This weekend the Backyard Theater in Urbana IL is presenting ‘Collecting Dust,’ written by Emily Rabkin.

Performances:
Friday, July 11th, 7:15pm
Saturday, July 12th, 7:15pm
Sunday, July 13, 7:15pm
712 W. Nevada, Urbana IL

Cost: $4 Donation, all proceeds go to the New Jersey Four.

Renata Hill, as folks may know, has been relocated from New York State Dept. of Corrections’  Bedford Hill Correctional Facility in upstate New York to NYC Department of Corrections’ Rose M. Singer Center on Rikers Island in the wake of her appeal.

Use the following address to send a letter or package to Renata. Your support matters!

RENATA  HILL
#6000800726
Rose M. Singer Center (RMSC)
19-19 Hazen Street
East Elmhurst, NY  11370

Tune-in to KPFA Hardknock Radio’s interview with Terrain Dandridge and Kimma Walker: http://www.kpfa.org/archives/index.php?arch=27051

Grab a flyer, spread the word and get involved!

Friday, June 27th

Trans March San Francisco
Dolores Park, Dolores and 19th Street
stage: 3pm
march: 7pm

Saturday, June 28th

Dyke March San Francisco
Dolores Park, 18th and Dolores
Rally and Stage Begins @ 3:00 p.m.
March Takes Off @ 7:00 p.m.

Dyke March Chicago
donde/where: halsted and 18th St. (Pilsen)
nos reuniermos/gather: 1pm
marcha empieza/step off: 2:30pm
manifestación/rally: harrison park 3:30

For Immediate Release: Sat June 21, 2008
Contact: Ralowe T. Ampu, media rep (415) 863-3249

Bay Area NJ4 Solidarity
freenj4@yahoo.com
(510) 400-8462
http://freenj4.wordpress.com

Terrain Dandridge, one of the New Jersey 4, released after 2 years of incarceration; first
day free will be spent meeting with Angela Davis and the Queer Community in San
Francisco.

Appeal Update for the case of the New Jersey 4

Terrain Dandridge’s appeal has been successful and she was released from Albion Correctional Facility on Monday, June 23, 2008! Terrain Dandridge’s case was overturned, all her charges we dropped and her record has been cleared. Renata Hill is awaiting a new trial of the events concerning the night of August 18, 2006, where her and six other young black lesbians from Newark, New Jersey faced a homophobic assault in New York’s Greenwich Village.

The lawyers, who agreed that there was no strategy for involving grassroots support in the appeals process, have called this, “a miracle”.  Terrain’s lawyer has acknowledged that to be granted a new trial is rare; to have charged dropped is unprecedented.  The Bay Area Solidarity Committee realizes that regardless of whether we were factored in by lawyers as part of the appeals process, this unprecedented turn of events had little to do with divisive legal strategy, an unjust system’s benevolence or retributive justice.  Terrain’s freedom is directly related to an international campaign of radical queers of color and their allies.

While we celebrate this victory, we mourn the divisive legal strategy, which has attempted to pit these friends and lovers against one another and further complicate those whose appeals are yet to be heard.  Despite our great news, we must ensure that no one is left– not Venice, not Renata, not Patreese– to endure the horror of the prison industrial complex.

As a result of sexist, homophobic, and racist stereotypes held by law enforcement agents and institutions, the women later known as the New Jersey 4 were deemed to be a “lesbian wolfpack gang”, who were organizing to terrorize straight men.  Our stories are so often retold with a complete reversal of who is being harmed and who is doing the harming. The impacts of allowing Dwayne Buckle to be popularly depicted in the media and during the court proceedings as the “victim” fails to identify how his desire to dominate women (and their spaces) only leads to the violence that resulted.  On a broader social level, such negligent media reporting, police investigation, and courtroom bias only promises to generate more of these same violent experiences which target women and queers.  The New Jersey 4, like so many of us, are survivors of a system which incorrectly identifies the root causes of violence and crime, only to create conditions for mass incarceration and displacement of queers, especially those queers, like the 4, who are already vulnerable to criminalization because of their race or class identity.

While, Monday, June 23rd marks Terrain’s long awaited release date from Albion Correctional Facility, where she has been caged for six hundred seventy three days of her life. We must remember Terrain unjustly spent two years of her young life in prison, which cannot be returned to her.  Chenese Loyal, Lania Daniels, and Khamysha Coates still have felony charges that prevent them from getting jobs, registering for housing and other unjust discrimination. Renata is still behind bars awaiting a new trial.  Venice, sentenced to 5 years and Patreese, sentenced to 11 years, remain incarcerated, awaiting appeals to be heard in the fall. The 3 women will continue to navigate the legal system until the day comes when their stories will finally be heard without the racist homophobic sexist bias that denied them a fair trial to begin with.

Terrain Dandridge and her mother, Kimma Walker are due to arrive to the Bay Area on Tuesday June 24th, 2008 to meet with Angela Davis and the Queer community at the San Francisco Women’s Building.  This public event is scheduled for Tuesday, June 24th, 7-9 pm, during PRIDE week  in order to unravel the experiences of violence that Queer People of Color face and how to prepare ourselves and our communities in the face of police harrassment, criminalization and mass incarceration.

