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DETROIT: Burned Torso Identified as Missing Transgender Teen

There have been no arrests after a gruesome discovery near a Detroit freeway: The charred torso of a transgender teen who had been reported missing, reports the Detroit News.

The Wayne County Medical Examiner's office has confirmed the death of 19-year-old Shelley Hilliard, a transgender teen also known as Treasure, after her mother identified her torso [Thursday] morning. The teen, who was born Henry Hilliard, went missing in the early hours of Oct. 23. The Medical Examiner's office received her torso later on Oct. 23.

Hilliard apparently met with foul play that morning, reports the Free Press.

A cab driver that Hilliard often used for rides dropped Hilliard off at a home where three men were waiting for her, his mother, Lyniece Nelson, said today. But Hilliard immediately called the driver back, voicing concern about the situation, Nelson said. The driver "started to hear her say, 'What are you doing,' then scream out loud 'No,' then her phone dropped, a few muffling noises, then the phone went dead," Nelson said. "By the time he got back around the corner, there was no one in sight."

"She loved her family, and she was well-loved by everybody," mother Lyniece Nelson tells the Free Press. "She was happy with who she was."

On Friday, Hilliard will be recognized in Detroit during an event in observance of the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, reports Monica Roberts.

In addition to being at the greatest risk of violence, the murders of Black trans women are often unsolved. Black transgender women face "extreme discrimination and poverty", and are more than likely to suffer from violence, physical or sexual abuse, police brutality, HIV/AIDS and bullying, according to a first of its kind survey conducted by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Black Justice Coalition.

MICHIGAN: Voters RECALL Anti-Gay Black GOP State Rep. Paul Scott

PHOTO: Michigan Radio

How sweet it is: Anti-gay and anti-trans Black Republican State Rep. Paul Scott has been recalled by voters.

Scott was recalled by voters in a tight election on Tuesday evening. Scott lost by 232 votes and becomes "the first state lawmaker recalled since 1983", reports Michigan Radio and MLive.com.

Scott’s opponents sought to recall the second-term lawmaker for several reasons, including his votes to cut K-12 education funding, add a pension tax and his work on legislation that loosens teacher tenure protection. According to campaign finance reports, Scott out-raised the recall effort by a nearly two to one margin.

"The effort to recall Scott was financed and backed by the Michigan Education Association, the state's largest teachers union," adds Michigan Radio.

Scott made national headlines during his 2010 campaign for secretary of state by using "bathrooom" scare tactics and anti-transgender rhetoric. Included among Scott's four campaign priorities: "I will make it a priority to ensure transgender individuals will not be allowed to change the sex on their driver’s license in any circumstance."

"If you are born a male, you should be known as a male. Same as with a female, she should be known as a female," he said. When asked to explain how such a mandate from the Secretary of State would benefit Michigan, he said it was about "preventing people who are males genetically from dressing as a woman and going into female bathrooms."

When the Harvard-educated Scott made history in 2008, it had "been more than 100 years" since a black Republican was elected to the state House. "Voters in the district will elect a new lawmaker in February," adds the Michigan Messenger. "Scott will serve until then."

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Former Anti-Gay Detroit Mayor Kilpatrick Released from Prison

Former Detroit Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick was released from a Michigan prison this morning after serving 14 months for obstruction of justice after his efforts to conceal a sex scandal, reports NYT.

Mr. Kilpatrick smiled broadly as he left the G. Robert Cotton Correctional Facility in Jackson, Mich., where throngs of local journalists had waited since the early morning. The Detroit Free Press live blogged the release and posted a video.

A 6-foot-4 former college football player once known as Detroit’s “hip-hop mayor,” Mr. Kilpatrick was elected to run the city when he was 31 years old. He left office seven years later in 2008 under a dark cloud of corruption after text messages revealed the affair, with his chief of staff, and an $8.5 million settlement with police officers, whom he fired to prevent the affair from being revealed.

[Kilpatrick was in] jail since May 2010, when a judge found he had mislead authorities and did not turn over certain assets toward his $1 million restitution to Detroit.

During his scandal-plagued administration, Kilpatrick infamously campaigned for a same-sex marriage ban in Michigan, saying that he didn't "support equal rights for gays because marriage should be a sacred institution between 'a man and a woman.' "

The anti-gay mayor was later outed as a serial adulterer. Kilpatrick and his former chief of staff faced multiple felonies after tens of thousands of text messages surfaced, including many sexually explicit ones, that revealed they were having an affair and attempting to payoff witnesses with city funds. This was Kilpatrick's second publicized extramarital affair.

