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Monday, 17 November 2008 22:33
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 Thursday’s Tenth Annual Tribute To Our Dead
By Jacob Anderson-Minshall
This weekend, as people filled streets across America to protest the passage of numerous anti-gay marriage measures, one could easily conclude that the ban on same-sex marriages is currently the single greatest affront to LGBT civil liberties.
And yet, many individuals are still being violently attacked and sometimes killed simply for being queer or transgender. Last month, in little over one week, three Washington State University students were assaulted on campus; two were FTM-spectrum trans individuals affiliated with the school’s LGBT association, while the other was an openly gay student so brutally assaulted by three assailants that he was taken to the hospital with a collapsed lung.
The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP)—which collects its own statistics—argues that the FBI consistently underestimates the number of attacks on queer and trans individuals.
First, the FBI relies solely on law enforcement data on reported hate crimes, rather than including reports to victim service organizations. Second, the FBI doesn’t include statistics about violence against trans or gender variant individuals.
In contrast with the six percent increase the FBI describes, NCAVP reported an alarming 24 percent increase in the number of victims reporting incidents of anti-LGBT violence last year. With some indication that violence against the LGBT community erupts during anti-gay campaigns, those numbers may be set to rise even higher in 2008, a year that saw multiple anti-marriage ballot measures; and in which $75 million dollars was spent on California’s anti-gay Proposition 8 alone.
Hate crimes, argues Richard Juang—who contributed to the National Center for Transgender Equality’s Responding to Hate Crimes—are more than just phobic responses to an individual. Juang, who identifies as a genderqueer, Taiwanese-American, femme born male with no plans to transition, contends that these violent acts are meant to relay a message to the entire community that “our existence is deviant and of no value.”
In Los Angeles, protests against Prop 8 this past week featured celebrities like Drew Barrymore and New Adventures of Old Christine’s Wanda Sykes, undoubtedly overshadowing that city’s tenth annual Transgender Day of Remembrance tribute.
The annual day for remembering those who’ve been killed by anti-trans violence is Thursday, November 20. Vigils will be held around the world honoring this year’s dead, including 15-year-old Lawrence King from Oxnard, California who was allegedly shot to death by a classmate in part because he liked to wear girl’s clothing.
In addition to King, at least fifteen other Americans were killed in the past year (and 400 since 1970) for their non-conforming gender expression or identity. As violence against the trans population goes woefully under-investigated, many of their murders will never be solved.
The Day of Remembrance was started by Bay Area Reporter columnist Gwen Smith to remember the murder of Rita Hester, a highly visible transgender activist in Boston, who was stabbed to death Saturday, November 28, 1998. A decade later her murder remains unsolved.
After Smith, who founded the organization Remember Our Dead to memorialize all who were murdered as a result of anti-trans violence, went on hiatus; TransFM’s Ethan St. Pierre co-founded The International Transgender Day of Remembrance and developed a new website (transgenerdor.org) to take over where Smith let off.
“I can’t tell you enough about the work that [Gwen]’s done on our behalf;” contends St. Pierre, who says it’s a difficult job. “I work on that website for half a day and I’m bawling my eyes out. These young people with all the promise in the world and their lives were just snuffed out for no other reason than they’re trans or different. We’re being murdered at an enormous rate.”
While some communities, like Chicago, Ill. and Oakland, Calif. hosted Trans Remembrance events this past weekend, Columbus, Ohio honored the dead Wednesday and still others will do so this Thursday and Friday. These include:
In San Francisco the observance is scheduled to start Thursday at 6 pm at 815 Hyde Street in the offices of Trans: Thrive (transthrive.org)—the city’s Transgender Resource and Neighborhood Space and Transgender Health & Resource Initiative for Vital Empowerment. The San Francisco event will feature community speakers, a reading of names of known 2008 victims and concludes with a march to City Hall. Special tribute will be paid to King and Sacramento area trans woman, Ruby Molina, whose body was found floating in the American River this September.
Friday, November 21 at 7:30 PM San Francisco’s Congregation Sha’ar Zahav (shaarzahav.org) will hold a Transgender Day of Remembrance Shabbat with special liturgy, music, sermon and reading of names.
In Denver the Gender Identity Center of Colorado (303-202-6460) will be holding a service Thursday at the Washington Park United Church of Christ from 7:00 to 9:00 pm.
In Portland, Oregon a candlelight vigil will be held Thursday 6:30pm-7:30 pm in the Park Blocks and will feature speeches by Lambda Literary award nominated trans author Reid Vanderburg, Spirit of Pride award winner Laura Calvo and Executive Director of TransActive, Jenn Burleton.
A show by award winning trans performing artist Scott Turner Schofield (Becoming a Man in 127 Easy Steps) follows the vigil from 8-9:00 pm in the Portland State University Smith Memorial Center Ballroom.
New York City’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center (gaycenter.org) will be hosting an event 7:00-8:30 pm Thursday, featuring a candlelight vigil, speeches from community leaders and trans advocates; and a display of quilts, collages and other meaningful items honoring the dead.
In tribute of the tenth anniversary of Rita Hester’s death, Boston will hold a candlelight vigil Thursday night, retracing the original route past Hester’s home. There will also be a reception at Saint Luke’s and Saint Margaret’s Church (masstpc.org/dor) at 7 pm, where community members are invited to share their feelings at an open mic.
Trans author Jacob Anderson-Minshall co-hosts the radio show Gender Blender on Portland’s KBOO. Download the November 18th episode on gender-based violence at kboo.fm.
Correction: A photo accompanying last week’s column (picturing Bastian Cole in a Jules Rosskam film) was wrongly attributed to Natalie Ross. The photographer was Christa Holka.
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