Mayor, cop commissioner silent as
Gay men, trans people are murdered
By Leslie Feinberg
New York
When New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani tried to block the
right of young African Americans to march in the streets of
Harlem, he slandered the Million Youth March as a "hate march."
Giuliani, atop the towering record of his administration's
racist attacks, demogogically postured as a defender of the
rights of the oppressed.
But gay men and trans people - many of them Black and Latino
- are being murdered in this city at an alarming rate. And
about this string of genuine hate crimes, hizzoner hasn't had
one single word to say.
"Had there been a surge in attacks against millionaires, you
can bet there would have been more of a response," gay City
Councilmember Tom Duane told a cheering audience that packed a
Sept. 9 town meeting here to discuss the murders.
Since May at least four - and possibly as many as seven -
gay men and trans people have been killed in Greenwich Village.
Of the four confirmed to be bias murders, two were African
American and two were Latino; two of the four were
trans-identified.
These murders follow on the heels of six more - all commited
against trans people and all unsolved by police - documented by
the Anti-Violence Project between November 1996 and April
1998.
Reported anti-gay and anti-trans attacks in this city soared
more than 78 percent during the last year.
Cops claim to have beefed up police presence in the West
Village since the killings. But Duane pointed out these are
mostly undercover cops. An article entitled "Bash Back" in the
Sept. 24 issue of Lesbian & Gay New York noted Duane's
concern that "the plainclothed response might be as much in
reaction to the presence of prostitutes of transgender
experience in the West Village as to the risk of violent
crime."
In the same article trans activists Rosalyn Blumenstein and
Carrie Davis of the Gender Identity Project explained that
people in their community "are particularly at risk because
they are often homeless, economically marginalized, and
sometimes sex workers at a time when the city is waging a
'quality of life' battle against street people."
After the Million Youth March, Police Commissioner Howard
Safir took to the airwaves to make the monstrous accusation
that Khalid Muhammad, one of the leaders of the event, was a
"Black Hitler." But Safir hasn't uttered a word about this
string of murders. Invited to the Sept. 9 town meeting, he
declined to attend.
Instead, NYPD Capt. William Callahan revealed the police
department's bias when he addressed the audience. "We actually
don't consider this to be a crime wave," he stated. "We view
this as a statistical spike."
The audience - gay and straight, young and old - booed and
hissed the police
double-speak.
"We don't want your statistics!" one man from the audience
shouted at Callahan, according to the Sept. 11 New York Blade.
"These are real people."
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