Free CeCe

More people than usual are visiting my blog right now because of the TPGA dialogues. That's great because I just found out about something really important that I think you all should know about. It doesn't have to do with autism. But it does have to do with oppression and with human beings having rights. If you can, please please keep reading.

Here's what's going on, from the website SupportCeCe. WARNING: this quote describes a really foul violent incident, which involved racist and transphobic slurs and people getting hurt.

CeCe McDonald is a young African American transgender woman charged with “second degree murder” after an incident that began when she was violently attacked because of her gender and race.

CeCe is a creative and energetic person who, before her life was so unjustly interrupted, was studying fashion at MCTC. She had a stable home where she lived with and helped support four other African American youth, her family. CeCe’s family describes her as a leader, a role model, and a loyal friend. She is known as a wise, out-spoken, and welcoming person, with a cheerful disposition and a history of handling prejudice with amazing grace.

Around 12:30 am on June 5, CeCe and four of her friends (all of them black) were on their way to Cub Foods to get some food. As they walked past Schooner’s Bar in South Minneapolis, a man and two women (all of them white) began to yell epithets at them. They called CeCe and her friends ‘faggots,’ ‘niggers,’ and ‘chicks with dicks,’ amongst other things.

As they were shouting, one of the women smashed her drink into the side of CeCe’s face, slicing her cheek open, lacerating her salivary gland, and stinging her eyes with liquor. A fight ensued, with more people joining in. What happened during the fight is unclear, but within a few minutes Dean Schmitz–one of the attackers–had been stabbed.

CeCe was later arrested, and is now falsely accused of murder

For a month, CeCe was kept in solitary confinement “for her own protection”; she had no say in this matter. Finally, she was transferred to a psychiatric unit in the Public Safety Facility. It was nearly two months before she was taken back to a doctor to check up on the wound on her face, which by then had turned into a painful, golf ball-sized lump.

Later on, CeCe’s friends were harassed on the street by people they recognized from the scene of the fight. Individuals circled the block that CeCe’s friends were walking on and called them ‘niggers’ and ‘faggots’ and told them to ‘go back to Africa.’ When they attempted to wave down a passing squad car for assistance, the officer driving the car said he would not help them.

Everything about this is wrong, down to the murder charge. Dean Schmitz died after initiating a transphobic, racist attack on CeCe McDonald and her friends. It's probable that CeCe or someone in her group killed him, perhaps by accident, while he was assaulting them. That is not murder of any degree. That is self-defense.

Here's the thing: it could so easily have been CeCe who died that night. Trans women of color die all the time for no other reason than because cis white men want them dead. And when the scenario plays out that way, it's not uncommon for the murderers to face charges that are a lot less serious than second-degree murder -- if the police bother to find them at all.

I'm furious and sad that these people attacked and hurt CeCe and her friends because of their race and gender identities. I'm so glad that CeCe survived this attack. Now she is being punished for keeping herself alive, and she needs our help.

Here are some things you can do:
- Go to http://supportcece.wordpress.com and donate money towards CeCe's bail, so that she can get out of jail and back to her family.
- Write a letter. You can write to CeCe to express your support, or write a letter to the editor about her case.
- You can distribute fliers and literature to let people know what's going on.
- Finally, if you have a blog or a tumblr or a twitter or a facebook or email or a phone or if you see people in person, spread the word. Post links, reblog, tell people about it, ask them to donate, ask them to visit the SupportCeCe website.

Let's all do something. Please. Thank you.

I Know Who Baby Knauer Was

[Trigger warning for discussion of (historical) violence against disabled people.]

Finals week was a weird time to be knocked down by history.

I'd been researching and writing a final paper for my German history class (weeks overdue) on a topic that I've studied before: disabled people in the Nazi regime. Really sad, grim stuff, and I knew that going in.

But here's the thing that I've learned from three years of genocide studies and a lifetime of Holocaust-related neuroses: you know that saying? The one every history major has heard several thousand times? That one death is a tragedy, and a million deaths is a statistic?

Well, it's kind of true.

Not that you can't feel sad about a million deaths. But for me personally, there's something abstract, something incomprehensible about deaths that are presented only as numbers. One death is easier to understand, because all around me are individuals I love, and I know how crushed I would be if one of them died. It's somehow easier for me to conceptualize a death if I know some details about the person who died: their name, something about their life story.

