Post a Comment On: TransGriot

[Image] I had the pleasure of meeting during #CC15 the #BlackLivesMatter founding trio of Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometti .  We had an interesting and substantive conversation about the BLM movement and where trans peeps fit in it.

FYI, meeting people like them is why I want to attend if possible #CC16 in Chicago this coming January. 

In the wake of this unprecedented bloody week for US trans people.(I'd need another post to tell you what's going on in Brazil), and being asked what is BLM's stance concerning what is on pace to be the worst year ever since we started tracking them for trans murders in the US, Alicia Garza put out a statement on her Facebook page concerning this problem that is at state of emergency status.

And enough chatter from me, here's Alica's statement.

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Shade Schuler. Papi Edwards. Lamia Beard. Ty Underwood. Yasmine Payne. Taja Gabrielle de Jesus. Penny Proud. Kristina Gomez Reinwald. London Chanel. Mercedes Williamson. India Clarke. K.C. Haggard. Amber Monroe. Kandis Capri.
These are the names of the trans women *reported* murdered since the beginning of the year. So many more go unreported. I call on all of us to say their names. Each one of these women should still be alive--but they are not because the lives of trans women are seen as disposable.

The average life expectancy of a trans woman of color is 35 years old. And yet even still, no state of emergency has been declared. Black communities are in crisis, and we declare that more than 13 murders of trans women, 5 of whom were murdered just this week, 11 of whom are of color and most of whom are Black, is indeed, a state of emergency.

State sanctioned violence is about much more than police violence. State sanctioned violence is the multiple forms of violence enacted against trans women of color, including exclusion from the economy, from services, from democracy. The murders of trans women alongside the multiple other forms of violence that trans women experience must be elevated to the level of conversation that the murders of cis Black men now occupy.

What that means is that it cannot constantly be the job of trans women to constantly remind us that their lives matter too. The liberation of Black people as a whole depends on the liberation of Black trans folks. None of us are free until all of us are free.