US Business

There were tears, hugs, anger and some smiles at a park in Colorado Springs on Monday, when hundreds gathered to pay tribute to the victims of a murderous gunman who stormed an LGBTQ club.

Groups huddled clutching candles, sharing memories of the five people whose lives were ended in the horrific violence of Saturday night, the latest example of a deadly mass shooting in America.

Other sobbed as speakers deplored the killing that they blamed on baseless hatred of people slain simply for who they loved.

“We shouldn’t have to be here tonight,” Allie Porter told the crowd. 

“This isn’t fair to them or any single one of you. We shouldn’t have to be here. This shouldn’t have had to happen.”

At the foot of a crumbling bandstand stood pictures of five people whose lives were cut short when bullets ripped through Club Q on Saturday just before midnight, shattering a safe haven for this Rocky Mountain city’s gay community.

Some on the stage shared memories of the victims, evoking smiles that turned into choked sobs, as the realisation of loss hit anew.

There were signs with messages like “Hate has no home here” and some speakers lashed out at what they said was the hateful rhetoric of right-wing politicians, which was amped up in the weeks before the midterm elections.

“We need to stop the political agenda against the LGBTQ community,” burlesque performer Bunny Bee told the crowd.

“Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people in America continue to face discrimination in their daily lives because of anti-gay, anti-LGBTQ political agendas,” Bee said.

“We need to continue to fight the hate, the politicians endangering the lives of this community.”

Fellow performer Jimmy Gomez-Beisch said the intolerance had to end.

“Stop killing us. The violence just needs to stop. The hate needs to stop. We need to come together as a human race.”

Many gave testimony about how they had found the loving support they needed to become comfortable with their identity through the tight-knit LGBTQ community in Colorado Springs, and particularly at Club Q.

And it was that loving support that several speakers said they wanted to channel in the wake of the tragedy.

“I want everyone here to remember that you are loved,” one speaker named Cole said.

“You are wanted, you are not a waste of space. We belong here. We have every right to exist.” 

Bunnie Phantom, a 25-year-old body piercer, told AFP that the community was strong enough to overcome the awfulness of mass murder.

“I’m so glad that everybody was able to come together,” she said.

“To see everybody here, to have the support and representation in the community… literally means the world to me.”

When it reopens, Phantom said, she will be back at Club Q.

“Absolutely, just for the support and just because it’s still my safe space,” she said. 

“I’m not gonna hide because of this.”

There were tears, hugs, anger and some smiles at a park in Colorado Springs on Monday, when hundreds gathered to pay tribute to the victims of a murderous gunman who stormed an LGBTQ club.

Groups huddled clutching candles, sharing memories of the five people whose lives were ended in the horrific violence of Saturday night, the latest example of a deadly mass shooting in America.

Other sobbed as speakers deplored the killing that they blamed on baseless hatred of people slain simply for who they loved.

“We shouldn’t have to be here tonight,” Allie Porter told the crowd. 

“This isn’t fair to them or any single one of you. We shouldn’t have to be here. This shouldn’t have had to happen.”

At the foot of a crumbling bandstand stood pictures of five people whose lives were cut short when bullets ripped through Club Q on Saturday just before midnight, shattering a safe haven for this Rocky Mountain city’s gay community.

Some on the stage shared memories of the victims, evoking smiles that turned into choked sobs, as the realisation of loss hit anew.

There were signs with messages like “Hate has no home here” and some speakers lashed out at what they said was the hateful rhetoric of right-wing politicians, which was amped up in the weeks before the midterm elections.

“We need to stop the political agenda against the LGBTQ community,” burlesque performer Bunny Bee told the crowd.

“Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people in America continue to face discrimination in their daily lives because of anti-gay, anti-LGBTQ political agendas,” Bee said.

“We need to continue to fight the hate, the politicians endangering the lives of this community.”

Fellow performer Jimmy Gomez-Beisch said the intolerance had to end.

“Stop killing us. The violence just needs to stop. The hate needs to stop. We need to come together as a human race.”

Many gave testimony about how they had found the loving support they needed to become comfortable with their identity through the tight-knit LGBTQ community in Colorado Springs, and particularly at Club Q.

And it was that loving support that several speakers said they wanted to channel in the wake of the tragedy.

“I want everyone here to remember that you are loved,” one speaker named Cole said.

“You are wanted, you are not a waste of space. We belong here. We have every right to exist.” 

Bunnie Phantom, a 25-year-old body piercer, told AFP that the community was strong enough to overcome the awfulness of mass murder.

