Bayard Rustin overcame homophobia and left an historic legacy in the civil rights movement.
➤ BAYARD RUSTIN, from p.12
later in life and elaborated on his
feelings about his intersectional
NEW YORK WORLD-TELEGRAM AND THE SUN VIA LIBRARY OF CONGRESS/ STANLEY WOLFSON
identity as a gay and Black man.
“It occurred to me shortly after
that that it was an absolute necessity
for me to declare my homosexuality,
because if I didn’t I
was a part of the prejudice,” he
said in 1987, the year he died. “I
was aiding and abetting the prejudice
that was a part of the effort
to destroy me.”
It is widely believed that it was
Rustin who encouraged King to
embrace non-violent resistance
—and even convinced him to stop
carrying guns for his own protection.
Robt Seda-Schreiber of the
Princeton, New Jersey-based Bayard
Rustin Center for Social Justice,
which offers advocacy, education,
and a safe space for LGBTQ
and intersex people, told Gay City
News last year that Rustin has
generally failed to get enough
credit for the role he played during
the civil rights movement.
“Too few folks nowadays are
aware that Bayard Rustin planned
the March, inspired the Freedom
Riders, & brought non-violence
to Dr. King himself, among many
other extraordinary accomplishments,”
Seda-Schreiber said in
an email message. “This lack of
recognition is directly related to
him not hiding in the shadows at
a time when it was de rigueurfor
one’s very survival.”
➤ ICE TRANS DETAINEES,, from p.12 DONATE YOUR CAR
CoreCivic told Gay City News
that the company previously outsourced
their healthcare coverage
of detainees to third-party medical
professionals, but that they would
be revamping that system while
the detainees are gone.
“The Cibola County Correctional
Center is transitioning from a
contract healthcare provider to inhouse
medical services,” spokesperson
Ryan Gustin, manager of
CoreCivic’s public affairs, said in a
written statement. “Detainees with
unique medical needs were transferred
from Cibola County while the
facility continues to work through
this transition of providers.”
ICE would not respond to questions
about where the detainees
are located now — a spokesperson
would only say that the agency
“found available bed space in other
facilities with existing resources to
better manage the needs of certain
detainees requiring continuous
medical case management” — but
advocates involved in the movement
to protect the women in custody
believe they have been moved
to facilities in Tacoma, Washington,
and Aurora, Colorado. Records
show a Florida-based company,
GEO Group, owns the ICE facilities
in both Aurora and Tacoma — the
Aurora Contract Detention Facility
and the Tacoma Northwest Detention
Center.
GEO Group has been rife with
issues, as well: The company just
settled for an undisclosed amount
of money for pepper-spraying eight
Central American asylum-seekers
in retaliation for a hunger strike at
one of the company’s ICE facilities
in California, according to the Desert
Sun.
Jorge Gutierrez, the executive
director of Familia: Trans Queer
Liberation Movement, an advocacy
group for Latinx LGBTQ folks, told
Gay City News that he has been
informed that roughly 13 to 15 of
the women were transferred to the
Tacoma facility, while others were
sent to Aurora. According to Gutierrez,
the Cibola facility did not
have any transgender men.
“At the Cibola facility, the trans
pod is empty as far as we know,”
Gutierrez said in a phone interview
on February 7. “We don’t know if
the trans pod at Cibola will remain
empty or eventually close. We don’t
know if ICE is going to open a trans
pod in Aurora.”
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