The small cutouts of Valentine's Day hearts made from red construction paper were still pasted on the door of the clerk's office in Jersey City on February 19, 2007. Inside, about thirty witnesses, including a number of gay rights activists and local residents, watched in anticipation as one of the first couples in the state of New Jersey applied for a civil union. The two men standing before the clerks seemed slightly self-conscious in front of the camera crew filming their every move, every passing comment, and every smile. Meanwhile, I was painfully aware that most of the people in the room were white, and I wondered where all the black and brown faces of Jersey City were that night.

I held flyers in my hand with the words "Rashawn Brazell Memorial Scholarship" emblazoned on the front. Part of my assignment at this historic gathering was to distribute these flyers in hopes that onlookers would recognize the connections between the day-to-day violence experienced by communities of color and the push towards formal legal equality made by the mainstream gay marriage movement. As I handed a flyer to a reporter from a major media outlet in the New York-New Jersey area, I quickly informed her of the murder of Rashawn Brazell and the purpose of the scholarship. The experience felt more like delivering an uncomfortable 30-second sound bite than an elegy for his beautiful life and tragic death.

"Rashawn was a black gay teen who disappeared from his Bushwick home on Valentine's Day 2005; days later, his dismembered body parts were found in trash bags by an MTA worker in the New York City subway. A number of activists came together in response to the unthinkable tragedy, and now an annual college scholarship is offered in his honor. This month is the two-year anniversary of Rashawn's death. Here is some more information," I said, handing her the flyer.

"Are there any upcoming events being coordinated for the two-year anniversary?" asked the reporter.

I thought for a second. "I can put you in touch with Larry Lyons, one of the cofounders of the scholarship if you are looking to interview someone."

The reporter nodded her head eagerly and began to take down Larry's information. As she did so I wondered if Rashawn's story struck a chord with her: Would she really do a story about the scholarship? A few seconds later, I became painfully aware of her true motives as she closed her notepad and replied, "This is great! The network has been pestering me to do a story for Black History Month." In that moment, Rashawn, whose life had been cut tragically short, was being dismembered and discarded all over again.

Despite being regarded as "one of the most heinous crimes in the last decade" by black gay activist Steven G. Fullwood, news of Rashawn's brutal death in February 2005 never made it to the radio. His photograph never appeared on the cover of any local newspapers or any major magazines. Play-by-play updates of the murder investigation were never featured on the evening news. In fact, a haunting silence was the mainstream networks' only response to Rashawn's murder.

One of the glaring questions on the minds of concerned activists and community members was, Why didn't the media pick up Rashawn's case? In marked contrast, the tragic murder of Matthew Shepard in 1998 quickly made national headlines, and scores of gay activists across the country united in support of the Shepard family. They held both the police and local lawmakers accountable for the investigation into his murder and started a foundation in his honor. On the other hand, Sakia Gunn, a 15-year-old black lesbian who was fatally stabbed in the chest by a homophobic man in 2003, barely received any media attention at all. Sakia, who was waiting for a bus in downtown Newark, New Jersey at the time of her murder, never made the cover of any local newspaper, but outrage over the incident among predominantly New Jersey- and New York-based LGBT communities of color did lead to memorials in alternative forms of media. For example, in the Sakia Gunn Film Project, director Chas Brack recounts his motivation for creating a film that highlights Sakia's sexuality and gender identity. In the film, he explains that when he first learned of Sakia's death, the television news report failed to mention that she was transgender. Exasperated by the omission, he says, "I'm over sitting around waiting for white people to tell Black people's stories and for straight people to tell gay people's stories . . . We have to create a space where we can tell our own stories."

Similarly, Rashawn received virtually no mainstream media attention except for a few brief newspaper stories with sensationalized titles like "Young Man Hacked Apart" (Gay City News) and "Subway Chop Up Victim ID'D," (New York Post) which captured only brief snippets of the gruesome murder. While Matthew, Sakia, and Rashawn all suffered tragically because of their sexuality, only Shepard represented the all-American boy, a clean-cut white face that mainstream America could relate to and rally around. On the contrary, Rashawn and Sakia represented a different face of America—one that is marked by the bodily violence of homophobia on one hand, and the symbolic violence of racist neglect by the mainstream media on the other.

