Transgender Day of Remembrance
After the November 1998 murder of Rita Hester, a transgender woman living in the Boston area, Gwendolyn Ann Smith and other organizers formed the "Remembering Our Dead" project and accompanying vigil in San Francisco in 1999.
The annual November 20 observance has grown into the national Transgender Day of Remembrance. It is an opportunity for communities to come together and mark the passing of transgender or those perceived to be transgender individuals who have been murdered because of hate.
Although the day primarily memorializes those lost to hate crimes, it also serves as a forum for transgender communities and allies to raise awareness around the threat of violence faced by gender variant people and the persistence of prejudice felt by the transgender community. Activities also make anti-transgender violence and bigotry visible to such key community groups as police and medical services, the media and elected officials. Communities often include a variety of events including town hall style "teach-ins," photography and poetry exhibits, along with candlelit vigils.
As expressed on Gwendolyn Ann Smith’s site, the guiding principle for the national Transgender Day of Remembrance is summed up in George Santayana’s immortal words, "Those who cannot remember the past doomed to repeat it."
Find an Event
- Local events and more information about Transgender Day of Remembrance [www.transgenderdor.org]
Personal message from Allyson Robinson, HRC’s Associate Director of Diversity
We in the transgender community hold Day of Remembrance events each November to honor Rita Hester, whose murder on November 28th, 1998 remains unsolved, and the hundreds who have lost their lives since then. According to the Day of Remembrance’s organizers, this year 13 Americans lost their lives because of someone’s hatred for their gender identity.
This year, we took a huge step toward ending this violence. The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act is now the law. It gives the federal government the power to investigate and prosecute cases like Rita Hester’s. And Washington State passed legislation to amend its own hate crimes law to include transgender people, becoming the twelfth state (along with D.C.) to do so.
We've also seen the first successful prosecution of a hate crime based on gender identity. In April, a jury in Greely, Colorado, convicted Allen Ray Andrade of first degree murder and a hate crime for the brutal killing of Angie Zapata, an 18-year-old transgender woman. Angie's killer attempted to use a "trans panic" defense. The tactic failed, and in this case, justice was done.
As a woman who has too often been confronted by bigotry, in spite of the privileges I enjoy as someone who is white, well-educated, and employed, I am encouraged by these new protections. But I know that they are not enough.
We need to pass a fully transgender inclusive ENDA. Passing ENDA will help improve the conditions that often cause transgender people to be more vulnerable to hate violence. When we are employed and financially secure, when we have health insurance, when there are more transgender people around the water cooler and in the board room, then we will truly be safer.
That is why on this 11th Transgender Day of Remembrance, I am choosing to pay tribute to those we lost by first participating in an event, and then by asking five of my neighbors and family members to write their members of Congress in both the House and the Senate to urge them to pass ENDA now. In honor of those we’ve lost, will you do the same?
- Local events and more information about Transgender Day of Remembrance [www.transgenderdor.org]
- More videos commemorating this day:
