Author Archives: Becci

Remembering Sean Kennedy

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A vigil to honor the life of 20-year-old Sean Kennedy was held tonight in Columbia. Friends and family shared songs, poetry, prayers and stories with the crowd that gathered at the State House to pay its respects.

It appears that Kennedy, who was beaten after leaving a club in the Upstate in May, was killed because he was gay. The 18-year-old accused of the crime is being held on murder charges in a Greenville jail. The assault has sparked public outrage and renewed pressure to enact hate crimes legislation in South Carolina, one of only four states without such protection. Rep. Seth Whipper (D-Charleston) introduced a bill in March; maybe this tragedy will generate enough heat to move the legislature to act when it reconvenes in January.

Sean Kennedy’s mother, Elke, and sister, Dawn.

AIDS Funding, Finally

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Our Network groups are hitting their stride in the waning days of the legislative session. The SC Campaign to End AIDS’ hard work to secure funding has paid off. See story in today’s The State.

Karen Bates, an activist with SC Campaign to End AIDS, makes a plea to legislators at the State House during a rally early in the 2007 legislative session.

Marching down Main Street, Columbia SC.

Children’s Health Insurance

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Good news from SC Fair Share today:

The General Assembly has overwhelmingly overridden the Governor’s vetoes of additional SCHIP funding and the proviso expanding SCHIP eligibility from 150% to 200% of the federal poverty level.

This is a great victory for 65,000 children that has taken us a long time to get to. Thanks for everyone who helped today and over the years.

John Ruoff

What’s democracy worth?

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Would you pay a penny a day for clean elections? Show it!

Order your penny pin today and make a fashion statement worth talking about. Send us $5 and
we’ll send you a pin and a postcard you can mail to your legislator urging him or her to support clean elections.

Donations will go to our Clean Elections Campaign. Send penny requests and donations to: Network at POB 8325, Columbia, SC 29202.

Send a photo to scpoint@mindspring.com of you or a friend sporting a penny pin and we’ll post it here.

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If you’re new to the Network, read about clean elections at our Web site.

A Victory and a Vigil

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South Carolina Equality Coalition – a Network member – sent this notice today. Congratulations!

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SCEC CELEBRATES VISIBILITY AND INCLUSION!

We prevailed! The SC Democratic Party voted yesterday to set a goal of sending at least 3 openly GLBT delegates from South Carolina to the presidential convention in 2008. Long active in political organizing in this state, gays and lesbians are now being recognized as an important constituency of the state party. The new policy sets an explicit standard of visibility and inclusion.

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Snapshot

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Wade Fulmer, of Military Families Speak Out, talks to the media after yet another vigil in Columbia marking too many dead.

Whatcha reading?

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As we have in the past, the Network will power down over the summer months. We won’t resume our monthly meeting schedule until September. Meanwhile, we have extra time to read and ruminate. Got me wondering what you have on your reading list. If you have a good book or magazine to recommend, let’s hear about it.

The magazines I subscribe to include Harper’s, The Nation, Ms. (although it is a shadow of its former glorious self) and Yoga Journal. For daily news, I get The State, read the BBC online and listen to NPR. And I sometimes listen to Rush, just to keep my hackles up.

So how ’bout you? Got anything to recommend?

Becci Robbins

Killing Spree Continues Down South

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By this time tomorrow night, the state of South Carolina will have executed Calvin Shuler for the 1997 murder of James Brooks during an armed robbery. It will be the latest in a long string of revenge killings conducted in the name of justice. Sadly, most of these state-sponsored murders have been committed in the South. Rankings by state of the number of executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977 show that 10 out of the top 12 are in the South. Texas, the state that brought us the most blood-thirsty cowboy in US history, leads the pack.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the list looks like this:

TEXAS: 395
VIRGINIA: 98
OKLAHOMA: 84
MISSOURI: 66
FLORIDA: 64
NORTH CAROLINA: 43
GEORGIA: 39
SOUTH CAROLINA: 36
ALABAMA: 36
LOUISIANA: 27
ARKANSAS: 27
ARIZONA: 23

The numbers are even more frightening when measured against what’s happening in the rest of the world. Amnesty International reports:

* 129 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice.
* Last year, 91 percent of executions took place in China, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Sudan and the United States.

Looks like our Cowboy in Chief may have more in common with his enemies than he might think.

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Union is a four-letter word in SC

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Even in the face of tragedy so profound that the rest of the world has taken note, the deaths of nine firefighters in a Charleston blaze on Monday could not shake South Carolina media outlets from their phobia of the “union” word. God forbid they could stray from their Right-to Work scripts even when the story surely warranted a mention of the mobilization of International Association of Fire Fighters to support their brothers in South Carolina.

A search online for coverage of this major story reveals the clear bias against unions in this (red)neck of the woods. Newspapers in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Kansas, — even Manitoba and Australia, for cryin’ out loud — noted how the loss of these men has resonated in the brotherhood. Across the country, firefighters have been dispatched to Charleston to attend funerals and lend their support to their fallen comrades.

Anywhere else, such solidarity would be seen as a good thing, decent people standing by their own. Here? Not so much.

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