When a clothing store opened in Cedar Glen, Calif., in the summer of 2021, the owner hung a Pride flag at the entrance, her friends recalled. Whenever someone would tear down the flag, owner Laura Carleton would raise another one.

But after someone complained about the flag on Friday, the encounter turned deadly.

A man arrived at the store, Mag.pi, around 5 p.m. and criticized Carletonā€™s Pride flag before he shot her, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriffā€™s Department. Carleton, 66, was pronounced dead at the scene.

The shooter, whom authorities have not publicly identified, died following ā€œa lethal force encounterā€ with deputies after the shooting, the sheriffā€™s department said in a statement.

Community members have since rallied around Carletonā€™s store, placing Pride flags, flowers, candles and photos of Carleton in front of it. Matthew Clevenger of Lake Arrowhead LGBTQ+ said Carleton was a strong ally of the LGBTQ+ community.

ā€œShe was a fierce protector of everybody being who they wanted to be,ā€ Clevenger told The Washington Post.

Carleton, who went by Lauri, began working in fashion as a teenager at her familyā€™s business, Fred Segal in Los Angeles, according to Mag.piā€™s website. After graduating from the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., Carleton worked at a retail store before joining Kenneth Cole in the 1980s. Carleton worked for the fashion company for more than 15 years as an executive.

In 2013, Carleton founded her clothing store, Mag.pi, on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, Calif. She added a second store in Cedar Glen in 2021. While she built her career, Carleton married her husband and took pride in their blended family of nine children, her storeā€™s website says.

Carleton was one of the largest donors to Lake Arrowhead LGBTQ+ and attended the organizationā€™s Pride boat parade in June, Clevenger said. A section of Mag.pi was dedicated to rainbow-colored products, and she displayed rainbow candles by the cash register, he said.

Carleton helped create a culture in which the LGBTQ+ community felt accepted, Clevenger said. But some community members were still resistant, he added, and took down Mag.piā€™s Pride flag multiple times.

After making ā€œdisparaging remarksā€ about the Pride flag on Friday, a man shot Carleton before fleeing, according to the sheriffā€™s department. He was holding a handgun when deputies found him on a nearby road, where he later died, officials said.

  • TinyPizza@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I say fuck representative government. We as people, all of us, are flawed. And no matter who we elect, they will at some point, use the power or voice weā€™ve entrusted them with to their own ends and for their own means. We need Digital Direct Democracy. Itā€™s time to end the notion that society needs elected representation to act as wranglers and moderate our opinion. The technology is here and honestly I think itā€™s a system that the founders would have been behind.

    • M0oP0o@mander.xyz
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      1 year ago

      Sure, I mean that would be great but looking at where the US is right this min maybe the focus should be just a touch lower.

      • TinyPizza@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        thereā€™s at least 5-7 states where you could pass it as a constitutional referendum. The only hang up is that we are baked in as representative governments on a state level due to agreements made to the federal government constitutionally when we joined the union. Youā€™d have to find a way to make a representative system function like a delegate system, but not under the eyes of the law. It seems like a real moonshot, but where Iā€™m at all it would take is the courts to approve the language and around 50,000 signatures to get it on the ballot. 50%+ of the vote and itā€™s enacted.

    • PunnyName@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The reason we got fucked over is a LACK of representation. We started a fucking revolution because we were so heavily taxed by a foreign power.

      Maybe you want to move into a different direction where all are somehow involved in lawakong, but thatā€™d be a huge clusterfuck.

      Imagine 330,000,000+ individual policiesā€¦

      • TinyPizza@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Technology could largely streamline that and condense things in plain language for people to understand. Research councils and individual polling could help to dictate ballot composition. Iā€™ve seen it proposed that you could enact whats known as liquid voting, where by you could entrust a like minded friend you consider more knowledgeable to vote for you. Outside of that, so much of that individual policy is performative and redundant. We can change how the system works incrementally and work toward greater levels of involvement and knowledge will become more common the more people have a taste for it. We can incentivize participation by linking it to civil duty and a lessening of your personal taxes.