely such a badly injured person would be whisked into surgery rather than the ICU - the doctors would be still trying to repair the damage in those first few hours, not just giving up, especially not on someone who was recently able to crawl three miles and, presumably, to give such a detailed an account of her ordeal because who else would know?

And she died "around 2.11 am". (around????) So... this girl's next of kin, her mother, who has already lost her husband and her arm just weeks ago, loses her daughter in this most traumatic possible way and instead of being screaming on the floor or under sedation somewhere, is thinking, "hmm, must make a note of the time to tell her internet friends. Is it 2.11 or 2.12? Oh well, call it around 2.11." And if not the mother, who has that information and why would that be on their mind as something that must be passed on?

No.

BTW Roz - there's a rather stupid extra "a" in my username - I don't like it very much but don't want to implicate "Azalea", whoever she may be!