Statement for Jennifer Laude from API Peoples’ Solidarity

October 15, 2014

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First and foremost, we send our love and strength to the family, friends and community of Jennifer Laude. In the same breath, we extend our love and strength to the trans and gender non-conforming community around the world, including comrades who are standing here today with us from the Audre Lorde Project and other organizations. We send our love, respect and strength also to Ferguson and to Shaw, where communities are rising in response to militarized police murdering their young black men Mike Brown & VonDerritt Myers.

I want to state with a strong voice that we stand with the Filipino community against the person who murdered Jennifer and against the Philippine government that has allowed US military presence in their homeland. Of course we stand in opposition to our own US government who is sending military to reside in places they do not have any business being, and militarizing our local police to drive tanks through communities when they peacefully protest. We stand with the trans and gender non-conforming community around the world whose beauty and wisdom is rarely heard outside of a memorial or a rally like this to commemorate a comrade whose life has been stolen by transphobia and hate violence.

API Peoples’ Solidarity members understand that Jennifer’s murder was not disconnected from the violent US military occupation of the Philippines. Member organizations of the coalition understand that the US has a larger goal of building economic, political and military power in the Asia Pacific region, and Jennifer Laude’s story is just one of so many hundreds of thousands of stories of why that goal is literally killing our people.

Chant: Stop the U.S. war machine, from Japan to Korea to the Philippines!

BayanUsa NationalAlliance

Caaav: Organizing Asian Communities

Civilian-Soldier Alliance

Eclipse Rising

Iraq Veterans Against the War

Island X

Nodutdol for Korean Community Development

Sloths Against Nuclear State – SANS

#Justice4Jennifer

#JenniferLaude

#APIPeoplesSolidarity

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