Marcellus Richard Andrews (Photo: Facebook)

Marcellus Andrews, of Waterloo, was taken off life support Saturday and officially pronounced dead on Sunday. In the early morning hours of Friday, he was part of a violent brawl that witnesses described as beginning with anti-gay slurs. Police do not anticipate the incident will be prosecuted as a hate crime, and cite an ongoing feud between the parties involved.

Nonetheless, Iowans will take to the streets tonight to remember the young man, who was slated to begin classes at Hawkeye Community College, and to speak out against bullying an intolerance. Information on some of the various vigils is included below. All will be held Thursday evening.

Cedar Falls — 8:30 to 11:30 p.m., Campanile, on the UNI Central Campus. The vigil is being organized by UNI Proud and participants are asked not to bring real candles, which are prohibited on campus.

Cedar Rapids — 8 to 10 p.m., Tree of the Five Seasons (near the 1st Avenue Bridge in downtown). This will be a candlelight vigil and there will be a few public remarks.

Council Bluffs — 7 to 7:30 p.m., Bayliss Park, at the Veterans Memorial Wall. The vigil is being organized by Council Bluffs Community Alliance.

Davenport — 9 p.m. to midnight, Mary’s on 2nd (832 W. 2nd St.). The vigil is being organized, in part, by QC Pride and participants are asked to bring their own candles.

Des Moines — 8 to 10 p.m., meet in front of The Blazing Saddle and walk to the steps of the Iowa Capitol, where there will be speakers. This will be a candlelight vigil.

Dubuque — 8:30 to 10 p.m., Dubuque Town Clock Plaza. The candlelight vigil is being organized by the Midwest Given ‘Em Hope Project. Participants are asked to bring their own candles.

Waterloo — 8 to 10 p.m., 200 block of Cottage St. This vigil, organized by family and friends, is being held in the residential area where the incident took place early last Friday.

Statewide — 9 p.m. to dawn. Those who cannot attend an organized vigil, but who would still like to do something to observe the moment, are being asked to leave their porch lights on in remembrance and for tolerance.

The Iowa Pride Network’s leadership team, comprised of high school and college students from across the state, issued the following statement Thursday:

This Sunday, many of us were getting ready for our first day of classes. However, as we all now know, one person was not. Upon hearing the story of Marcellus Richard Andrews, we were deeply disturbed that such violence and persecution happened here in the state of Iowa; however we were not entirely surprised that this sort of incident happened. We know firsthand that discrimination and bigotry both exist here, as in other places in the nation, despite our outward progressive appearance.

Let us not as citizens become so naïve as to think occurrences such as these are confined to places that are always elsewhere and never “here,” ever close to home. This has served as a reminder that the fight for equality is not over. We as youth need to vocalize what is happening in our schools and communities to better ensure the safety of all. We need to report every incident, every time so that issues such as these do not go unnoticed. By bringing these issues to the forefront people can become educated and help eliminate tragic events like this one. It is our hope that one day all youth will feel safe to live out in the open, as who they truly are.

The statement was signed by the leadership team members, who are as follows:

• Benjamin Alley, University of Iowa
• Holly Wilson, Southeast Polk High School
• Sean Hernandez, University of Iowa
• Dane Buchholz, Iowa State University
• Rachel Anderson, Grinnell College
• Alan Toussaint, University of Iowa
• Joy Dannelly, Roosevelt High School
• Mike Covington, IWCC
• Nicholas Muntz, University of Iowa
• Brittany Banks, Waldorf College
• Stephen Boatwright, DMACC
• Sara Puffer, University of Iowa

Ben Stone, executive director of the ACLU of Iowa, said, “The brutal beating death of Marcellus Andrews is further evidence of the existence of hatred and bigotry in our state. Whether the ultimate charges brought include an allegation of a hate crime, it appears from information reported in the media that the violence of that night was accompanied by anti-gay hatred and prejudice. The ACLU of Iowa remains steadfast in its decades-long commitment to human dignity and equality for all people, including young Iowans like Mr. Andrews.”

