#club q shooting

[fursasaida]

The staff and performers of Club Q are struggling financially with the club being shut down. Those who weren't working the night of the shooting are not counted as "victims," so don't have access to the same kinds of support but are nonetheless out of a paycheck.

Del Lusional explained here: "Unfortunately the employees and contractors who were not in the building are still being greatly impacted with the loss of income, these last few shows of the month were gonna help pay rent and utilities for many of us."

They are working on getting a joint PayPal set up, but for those of us in the US, here are ways to send money to some of these individuals:

[there's an OCRed version here.]

#club q shooting #donation

[katy-l-wood]

Here are a list of fundraisers verified by GoFundMe themselves if you want to support those effected by the Club Q shooting.

#Club Q #Club Q Shooting #Mass Shooting #Colorado

[swordgrl]

thread under a tweet about the Club Q shooter coming out as nonbinary after the shooting

sums up queer self-id politics very well, its hypocrisy, and the untouchable status it has given predatory men to continue assaulting women and children

#club q shooting #sex-based violence #trans movement #trans #mra #gender critical #nb #mypost

[fairfowl]

trans rights and gay rights are inseparable, trans safety and gay safety are irrevocably intertwined.

Have a mostly painless Trans Day of Rememberance

#trans day of remembrance #transgender day of remembrance #colorado springs #colorado springs shooting #club q #club q shooting #hate crime #gun violence #original #i contributed

[mysharona1987]

A drag queen with a stiletto did more to stop a spree shooter than the Uvalde cops ever did. She absolutely bashed his frigging head in and was stabbing in the eye.

The heavily weaponised and armed Uvalde cops were lazy, selfish and inept.

And did not watch the film Single White Female, apparently.

#club q #club q shooting #Draq queens #horror movies #colorado #true crime #lbgtq rights #lbgtq #trans woman #Single white female #shoes #Texas #lauren boebert

[cleolinda]

When I was a child in the '80s, I absorbed some kind of cultural truism that disco was ridiculous, embarrassing, cheesy, a cultural relic to be mocked at every turn. Remember, I'm under ten years old at this time, and I still manage to get this impression. There was another, milder sea change when grunge overtook the hair metal of the late '80s, so I never questioned the idea that disco should be dead and buried. We like silly things, I thought in my 13-year-old wisdom, and then we get over it.

Then I saw The Last Days of Disco (1998) while I was in college, and suddenly I realized that disco was fun, and it was like—it was in the roots of—music I already loved. And the end of that movie also—hints? tells you? I can't remember how explicitly—that disco didn't just fade like most trends; it was killed off.

I watched a lot of VH1 in those days, the late '90s, with a little TV sitting on my tall university-issue dresser, its corner overlooking my computer desk while I struggled with piles of assignments. This was the heyday of Behind the Music, so it was great background TV. And then one day (1999) they ran a Donna Summer—the "Queen of Disco"—concert special. The video up there is the song that immediately became my favorite of hers. It’s just instant serotonin to me, any version of it. I bought the whole VH1 album on CD, and "This Time I Know It's For Real" may genuinely be one of my all-time favorite songs, now, still, more than 20 years later. You can hear the original version (1989) here (the backing instrumental that I just found today is lovely), but the live version ten years later, the video up there, has a really special comeback—joyous, gracious survival—energy to it.

Watching the whole concert, I got it. Why the fuck did I ever think disco wasn't amazing? It was always the kind of thing I loved; we had all just been pretending that it was embarrassing glitter trash.

And then I found out why we were pretending. From densely-footnoted Wikipedia:

Disco Demolition Night was a Major League Baseball (MLB) promotion on Thursday, July 12, 1979, at Comiskey Park in Chicago, Illinois, that ended in a riot. At the climax of the event, a crate filled with disco records was blown up on the field between games of the twi-night doubleheader between the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers. Many had come to see the explosion rather than the games and rushed onto the field after the detonation. The playing field was so damaged by the explosion and by the rioters that the White Sox were required to forfeit the second game to the Tigers. [...] The popularity of disco declined significantly in late 1979 and 1980. Many disco artists carried on, but record companies began labeling their recordings as dance music. [...] Rolling Stone critic Dave Marsh described Disco Demolition Night as "your most paranoid fantasy about where the ethnic cleansing of the rock radio could ultimately lead". Marsh was one who, at the time, deemed the event an expression of bigotry, writing in a year-end 1979 feature that "white males, eighteen to thirty-four are the most likely to see disco as the product of homosexuals, blacks, and Latins, and therefore they're the most likely to respond to appeals to wipe out such threats to their security. It goes almost without saying that such appeals are racist and sexist, but broadcasting has never been an especially civil-libertarian medium." Nile Rodgers, producer and guitarist for the disco-era band Chic,

(who survived the disco era to make half the music I loved in the '80s)

likened the event to Nazi book burning. Gloria Gaynor, who had a huge disco hit with "I Will Survive," stated, "I've always believed it was an economic decision—an idea created by someone whose economic bottom line was being adversely affected by the popularity of disco music. So they got a mob mentality going."

