[Fwd: Montreal/Killeen/Jonesboro vigils needed]

Linda Purrington (lpurring@earthlink.net)
Sun, 29 Mar 1998 15:09:17 -0800


Forwarded by Linda Purrington <lpurring@earthlink.net>
____________________________________________________________________

Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 14:54:21 -0800
To: laurax@igc.org
From: Laura X <laurax@igc.apc.org>
Subject: Montreal/Killeen/Jonesboro vigils needed

Thanks for the info as I did not know how to answer Marie de Santis, one of
our great longtime, pull-no-punches writers on violence against women. Do
you have any citations for the below on the Killeen Massacre of women? Do
you have any idea what his motivation was? Diana Russell, author of the
book "Femicide", told me this week that even massacres of men and men and
women are often precipitated by the man's hatred of a woman. She has
written on this, as I wrote to the ARK Governor, in the upcoming issue on
Femicide for the Homicide studies journal from Sage.

The murderer in Montreal at L'Ecole Polytecnique Dec. 6,1989 left a 3 page
letter on his body about all the labor leaders and members of parliament
and journalists who were"f***ing feminists"whom he "wanted to kill but did
not have time to" so he killed 14 female engineering students at a school
which had 40% women and refused to admit him-- a man whom even the army
rejected for being "anti-social".

The total content of Marc Lepine's suicide mission letter was suppressed
for a while and many people, like now, denied the political gender crime -
refusing to allow female pallbearers or to let women speak, though it was
instantly in the press that he had gone into the classroom with the hunting
rifle and said to the male teacher and male students to leave because he
wanted "to kill the f***ing feminists". The male teacher led the male
students out of the room. What a contrast to the teacher in Jonesboro who
gave her life for her students, even though she was pregnant.

Ursula Franklin, the top female professor, who also held the highest rank
at the U of Toronto- "University prof", and is an engineer who was a
refugee from Nazi Germany, was SILENCED by the U for saying that if
Christians had thus abandoned Jews, or whites Blacks, there would have been
a huge uproar and she was upset that there was not in this case.

I know there was a flap at Notre Dame when a female student overheard 2
male students talking about "when do we get to get rid of all the females
here that way".The death threats against women all over Canada for their
vigils were horrendous. Where are the campus vigils now?

I was on tour in Canada just before the Montreal massacre and was asked
back, but was warned that there had been death threats even at the mildest
of places, a faculty club annual Christmas lunch for childcare workers at
the University of Ottawa.(here childcare is a threatening concept, but in
more civilized places, like Canada, it is not).

I was anguished, and was scared as hell, wrote a goodby letter to all my
friends, stamped them and told my staff to mail them if I was shot. What
made me decide to risk assasination was not just the obvious parallel to
how Malcom X died giving a speech with warnings he was to be killed, but I
was lucky because all of my adult life I have been nurtured by a veteran
of the Spanish Civil War and that community, and thus tried to live by and
therefore decided to die by La Pasionaria's credo from the Spanish Civil
War, "it is better to die on your feet than live on your knees.'' As women
we have to make that decision every day in every way, but that time was
just more hellishly publicly tense.

Later I met the chief of police of the University of Ottawa at an
international conf. He had been there in plain clothes, unbeknownest to me,
and was most supportive of me during my flashbacks at seeing him at that
conf. Andrea Dworkin was kind enough to comfort me personally before I
went to Ottawa as she lives with this constantly which makes me so angry.
If there were more of us with her courage they would not be able to pick us
off one by one, in the media and real life.

Please pummel the media and college administrations and organizations that
are kid oriented wherever you are to get it right- It is about to official
open season on women and girls. Look at the research already in the media
on the copycat nature of adolescent crimes. Prof. Gail Dines at Wheelock
and even the FBI have been pointing out for a decade the huge leap in 9- 14
year olds justifiably arrested for rapes.The ages are getting lower and
lower. They are raping younger children and adult women. Sometimes their
elderly relatives.

So let's get those vigils going. Laura X.
>Here's the low-down on the Killeen massacre. On 10/16/91, George Hubley
>(that's not spelled right, but he was a murderer so who cares) rammed his
>pick-up truck into the front of a Luby's cafeteria in Killeen, Texas. He
>injured 5 people with that action. As some people rushed toward the truck
>(thinking he was a heart attack victim, planning to help), he cooly pulled
>out his weapons (ordinary stuff, available at any Sears, as I recall) and
>began picking off people in the serving line. One gun jammed twice before
>he tossed it aside. In the end, he killed 15 women, 8 men and himself,
>and injured something between 10 and 15 others (genders I couldn't
>verify). Additionally, some other people were injured trying to flee the
>restaurant.
>
>I don't remember reading or hearing that he was specifically targeting
>women. One of the survivors was Suzanne Gracia, whose parents were both
>killed, and who then began a campaign to bring concealed carry laws to
>Texas (ultimately successful).
>
>And now we return to our regularly scheduled topic....
> Jaw 707 <Jaw707@aol.com>

Laura X
National Clearinghouse on Marital and Date Rape
Women's History Library
S.F. Women's Centers Date/Marital Rape Education Project
(510) 524-1582 Berkeley, Ca.
WEB SITE: http://members.aol.com/ncmdr/index.html


new message to this message