The Republic of T.

Then I’m walking in Memphis

Walking with my feet ten feet off of Beale

Walking in Memphis

But do I really feel the way I feel

~ Marc Cohn, “Walking in Memphis”

On my next-to-last day in Memphis, before flying home, I finally made my pilgrimage. No, not to Graceland. I never really had any desire to go there. Besides, I knew that when I got home, most of the people who knew me and knew about my trip wouldn’t ask if I went to Graceland. At least not first. If I was going to visit anywhere in Memphis, there was one place I had to visit first. So when I co-worker told me that several people were planning to visit the National Civil Rights Museum — which includes and incorporates the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated — I knew that was where I was going to go, if I went anywhere else in Memphis.

I remember walking through the exhibit, and finally making my way to the King Room, looking through the glass that protected and preserved it, and then walking through an adjacent room and stepping out onto the balcony next to where King was shot. I remember looking across the street and seeing the window of the boarding house where James Earl Ray made the fatal shot. I remember walking through a tunnel, across the street to that house, and looking into the room from which he made the shot. And I remember walking past James Earl Ray’s car when we finally left the museum.

I stepped out into the sunlight, at last, with the rest of the group —all of us blinking our eyes, trying to get used to the light, grateful for the awkward silence, yet feeling the need to fill it with something profound or moving, but coming up short. The thought I kept to myself was how strange it was that in Memphis people ended up visiting a monument to someone’s death, both named — at birth or at birth as a celebrity — “King.” I didn’t think about then, what comes to mind now: how many deaths will receive no monument in Memphis, or be remembered even a year later.

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I haven’t made a secret on this blog that I’m a recovering alcoholic. (In fact, last month I celebrated 16 years of sobriety.) So, I was intrigued when I found Kevin’s link to Addict’s Almanac — Tye Dowdy’s series of posts over at Street Roots. When I clicked through to the posts, I was glad I did.

Like Kevin, Dowdy’s experiences are very different from mine, but mostly on the surface. Reading it, I felt at first the familiar feeling I had in some of my first twelve step meetings, listening to people talk about the wreckage addiction had made of their lives.

As a 23-year-old whose drinking career had been relatively short, but who was fortunate enough to recognize a wake-up call when I got one, I couldn’t relate to the stories I sometimes hear about DUI arrests, lost jobs, lost marriages and relationships, lost health, lost fortunes, etc. I remember mentioning those feelings to my sponsor, who said to me, “Well, if you go back out and start drinking again, all that and more could be yours.”

Since then, I’ve always been drawn to the stories of other addicts, not just because I find them informative, but also because it’s a reminder that beyond the surface of age, location, economic class, drug of choice, etc., we’re pretty much the same underneath.

Dowdy’s piece should be required reading for anyone holding forth on the “drug war.” I could get into my thoughts about that, but that’s a much longer post.

For now, go read Addict’s Almanac.

Saw the Ghost of Elvis

Down on Union Avenue

Followed him up the gates of Graceland

And I watched him walk right through.

~ Marc Cohn, “Walking in Memphis

My one trip to Memphis didn’t include the expected pilgrimage to Graceland, and I never saw the ghost of Elvis (impersonators notwithstanding) even though I stayed on Union Avenue. Even if I had I’m not sure I’d have followed him to Graceland. I say expected, because almost everyone I met who wasn’t connected with the conference asked me if I was going to Graceland. I said no, but what I didn’t share was that I’d already made up my mind where I was going while in Memphis, and my itinerary didn’t include Graceland. Not even a walk down Elvis Presley Blvd.

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Then I’m walking in Memphis

Walking with my feet ten feet off of Beale

Walking in Memphis

But do I really feel the way I feel

~ Marc Cohn, “Walking in Memphis”

I only went to Memphis once, and I left knowing there was much of it I hadn’t seen. It was 1998, and it must have been August, because the city was crowded with people there for the anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death. I was there for a conference about HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment. It was an odd coincidence, and one that made it fairly easy to tell conference attendees from the tourists who were there to celebrate or experience one of Memphis’ three major attractions: Elvis, Barbeque, and the Blues. They were all everywhere.

