Fifty-eight transgender individuals in the USA have died from violence and suicide this yr. Native activists and group leaders wish to guarantee their names are by no means forgotten.
On Wednesday evening, about 100 individuals gathered to mark Transgender Day of Remembrance in Vancouver. The nationwide occasion began about 20 years in the past to honor the reminiscence of transgender individuals who have died by violent means, together with by gun violence and intimate associate violence.
The ceremony introduced collectively non secular and nonprofit leaders, youngsters, households and transgender people who say they’re bored with the continued violence towards their group.
“I am one of the fortunate people, to where I have a family that loves and supports me,” stated Remi Ostermiller, a transgender activist. “But it’s hard growing up in a society that does not value you. So many people in my community don’t get to live that long. Will I be murdered before I’m able to retire?”
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Native nonprofit Odyssey World Worldwide Schooling Providers hosted the occasion on the downtown Vancouver workplaces of Southwest Washington Accountable Group of Well being.
Rev. Byron Harris, lead pastor at Vancouver Heights United Methodist Church, launched numerous audio system, together with Rep. Sharon Wylie, D-Vancouver, and Vancouver Metropolis Councilor Ty Stober.
Harris, who identifies as queer, acknowledged how the church has negatively impacted the LGBTQ+ group.
“Can we speak truthfully in this moment? The church has caused a lot of wounds within our community. Religious institutions have bruised a lot of people,” Harris stated. “But there is some work being done in this area. All hope is not gone.”
As individuals spoke throughout the occasion, a slideshow of the 58 transgender individuals who died performed on a TV display screen, exhibiting their images, age, how they died and the place they have been from.
“When we were talking about this meeting, I said I wanted there to be a PowerPoint. You can read names, but they’re just names,” Ostermiller stated. “Seeing the faces of the people and realizing that they were human, and they were people like you and I. They were people with hopes and dreams.”
Group member Leeza Edwards learn all of their names, adopted by a second of silence to honor them.
Charges of violence
Transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith began Transgender Day of Remembrance in 1999 as a vigil to commemorate the deaths of Black transgender girls Rita Hester and Chanelle Pickett in 1998 and 1995, respectively.
However greater than 20 years later, Black transgender girls proceed to face violence at disproportionate charges.
Since 2013, the Human Rights Marketing campaign has tracked incidents of deadly violence towards the transgender group. This yr, it reported the deaths of at the very least 30 transgender and gender-expansive individuals.
Of these individuals, 77 p.c have been individuals of shade, and 53 p.c have been Black transgender girls.
In 2022, the FBI recorded a report excessive variety of hate crimes associated to gender identification, together with a 33 p.c soar in hate crimes on the idea of gender identification from the yr earlier than, in accordance with the Human Rights Marketing campaign.
Gun violence disproportionately impacts the transgender group: Thus far, greater than half of all victims of deadly violence in 2024 have been killed with a gun.
Vancouver’s Nikki Kuhnhausen was a 17-year-old transgender teenager who was killed in June 2019. David Bogdanov was later convicted and sentenced to just about 20 years in jail for her homicide.
Wylie spoke of Kuhnhausen and her reminiscence on Wednesday evening.
“I was the leader in Olympia that brought back the trans panic bill that was passed in the wake of Nikki’s murder,” Wylie stated. “In my floor speech, I had permission to read some letters from her to her mom. I made my point that Nikki, and all of us, are somebody’s child.”
Kuhnhausen’s case impressed native activists to push for a ban on the trans panic protection, the place defendants might justify violence primarily based on an individual’s gender identification.
The ensuing laws, which was initially launched in 2019 by then-state Rep. Derek Stanford, handed a yr later in Washington. Wylie added an modification to call the invoice the Nikki Kuhnhausen Act.
Flyn Alexander, a social employee, stated regardless of the violence, coming along with the group provides him hope as a transgender man.
“I think in the last few years for myself, these events are very heavy, but I think we need to hold on to that praxis of hope,” Alexander stated. “Hope is not something you just feel, it is a practice. I think a big piece of that journey for me has been community. Finding my people, that has been my praxis of hope in a place of grief.”