One Iowa Executive Director Troy Price released the following statement earlier this week: “We are deeply saddened by the brutal and tragic death of Marcellus. This is just not something that happens in Iowa and we are appalled at this level of extreme violence and intolerance. Tragedies like this underscore the incredible need to talk about issues affecting gay and lesbian Iowans and to fight for equality in our communities. When community, state, and national leaders ridicule and deride gay and lesbians, it creates a hurtful environment and gives license to this sort of attack. Most importantly, it harms lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) young people by sending the message that they are not equal. We can and must do better, because we can never, ever allow an attack like this to take place in Iowa again.”

A memorial for Andrews has been set for Friday at Union Missionary Baptist Church in Waterloo. Funeral services are scheduled for Saturday morning.

“These were individuals who were known to each other, and there had been previous incidents,” Lieutenant Michael McNamee of the Waterloo Police Department told The Iowa Independent by phone early Wednesday. “It is possible that there was anti-gay shouts made at the time of the incident early Friday, but the attack did not stem from that. We don’t believe sexual orientation was a reason why Andrews was attacked or targeted — the history between the individuals involved goes back for some time.”

As The Iowa Independent previously reported, Marcellus Andrews is believed to have been sitting on an enclosed porch in the 200 block of Cottage St. in Waterloo at roughly 12:45 a.m. on Friday. Two friends had gone walking, but report only being a block away when they heard shouting and returned to the residence where they had left Andrews.

The shouting escalated and a fight with multiple participants began. Andrews, who was reportedly kicked in the face, was transported to University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. He was pronounced dead on Sunday after being removed from life-support by his family on Saturday.

According to autopsy results released by the Waterloo Police Department, Andrews died as a result of blunt force trauma to the head.

McNamee said law enforcement is continuing to investigate the incident, and that no arrests have yet been made.

Marcellus Richard Andrews (Photo: Facebook)

Marcellus Richard Andrews was pronounced dead at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City on Sunday. He had been transported unconscious to the facility by helicopter from Waterloo early on Friday morning with severe head trauma.

According to reporter Jeff Reinitz of the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, the attack that claimed Andrews’ life began with taunting in reference to sexual orientation.

Witnesses say they left Andrews sitting on an enclosed front porch at roughly 12:45 a.m. Friday. The witnesses were going for a walk, but only made it about a block from the home when they heard yelling. They returned and found a truck in the street, the occupants yelling at Andrews and calling him a “faggot.”

From the taunting grew a brawl, which a female witness admits to starting by throwing the first punch. Another female witness remembers Andrews being kicked in the face while he was down.

Andrews was removed from life support on Saturday, according to family reports, and was officially pronounced dead on Sunday afternoon.

Lieutenant Micheal McNamee of the Waterloo Police Department confirmed to The Iowa Independent by phone Tuesday morning that an investigation remains ongoing, no suspects have yet been arrested and that the incident has not yet been classified as a hate crime. The law enforcement officer had no other details to share because of the open investigation.

Of the numerous vigils and demonstrations being planned, one is taking place in Cedar Rapids, a community roughly midway between the location of the attack and Andrews’ later death.

“In this time of political knashing and fighting for human rights … I think it’s time that our community says we are not going to stand by and watch this happen ever again … and mainly to stand in solidarity with our community to the north and most of with friends and family of Marcellus,” wrote the organizer of the Cedar Rapids Thursday evening candlelight vigil. The vigil, which will include a few brief statements, is slated for 8:30 to 10 p.m. at the Tree of the Five Seasons, near the 1st Avenue Bridge in downtown Cedar Rapids.

Another Facebook posting by Iowa Gay Advocacy asks for porch lights throughout the state and nation to be left on in memory of Andrews Thursday evening.

A third page devoted to the memory of Andrews holds messages of condolences and shock.

