Gays Against Guns Join Intern’l Women’s Day Action
Human Beings with feminists demanding Violence Against Women Act reauthorization
BY DONNA ACETO
As International Women’s
Day was marked
around the globe on
Sunday, March 8, activists
gathered in Battery Park, in
the shadow of the Statue of Liberty,
to demand that the US Senate take
a vote on reauthorization of the Violence
Against Women’s Act.
A corps of Human Being activists
affi liated with Gays Against
Guns was on hand to bring attention
to women who had died from
gun violence. Among the gun victims
the Human Beings commemorated
were Dr. Tamara O’Neal, an
emergency room physician at Chicago’s
Mercy Hospital, a volunteer
with at-risk youth, and the leader
of her church choir, who was
gunned down in November 2018 in
the hospital parking lot by her exfi
ancée; and Deirdre Alia Zaccardi
and her children Alexis, Kathryn,
and Nathaniel, who were shot dead
in their Abington, Massachusetts,
home in October 2019 by Zaccardi’s
husband, who then turned
the gun on himself.
The Violence Against Women Act
was fi rst passed in 1994, under the
bipartisan leadership of Delaware
Democratic Senator Joe Biden and
Utah Republican Orrin Hatch.
It has been reauthorized several
times, but over the years conservative
opposition grew, because it
was extended to protect partners
in same-sex relationships and it
allowed battered undocumented
immigrants to receive temporary
visas to ensure their safety.
The law’s most recent reauthorization
expired last February, and
though the House of Representatives
agreed to its extension in a
vote last April, Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky
Gays Against Guns’ Human Beings join activists calling for reauthorization of the Violence Against Women’s Act.
DONNA ACETO
Dr. Tamara O’Neal, who was gunned down by her
ex-fi ancée in 2018, is remembered.
has, to date, blocked any
vote in his GOP-led chamber.
➤ TERF WAR, from p.22
is no sexual orientation, and lesbians (and gay
men) are just bigots fi xated on genitals. And any
dyke who just wants to eat pussy is a trans misogynist.
A TERF. Who should renounce their
pleasure and their sense of self, and even get
Human Beings honor Deirdre Alia Zaccardi and her two daughters, who were shot to death last year by
her husband, who also shot and killed their son and himself.
Human Beings stand in front of the World War II East Coast Memorial in Battery Park.
over whatever sexual assault experience they’ve
suffered, and suck the nearest “girldick.” And
before you can say “phallogocentric,” females
once again have no right to say, “No.”
I’ve had enough of this regurgitated misogyny
parading itself in the clothes of a gender
revolution. And I hold responsible the whole
DONNA ACETO
POLITICS
DONNA ACETO
DONNA ACETO
TERF-hating alphabet of the LGBTQ community
worldwide for allowing such increasingly
violent, gynophobic attacks on lesbians that in
2020, dykes I’ve worked with in Canada — who
have actively supported transgender rights their
whole activist lives — have to meet in secret, in
secret, to discuss how to respond.
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