Transgender Day of Remembrance 2021

Tyianna Alexander, Samuel Edmund Damián Valentín, Bianca “Muffin” Bankz, Dominique Jackson, Fifty Bandz… Today is National Trans Day of Remembrance, the day we honor and memorialize the trans people who were murdered in the last year. It is a time to consider how the number of trans people whose lives are tragically cut short each year is growing. Perhaps not coincidentally, this tracks closely with the dramatic increase in anti-trans bills being introduced in state legislatures. It is a time to note that FBI tracked a total of 22 all hate-crime related murders in 2020. Yet today we are memorializing at least 47 known trans murder victims in the past year, a number that is likely an undercount. It is also a time to name that an overwhelming number of these victims each year are Black trans women, a group who start out with fewer life chances than many others and are too often pushed into violent and dangerous sex work as one of the few ways to earn a living. Today let us say all their names, let us consider what these murders say about all of us, and as we bear witness to this injustice let us each consider what we may be able to do for any trans people near our lives to help give them enough safety and self-determination to survive for another year. 

With tears and resolution, 

Scout