Since 1999 transgender activists and allies around the world have honored their dead and lost on November 20th, the day in 1998 when Massachusetts transwoman Rita Hester was murdered. Virginia’s legislature first marked the day in 2020, thanks to the state’s only openly transgender elected official, Senator Danica Roem.
But after President-elect Donald Trump spent hundreds of millions of dollars demonizing trans folks in campaign ads and rhetoric, Roem is worried for her community's future.
“It’s going to just continue this drum beat of ‘trans people are other,’ ‘trans people are different,’ and therefore we should be stigmatized and singled out, and that leads to violence,” Roem told Radio IQ Wednesday morning.
Meanwhile, at Diversity Richmond’s Transgender Day of Remembrance and Resilience, the names of over 100 trans people who passed in the last year were displayed on a TV as attendees watched in reverence. Black trans women make up the largest share of those lost to violence - they always do. It’s something Zakia McKensey, CEO of the trans support organization Nationz Foundation, is all too familiar with.
A person of color living the trans experience, she warned about how Trump and his allies will likely work to make trans healthcare illegal and push folks like her further into the shadows.
“Times will be hard; times will be trying. There will be moments when we don’t know what we’re going to do," McKensey told the crowd. "But at the end of the day, we’re going to stick together, we’re going to love one another and we’re gonna get through this.”
The gathering then moved outside for a candle lighting ceremony where pastor Donte McCutchen offered a prayer.
“And as we blow out our candles, it's not that the light will ever end, we’re sending it to someone else," McCutchen, who brought his children to Wednesday event, said.
"We teach our kids to love," he said looking at his girls holding candles. "We teach our kids to stand up for what's right."
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
