All participants have been made aware that the demonstration is also a memorial vigil, and will be conducted in a peaceful orderly fashion. Members of TOPS, the national organization for transgendered police and fire fighters, will be onhand to act as marshals.
Local organizations have been very supportive, including Chicago area transgender groups, local representatives of the Lambda Legal Defense Fund and the Gay & Lesbian Anti-Violence Project. Several dozen people are expected to turn out for the action. In addition, the Chicago Mayor's Liason for Gay & Lesbian Affair's has also been contacted, as the transcommunity continues to express its concern and anger over the murder. The Chicago PD have yet to announce any leads or developments in the case.
Said Riki Anne Wilchins, a founding member of the Menace who helped organize the action: "Every four months like clockwork another transperson is savagely killed in a fairly unambiguous hate crime. In past years, we would have quietly ground our teeth, gone to bed, and tried to ignore and forget the danger in which we must live.
"But this is a community which is organizing, finally finding its own voice, from now on we will *not* be silent in the face of violence: whenever one of us is killed, others will show up to take their place.
The demonstration, will start from the Baton Lounge where Ms. Paige worked and proceed 6 blocks to Daly Center where the PD and City Hall are located. Said one member of the Menace, "People must be made aware, every time one of us goes in the ground, there WILL be a response. Trans-related violence has got to stop."
Gildea noted that all Ms. Paiges stab wounds were so deep and severe that any single one would have been sufficient to kill her. In addition, preliminary results showed no defensive wounds on her body, consistent with a theory that she was struck unconscious from multiple blows to her head prior to being strangled and stabbed.
Police told Windy City Times reporter Lisa Neef that the murder is not being investigated as a hate crime. Their initial report that the victim was a "white female" was later amended to that of "white male."
Ms. Paige had apparently met her alleged assailant through a telephone dating service only a few days before. She told roommates she had spoken with him twice by phone on the Wednesday and Thursday prior to her murder, eventually making a date with him for 8:30 PNM Friday evening, the 22nd.
Police discovered glasses in her apartment still on the table where the two of them had apparently shared a drink together before she was killed. Unfortunately, the fire destroyed any fingerprints and police are still trying trace her alleged assailant through the dating service phone records.
"I'd be hard pressed to think of another person who enjoyed life and just liked people. It's hard to fathom that somebody who liked to see people laugh and smile so much could bring so many tears, but that is how much we were touched by her."
Ms. Paiges body was flown back to Nashville, where it was buried last week. She is survived by an older sister and her mother, both of whom attended her funeral. Several Nashville organizations and local fund-raisers have collected $512 in donations to help her family cover burial expense.
Donations for Christians burial expenses can be mailed to: Tennessee Vals PO Box 92335 Nashville TN 37209