The former mayor's legal woes undoubtedly helped end the career of his mother, one of the biggest names in Detroit politics and one of the LGBT community's strongest supporters on Capitol Hill. Democratic Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick lost her bid for an eighth term in August 2010.

Kiwame Kilpatrick's legal problems are only just beginning. Kilpatrick is facing a 38-count federal indictment "that accuses the former mayor and his circle of rigging contracts, collecting millions of dollars in bribes and defrauding taxpayers."

#GlassHousesStonesEtc

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DETROIT: FBI Investigating Brutal Anti-Gay Assault

 

There is a welcome update to the horrible anti-gay assault in Detroit mentioned two weeks ago. Twenty-three-year-old Justin Alesna has a shattered eye socket after he says witnesses "gawked and laughed" after he was brutally attacked at a gas station. Federal authorities may intervene, reports the Free Press. 

The FBI is now investigating the March 7 assault, which left Alesna with facial injuries. Alesna said he has been told FBI agents have possession of surveillance video from the gas station. Sandra Berchtold, a spokeswoman for the FBI Detroit office, confirmed Wednesday that the agency, which handles hate crimes, is investigating.

Alesna said Detroit police asked him to make an identification during a lineup Tuesday night, but he was unable to do so. He said he was told later one of the men may have been a witness to the assault.

Michigan hate crimes law does not include sexual orientation or gender identity.

Detroit City Council President Charles Pugh, who made history as the first openly gay person elected to the City Council, is urging the city's police department to collar Alesna's attacker.

Alesna recorded a video and uploaded it to YouTube. Watch that video and the disturbing news report AFTER YOU JUMP ...

DETROIT: Witnesses "Laugh" as Man is Brutally Gay-Bashed

Just heartbreaking. A young Detroit man has a shattered eye socket after he says witnesses "gawked and laughed" after he was brutally gay-bashed.

Twenty-three-year-old Justin Alesna says he walked into a gas station and another customer started unloading derogatory insults. The man punched him in the eye twice, they wrestled "and the owner told me to leave the store," Alesna tells FOX Detroit.

Alesna was hospitalized but may require additional surgery. "The eye socket is shattered in several places, like someone took a hammer to a mirror," Alesna says.

Alesna recorded a video and uploaded it to YouTube. Watch that video and the disturbing news report AFTER YOU JUMP ...

Detroit to End Police, Street Lights, Garbage Pickup in 20% of City

Rural farmland? Not quite. You're looking at a Google Earth satellite image of Detroit several blocks north of I-94 where "block after block of a city grid with virtually no homes or buildings lin[e] the streets."

Detroit's expanding urban blight and the city's rapidly declining fiscal health have prompted the city to seriously consider ending city services including police patrols, road repairs, street lights and garbage collection to more than 20% of the city. "As few as seven neighborhoods [are] seen as meriting the city's full resources," reports the Wall Street Journal.

Until now, the mayor and his staff have spoken mostly in generalities about the problem, stressing the need for community input and pledging to a skeptical public that no resident would be forced to move. But the approach discussed by city officials could have that effect. Mr. Bing's staff wants to concentrate Detroit's remaining population—expected to be less than 900,000 after this year's Census count—and limited local, state and federal dollars in the most viable swaths of the city, while other sectors could go without such services as garbage pickup, police patrols, road repair and street lights.

Karla Henderson, a city planning official leading the mayor's campaign, said in an interview Thursday that her staff had deemed just seven to nine sections of Detroit worthy of receiving the city's full resources. She declined to identify the areas, but said the final plan could include a greater number. Ms. Henderson said her team amassed hundreds of data—on household income, population density, employment, existing city services, philanthropic investments and housing stock —in its effort to identify the neighborhoods with the brightest outlook—those that could be stabilized with additional city, state and federal resources.

"What we have found is that even some of our stronger neighborhoods are at a tipping point with vacancy," Ms. Henderson said. "Vacancy adds to blight and blight is a disease that takes over the whole neighborhood. So the sooner we can get those homes occupied, the better for the city." Officials bristle when their efforts are described as downsizing, saying their aim is to repurpose portions of the city, not redraw its borders. "We will not be shrinking the city," Ms. Henderson said. "We are 139 [square] miles and we'll stay that way."

It won't shrink Detroit's virtual footprint on Google Maps, but "Bing's plan would effectively surrender 20% of the city to gangs and the homeless," critics argue. "Would you want to live in one of the gang war-zones that his plan would create? Would you want to live in a bordering neighborhood or in a bordering city?"