The DJ who ran the whole thing, Steve Dahl, complains that it was VH1 itself—you know, those Behind the Music specials I was watching—circa 1996 that labeled the whole debacle as bigotry when it so totally was not, you guys, and he is so tired of defending himself. But I'm gonna tell you, Steve, I don't really care. Maybe Disco Demolition Night was your fault; maybe you were just a part of something so much bigger and uglier that you couldn't see the whole size of it. Can you draw a direct line from the weird bigoted vitriol directed at those dance records to Ronald Reagan, elected the very next year, not giving a single fuck about the AIDS crisis? You probably don't want to, but I will.

And I don't care because I can look around the U.S. right now and tell you, nearly 45 years later, people are trying to demolish a lot more than disco. The Club Q shooter was sentenced to life in prison just a few hours ago. It's Pride Month, and we're all sitting here holding our breaths. That's a terrible way to end a post about a beautiful happy song I love, I guess, unless you turn it around and say, that should have been the whole point of this post in the first place. Listen to this song and think, people wanted to destroy this music, this sound, this joy for some reason. They want to stop people from just living their lives, from dancing. And yet, disco is still here. It was there in 1979, and it was there when Donna Summer released this song in 1989, and it was there when she returned in 1999. The Queen of Disco passed away in 2012, and it's still here. I feel a lot of joy when I listen to this song, but I don't think I'd ever thought about it being the joy of grooving with something just because it’s beautiful, the joy of just being here, still.

#donna summer #music #video #disco demolition night #queer history #lgbtqia+ #club q shooting #aids crisis #pride #pride for one thousand years #I feel really hesitant about the turn this post took but #if the dots are there you gotta connect them #long post #music discussion

[metalheadsforblacklivesmatter]

When reporting on the Club Q shooting remember that the woman that helped the veteran take down the shooter was a trans woman, not a drag queen.

It did occur on drag night, and was an honest mistake but one of the victims have since spoken out to apply this correction.

-fae

#club q (colorado springs nightclub) #club q #club q shooting #lgbt+ #lgbt #lgbtq+ #lgbtq #trans pride #trans #trans day of remembrance

[magnetothemagnificent]

My heart goes out to the victims and to the community at Colorado Springs, Colorado.

And on Trans Day of Remembrence, too.

May their memories be a blessing.

#mass shooting #hate crime #homophobia #club q shooting #colorado springs mass shooting #gun violence #current events #violent homophobia

[vaspider]

So apparently the Colorado Springs shooter's lawyer filed papers referring to them as non-binary, using Mx & they/them pronouns throughout.

#colorado springs #club q shooting

[queerism1969]

#usa politics #american politics #right wing politics #us politics #politics #republicans #americans #american #america #united states of america #united states #usa #conservatives #democracy #club q massacre #club q shooting #club q

[date-a-jew-suggestions]

Being Jewish is exhausting. Being trans and Jewish is more exhausting. Rhetoric around “moral degeneracy” and “attacks on western values” continues to get people killed. Who could have guessed.

#jumblr #judaism #antisemitism #antisemitism tw #transphobia tw #homophobia tw #transphobia #homophobia #club q shooting #hate crime tw #violence tw #death tw

[michaelmilkers]

i don’t give a fuck about your opinion on guns or gun control, every single lgbt event and venue needs to have armed security and every single lgbt person who can needs to arm themselves or at least learn how to shoot a gun.

national firearm reform is not fucking coming. the people who want to hunt us down and kill us will continue to have guns. domestic terrorists will continue to evade the law by design. either we gain a reputation for being armed and dangerous or we get slaughtered.

#club q shooting #colorado springs

[celttim]

#truth #colorado springs #club q shooting #gun violence

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

A year and a half before he was arrested in the Colorado Springs gay nightclub shooting that left five people dead, Anderson Lee Aldrich allegedly threatened his mother with a homemade bomb, forcing neighbors in surrounding homes to evacuate while the bomb squad and crisis negotiators talked him into surrendering.

Yet despite that scare, there's no public record that prosecutors moved forward with felony kidnapping and menacing charges against Aldrich, or that police or relatives tried to trigger Colorado's "red flag" law that would have allowed authorities to seize the weapons and ammo the man's mother says he had with him.

Gun control advocates say Aldrich's June 2021 threat is an example of a red flag law ignored, with potentially deadly consequences. While it's not clear the law could have prevented Saturday night's attack — such gun seizures can be in effect for as little as 14 days and be extended by a judge in six-month increments — they say it could have at least slowed Aldrich and raised his profile with law enforcement.

