They offer services ranging from youth programs to harm reduction to education around HIV/AIDS awareness. The Spahr Center, founded in 2015, is Marin County’s only nonprofit serving the LGBTQIA community. In Marin County, organizers from the Spahr Center held a similar vigil in San Rafael, highlighting the importance of Black transgender voices in the ongoing fight against hate violence. “Seeing so many people come out to show support and show love and remember those within our community who, I was humbled.” It’s such a heavy topic, and I didn’t know what I could personally do,” Muir, a trans man, said. “When I was first asked to do this, I was scared. Muir, a committee member for TransLife Sonoma and one of the event’s speakers, told me that they felt grateful to be invited to speak and attend. “You can look around and see that there are so many trans people in Sonoma County, but also so many allies and accomplices,” she added.Ĭ.L. “But it’s also an opportunity to recommit ourselves to fighting for justice and against the transphobia that is so deadly in the world.” “This is an opportunity for us to come together and have a moment of reflection and sadness and sorrow and mourning,” Jessica Carroll, director of programs for Positive I mages, a Santa Rosa-based LGBTQIA nonprofit, said to me shortly after the vigil. Still, O’Shea and other organizers recognize the work they do as imperative to the transgender community, no matter how painful the reality of the situation may be. It’s a difficult thing to wrap your head around, that you’re doing this every year and things are getting worse.” “You want to have hope, but when you’re seeing more people die than the year before, it’s a heavy thing. has only increased, along with the ever-present feeling of loss, sadness and despair within the community. Since then, the number of transgender people killed in the U.S. A 50-year-old transgender man, O’Shea attended his first TDOR event in Guerneville close to seven years ago. A majority of the victims were Black and Latina transgender women one of the youngest victims, a Black trans boy named Jeffrey “JJ” Bright, was only 16 years old when he was shot and killed this past February.įor O’Shea, Saturday’s vigil was a bittersweet experience, like it is every year. In 2021, at least 47 transgender and nonbinary people were killed in the United States, making it the most devastating year on record for transgender people in the U.S. Things change so slowly, and times feel so uncertain right now.” “But we’re still in the weeds, we’re still in the thick of things.
“It’s amazing how things have changed for trans people in the last decade,” he says. TransLife Sonoma is a volunteer-run organization which holds educational and social events for the larger LGBTQIA community in the North Bay. In 2020, TDOR gained national recognition when Vice President Kamala Harris t weeted “Today and every day we must recommit to ending this epidemic.”īut despite the increased mainstream visibility for transgender issues over the past few years, the community still continues to face violence, crime and murder at an alarming rate, TransLife Sonoma committee member Orlando O’Shea says. Smith’s prior activism included “Remembering Our Dead,” a 1998 project which timelined anti-transgender murders in the United States and ultimately laid the groundwork for what TDOR is today. 20, memorializes those who have been killed in acts of hate violence and transphobia. Remembering Our DeadĪn annual event founded in 1999 by advocate and writer Gwendolyn Ann Smith, Transgender Day of Remembrance, celebrated on Nov. This is what Transgender Day of Remembrance looks like in the North Bay. In conversation, organizers point out to me that the list has grown significantly since last year’s event.Īt one point, a man leans out the window of a passing car, yelling “white lives matter!”, loud enough to be heard over one of the evening’s speakers. A poster board, set up near the front of the cafe, lists the names of transgender men, women and nonbinary people who were killed in 2021. On a clear, chilly Saturday night in Santa Rosa, approximately 100 community members, college students and local activists gather on the patio outside Brew Coffee and Beer along Healdsburg Avenue.Ĭlutching plastic cups filled with electric tea lights, a distinct, tangible sense of grief grips the crowd.