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Brent Corrigan strips down
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Since 1971, the newspaper of record for the San Francisco Bay Area LGBTQ community
SF prosecutor accused of lying
Vol. 47 • No. 20 • May 18-24, 2017
Artists pay homage to Milk
by Seth Hemmelgarn
S
an Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi is accusing an attorney prosecuting an LGBT woman of lying because the prosecutor wasn’t prepared to prove her case. In the complaint he Rick Gerharter filed May 4 with the State Bar of California Prosecutor against Assistant Dis- Maggie Buitrago trict Attorney Maggie Buitrago, Adachi says Buitrago falsely claimed she had a witness ready to testify in a case against Jacqueline Sims. Sims, 31, who was born male but identifies as female, was facing a motion to revoke the three-year probation she received in December after pleading guilty to felony second-degree burglary in a plea deal. In January, she was arrested for allegedly stabbing a man’s hand. “Buitrago lied,” said Adachi, and among other allegations, he said the prosecutor “abused her position in threatening to file a new strike case solely because she was unprepared” for a March hearing in which she would’ve had to prove the probation violation, “and after our client had already spent nearly two months in jail.” Having a new case filed against her would have likely meant more jail time for Sims. Buitrago, who’s one of the city’s hate crime prosecutors, has disputed claims that she lied, according to a court transcript. In his complaint, Adachi wrote that at the March 10 hearing on Sims’ probation, “Buitrago claimed she had a witness available in the courthouse who was in fact neither under subpoena nor expected to appear. When forced to admit she was not ready to meet her burden, Buitrago threatened to file a new case against our client without authority and for reasons unrelated to [Sims’] conduct.” Fearing a new case, “our client accepted a time-served sentence and admitted a probation violation that could not be proven,” said Adachi. In his complaint, he alleges that Buitrago violated codes related to making false statements, one of which “holds that ‘any act involving moral turpitude, dishonesty, or corruption ... constitutes a cause for disbarment or suspension.’” According to the transcript of the March hearing, Buitrago told Superior Court Judge Linda Colfax that she wasn’t “ready to proceed,” and that she’d be withdrawing the motion to revoke probation and “filing new charges.” There was an offer for Sims to admit to violating her probation in exchange for serving 90 days in a program instead of doing the time in jail. “It’s my understanding that Ms. Sims does not want that offer. And I’ll be proceeding with the new charges,” said Buitrago. See page 10 >>
As part of the Windows for Harvey initiative, the Berkshire Hathaway-Drysdale Properties office has a painting of Harvey Milk by Jun Yang in its Market Street office window.
by Matthew S. Bajko
B
orn in Seoul, South Korea, Jun Yang nine years ago moved to San Francisco and has become a successful painter, with his works displayed at various galleries and included in a number of curated art shows over the years.
In January, he created a series of six paintings featuring portraits of luminaries that have inspired him, including the late bisexual Mexican artist Frieda Kahlo, models Grace Jones and Twiggy, and the late singer Amy Winehouse. Also among them was Harvey Milk, the first gay elected official in a major American city, having won a
San Francisco supervisor seat in 1977. Yang, 37, based his mixed-media painting of Milk, who was assassinated at City Hall in November of 1978, on the U.S. postal stamp that was issued in Milk’s honor on May 22, 2014. The date is Milk’s birthday – he would have turned 87 this year – and now a day of See page 10 >>
Gay Ugandan refugee seeks funds to help his compatriots
Rick Gerharter
by Matthew S. Bajko
N
ow that he is restarting his life in the Bay Area, Ronnie Kayigoma is trying to assist other gay Ugandans who have fled anti-gay discrimination in their home country and are in Kenya waiting for their asylum applications to be processed. In March, he launched a GoFundMe page with a goal of raising $7,000 to pay for food, HIV medications, and other medical costs for LGBT HIV-positive refugees and asylum seekers in the East African country. To date, his campaign has netted $325. “I look for other people to donate so people have food and can take medication. You have to eat well to take those medicines. Some people stop taking medicine because they can’t eat the food you get in Nairobi,” said Kayigoma, who since June has sent $1,000 of his own money to LGBT people he knows who are stuck in Nairobi, Kenya waiting to be relocated to either Europe or the U.S. Kayigoma, 30, fled Kampala, Uganda in November 2014 by bus for the Kenyan capital in order to seek asylum. A gay activist and paralegal in his home country, Kayigoma had come out publicly in 2009 fighting legislation dubbed the “Kill the Gays” bill. After the country’s president signed the bill into law in February 2014, harassment of LGBT Ugandans increased.
Kelly Sullivan
Gay Ugandan refugee Ronnie Kayigoma
“It spoiled people,” recalled Kayigoma, and “they started to attack people.” At first he refused to flee and remained in Kampala to assist LGBT people who were arrested. One day on his way to the police station, Kayigoma was kidnapped. Held hostage for several days, he was able to escape after having sex with one of his captors and immediately made arrangements to leave Uganda. “I said I can’t wait for myself to die. I have
to seek asylum,” said Kayigoma. “I was already sending people to Nairobi to seek asylum.” Presenting himself as a tourist at the Kenyan border, Kayigoma made his way to the Nairobi office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to start the asylum process. As he waited for his application to be granted, he found that Kenya was no haven, as he faced discrimination for being both a foreigner and gay. Unable to work, he struggled to make ends meet on the $45 he received each month as an asylum seeker. With financial help from the Ireland-based group Front Line Defenders, which assists human rights defenders across the globe, Kayigoma was able to afford his own housing. After 18 months in Kenya, Kayigoma was resettled to the Bay Area in April 2016. Since the fall he has been living with a host family in North Berkeley and is now in the process of applying for a green card. “I have to be here, this is my country. My family disowned me and my country doesn’t love me,” said Kayigoma, who in October found work as a security guard in San Francisco, a job he works at five days a week. “I want to become a U.S. citizen, maybe continue my education.” See page 14 >>
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