Mourning the death of David Ritcheson

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18-Year Old Victim Had Testified in April for Passage of Matthew Shepard Act

Take action with Equality Now to help pass the Matt Shephard Act

Austin, TX (July 2, 2007) – Equality Texas today mourns the death of David Ritcheson, the 18-year-old Spring, Texas teenager who had survived an April, 2006 brutal hate crime. On April 22, 2006, Ritcheson was beaten nearly to death by self-professed Skinheads, who cut him, burned him, poured bleach over him, sodomized him with an outdoor umbrella pole and yelled anti-Hispanic slurs.

Last November and December, Ritcheson sat in a courtroom in Harris County, Texas and faced his attackers for the first time as they went through their respective trials. Ritcheson’s attackers eventually were convicted of aggravated sexual assault; one was given a life sentence, the other 90 years.

[On Sunday, July 1, 2007, David Ritcheson apparently jumped to his death from the upper deck of a cruise ship in the Gulf of Mexico

Less than three months ago, on April 17, 2007, David Ritcheson went to Washington, D.C. and testified before the House Judiciary Committee urging passage of the “Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007”, also known as the Matthew Shepard Act.
Ritcheson’s testimony included:

“I appear before you as a survivor of one of the most despicable, shocking, and heinous acts of hate violence this country has seen in decades. Nearly one year ago on April 22, 2006, I was viciously attacked by two individuals because of my heritage as a Mexican-American.”

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On the Supreme Court and race….

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The Applied Research Center is dismayed by today’s decision from the United States Supreme Court (pdf file) to overturn lower court rulings allowing the districts of Seattle, Washington and Louisville, Kentucky to use race in making school assignments. This decision is especially disappointing, given that the majority of the Court affirmed race as an important … Read more

Tongue to Tongue: Critical Dialogues among Queer Women of Color (Los Angeles 9/7/07)

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Extended submission deadline – June 30, 2007

Los Angeles, September 7-9, 2007
www.tonguetotongue.org

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS/PARTICIPATION

Tongue to Tongue: Provoking Critical Dialogues Among Queer Women of Color is a community-organized three-day dialogue among diverse queer women of color, transgender, genderqueer and gender non-conforming communities of color featuring workshops, lectures, visual art, film, performances meant to facilitate real dialogue among participants. Tongue to Tongue believes that provoking honest and difficult dialogue is a critical first step toward building and strengthening community alliances across diverse communities and differences. The goal of this event is to envision concrete plans of action to collaboratively confront the injustices we face through proposals for continued organizing and solidarity building. This social change event aims to deepen analysis of-, broaden dialogue on-, and instigate response to critical issues created out of the intersecting sites of race, class, gender, sexuality, citizenship, and nationalism.

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