"We need heroes beforehand — parents, co-workers, friends who are seeing someone go down this path," said Colorado state Rep. Tom Sullivan, whose son was killed in the Aurora theater shooting and sponsored the state's red flag law passed in 2019. "This should have alerted them, put him on their radar."

But the law that allows guns to be removed from people deemed dangerous to themselves or others has seldom been used in the state, particularly in El Paso County, home to Colorado Springs, where the 22-year-old Aldrich allegedly went into Club Q with a long gun at just before midnight and opened fire before he was subdued by patrons.

An Associated Press analysis found Colorado has one of the lowest rates of red flag usage despite widespread gun ownership and several high-profile mass shootings.

Courts issued 151 gun surrender orders from when the law took effect in April 2019 through 2021, three surrender orders for every 100,000 adults in the state. That's a third of the ratio of orders issued for the 19 states and District of Columbia with surrender laws on their books.

El Paso County appears especially hostile to the law. It joined nearly 2,000 counties nationwide in declaring themselves "Second Amendment Sanctuaries" that protect the constitutional right to bear arms, passing a 2019 resolution that says the red flag law "infringes upon the inalienable rights of law-abiding citizens" by ordering police to "forcibly enter premises and seize a citizen's property with no evidence of a crime."

County Sheriff Bill Elder has said his office would wait for family members to ask a court for surrender orders and not petition for them on its own accord, unless there were "exigent circumstances" and "probable cause" of a crime.

El Paso County, with a population of 730,000, had 13 temporary firearm removals through the end of last year, four of which turned into longer ones of at least six months.

The county sheriff's office declined to answer what happened after Aldrich's arrest last year, including whether anyone asked to have his weapons removed. The press release issued by the sheriff's office at the time said no explosives were found but did not mention anything about whether any weapons were recovered.

Spokesperson Lt. Deborah Mynatt referred further questions about the case to the district attorney's office.

An online court records search did not turn up any formal charges filed against Aldrich in last year's case. And in an update on a story on the bomb threat, The Gazette newspaper of Colorado Springs reported that prosecutors did not pursue any charges in the case and that records were sealed.

The Gazette also reported Sunday that it got a call from Aldrich in August asking that it remove a story about the incident.

"There is absolutely nothing there, the case was dropped, and I'm asking you either remove or update the story," Aldrich said in a voice message to an editor. "The entire case was dismissed."

A spokesperson for the district attorney's office, Howard Black, declined to comment on whether any charges were pursued. He said the shooting investigation will also include a study of the bomb threat.

"There will be no additional information released at this time," Black said. "These are still investigative questions."

AP's study of 19 states and the District of Columbia with red flag laws on their books found they have been used about 15,000 times since 2020, less than 10 times for every 100,000 adults in each state. Experts called that woefully low and hardly enough to make a dent in gun killings.

Just this year, authorities in Highland Park, Illinois, were criticized for not trying to take guns away from the 21-year-old accused of a Fourth of July parade shooting that left seven dead. Police had been alerted about him in 2019 after he threatened to "kill everyone" in his home.

Duke University sociologist Jeffrey Swanson, an expert in red flag laws, said the Colorado Springs case could be yet another missed warning sign.

"This seems like a no brainer, if the mom knew he had guns," he said. "If you removed firearms from the situation, you could have had a different ending to the story."

#us politics #news #npr news #npr #Colorado #club q shooting #Anderson Lee Aldrich #red flag laws #gun violence #gun rights #gun control #felony kidnapping #menacing #bomb threat #Rep. Tom Sullivan #The Gazette #Second Amendment Sanctuaries #Sheriff Bill Elder #associated press #ap news #mass shootings #mass shooters

[mysharona1987]

#Rainbow #club q #club q shooting #true crime

[silvermoon424]

>Right-wing figureheads spend literal months if not years riling up their base about how queer people are "groomers" and a danger to children

>Someone who doesn't have the best grip on reality goes out and decides to take matters into their own hands by targeting a gay nightclub

>Right-wing figureheads will find some way to blame the libs and avoid all responsibility

We’ve seen this happen time and time again with the far right and stochastic terrorism, only the targets have changed. Sometimes the targets are Hispanic immigrants, sometimes they’e abortion clinics, sometimes they’re black people, sometimes they’re Jews, and today they’re queer people. Right-wing figures like Tucker Carlson spend months stoking the flames of hatred and panic against these groups until someone decides “something needs to be done” and shoots up a church or a grocery store or a nightclub. 

The kind of rhetoric the right wing is spreading kills people, don’t ever forget that.

#club q shooting #mass shooting tw #colorado nightclub shooting #violence