“I’m so glad that everybody was able to come together,” she said.

“To see everybody here, to have the support and representation in the community… literally means the world to me.”

When it reopens, Phantom said, she will be back at Club Q.

“Absolutely, just for the support and just because it’s still my safe space,” she said. 

“I’m not gonna hide because of this.”

A Colorado man was facing murder and potential hate crime charges on Monday after a shooting rampage at an LGBTQ nightclub, as a US Army veteran recounted how he “went into combat mode” to quickly subdue the gunman.

Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, was arrested following the Saturday night shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs that left five people dead and at least 18 injured, officials said.

Currently held without bond in hospital after being overpowered by club patrons, the alleged gunman will make a first court appearance in the next few days, El Paso County District Attorney Michael Allen said.

Formal charges have not yet been filed but Aldrich is expected to face first-degree murder charges and “if the evidence supports bias-motivated crimes, we will charge that as well,” Allen said.

Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers praised “two heroes” who helped pin down the gunman after he entered the club and opened fire.

“I think in the opinion of everyone involved, (they) saved a lot of lives,” Suthers said.

The mayor said he had spoken to one of the men — Richard Fierro, a 15-year veteran of the US Army, according to The New York Times.

“I have never encountered a person who had engaged in such heroic actions that was so humble about it,” Suthers said. “He simply said to me, ‘I was trying to protect my family.'”

In an interview with the Times, Fierro said he was at the club with his wife, daughter and friends watching a drag show when the gunfire began.

The 45-year-old Fierro, who was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan during his military service, said he tackled the gunman by grabbing a handle on the back of his body armor, took his pistol and beat him with it.

“I don’t know exactly what I did, I just went into combat mode,” he said. “I just know I have to kill this guy before he kills us.

“I grabbed the gun out of his hand and just started hitting him in the head, over and over,” he told the newspaper.

– ‘Vile rhetoric’ –

The attack was the deadliest on the LGBTQ community in the United States since a 2016 mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida that claimed 49 lives.

GLAAD, an LGBTQ advocacy organization, noted that it came on the eve of the Transgender Day of Remembrance, which honors victims of transphobic attacks, and amid an uptick in hostility against the LGBTQ community in the United States.

“You can draw a straight line from the false and vile rhetoric about LGBTQ people spread by extremists and amplified across social media, to the nearly 300 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced this year, to the dozens of attacks on our community like this one,” GLAAD president Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement.

Colorado Representative Brianna Titone, an openly transgender state legislator, also singled out anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.

“When politicians and pundits keep perpetuating tropes, insults, and misinformation about the trans and LGBTQ+ community, this is a result,” Titone tweeted.

Transgender rights were a hot-button issue in the United States leading up to midterm elections earlier this month, with Republicans putting forward a slew of legislative proposals to restrict them.

Adrian Vasquez, the Colorado Springs police chief, said the shooting suspect was armed with an “AR-style” rifle and a handgun.

Vasquez condemned what he called an “evil act” and pledged to do everything he can to make the community feel safe again.

Gun violence is alarmingly common in the United States. This year there have been more than 600 mass shootings across the country, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines such incidents as shootings of four or more people, not including any gunman.

– ‘We’ll keep going’ –

On Monday evening, hundreds of people gathered in a Colorado Springs park for an emotional candlelit vigil paying respect to those who were murdered.

Speakers praised the resilience of the LGBTQ community in the Rocky Mountain city, and insisted it would not be cowed by the horrific violence of Saturday night.

“I’m so glad that everybody was able to come together,” 25-year-old body piercer Bunnie Phantom told AFP.

“To see everybody here, to have the support and representation in the community… literally means the world to me.”

Allie Porter, who paid a tearful tribute from the stage to those killed, said she had felt the warm embrace of the local community for the 30 years she had lived in the city.

She vowed it would not be changed by the horrors of the weekend.

“We’ll keep going the same way as we always have. We’ve dealt with this for years, decades, and we’ve consistently rebuilt,” she said.

A powerhouse trio of American song will interpret the voice of Virginia Woolf on New York’s prestigious Metropolitan Opera stage, as the highly anticipated run of “The Hours” makes its world premiere Tuesday.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and Oscar-nominated film explores how threads of English writer Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” tie three women of different generations together, and its darkly moving operatic adaption offers a new vision of the drama that probes themes including mental illness and the alienation from tradition that haunts its protagonists.

