Trans Universe

by Monica F. Helms

The eleven videos are of the 16 speakers who spoke at the Atlanta 2009 Transgender Day of Remembrance.  We had State Senator Vincent Fort as the Keynote speaker.  Atlanta Mayoral Candidate Kasim Reed spoke, as did Atlanta City Council Candidate Amir Farokhi.  There were some beautiful words spoken and some angry words spoken, but it was a beautiful event.
The videos are not in any particular order.  Please do not try to comment here on the blog because I am preventing the heavy amount of spam that I get.  Please either send me a comment on my E-mail address at: monicahelms@earthlink.net, or on the specific video on YouTube.

Pastor Paul Turner:

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by Monica F.  Helms

This is a short video put to music of photos takes at the Atlanta TDOR event, November 20, 2009. Also included are photos of those we lost, at least the ones we had photos of.

Kevin MacLeod’s “With the Sea” provided the perfect background music to this video.

(In order to prevent the constant spam that happens on my blog, please place your comments in the YouTube site.)

by Monica F. Helms

The following seven video are of the individual speakers at the rally in front of the Georgia State Capital building on November 14, 2009.  On the anniversary of Prop 8 and the loss in Maine, the Atlanta LGBT community rallied to vent their feelings and their anger.  One of the speakers was Mary Norwood, who is a candidate in the runoff election for the Mayor of Atlanta.  They are posted in order of appearance.

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By Monica F. Helms

The following are the videos from the Atlanta Eagle protest at the Atlanta City Hall, September 19, 2009 I was only able to get seven out of the 11 speakers. Either I didn’t get footage on the speaker, or the footage I got was corrupt. The four missing speakers were Craig Washington, Deepali Gokhale, Alex Hicks and myself.

Jeff Graham:

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By Monica F. Helms

On December 17, 2008, the police found the lifeless body of Jennifer Gale on the streets of Austin, TX. They speculate that she died sleeping on a bench in the cold Texas night. The only woman’s shelter in Austin, run by the Salvation Army, turned her away because they didn’t want a transsexual woman in their shelter. If she wanted to enter a shelter, she had to strip herself of her dignity by using her old male name and dress like a man so she could be allowed in a men’s shelter. Austin has a both housing and public accommodation laws that include “gender identity.”

On December 17, 2002, a passer-by discovered the body of Alice Johnston near the Chattahoochee River in Georgia with a self-inflected bullet wound to the head. The day before, she sent out a final E-mail on her Yahoo account that said, “I will soon be homeless. Since women’s shelters in Atlanta don’t take transsexuals, I’m a goner.”

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