November 20th was International Transgender Remembrance day. To show respect for “fallen angels”, who needlessly lost their lives to transphobia, members of the community recently gathered in Oakland City Hall.
Also in attendance was Mayor Jean Quan, City Council member Lynette Gibson McElhaney, and representatives for Barbara Lee, George Miller, and State Senate Majority leader Ellen M. Corbett.
The smaller than expected group described the event to the Post as “Sad, really sad.” The repeated words echoed off of the marble walls, losing definition, but not meaning.
After introductions from Terry Washington, Kayla Moore, and Roman Flintroy, Jean Quan took her time to point out progression on the topic; Oakland’s 5th Gay Pride Parade had 30-40,000 attendees this year, which was marked as a success for the city and the LGTBQ community. Also, the Oakland police force continues to be more accepting of their LGBTQ officers, although Quan is “not sure about the T yet.”
But perhaps the evening was described most poignantly by openly transgender Judge Vicky Kolakowski, who said, “I think that in some ways we’ve made so much progress. I think that perhaps, there’s a little bit of tiredness, in the fact that we always seem to celebrate these times of pain and loss, and that we don’t celebrate as much in times of joy.”
“In some ways,” she continued, “it has gotten better, but I don’t think we should be too overly optimistic… the truth of the matter is that we still have a long way to go. And this [is] in Alameda County, where Gwen Araujo was murdered over ten years ago, and her murders were tried in the very courthouse I’m serving in right now… we’ve lost so many people over the years, in this county, in the world… We have made progress, but don’t think that just because we may win an occasional court victory or somebody may talk about us on TV from time to time that means we’ve gone past that.”
Much of the evening thereafter was dedicated to silence while speakers read from a list of transgender murder victims in 2014. Often times, victims did not have names, or identities; and the overwhelming majority of cases took place in Brazil.
Throughout the night, it was made explicitly clear that transgender individuals of color bear the brunt of discrimination.
In an interview with the Post, Terry Washington said that there has been 17 transgender murders this year in the US, down from 24 last year.
Speaker Roman Flintroy said that the best resource available to anyone transgender is Google.
Originally Published in the Weekly Edition (Nov. 26-Dec.2, 2014) of the Berkeley Tri-City Post