“My heart is breaking,” wrote a young woman. “May the angels fly thee home,” shares a young man.

“Anyone who has not ready this story, please look it up,” cautions an Iowa mom. “This is a tragedy for our state and our nation as a whole. We need to move past the hatred, people, and live and let live as well as love and let love.”

A Philadelphia man adds that it is “so sad this 19-year-old didn’t get to grow up in a world without bigotry and violence as an everyday occurrence.”

“My thoughts are with his family and hope his soul is at peace.”

Most can’t help but question how something like this can happen to a young man, who had only recently bought text books in preparation for studies at Hawkeye Community College and who led the Crusaders step team for Missionary Baptist Church.

“[This report] is long overdue,” said Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser and chairwoman of the White House Council on Women and Girls. “We understand that the success of women and girls is vital to winning the future.”

The report, titled Women in America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being (PDF), is a collaborative effort of several federal departments prepared for the White House Council on Women and Girls. None of the data revealed in the report is new — and the most recently reported statistics are from 2009 or 2006 — but it is the first time such a report has been drafted since President John F. Kennedy commissioned one in 1963.

A lot of the information in the report is old news — for instance, women are still trailing men in economic earnings: At all education levels women earned 75 percent of what men make in 2009. But the report does add some interesting perspectives. For example, the jobs that women tend to go for and the majors they take in college, tend to be in humanities or social work, something Obama is hoping to change. Acting Deputy Secretary of Commerce Rebecca Blank said in a phone conference Tuesday that the president will be encouraging young women to pursue the fields of science, technology, engineering and math.

Women currently make up 51 percent of the population; there are about 4 million more females than males in this country. And 57 percent of Americans over 65 are women. But though women still exceed men in life expectancy, they are likely to face more health problems and physical ailments down the road, particularly in the regions of mobility, obesity and depression; though figures point to a higher prevalence of heart disease and diabetes in men (14 percent of men 18 and older, compared with 10 percent of women).

About a quarter of women have reported arthritis and hypertension, with those figures increasing as women become seniors. And though less-educated women have reported higher rates of hypertension than more-educated women, among men, hypertension is not associated with education levels.

The report finds that women exercise less than men. Only about 41 percent of 25-year-old women said they participated in the federally recommended amount of aerobic and muscle-strengthening exercises, compared with more than half of 25-year-old men. And of all women, only 15 percent reported exercising the recommended amount. In 2009, about 25 percent of women said they ate fruits and vegetables five or more times a day. Almost one out of seven adult women smoked cigarettes every day.

Amid all the statistical figures one statement really stands out in summarizing women’s health:

“Women are almost 40 percent more likely than men to report difficulty walking.”

And that’s difficulty walking a quarter of a mile, or three city blocks. Walking trouble can point to arthritis, heart disease, pulmonary conditions, neurological conditions, near-blindness and other sensory limitations, and can “affect an individual’s ability to fully take part in all aspects of life,” according to the report.

And then, of course, there are different levels of walking difficulty among women, depending upon education and race:

• Women who did not complete high school (23 percent) were twice as likely to report difficulty walking than women who have had at least some college (11 percent).
• Non-Hispanic black women (18 percent) were more likely to report difficulty walking than Non-Hispanic white women (12 percent) and Hispanic women (11 percent).

From 'Women in America,' source National Center for Health Statistics

And even if the information is already out there, here are some, perhaps, surprising findings:

