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Tuesday, January 28, 2014

#AVP Community Alert Update


 COMMUNITY ALERT
January 27, 2014

Journalist Randy Gener beaten in possible anti-gay hate crime in Hell’s Kitchen 

The New York City Anti-Violence Project (AVP) has learned of an attack on openly gay Filipino journalist Randy Gener that occurred on January 17th in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood at around 3 a.m. on Seventh Avenue near West 54th Street.  According to media sources, Gener was attacked by multiple assailants, and beaten so badly that he required brain surgery. He is currently in serious but stable condition. The NYPD is currently investigating to determine if this was a hate crime.

Last night, Gener’s family and friends were joined at a vigil by concerned community members and organizations, including AVP.  The vigil aimed to raise awareness of hate violence against LGBTQ people and this incident in particular in the hope that witnesses will come forward.

AVP is working with community partners FANHS-NY, Broadway Barkada, GAPIMNY Steering Committee, Sakhi for South Asian Women and NQAPIA.  We have also reached out to the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and Council Member Corey Johnson's office regarding this incident.


TAKE ACTION WITH AVP

In response to this incident, we will be holding a Community Safety Night in Hell’s Kitchen this Friday, January 31st.  AVP will be talking with community members to increase awareness about this incident and provide people with safety information.  In addition, with the Super Bowl being in New Jersey this year, New York City is expected to see a substantial increase of tourist/fan traffic in and around Midtown bars and restaurants, and we want to ensure that community members have information about resources and safety tips in the midtown area.  We will meet at AVP at 6 p.m. for a brief training and then head out into the community to hand out safety tips and information to community members.  To get involved, or to join us in our outreach, you can also contact RJ Mendoza, AVP’s Hate Violence Community Organizer, at rmendoza@avp.org.

REPORTING VIOLENCE HELPS END VIOLENCE

AVP encourages you to report violence you experience or witness to our free and confidential 24-hour bilingual (English/Spanish) hotline at 212-714-1141 where you can speak with a trained counselor and seek support, or you can report violence anonymously online at http://avp.org/get-help/report-violence.

Find out more about AVP at our website, www.avp.org, and get regular updates on our ongoing work on Facebook.com/antiviolence or Twitter @antiviolence, and get involved and make a difference.
 


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#Gun Crisis Philadelphia 1/28/14

#GunCrisis


Posted: 28 Jan 2014 07:09 AM PST
Six-year-old Jordan Hall waits with her mother to find her brother after two students were shot inside his school in Philadelphia earlier this month. Photograph for the Gun Crisis Reporting Project by Joseph Kaczmarek.Six-year-old Jordan Hall waits with her mother to find her brother aftertwo students were shot inside his school in Philadelphia earlier this month. Photograph for the Gun Crisis Reporting Project by Joseph Kaczmarek.

Since the Newtown school shootingdemandaction.org has counted 36
more school shootings in the US, including 29 incidents in 2013.
Yet in the first month of 2014, they have already added seven more incidents to their list,
 including three in the Philadelphia region.

UPDATE: Shots were fired Tuesday at a high school in Honolulu, according to the Associated Press: Shots fired at Hawaii school; injuries reported
This list includes the previous incidents tracked bydemandaction.org:
A 17-year-old student was wounded in a shooting at Liberty Technology Magnet 
High School in Jackson, Tenn. on January 9th.
On January 14th, a shooting at Berrendo Middle School in Roswell, N.M. left at least two
children wounded.

In Lancaster, Pa., King Elementary School was locked down after someone fired a gun in the schoolyard on January 15th. Two children were wounded inside the Delaware Valley Charter School in Philadelphia on January 17th.

A Widener University student was shot on campus in Chester. Pa., on January 20th.

A student was shot and killed on the campus of Purdue University in West Lafayette, In.,
in January 21st. And a student was shot to death outside a dorm at South Carolina State
 University on January 24th.

According to demandaction.org, their list includes incidents in which a firearm was fired or
brandished on school property, identified through media reports, and likely an under count
 of the true total. At the Gun Crisis Reporting Project, we tracked several more incidents
in the news, both near and far this month:
And according to a recent report from thinkprogress.org: “Just about the only
discernible impact of adding security officials into schools isa dramatic increase in the number of students arrested. More alarmingly, there have been instances of officers forgetting
 their guns inside bathrooms used by students or accidentally firing their guns inside
 of crowded high schools.”

After last weekend’s mall shooting in Maryland, celebrity Katy Perry asked her nearly
 50 million Twitter followers if they were “Scared to go to school? Scared to go to the mall?
 Scared to go to the movies?,” and if anyone else was sad about “the constant stream of 
shootings and how normal it’s becoming,” finally adding: “You and I both know this is getting embarrassing.”

As the first anniversary of the Newtown shooting approached in December, momsdemandaction.org released this video: Stop The Silence

At the same time, school shootings represent a very small part of the gun violence crisis
 in Philadelphia. Three men were killed and four more people were wounded in unrelated
 incidents on the same day as the recent school shooting. Five incidents last weekend – including two fatalities — brought this month’s shooting victim totals in Philadelphia to 23 dead and 41 wounded.