You weren’t out of the airport before you encountered all three in some form, and they were still there when you left, so you could take them home with you. (You could even — I was amazed to find out — order your barbeque at the airport and have it Fed-Exed home. Depending on how long your flight was, it might arrive before you.) Downtown, Elvis’ images and impersonators were in abundance. (I think every hotel may have had one of the latter.) You could stand in the street and be wrapped in the sent of barbeque and the sound of the blues. And that was just the block where my hotel stood.

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I wrote this yesterday:

Sometimes I’ll come across an article focusing on family and friends remembering the victim, and may be able to glean a little more information. But just as often, those friends and family may not have known — may have guessed or inferred, or may have assumed since they were not told — that their loved-one or their friend was gay. Co-workers who have worked beside the victim for years, friends and family who have known the victim even longer, may simply not have known who their friend and love-one really was. That is, until they become the victim of a hate crime.

That was the case with the murder of Victor Manious. When I filed away an article on Manious’ murder a couple of months ago, I intended to get back to it, and I did. But I didn’t expect to find so much information on the case, or to spend much time with it. But the more time I spent looking in to it, the more I was reminded of a few other stories, which raised some questions for me.

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I’ve written this before, but one of the most striking things I’ve found about researching cases for the LGBT Hate Crimes Project is how little information is often available about the victim. In some cases, where the victim or victims survived an assault or attempted murder, they may speak for themselves, unless they are minors or afraid of reprisals if they speak out. (Some victims are targeted because they are marginalized and less likely to speak out and report a crime against them.) In some cases — where the victim has been killed and was also a member of a marginalized group — the victim almost disappears, except for a fleeting sentence here or there in one news article or another, hinting at the life that existed before the crime that snuffed it out.

Sometimes I’ll come across an article focusing on family and friends remembering the victim, and may be able to glean a little more information. But just as often, those friends and family may not have known — may have guessed or inferred, or may have assumed since they were not told — that their loved-one or their friend was gay. Co-workers who have worked beside the victim for years, friends and family who have known the victim even longer, may simply not have known who their friend and love-one really was. That is, until they become the victim of a hate crime.

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In the previous post, I wrote:

Basically, I had someone say to me that if a hate crimes case didn’t get widespread coverage, didn’t spark large protests, or catalyze new legislation, then it wasn’t noteworthy enough to warrant its own entry. Well, part of the reason I started the project was because so many cases don’t get the kind of coverage that a Matthew Shepard or Brandon Teena gets. In fact, many don’t get coverage beyond their local areas, and don’t spark huge protests in part because the victims are already members of marginalized groups; people we tend to care even less about in death than we do in life.

This is one of those stories.

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One of the things that surprised me after starting the LGBT Hate Crimes Project is the amount of email I get. Much of it is from people who knew, or were related to the victim. Sometimes I’ve heard from family members who didn’t know the outcome of their loved one’s cases. Sometimes it’s from people who want to let me know about cases that they think should be on the site.

In the latter case, I usually take them and research them, unless they’ve been covered in depth elsewhere. If, for example, they’re already covered in depth on Wikipedia I may decide not to duplicate efforts. I started this project on Wikipedia, by the way, but stopped posting entries on Wikipedia when it became clear that their notability guidelines would cause many of the cases I was writing about to get deleted, because one editor or another didn’t think they were noteworthy enough. In one case, one person asked me “What makes this different from any other crime story?”

I thought I’d scream, but it got worse.

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I mentioned earlier that the shooting at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church had jump-started my return to the LGBT Hate Crimes Project. Specifically it was Joe Lauria who put it into a context that immediately gelled for me.

Even if this man hopefully acted alone it is chilling to all progressive people and groups, like the Unitarians. Are we free to express our views, indeed to allow our children to perform in a church play?

Th answer, of course, is no. Well, sort of. Maybe. Not really.