The production began with a pitch from Renee Fleming, widely considered the leading American soprano of her generation, whose role as the show’s Clarissa Vaughan marks her return to the Met after bidding adieu to her trademark role in Strauss’ “Der Rosenkavalier” in 2017.

“It was perfect for opera because of the complexity of the dealing with three periods,” Fleming said of “The Hours,” whose music was written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Kevin Puts.

“Music gives a kind of a river, on which we can all sort of float — together or separately,” Fleming said of the three-pronged production.

Fleming’s Vaughan — a 1990s-era New Yorker who mirrors the character Clarissa Dalloway, and whose plotline centers on her party-planning for a friend, a renowned poet dying of AIDs — is joined onstage by the Broadway and opera star Kelli O’Hara, who performs as the depressed 1950s housewife Laura Brown.

Grammy-winning mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato plays the struggling Woolf herself.

“The possibilities were so exciting,” composer Puts told AFP, saying that “what you can do in music that you can’t really accomplish in a film or a book is that you can begin to present the three stories… simultaneously.”

“The idea of introducing those stories musically and then gradually bringing them together, until maybe all three of the leading ladies would sing trios together, was a really exciting idea,” Puts continued. 

“I loved the book so much, and I felt like I had the musical vocabulary for it.”

– Extraordinary women –

For Fleming — who prior to collaborating with Puts on “The Hours” was putting on a song cycle by the composer, which drew from the writings of the artist Georgia O’Keefe — part of the appeal of both that project and her latest venture was to tell stories of powerful women.

“Too many times in opera, historically, women have been sort of pawns,” she told AFP. “They’ve been victims, they’ve been really at the center of power struggles when they have no power or no agency.”

“I want to tell stories now about women who are extraordinary.”

Along with the force of the show’s vocals, “The Hours” integrates modern dance in a way not often seen in traditional opera houses, with dozens of performers physically manifesting the characters’ emotions.

Choreographer Annie-B Parson — who’s worked with the likes of Mikhail Baryshnikov, David Byrne and David Bowie — told AFP her process is generally “less about narrative, more about the worlds that I’m trying to create.”

“We spent a lot of choreographic currency on how to animate and inhabit the actual physical set and the moving parts,” she said; the Met’s stage is one of the most technologically advanced in the world, allowing for complex sets including at different levels.

“I liked the idea that these dancer beings would be the sinew — the interstitial, physical animation of the set,” Parson said.

Fleming said productions like “The Hours” can play a vital role in freshening the opera experience and drawing in new audiences, a major goal the Met has been working towards including by staging Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up In My Bones” last year.

The soprano emphasized the need to continue bringing in composers of diverse backgrounds and giving women more and larger creative roles.

The Grammy-winning performer herself was the first woman in the Met’s history to solo headline a season opening night gala, in 2008.

“All of our art forms really need to represent our population,” Fleming said.

“The Hours” runs at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Opera from November 22 through December 15.

Joe Biden on Monday used his powers as US president to pardon two turkeys, sparing them from winding up as the main course during an upcoming Thanksgiving dinner later this week.

“I hereby pardon Chocolate and Chip,” Biden said at the pardoning ceremony on the South Lawn, a lighthearted autumn event that has become something of a White House tradition.

The large white birds, which were raised on a farm in North Carolina, were named for the president’s favorite ice cream flavor, Biden told several schoolchildren who were present for the event.

“That’s a big bird,” Biden quipped as 46-pound (21-kilogram) Chocolate was placed on a table.

Biden used the backdrop of the recent US midterm elections — in which his Democrats fared better than many experts expected, retaining control of the Senate and only narrowly losing the House of Representatives to Republicans — to crack jokes about the time-honored turkey pardoning.

“The votes are in. They’ve been counted and verified. There’s no ballot stuffing. There’s no fowl play,” he said to laughter — and likely a few eyerolls.

“The only red wave this season (related to the traditional color of Republicans) is going to be a German Shepherd, Commander,” the president said, referring to his dog, who “knocks over the cranberry sauce on our table.” 

Turkey with stuffing is the traditional dish that Americans serve at a family feast on Thanksgiving, which is Thursday.

Biden mentioned how the Covid-19 pandemic had interrupted or curtailed such commemorations by Americans in recent years, and urged the invitees to feel gratitude for those who had protected US communities during the crisis, notably doctors, nurses and scientists.

“Two years ago, we couldn’t even safely have Thanksgiving with large family gatherings. Now we can,” he said. “That’s progress, and let’s keep it going.”