West Chicago

I guess all portents indicated my first essay upon returning from a bout of sickness would concern some death. The Lady Chablis died. Alexis Arquette.

But we're left to believe those were from natural causes. Chablis died after a month in a hospital fighting pneumonia. Alexis was in a coma at Cedars Sinai for four days before passing while listening to David Bowie's Starman.

Near the train tracks in West Garfield Park in western Chicago, the body of a transgender woman was found Sunday evening. She did not die of natural causes unless murder is natural. She is being identified at this point only as T.T. She wanted to be a hairdresser.

Police at first identified her as a man. of course. After all, she wasn't famous or anything. Her firnds said she was 26 or 27. She was identified by employees of the West Side nonprofit Taskforce Prevention & Community Services Chicago.

She had a "neck laceration" and was pronounced dead on the scene, Pacheco said. A knife was found near her body, which was near train tracks in the area, police said.

Jaliyah Armstrong, who had known T.T. for seven years, said she thinks she may have been killed by another trans woman. She told DNAinfo that her friend had a fight with a woman three days before she was killed.

This woman said online that she was going to kill her. Three days later, she's dead. It's just sad. She didn't go to the police because she believed it wasn't much of a threat. She didn't think another transgender sister would kill her.

--Armstrong

Armstrong met T.T. while they were both incarcerated. She credits T.T. with helping her get her life together.

She helped me get through it. Knowing that she got into it with another transgender woman is crazy.

This is sad. I lost a friend, and another transgender sister.

--Armstrong

At a vigil Reyna Ortiz of the Taskforce read the names of the 20 transgender people who have died from violence this year. She does not feel that police respect transwomen.

Not on the West Side, or the South Side for that matter. We don't feel the protection from the police as we should as trans women.

--Ortiz

Five transgender women have been murdered on the West Side in the last three or four years.

With all that's going on in the city, we get pushed down to the bottom. A lot of the transgender youth say that the police pick on them. We can put cameras all over the city, but not in this area? When they hire those new officers, I hope we get some of them over here.

--Rhonda Johnson, Cook County Hospital

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enhydra lutris's picture

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

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This website is getting bizarre with strange behavior and long delays. I really hate clicking send then waiting ten to twenty seconds then having the comment disappear.

The original comment that "including the Clinton Foundation" was in reply to was about private organizations masquerading as charities.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

RantingRooster's picture

rankles my feathers (imagine I just said a lot of filthy expletives....)

I swear, I really don't understand people today, I really don't. Scratch one-s head

I'm like, are you human? well, that's good enough for me, to treat someone as human, with equal rights, as all humans should have, period. WTF is wrong with people? Wacko

Stop Hey, we all mutated from a single cell organism, right? So we are all fricking mutants, no?

What "parts" we have where, doesn't fricking matter, what restroom we use, doesn't fricking matter, how we dress, doesn't fricking matter, ARE YOU HUMAN?, that's all that should fricking matter! Aggressive

(Of course that assumes the basic social construct, ie the social contract is obeyed, don't (expletive, that sounds like duck, but starts with an F) with anyone, period! Show some respect you moron, they're HUMAN!) Wink

Apologies for this emotional outburst, BUT, this is not "Leave it to Beaver" land anymore, not that it ever really was, except in the mind of these deluded MF's, that need to be locked up because they don't have the mental capability to acknowledge other humans, not like them, have equal rights! It's the fricking 21st century Shok , and some people think it's the fucking dark ages......

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C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote

because I know they would welcome trans women as sisters. What a horrible fate awaits them if they have to go to prison with violent males.

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