CeCe McDonald
TW: Racism, Violence, Transphobia, Murder
Around 12:30 am on June 5, 2011, CeCe was walking to the grocery store with some friends, all of them young, African American, and LGBTIQ or allied. As they passed a local bar, the Schooner Tavern, a group of older, white people who were standing outside the bar’s side door began hurling racist and transphobic slurs at them, without provocation. They called CeCe and her friends ‘f*ggots,’ ‘ni**ers,’ and ‘chicks with dicks,’ and suggested that CeCe was ‘dressed as a woman’ in order to ‘rape’ Dean Schmitz, one of the attackers. When CeCe approached the group and told them that her crew would not tolerate hate speech, one of the women said, “I’ll take you bitches on,” and then smashed her glass into CeCe’s face. She punctured CeCe’s cheek all the way through, lacerating her salivary gland. A fight ensued, during which one of the attackers, Dean Schmitz, was fatally stabbed.
The only person arrested that night was CeCe. She was briefly taken to the hospital where she received 11 stitches in her cheek. While she was still suffering both physically and mentally from this traumatic incident, she was left alone in a room for three hours and then interrogated, and then placed in solitary confinement at the Hennepin County men’s jail. She spent the next several months in jail and had to wait almost two months between her initial doctors’ visit and a much-needed follow-up appointment.
After her arrest, CeCe was quickly charged with second-degree murder. In short, she was prosecuted for surviving a violent, racist, transphobic attack.
![TW: RAPE [Extremely disgusting facebook screenshot] »](http://25.media.tumblr.com/83066c7bfc1a35b9a9e5356345623b19/tumblr_mmgfyerN5A1qlrxk7o1_r1_500.png){kind=link}