International Transgender Day of Remembrance

for more info on TDoR: http://www.transgenderdor.org

Author: Jan Steckel
Title: Intersection

reprinted here w/o formal permission from my friend the author 
dedicated to my children, my friends and other strangers as:

• a commitment and call to action from the CPUSA
• a clarion call, a wake-up call, a promise and a warning 
• a gift for my grown children whose paths through the verb "gender" to selfhood made me proud of them and myself as a parent. I love who you are. I love that you will let no one (even me) "un-are" the who of you.
• a milemarker and a tombstone those lovers, friends and strangers harmed, murdered or imprisoned by Transphobia

 ~~~~~~~

Intersection

When I help a woman on with her jacket,
my sexuality grabs my gender identity
and waltzes it around the room.

I’m a woman, but there’s a man in me.
He’s a bit of a fop, sort of a pansy.
He might be a fag.

Why shouldn’t everything about me be fluid?
I’m a squishy skin-bag of water and salt,
ocean inside and out.

As a child, I was sure I was a boy.
The heroes of all the best books were boys.
I pretty much lived in my head, what I read.

Now I feel more like a woman –
except around straight women.
Then I feel like a butch lunk.

My husband thinks I’m a femme
because I wear lavender, (color and scent),
and ask him to open jars.

All roads meet in me:
butch when I wake up,
femme at lunch.

Androgynous at dinner,
totally trans all night .
Can I get that door for you?

--Jan Steckel

~~~~~~~

Communist America

U.S. Communists: Who & What We Are

from CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
Amended July 8, 2001 at the 27th National Convention, Milwaukee, WI

The Communist Party USA is the party of and for the U.S. working class, a class which is multiracial, multinational, and unites men and women, young and old, employed and unemployed, organized and unorganized, gay and straight, native-born and immigrant, urban and rural, and composed of workers who perform a large range of physical and mental labor—the vast majority of our society. We are the party of the African American, Mexican American, Puerto Rican, all other Latino American, Native American, Asian American, and all racially and nationally oppressed peoples, as well as women, youth, and all other working people.

The living standards of workers and the natural environment on which life depends are under constant attack due to the drive for maximum profits inherent in capitalism. Our party fights for jobs and economic security, a decent and rising standard of living, peace, justice, equality, a sustainable environment, gay rights, health care, education, affordable housing,  the needs of seniors, democracy, and a fulfilling life for everyone, with socialism as our goal. Only through the abolition of the capitalist system and the socialist reorganization of society can exploitation of human beings by others, and the evils of oppression, war, racism, environmental degradation, and poverty be ended. We seek to build a socialist society which puts people and nature before profits.