We're Not Letting This Go...

I hope that most of my readers (if there are any of you left) have heard about the raid on the Rainbow Lounge in Fort Worth on June 28th. TABC Officers, assisted by Ft. Worth Police, brutalized 6 people in a supposed "site check" of the bar, which had only been open for ONE WEEK. One of those 6, Chad Gibson, was hospitalized because they bashed his head in. His skull was fractured and he had a subdural hematoma. Chad is a small person, he weighs less than 150 lbs. Yes, he was drunk, but eyewitnesses state that he was not combative or resisting when the officers came into the bar.

The irony of the situation? It happened forty years to the HOUR of Stonewall. That can not be a coincidence.

Fort Worth Police and the TABC have issued this statement about what happened; there is an "investigation" going on at the moment, and the TABC officers involved have been assigned desk duty while that happens. The Ft. Worth police department has suspended operations with the TABC until this is figured out. However, no answers have been forthcoming.

Lately, my lovely wife and I have been active with a group called QueerLiberaction. We attended a "Milk Box" forum (after Harvey Milk) on July 5th, and we attended the rally in Fort Worth on July 12th. There has been little to no local media coverage of these events. They have been peaceful, organized, and non-threatening. This video, made by a friend of ours, shows scenes from the rally and short "sound bites" from people who were there. Why isn't THIS being shown in the press?



Instead, what leads the online coverage today in the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram is this. Why is it that when we're doing our thing peacefully, we get no attention? There were three hundred people in Fort Worth on Sunday. We stopped traffic on Main Street when we marched to City Hall to post our demands on the doors. There has been NO mention of this in any of the local press, except for two small TV soundbites, one on ABC, the other on NBC. The Dallas Morning News and the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram have not covered this protest at all online. The few papers that have covered the story have relegated it to back pages and small blurbs. But as soon as we show up en masse at a Ft. Worth City Counsel meeting, THAT makes the news. When we get ejected from that meeting for voicing our concerns, THAT makes the news.

When does it stop? When do we get our say?

The reason that we're out there, rallying, marching, fighting for our civil rights is because we're tired of being treated like someone else's problem. We intend to get what has been promised to us since Stonewall, and what "normal" people have had seemingly forever. We deserve our Civil Rights. And we're not going to stop until we get them.