In response to the gross underreporting of Rashawn's slaying, a number of predominantly gay African American cyberactivists began publicizing his case at a moment when the stinging abandonment of the mainstream media was too much to bear. In several entries on Larry D. Lyons's blog, The Larry Lyons Experience, this black gay scholar and self-described feminist offered a vital space for Internet users to learn about Rashawn's story and express their frustration and rage at the lack of attention paid to the murder.

In reference to the few headlines that did make it into the newspaper, Larry composed a revealing blog entry that asked his readers "I wonder . . . if the body parts turned out to be those of Donald Trump, would the New York Post still refer to him as 'Chop up victim?' If he were a heterosexual member of the white upper middle class, would Rashawn's story be phrased so indelicately as 'Hacked Apart'? . . . Please acknowledge that we are more than just some chopped up body parts that litter your subway. We are a life, and a son, and a friend, and a lover . . . We demand the cries for decency, visibility and justice that would surely be afforded to our white counterparts."

The thirteen pages of responses to the initial posting on Larry's blog suggest that many shared his concern for the devaluation of black gay life. Comments on Larry's Web site reveal that bloggers from as far away as Philadelphia, Houston, and Chicago discovered the incident through Larry's posts and began to post regular updates on their own blogs about the murder, the candlelight vigils, the town hall meetings, and the investigation. Eventually, the Rashawn Brazell Memorial Fund was set up by queer activists of color in order to chronicle these responses, place them within a specific cultural context, and provide encouraging avenues of action for bloggers and other Internet-savvy individuals wanting to join the battle against racism and homophobia.

When Rashawn's case was rejected by traditional media channels, it was picked up by blogs and broadcast far and wide. In a number of concrete ways, blogging represents a new media technology that enables people from marginalized groups to communicate with each other, share information, and form powerful networks of belonging that can function both within and outside of cyberspace. Furthermore, the act of blogging serves to refocus the lens and add depth to the few available images of queer experiences in the United States.

Now in its second year of existence, The Rashawn Brazell Memorial Fund awards an annual $1,500 scholarship to students of color who reside in New York City. (For more info, see www.rashawnbrazell.com/scholarships) In addition, the community-building that became so evident in cyberspace sparked the creation of a series of fundraising parties in Rashawn's honor throughout various queer-friendly spaces in New York City. Appropriately titled, "Brighter Days," these parties help to distinguish the vibrant legacy of Rashawn's life from the bleak shadow cast by his death. These significant accomplishments would not have been possible without the tireless efforts of bloggers who have a history of writing about race and sexuality. These bloggers are personally affected by the daily instances of homophobic, racist, and sexist violence against queer communities of color.

Trailblazing black lesbian poet Audre Lorde once wrote, "My response to racism is anger . . . once I did it in silence, afraid of the weight . . . women responding to racism means women responding to anger, the anger of exclusion, of unquestioned privilege, of racial distortions, of silence." Indeed, Lorde instructs us to tap into our own "arsenal of anger" to inform our activism and refine our practice. Her words resound in the hearts of queer activists of color even today, as she recognizes that "my anger has meant pain to me, but it has also meant survival, and before I give it up, I'm going to be sure that there is something at least as powerful to replace it on the road to clarity . . . I am not free as long as one person of color remains chained. Nor is any one of you."[1]

For those of us who have been profoundly moved by Rashawn's inspiring life and tragic death, we will not be satisfied with a 30-second sound bite for Black History Month. The Rashawn Brazell Memorial Fund, whose operation relies almost entirely on the Internet, is committed to proactive and sustainable activism that takes seriously the challenges and concerns of our youth. Whereas more traditional types of organizing might require surveys and other cumbersome types of person-to-person outreach to assess the needs of the community, cyberactivism, and blogging in particular, has enabled us to connect more directly to the communities we aim to serve. Keeping our finger on the pulse of the community's needs in this way has been and will always be a central organizing principle for the Memorial Fund. We will continue to heed Audre Lorde's legacy and address the glaring gaps of injustice with our words, our stories and our activism—in hopes that we might be able to channel our anger and rage into meaningful social change.

Endnotes

1. Audre Lorde, "On the Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism," Sister Outsider, (Freedom, California: Crossing Press, 1984). [Return to text]