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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (March 1, 1996)
j u s t o u t ▼ m a rc h 1, 1 0 0 6 ▼ 5 T H E V IE W F R O M H E R E 7 JteJtotte/uf, * 9 l hot A Sound fyinan cial Sfacdecgf,. To heal and m ove on Why leave your financial future to chance when you can trust the solid experience of Floreid Walker? As a Waddell & Reed account represen tative, she can help analyze your financial resources, needs and goals. Then, with objectives firmly understood, plan and implement a person al program designed specifically for you. The first one-hour consultation is free, so instead of picking more lottery numbers, pickup the phone and dial Floreid Walker's number. A Southern Oregon activist reflects on what his community has learned from tragedy ▼ by Adrian Murillo It is a fearful thing to face rejection, but it is more frightening to be an empty, dishonest person, always relying on the approval o f others for one’s own sense o f self. If we ’re lucky we will come to know the Gifts we ’ve been given and we ’ll learn to play the music o f honesty that is in our hearts. —Michelle Abdill away from the suggestion that this is a hate crime. Our community will embrace a wide range of responses to these simple facts, from denial to paranoia. At times like these we need to remind ourselves of our strengths and virtues. We must reaffirm our connections, our shared visions, and our networks of mutual support. One of our strengths is that we understand the struggle between love and To love someone is to always show them new anger. From childhood we are taunted and abused, ways to grow. poisoned with guilt and shame for being different, —Roxanne Ellis even before we ourselves can comprehend the meaning of our difference and the hostility it in ur community has suffered a serious spires. The threat of violence is often used to keep blow with the murders of our beloved us repressed. And yet the vast majority of us tri umph over fear, anger and violence with love and friends and cherished activists dignity. Roxanne Ellis and Michelle Abdill. Our community has been buffeted Many of us have been dealing with death and and tested, and the fabric, though tom, has loss held. on an ongoing basis for years now. We stand in We face an uncertain future, expecting justice, solidarity with the suffering of others. For every gay knowing the only thing we can be sure of is our or lesbian voice we lose to violence, AIDS, the commitment to honoring their memory. The chal crimes of hate, or the self-destructive nature of lenge is to heal and move on with our lives, while internalized homophobia, another will surface to .-Jfc never forgetting the shared reality of this moment. The grief, anger and love. For this is why we do what we do when we speak out, Il >> *1?} educate and organize. The days of grief struc m ms ture our community-building as much as cel ebrations, festivals, conferences and cam paigns. Such days birth and confirm our val T#-* ues. «a We also know we are one of many com munities beset by violence, and we recommit \Tf»tl„ K VS 0 ourselves to the ideas and values that connect us as Americans and lead to healing: democ oint racy and freedom, equality and justice. tlUCIMt, ..W - ; The way to move through grief is to live 497 1 -<ta nvllk one’s own life in a way that honors those who have died. Do those things that would make AihUnd° 3 *= them proud. Allow grief to transform you, SS m deepen you. Hate crimes are meant to inspire fear, in the hopes that it will paralyze us. Enter the fear to the vulnerability beyond. When we can accept our vulnerability, we grow, find take its place. It is in our nature to speak out with strength. We learn that vulnerability is not weak heartfelt truth. ness or defect. It is openness and love. It is the very In his book Living in Truth, Vaclav Havel writes best of who we are. of the period before his country’s Velvet Revolu We realize that our sisters, whether gay or not, tion, when fear had become “the fundamental fab struggle with this issue of vulnerability on a daily ric of society.” In spite of that fear, many people, basis, and we pledge our support. So many of us are particularly writers and activists, resolved to build distraught at the thought of the terror Roxanne and community by living in truth. What they discovered Michelle must have gone through. The violent was that confrontation with corrupt authority “only oppression of women in this country continues ends in defeat for the isolated individual.” unabated, yet is rarely taken seriously by politi We believe that Michelle and Roxanne would cians. There are aspects to this crime, however, that never want any of us to retreat into a personal or suggest that Roxanne and Michelle were singled political closet. They would want us to continue our out for being lesbian activists. The perpetrator was commitment to purpose and civil rights, to take our not satisfied with victimizing Roxanne alone, rightful place at the table. We live in a time when the Michelle was lured to the site—suggesting he knew world is gripped and held hostage by violent men of their relationship. And, as everyone in our com who have become completely alienated from a munity knows, to know Michelle and Roxanne is to loving, rational way of being. As a gay and lesbian know of their community and human rights work. community of healers and leaders we have some The usually talkative accused has, with a shame answers, and many questions. What does it say less lack of remorse, stated that the fact that they about our nation when Americans kill Americans were lesbians simply made them easier targets. who speak out for human rights? Regardless of And when, during a televised interview from jail, motive, will the communities of the Rogue Valley he dismissed their activism as irrelevant with sense stand with us and honor the work Michelle and less laughter, it was a chilling moment. Roxanne stood for? Michelle and Roxanne were bound and gagged, Let it be understood that we have paid our dues. shot at close range. Their bodies were left in a We have earned our visions. We have much to teach populated area of Medford as if inviting discovery. the world, not the le^st pf which is how to survive\ And the normally conservative, apolitical Medford continuous tragedy wifh shimmering resilience. * police department is not making any effort trrback HIV POSITIVE? FLOREID WALKER (800) 487-6626 (503) 238 603ft The Russell Street Clinic at Oregon Health Sciences University needs HIV participants for an oral health care research project to study the overall health effects of regular dental care for people with HIV. 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