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[Ed. Note: In light of the Knoxville shooting, I've decided to spend most of my blogging this week focusing on hate crimes.]

I rarely set foot in a church these days, for the most part, except for weddings and funerals. I did a few months ago, when a D.C. area “welcoming church”, offered Rainbow Families DC a space to gather and decorate our tricycles, bicycles, wagons, scooters and skateboards for the Capitol Pride Parade. But if I were, I’d probably feel most comfortable in a Unitarian Universalist church.

So, when I heard about the shooting at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, and the motives behind it, my first thought was that my own family could have been sitting in that sanctuary if we lived in Knoxville. (In a place as conservative as Knoxville, the church was described as an “oasis” to the city’s LGBT community, and I suspect it was to anyone who held progressive/liberal views.) Sad to say, I’m used to the idea that my family may be targeted simply for being the kind of family we are. But what struck me was that the hatred was so deep in this case, that the gunman lashed out not just at gays, but at those who supported gay and lesbian equality.

In the pre-civil-rights south, whites who supported equality for African Americans were called “nigger lovers,” and as such were as much targets as blacks who stood up for their rights. Now, are heterosexual supporters of LGBT equality the new public enemy?

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It’s been a while since I last updated the LGBT Hate Crimes Project. That was partially due to life events (adopting a baby, losing a baby, adopting a baby, etc.), but also due to the nature of the work. Spending so much time researching each story inevitably, for me, means spending a lot of time feeling a story, as much as researching and writing it. Having a new baby, for a while, made me less inclined to focus on the uglier realities of the world my family and every other family lives in.

But the shooting at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Church nudged me out of nesting mode a bit. Dylan, now eight months old, is not only sitting up, but surpisingly mobile in his own way. A combination of rolling and scooting himself backwards allows him to cover quite a bit of ground. (Though it doesn’t necessarily take him where he wants to go, but moves him further from it instead, leading to frustration on his part.) Crawling may be a month or two away, but he’s actively exploring the world around him now, where he used to just gaze at it from the safety of our arms.

He’ll be walking soon; probably sooner than I expect. And, like all children, he’ll walk out in to the world someday; probably far beyond the reach of our arms. So, now I’m back to looking at the world our children will walk into and walk through, as we all have. We are all somebody’s child, after all.

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I haven’t written much yet about the shooting at a Unitarian church in Knoxville. By now, the particulars are known. The shooter acted (at least in part, though mental illness almost certainly played a role) out of a hatred of liberals, if he is to be taken at his word. Speaking of words, among the things police found in his home were books by Michael Savage, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity.

A while back, I bought book called Take them at Their Words: Startling, Amusing and Baffling quotations from the GOP and Their Friends, 1994-2004. I thought of that book when I heard about the shooting, and about this quote from Ann Coulter.

“When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors.” 2

That really is the message in acts like this one, as any group subjected to hate-inspired violence knows — whether its a lynching, a gay-bashing, of a little target practice with liberals: You can be killed, too. You are not safe. Don’t forget it, and don’t get too far out of line.

There’s more where that one came from of course.

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I don’t remember how old I was the first time it happened. I couldn’t have been more than ten years old. We were in Philadelphia — my mother, my younger sister, and I — visiting my great grandfather on my mother’s side of the family. For my sister and me, it was our first time traveling that far from home, and our first time in a city like Philadelphia. Everything amazed us, from the size of the buildings, downtown to the narrow little houses on my great great-grandfather’s street, with no yards to speak of and no space between them; so different from our suburban home back in Augusta, GA.

Even going shopping was different. Instead of driving to the store, my mom pushed her grandfather’s folding cart a few blocks to a store a few blocks away, and we followed her. The store was a wonder unto itself; on the outside a rowhouse like the one my great grandfather lived in, but on the inside there were long, narrow shelves holding food, toys, and other items we’d never seen before.

Our mother had told us time and time again not to touch anything whenever we went shopping, but we couldn’t help it this time. We picked up toys and candy and other items, exclaiming to each other to “come look at this.” Until it happened.

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