The person I knew as baby Knauer lived for such a short time, there was very little of his life story to tell. Until finals week, I didn't know that story. Now I do. And where before I had been outraged at the injustice of baby Knauer's death, now I feel utter grief.

Let me explain.

Probably everyone who has done research on the Nazi 'euthanasia' program knows about the Knauer case. The basic facts are: a man who for a long time was only known as Herr Knauer petitioned Hitler to have his infant child killed after his child was born blind and with some physical deformities. Hitler sent his personal physician, Karl Brandt, to assess the baby. If Brandt deemed the child "unworthy of life," he was authorized to have the child killed. Brandt decided baby Knauer should die, and baby Knauer did. Soon after this, the children's killing program began, and then the T4 adult killing program. Baby Knauer was the first victim of Nazi 'euthanasia.'

Then, in 2007, historian Ulf Schmidt published a biography of Karl Brandt. In this biography, Schmidt revealed the details of baby Knauer's life, saying that he didn't feel it was right to "place the justifiable claim of the parents for anonymity above the personality and suffering of the first 'euthanasia' victim."

In my school library, I found Schmidt's book and read the section on the Knauer case. Here's what I learned:

Gerhard Herbert Kretschmar was born on February 20th, 1939, in a village called Pomβen. He was blind, and "lacked one leg and part of an arm." Some doctors speculated that he was "feeble-minded" but realistically they probably couldn't have known this at his age. His parents, Richard Gerhardt Kretschmar and Lina Sonja Kretschmar, believed strongly in Nazi ideology, and his father wanted him dead.

Schmidt writes that Richard Kretschmar took Gerhardt to the Leipzig Children's Clinic "in the spring of 1939" -- when Gerhardt was just one or two months old -- and had him institutionalized there. Werner Catel, the head of the clinic, later testified that Herr Kretschmar had wanted him to kill Gerhardt right then, but Catel refused because of legal concerns. (As an aside here, Catel took part in the T4 program later, so when he refused to kill Gerhardt he didn't have any moral problems with infanticide -- he was just concerned about going to jail.) When Catel would not kill Gerhardt, Herr Kretschmar or perhaps one of his relatives petitioned Hitler directly to end the child's life. Hitler sent Karl Brandt to examine Gerhard and decide whether he should live or die. After confirming that Gerhard was blind and physically disabled, Brandt authorized the clinic staff to kill the baby, and Gerhard was murdered on July 25, 1939. He was five months old.

Once I read those names and dates, I couldn't get them out of my head for days. It's strange to think that these few details -- Gerhard's name, his assigned sex, his birth and death dates -- would change my perception of the case. I wish that it didn't matter, that I would feel just as much grief for a nameless child murdered 70 years ago as I would for a named one, but somehow the name is important to me. Today, when parents continue to murder their children, when people call themselves part of the disability community while dreaming of a world without us, it seems vitally important to hold on to that name.

Tragedy Time

[I wrote a slightly less polished version of this in German for class last week]


I’m talking with a friend, and it’s going well. She wants to know what I did over the summer. Because I trust her, I tell her that I volunteered at a program for autistic kids.

Her eyebrows go up like she’s watching a sad movie. “That’s so heavy!” she exclaims. “Was it really hard?”

I don’t know what to tell her. I try to explain that being autistic isn’t a tragedy like people think. I tell her that the kids are still kids, that actually the hardest part was getting along with my co-workers. But I didn’t like her breathy “that’s so heavy!”, so there are some things she doesn’t get to know. She won’t find out that when I was a kid, I went through the same program.

---

A lot of people think that autism is a tragedy. Some say it’s so bad that we have to find the genes, we have to prevent it. They say that autistic kids ruin their parents lives, that autistic adults ruin their own lives. They think that the world would be better without autism. Without us.

---

People say, “You don’t seem disabled.” But they always have an explanation for why I’m so different. “You don’t seem disabled,” they say, “but you do seem kinda weird.” Or “you seem shy.” “I thought that you were just really sheltered.” “I thought that you were from another country.” “I thought you were on drugs.” People make up lots of explanations for me. Autism is never one of them.

Lots of people don’t want to think about disability, about autism. They’re afraid of these things. They think that disability is the same thing as sadness. That autism is so heavy. They don’t want to change their minds.

“You don’t seem disabled.” “I thought it was something else.”

Of course you did.

---

“What did you do over the summer?” another friend asks.

“Not much,” I say. “How about you?”