Another Transgender Murder R.I.P Brandy Martell of Oakland Calif.

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Another Transgender Murder R.I.P Brandy Martell of Oakland Calif.

More is being learned about the murder of a transgender woman in Oakland over the weekend. Brandy Martell was shot to death in downtown Oakland at Franklin and 13th Street just a block from city hall. Her friends believe the killing was a hate crime.
37-year-old Brandy Martell was sitting behind the wheel of her car around 5:15 a.m. Sunday when one or two men walked up and began a conversation. A witness told ABC7 the conversation was cordial, but then a few minutes later, one of the men became angry and fired into the car right where Martell was sitting.

Until late last year, Martell worked as an outreach worker at the Tri-City Health Center in Fremont which serves the transgender and transsexual community. "When you don't provide a space in society for people who you think are the other or different, especially transgender women, especially transgender women of color, when you don't provide spaces for them to be in a safe environment or a safe space, whether it's socializing or services, this is what happens," Martell's friend Tiffany Woods told ABC7.

People gathered at the scene of the shooting Sunday night to remember Martell. Her murder was one of three in Oakland over the weekend.
Investigators are talking to witnesses and trying to figure out exactly what led up to the shooting. It could be considered a hate crime if they find out that the shooter was motivated by a perception of the victim's sexual identity.

HMMMMMMM, As noted, there was an email notice send out about the murder Sunday evening, with a damning claim about police inaction.
Brandi, a transwoman, was murdered last night, shot at 12th and Franklin in Downtown Oakland after an altercation with a man who became enraged and shot her when he realized she was trans. An amazing #oo comrade tried to keep her alive with training learned from the People’s Community Medics, but the cops walked away and the ambulance came too late.
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(From Daily Kos) If you are doubting whether this could possibly be true, I suggest you read Politicized 'Hate Crimes', the OPD and District Attorney O'Malley, and judge for yourself.
It is true that Oakland is a high-crime city, at least if you consider the data per capita. But Oakland is just not that populous, so that you might think that each of the some 110+ murders a year that occur within its boundaries would garner significant media attention. But as of five o'clock today Oakland's flagship newspaper, the Oakland Tribune, had absolutely nothing about a rather shocking crime that took place just a block from Frank Ogawa Plaza / Oscar Grant Park.

Think about what the newscape would look like if a well-heeled, white, Oakland citizen living on "the right side of the tracks" (or, in Oakland parlance, "the hills") had been the victim. Or consider that another murder that took place at almost the same location in November of 2011 while Occupy Oakland was camping in the Plaza rated world-wide headlines. I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine how many articles there were about broken windows in Oakland on November 2nd, 2011.

So this is how yet another (and another, and another and another) transgender woman dies; a victim simultaneously of hatred and a conspiracy of silence.

WE MUST DO BETTER!