On Sunday, thousands gathered in Brooklyn, New York, to protest as part of the movement to draw explicit attention to the violence and discrimination faced by the Black transgender community, as reported by CNN. As we know, protests have continued across the nation, igniting after George Floyd, a Black man, was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. These protests also encompass other Black people tragically killed by police whose deaths did not get as much mainstream media attention like Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and Rayshard Brooks. Last week, two Black transgender women, Dominique "Rem'Mie" Fells and Riah Milton, were killed in Philadelphia and Ohio, respectively. Their deaths are being investigated as homicides.
Sunday’s The Black Trans Lives Matter rally was co-organized by The Okra Project, the Marsha P. Johnson Institute, and Black Trans Femmes in the Arts, among others. Demonstrators gathered outside of the Brooklyn Museum and spilled out over the road on Eastern Parkway, as reported by NBC News.
To get the full scale of the demonstration, you can check out some videos from Twitter below.
Transgender people—and especially transgender people of color—face disproportionate rates of violence and barriers at almost every single systemic level. For example, according to a 2015 survey, 47% of transgender people report being sexually assaulted in their lifetime. In that same survey, 65% of respondents said they experienced homelessness, and almost half reported being verbally harassed in the last year because of their gender identity. In a report from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), 26 transgender or gender nonconforming people were recorded as fatally shot or killed by other violent means in 2019. According to the HRC, 91% of those people were Black women. Transgender people also report facing discrimination when it comes to finding (or keeping) housing, as well as employment and medical care.
In the introduction to a 2019 report on anti-transgender violence in the United States, Human Rights Campaign (HRC) President Alphonso David summed it up simply, saying: “Transgender women of color are living in crisis, especially Black transgender women.” David clarified one of the most important takeaways of all of this data: “Every one of these lives cut tragically short reinforces the urgent need for action on all fronts to end this epidemic—from lawmakers and law enforcement, to the media and our communities.”
In all of this, marches and demonstrators that hold specific space for Black transgender people feels especially significant for many who are too often left out of the mainstream conversation.
"I've had police throw my things on the floor and ask me to pick them up. I've had police make fun of me, berating me for being black and trans,” Hope, a trans rights organizer from Washington, D.C., told the BBC in an interview. The 26-year-old added that Black Lives Matter “needs to be very intentional about including the voices and struggles of black queer and trans people – because those are the struggles of black people too.”
