From The Edge NYC: http://www.edgenewyork.com/news/local/features//139276/spanning_the_brooklyn_bridge_to_remember_those_lost_to_trans_violence_
by David Perry
Tuesday Nov 27, 2012
With somber moments of silence and bursts of cautious enthusiasm, New Yorkers marked the 14th annual Transgender Day of Remembrance Nov. 20 with events throughout the city. Trans people, their friends, allies, and advocates came to remember those of the community who have passed on, and to steel their resolve for the continuing struggle in the courts and mainstream life for full equality.
“The challenges facing the transgender community have many faces,” says Brooklyn Community Pride Center Executive Director Erin Drinkwater, who organized a march across the Brooklyn Bridge and a vigil at City Hall for the TDoR vigil in Brooklyn. “They include discrimination manifesting itself in accessing housing, employment, credit, education and accessing adequate and culturally competent healthcare. The transgender community faces widespread transphobia simply because of who they are, and are more likely to be the victim of a violent crime.”
Springing from the efforts of Boston-based trans activist Gwendolyn Ann Smith, “TDoR” began as small vigil in response to the still-unsolved murder of Rita Hester, a transgender African American woman, in 1998. The day is now observed in over 185 cities in more than 20 countries, and is the culmination of Transgender Awareness Week.
While Chaz Bono, “Cloud Atlas” director Lana Wachowski, beauty-queen Jenna Talackova and “pregnant man” Thomas Beatie have shed more light than ever before on trans life, outside the spotlight, trans people continue to run the friendless gauntlet of discrimination, fear, misunderstanding, legal apathy and threats to their lives that gays and lesbians themselves faced 30 years ago.
Lourdes Hunter, the keynote speaker at the TDoR event held at Manhattan’s Audre Lorde Project, is blunter about the hardships trans people face.
“Many are ostracized by family and community and are forced to engage in survival activities, or are subjected to unsafe environments and relationships,” said Hunter. “As a consequence, homelessness, untreated health issues, higher rates of incarceration, drug use and abuse and street-based sex work are just a few of the challenges many trans folk, in particular, trans women of color, face everyday.”
Continue reading at: http://www.edgenewyork.com/news/local/features//139276/spanning_the_brooklyn_bridge_to_remember_those_lost_to_trans_violence_