The Bay Area Solidarity Committee is dedicated to promoting self-defense of our bodies to all forms of violence!  We especially call on Queer People of Color to come to the fore to exposes the lesser talked about queer experience and it’s relationship to criminalization, policing, harsher sentencing, incarceration and state assault.  This PRIDE week, we intend to remind all oppressed communities of the way racism and sexism set up predictably violent outcomes and to understand that this too is part of the Queer struggle.

The  local organizing effort, broadly made up of Lesbians, Transgender, Gay, Two-Spirit, and multi-generational Queers, also encourages our peers to  name and articulate the elements in the Criminal Justice System that  permit homophobic and transphobic violence to be promoted and carried out on  the community level.  Please  join us in this growing resistance movement of trans/queer communities of  color!

co sponsors of the event include:  Critical Resistance, LAGAI-queer insurrection, QUIT!-Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism, SF Women Against Rape, OLOC, Radical Women, and Gay Shame SF.

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to find out when the next art attack or event are, visit the calendar at
http://calendar.yahoo.com/freenj4

Promote Self-Defense! Uncage the New Jersey 4!

Join Angela Davis, Kimma Walker AND Terrain Dandridge (NJ4) on June 24th from 7-9pm at the Women’s Building (3543 18th St. San Francisco).

Kimma Walker, the mother of Terrain Dandridge, will be in the Bay Area at the end of June. She will be speaking at the following events:

Juneteenth San Francisco
Saturday June 21st
3 pm
San Francisco Civic Center
Kimma Walker will be speaking at the largest largest festival of its kind outside of the South to commemorate the Emancipation Proclamation.

Transcending: Ark of Refuge
Friday June 26th
6-8 pm
Ark of Refuge
1025 Howard Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
Kimma Walker speaks at a Friday night support group for transpeople. Open to all who identify as trans!

Speakout for Self-Defense at the DYKE March
Saturday June 28, 2008
6:00 pm
Dolores Park Dyke March Stage
Kimma Walker speaks to the DykeMarch from the stage! Show some love!

Thursday, June 12th
7:30-9pm
Caffe Paradiso (801 S. Lincoln Ave. Urbana, IL)

Illinois supporters of the New Jersey 4 will be gathering at Caffe Paradiso on Thursday, June 12th to write letters of support to the four women unjustly sentenced for defending themselves from a homophobic attack. Paper, postcards, and art supplies will be provided. All are welcome to join us! The write-in will directly follow the Critical Research and Action Caucus.

Spread the Word. Ask your local radio station to play the newest NJ4 Public Service Announcement.

Stay Ready!!!

We continue to be violated, blamed, locked up, and murdered by the unimaginative tired violent tendencies of sexism racism and homophobia. Because we are the one’s we have been waiting for, it is up to us to devise, organize and strengthen the means for our queer communities, feminist communities, people of color communities, and working class/poor communities to defend ourselves.

In June 2008, during the Bay Area Pride events, queers, people of color, and radical feminists here in Oakland and San Francisco are coming out and promoting self-defense. The strategy for creating visibility of the case of the NJ 4 during this year’s Pride celebration is that any and every picture taken/video shot will relate the message to “Free the New Jersey 4” and “Support a Culture of Self Defense” somewhere in the frame.

If you are down to free our people in the Bay, in New York, and Ourselves, come through and build the strategy, coordinate logistics, write the word, design the representation, print the images, keep people involved, open the door, throw events, and outreach. This struggle is a
collective struggle, and everyone’s imagination and participation are being called on.

Here’s how you can help:

Artists:

We are beginning a media campaign calling for queer artists of color to design images for mass reproduction. T-shirts, posters, banners, stencil, stickers, armbands, and other free forms are in the works. We also need performance artists for several actions & workshops, donate fabrics and art supplies, people to host art parties in their neighborhoods, people down to throw up, paint, or paste images. please contact us for more info.

Priorities and timeline are:

**T-shirt graphics**
To ensure t-shirts are printed for the Dyke March, we need your design by May 30th

** Stencil/poster/silkscreening images**
E-mail us designs that we can post to the NJ4 blog for download and distribution

** Banners and Posters for DykeMarch/Pride**
In time for PRIDE. See party time, date and location

Upcoming Art Production Parties:

Thursday, May 29th
6pm – whenever
733 Baker St. SF, CA

Friday, May 30th
8pm (after the Screening of Born in Flames)
1820 Fairview St. Berkeley, CA

Stenciling and Wheatpasting Party
Each Friday in June
6 pm – whenever
Locations TBA

Media:

Do you or folks you know produce media? Media Spokes, Radio Producers, videographers, journalists! We need your help with making press contacts and to reclaim our stories. We will have interview broadcasts of the families available for radio syndication in mid June. Get in touch if you would like a press kit.

THE LOVE letters by the People:
Have you written Renata, Terrain, Patrice or Venice? Please send us letters for an audio installation project. For legal purposes, we will omit any details or comments about the night of the attack or the case. The audio project will be used at the upcoming September Critical Resistance Conference in Oakland. If you have yet to write them, it’s never too late. Their addresses are on the blog, so take the time to deny the prison structures that keep us out of touch.

Contact the Bay NJ4 Solidarity Committee
(510) 400-8462
freenj4@yahoo.com
http://freenj4.wordpress.com/