• In any two-week period, 8 percent of women and girls report experiencing clinically significant depression, compared with 5 percent for men and boys.
• Women make up two-thirds of graduates in the fields of humanities, arts, education, health and welfare but one-quarter of the graduates in science and technology.
• During the most recent recession, the unemployment rate among women over 20 rose from 4.4 percent to 7.7 percent; for men the unemployment rose from 4.4 to 9.9 percent.
• About 7 percent of women are severely obese. But 14 percent of non-Hispanic black women are obese, compared with 7 percent of Hispanics and 6 percent of white women.
• In 2008, intimate partners were responsible for 26 percent of all violence against women, compared with 5 percent of all violence against men. Of all Americans killed by an intimate partner, 70 percent were female, a percentage unchanged since 1993.
• The rate of rape against females over 12 (as defined by the National Crime Victimization Survey, which notes that between 2004 and 2008, police were not notified of nearly half of all rapes) declined by 60 percent between 1993 and 2000 and has remained at this level throughout the past decade.
• While male students are more likely to be victimized with weapons, female students are twice as likely to be electronically bullied as males.
• The number of women committing crimes is growing: Women made up 18 percent of all arrestees for violent felony offenses in 2008, up from 11 percent in 1990. The amount of women arrested for burglary or larceny grew from 25 to 35 percent.
• About 206,000 adult women were incarcerated in state or federal prisons or local jails in 2008.
• The number of women under community supervision or parole increased by 121 percent between 1990 and 2008: 1.1 million adult women were under community supervision on probation or parole in 2008.
• Homicide victims among black women dropped from 2,300 in 1993 to 1,200 in 2008. But for white women the figure remained steady during this same period of time at 2,200.

Officials stressed the point of the report is to draw a complete story of the American Woman, piecing everything we know about her to improve her well-being.

So what will the Obama administration be doing with this data? Should Americans expect to see new legislation, or at the very least, more discussion of women’s issues after Women’s History Month has turned into National Poetry Month?

Asked directly, Jarrett said: “[This report] will be a tool to help inform our policies and programs. Given the financial challenges, it is important we help spend our money wisely. … This report gives data that will help support that.”

As evidence to the president’s commitment to improving the “quality of life for women and girls,” Jarrett pointed out that Obama created the White House Council on Women and Girls. And look, they got a report — which Jarrett said the administration plans to help them “do more with less.”

What that means exactly remains to be seen, but Preeta Bansal, general counsel and senior policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget, was slightly less vague. She said Obama has made a vow to enact policies that are evidenced-based, and the same goes for this information on women. She said he will be looking at how well existing programs targeted at women — in the areas of health, education, unemployment, and violence — are working.

But shortly after last November’s midterm election, in which Giffords was one of only two of the targeted Dems reelected, Palin called last year’s campaign a “bullseye” and crowed about taking down 18 of 20, which included blue-dog Democrats Betsy Markey and John Salazar in Colorado.

After Palin’s PAC posted the campaign last March, Giffords, now in critical condition after an assassination attempt Saturday, was critical of Palin’s violent imagery: “We’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list. Crosshairs of a gunsight over our district. When people do that, they’ve got to realize there’s consequences.”

Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnick, a Democrat, pointedly decried the heated political rhetoric in Arizona and the effect it may have on mentally ill people like Giffords’s alleged attacker, 22-year-ol Jared Lee Loughner of Tucson, now in police custody after bystanders captured him after he killed six and wounded 14 outside a Safeway grocery store.

“When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous,” Dupnick said at press conference Saturday. “And unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry.”

Tea Party favorites and conservative Republicans ratcheted up the warlike and violent imagery during last year’s campaign, aiming most of their vitriol at President Barack Obama for passing “Obama-care” in an effort to get more Americans covered by adequate health insurance.

Giffords voted for health-care reform and saw one of her Tucson offices vandalized with what police believe may have been a bullet through one of the windows.

Rising Republican star Congresswoman Michele Bachmann was particularly noteworthy in her borderline militant stance against health-care reform, saying on Sean Hannity’s radio show, “We can never forget that the Founders were rebelling against a governmental authority that abused their taxation power. And that was the tyranny. That’s exactly what’s happening right now. And we have to — we have to rise up and say, ‘No more. Not on my watch. No more.’”

At a Republican event in Denver in 2009, Bachmann was much more graphic:

“This cannot pass,” she told a crowd at a gathering sponsored by the conservative think tank Independence Institute. “What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass. We will do whatever it takes to make sure this doesn’t pass.”

