Remembering, Resisting, and Honoring our Resilience
Art by Edxie Betts+ Forward Together. Please visit Forward Together’s Trans Day of Resilience page for “art that dreams beyond resilience, towards our free trans future.”
On this day, November 20th, trans communities, our loved ones, and allies are pausing on a global level to honor and grieve the lives of those who have been taken from us by acts of anti-trans violence. Even though great strides have been made over the years, carving out new opportunities and progress for our people, transphobic violence continues to be a global crisis.
According to Trans Respect vs Transphobia, a devastating 375 trans and gender-diverse people were murdered in the past year around the world. This number is up from 350 in 2020. 96% of those murdered globally were trans women or transfeminine people. In the United States, the murders of trans people doubled from last year; 89% of the 53 trans people murdered were people of color.
As we know, anti-trans violence is supported by and consistantly intersects with misogyny, racism (especially for Black and brown trans women and migrants), economic injustice, criminalization, and hate towards sex workers.
So once again we come together–however we are able–to light our candles in their memory and speak out the names of those we’ve lost. Our flames burn brightly for them. Their lives, your life, our lives, are all worthy of receiving love and joy, support and care. As a bare minimum, we deserve to exist, able to move freely as our truest selves without fear.
All of this weighs heavy on our shoulders.
And yet, on this day, November 20th, trans communities, our loved ones and allies are also honoring our resilience, our perseverance, our creativity, our beauty, and our gift of knowing how to take care of each other.
TJFP shares our community’s love and rage and we’re grateful for everyone who works relentlessly to resist, refusing to no longer accept a culture or future where our trans siblings experience violence in all of its forms.
Today and every day we hope to honor and support you, our grantees, friends, family and community. We will remember and we will continue to press forward. And we thank those of you who do this with us.
Change is not possible without action and we see our beautiful community actively fighting for a liberated future for us all.