The plan would face an array of legal obstacles. The city is also not commenting on reports that eminent domain or condemnation would be used to "move" residents out of areas ....

No public comment yet from Charles Pugh, Detroit's first-ever openly gay city councilman and the city council president. Would be interesting to hear his take on how the plan would impact health services to Detroit's rapidly expanding HIV/AIDS caseload. Over 50 percent of Detroit’s zip codes report HIV prevalence rates at three percent or higher, state records show, "and one of those zip codes clocking in at six percent — on par with Uganda."

Bioterrorism Charges Dropped Against HIV Poz Michigan Man

You may recall the case of Daniel Allen, the Black, gay HIV-positive Michigan man who was charged with bioterrorism and assault after allegedly biting his neighbor during a fight. Thankfully, the outrageous bioterrorism charge has been dropped in a plea deal, reports the Detroit News.

The controversial felony charge against Daniel Allen was dismissed in June by Macomb County Circuit Court Judge Peter Maceroni. The judge agreed to toss the charge after Allen's attorney, James L. Galen Jr., argued the law — enacted in Michigan in 1998 in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing and an anthrax scare — was being misapplied. Allen pleaded no contest to assault with intent to do great bodily harm less than murder. If he complies with the terms and conditions of probation for the next 11 months, the charge will be reduced to a misdemeanor charge of aggravated assault and Allen will not have a felony conviction, [Galen] said.

The controversial bioterrorism charge gained national exposure and outraged HIV/AIDS activists across the country. Experts believe this was the first time that HIV was presented as a bioterror weapon. Catherine Hanssens, executive director of the New York City-based Center for HIV Law and Policy told Michigan Messenger that the bioterrorism charge was the "boogey-man characterization of people with HIV."

Faith Evans to Play The Supremes' Florence Ballard in Biopic?

R&B star Faith Evans has reportedly been selected to star as Florence Ballard in a new biopic about the tragic life of the fallen Supreme. The film is reportedly based on the book The Lost Supreme: The Life of Dreamgirl Florence Ballard.

The Detroit native was once the lead vocalist of The Supremes before being shifted to the background in favor of Diana Ross. Ballard fought weight issues, alcoholism and depression and was later dismissed from the group in 1967. Ballard was replaced by former Bluebelle Cindy Birdsong.

After spending the next six or seven years in near poverty while suing Motown executives and former attorneys, Ballard later regained control of her faculties, sought treatment for her alcoholism and received a sizable legal settlement. Ballard started to perform again in 1975 and died of cardiac arrest at the age of 32 in 1976. Ballard's story was the inspiration for the now-iconic role of Effie White in Dreamgirls.

BET.com's Clay Cane says he's withholding judgment on the casting. "I always give the side-eye when singers who have little experience acting play biopics.  Ballard is a meaty, complex character. Nonetheless, Evans might surprise us—she certainly has the soul in her vocals."

Fire Destroys Detroit HIV/AIDS Center for Young Black Gay/Bi Men

Very unfortunate news to report from Detroit. A fast-moving electrical fire destroyed the R.E.C. Boyz Center, "considered one of the top five HIV prevention programs nationwide" targeting young Black men who have sex with other men, reports PrideSource.com.

No one was hurt in the August 17 fire but the center lost all of its HIV testing and counseling supplies, computers and client data. The staff are now sharing space with its parent organization, AIDS Partnership Michigan. The program offices were de-facto drop in center for young black MSM in Detroit's LGBT.

The center was located at 1959 E. Jefferson in the historic Willens Typesetting Building ... constructed in 1929 and considered one of best examples of Art Deco architecture in Detroit.

Suspected Serial Killer Elias Abuelazam to be Arraigned in Flint

The 33-year-old Israeli Arab man suspected of a horrific stabbing spree of 18 attacks in three states, including five fatal stabbings, has been returned to Flint, Michigan to face charges. All but one of the victims were Black or dark skinned men.

  Elias Abuelazam was extradited from Atlanta this morning. Abuelazam was arrested August 11 at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport before catching a flight bound for Tel Aviv.

Detroit's FOX 5 reports Abuelazam is expected to land in Flint at 1P ET. The Israeli national is scheduled for a 3P video arraignment and faces one charge of assault with intent to commit murder.

Residents in an around Flint have slammed the Flint Police Department, Genessee County Sheriff and Michigan State Police for taking up to three months to link the attacks ... and not warning them that a serial killer was on the loose. One 17-year-old stabbing victim says police "never" questioned him the night he was attacked and "waited days" to ask any questions.