Police have yet to ascribe a motive to Loughner’s alleged rampage, but Internet postings and interviews with acquaintances and classmates paint a picture of a deeply disturbed young man with a strong objection to government policies. He had been rejected for military service and thrown out of his community college for erratic behavior.

The Denver Democratic headquarters was vandalized last night, the long bank of windows that fronts the building smashed. Authorities reportedly apprehended the vandal but no details on his identity or motives so far have been released. [...]

7News Denver Channel quotes Democratic Party Chairwoman Pat Waak, who said she received a call from police at 2:54 a.m. notifying her of the attack.

“There is a poster up on the wall that is kind of anti-health care reform and I didn’t see it yesterday, so it begs the question whether that was part of it,” Waak said. “I know that tempers are really hot right now and they are being fueled. I would hope that people would take this at least as a sign that we need to have a little calmer debate about health care reform, which everyone needs right now.”

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But statistics kept by McClatchy show that in Baghdad alone, more than 200 people have been killed in attacks so far this month, compared with 99 last month and 46 in February, according to a McClatchy count.

The last time McClatchy recorded more than 200 civilian deaths in one month in the capital was more than a year ago, in March 2008.

hat’s via Juan Cole. The trend lines for violence in Iraq are moving upward. What was true for Bush is true for Obama: devising responsible approaches to Iraq require a firm handling of the facts involved, not wishful thinking and not impressions shaped months or years ago. My understanding from administration Iraq-hands is that the trend they’re watching is the relationship between the violence and the country’s political fault lines. Right now they don’t perceive one. But how could the violence not impact Iraqi politics?

Recent congressional hearings have called attention to a growing culture of violence among Mexican drug cartels that has spilled into American cities near the border, like Phoenix, Ariz. and El Paso, Texas, while spreading fear as cartels increasingly reach into cities across the United States. U.S. lawmakers say much of the violence is in response to Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s serious attempt to reduce corruption and crack down on the cartels’ operations in Mexico.

That’s put real pressure on the United States, however, and the governors of Texas and Arizona have both asked the federal government to send National Guard troops to help secure the border. That, in turn, has raised fears among some immigrants’ rights groups that the National Guard would be used to crack down not on drugs or violence, but on illegal immigration.

The plan the White House will set forth today includes investing $700 million to collaborate with Mexican law enforcement, increasing the number of federal law enforcement agents along the border, and pledges to increase funds for drug treatment and alternative sentencing to reduce the demand for illegal drugs in the United States.

Notably, however, it does not include sending in the National Guard.

Update:  At a White House press briefing this morning, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, in response to questions about the Texas governor’s request to send National Guard troops, said she is still considering it, but needs more information about where and how they would be used.

As Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) noted, “Mexican drug cartels aren’t just a threat in border states. They are now present in at least 230 U.S. cities, up from about 50 cities in 2006.”  In addition to corrupt law enforcement and an ineffective criminal justice system in Mexico, Durbin and others noted that the United States is, as Mexico’s President Calderón said last week, “the biggest consumer of drugs and the largest supplier of weapons in the world.”

According to the testimony of Terry Goddard, attorney general of Arizona, over 2.4 million pounds of marijuana is smuggled into the United States each year from Mexico; about 80 percent of the methamphetamine in the United States is produced in Mexico; and more than 90 percent of the cocaine in the United States comes through Mexico. Profits from those drug sales in the United States generate $15 – $25 billion per year, which gets smuggled back into Mexico in the form of cash or weapons.

While lawmakers intensively questioned witnesses about law enforcement tactics used by the various federal agencies involved — the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms — there was virtually no discussion whatsoever about how to reduce the demand for drugs in the United States, the possibility of legalizing some drugs like marijuana to reduce the money and violence associated with its trafficking, or whether stricter gun control laws in the United States would reduce the number and caliber of firearms purchased in the country and smuggled into Mexico.