Political Funeral for Murdered Queers

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Political Funeral for Murdered Queers: Jihad Alim Akbar and Gwen Araujo
415/540.2947
gayshamesf [at] yahoo.com 415/540.2947 http://www.gayshamesfbay.org

Sunday, November 3rd, San Francisco, Market and Sunday, November 3rd, San Francisco, Market and Sixteenth Streets, 5pm. GAY SHAME presents a political funeral for Jihad Alim Akbar and Gwen Araujo. Akbar, a gay black man, was shot and killed by the SFPD on October 8th. Araujo, a 17-year-old transgendered Latina, was bludgeoned and then strangled to death by four men at a party after they discovered she was transgendered. GAY SHAME calls on all participants to bring noisemakers to voice their outrage at these brutal murders. Bring boomboxes, drums, whistles and any other musical instruments in order to be as loud as possible to fully express our grief and outrage.

The murder of Jihad Alim Akbar is eerily reminiscent of the police slaying of Idriss Stelley, a 23-year-old man of color shot dead by the SFPD in the Sony Metreon in June 2001 for wielding a key-chain knife. Akbar reportedly brandished two butcher knives he removed from the kitchen at Bagdad Café, a popular Castro District restaurant. As with Stelley, the SFPD responded to a 911 call with deadly violence. Akbar was shot dead by Officer Michael Celis, who had been called to the scene with Officer Joelle Felix-Zambrana. Media reports focus on the fact that Akbar, a gay black Muslim man, was making homophobic remarks, but clearly this does not justify his murder at point-blank range. Obviously, police overreacted based on their racism and incompetence.

On October 3rd, Gwen Araujo, a Newark, California teenager, went to a crowded house party. After discovering that Araujo was transgendered, defendants Michael William Magidson, 27, Jaron Chase Nabors, 19, Jose Antonio Merel, 24, and Paul Richard Merel Jr., 25, bludgeoned Araujo then dragged her, semi-conscious and bleeding, to the garage. In the garage, they tied a rope around Araujo’s neck until she appeared to be dead. The defendants then drove 150 miles away to a remote area in the Sierra to bury Araujo in a shallow grave. The fact that no one at the party responded to Araujo’s cries for help highlights the extreme transphobic nature of the crime.

GAY SHAME calls on all participants to show their outrage at the senseless murders of Akbar and Araujo with a percussion protest of epic proportions. We will meet in front of the Bagdad Café, at the site of Akbar’s murder, exactly one month after Araujo’s death.

GAY SHAME is a radical alternative to the gay mainstream and the increasingly complacent left. We seek nothing less than a new queer activism that addresses issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality, to counter the self-serving “values” of the gay mainstream. We are dedicated to fighting the rabid assimilationist monster of corporate gay “culture” with a devastating mobilization of queer brilliance. GAY SHAME is a celebration of resistance: all are welcome.