TransJustice triumphs

WW photo: Deirdre Griswold

TransJustice held the second annual Trans Day of Action for Social and Economic Justice on June 23 in New York, kicking off with a rally of fiery speeches, followed by a militant march of more than 500 people who defied police restrictions.

TransJustice is a political group “exclusively by and for Trans and Gender Non-conforming [TGNC] People of Color” initiated in 2004 by the Audre Lorde Project, an organizing center for lesbian, gay, bisexual, two-spirit, transgender, and gender non-conforming people of color.

New York Police Department and Mayor Michael Bloomberg denied TransJustice organizers a permit to march down Eighth Avenue and across 42nd Street past the Port Authority Bus Terminal. The route was chosen to honor Amanda Milan, a 25-year-old African-American transgender woman who was viciously murdered near that location.

The denial of the permit showed once again a shocking contempt for LGBT lives on the part of city authorities, given the recent increase in bashings in the city. The Lesbian and Gay Anti-Violence Project reported 566 total hate incidents in 2005, with 233 of those classified as assaults. According to the Police Department’s own figures, the rate is up from last year. (Village Voice)

On June 10 four attackers assaulted legendary drag star Kevin Aviance, putting him in the hospital with a broken jaw, a fractured head and back, and knee injuries, and leaving him out of work during Pride month. Like so many working people in the United States, Aviance has no health insurance. The same weekend two other gay-bashing incidents in the city also sent the victims to the hospital or left them out of work. (Gay City News)

Economic justice and trans justice

Gathering marchers first heard Jack Aponte of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project eloquently highlight issues raised by TransJustice in its call for the Day of Action.

The TransJustice call said: “The specific issues that TGNC people of color face mirror those faced by broader communities of color in New York City: police brutality and harassment; racist and xenophobic immigration policies; lack of access to living wage employment, adequate affordable housing, quality education, and basic health care; and the impact of U.S. imperialism and the so-called U.S. war on terrorism being waged against people at home and abroad. These issues are compounded for TGNC people of color by the fact that homophobia and transphobia are so pervasive in society. As a result, our community is disproportionately represented in homeless shelters, in foster care agencies, in jails and prisons.”

Speaker after speaker at the rally affirmed these difficult truths and cried out for action. Jennifer Ramirez of FIERCE—Fabulous Independent Educated Radicals for Community Empowerment—identified herself as a pre-operative transgender woman and told how transgender youths are severely harassed and targeted by the police, especially in the West Village piers area.

Dee Perez, a transgender Latina representing GLOBE—Gays and Lesbians of Bushwick Empowered— was a friend of Amanda Milan. She spoke of being present as Milan lay dying amidst jeers and laughter. She ended by saying: “We will fight back! Si se puede!”

D’Angelo Johnson of TransJustice and Jay Toole of Queers for Economic Justice celebrated two recent victories. As a result of struggle, a separate “gay and trans” housing unit at Rikers Island, a New York City jail, slated for closing, will be kept open as a measure to minimize danger to detainees at risk of rape and assault. A struggle also changed a Department of Homeless Services policy used to force transgender people into shelters based on birth sex, rather than assigning housing appropriate to gender expression.

Acknowledging these wins, Toole, herself a formerly homeless lesbian, added passionately: “But we need to get our people out of jail—and out of the shelters. We need affordable housing. We need to march on the welfare offices!”

Speaking as a representative of the International Action Center, LeiLani Dowell emphasized that anti-racist and anti-imperialist organization’s strong support for transgender justice issue. Dowell characterized the permit denial as an attempt to deny the history of activism by transgender people of color. She noted that LGBT people have participated in every single struggle for social justice in the United States, both before and after Stonewall, including mobilizations to free political prisoners such as Mumia Abu Jamal and current opposition to the war on Iraq.

Richard Burns, executive director of the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center, affirmed the center’s commitment to transgender justice issues. Other speakers included the Rev. Pat Bumgardner of the Metropolitan Community Church, Charles King of Housing Works, and representatives from Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and the Green Party.

Readying for the march, the crowd heard rally moderator Lourdes Hunter say that this march was “37 years in the making” since the original Stonewall Rebellion. Tamiko Beyer of Q-Wave, an organization “for lesbians, bisexual women and transfolks of Asian descent,” recited a poem with the refrain: “We rise! We rise! We fight! We fight!”—which was taken up and chanted vehemently by the energized crowd.

Finally, Imani Henry of TransJustice, lead organizer for the Trans Day of Action for Social and Economic Justice, called on marchers to honor the memory of Amanda Milan, Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson, and Sakia Gunn. Rivera, a Latina transgender combatant at the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion, began Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries—STAR—along with Johnson, an African American Stonewall veteran found drowned in the Hudson River under suspicious circumstances in 1992. Gunn, a 15-year-old African American AG, or masculine lesbian, was stabbed to death in Newark, N.J., in 2003.

Henry launched the crowd into motion, saying: “We have given our blood to make sure we can live and breathe in this city every day. The mayor and the police are trying to keep us from being activists, but we are taking to the streets.”

Chanting fiercely without let-up for the next two-and-a-half hours, demonstrators then wound through Chelsea and the West Village, first marching past the Port Authority on 42nd Street in tribute to Amanda Milan and veering defiantly onto Eighth Avenue at one point. Marchers shouted, “Whose streets? Our streets!” to reject the police limits on their protest. Passersby carefully studied, and many cheered, the signs that covered a wide range of demands, from non-gendered access to bathrooms to an end to deportation of immigrant workers. Finally people marched jubilantly up to the LGBT Center on 13th Street and celebrated this day of TransJustice with an electric slide dance in the street.