!['Out at QueerBomb June 25 -- was really hot but we had lots of good conversations! And it was great to share space with our friends at @[49525046576:274:Texas Equal Access Fund - TEA Fund] -- funding abortions across Texas and supporting reproductive justice for all!'](https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-0/p100x100/13516250_1357958837554852_1432900149410329785_n.jpg?oh=eeed955164abfa58412982e372b3f2e9&oe=57FDBDF8)
It took only three weeks for the initial quiet of 2016 to be shattered by the murder of another trans person. Our thoughts and sympathies are with the family and friends of Monica Loera, and our outrage is centered squarely on the oppressive and willfully disrespectful police and media systems that continue to erase our identities and further victimize our communities and our families. In 2016, there is no excuse for such additional violence from the authorities. We must strive not only to hold accountable those that contribute to the stigma and violence against LGBTQ and HIV-affected communities in times of tragic loss such as this, but also to make sure that our participation in society is welcomed, invited, valued, and even celebrated. Only in this way will we build communities that eliminate biased hate and violence such as the lamentable murder of Monica Loera.
- Today's fight is over and a horrible ordinance died before it could ...become enshrined into a cities legislation. The fight doesn't end here however, the ideology that took form in the Rockwall ordinance still resounds strong in rural Texas and more importantly in the halls of Texas's state capital building. For now we should turn our attention to Lufkin Texas and do what we all can to let them know that bathroom ordinances that try to govern peoples private parts will not be tolerated nor will we let them be written into practice without a fight. I plan on contacting their mayor via email expressing my concerns about any proposed ordinances that target the transgender community or LGBT community at large. The battle is won but the war rages on. See More
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Trans Pride Initiative shared a post.
I am sooo happy The Revolution Starts At Home: Confronting Intimate Violence in Activist Communities is back in print through AK Press, and so honored I was ask...ed to write a blurb for it!
So thankful to Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Jai Dulani, and Ching-In Chen for putting this vital resource together!
Trans Pride Initiative shared a link.
Trans Pride Initiative shared a link.
"'Routinely we see trans women being stopped and accused of engaging in sex work, and they're just walking down the street,' said Shelby Chestnut, director of community organizing at the New York City Anti-Violence Project. 'We're seeing this predominantly happening to LGBTQ people of color. The allegations people make to us correlate exactly with this report.'"
Trans Pride Initiative shared a link.
Very worthwhile read. Please be aware of the ways that "LGBTQ" is far from a single monolithic "community," but many communities that experience discrimination and violence in different ways.
However, one that is becoming universal is increasing mistreatment by police. Eighty percent of those reporting information to the police experienced indifference (41%) or hostility (39%). After reading the article, consider a look at the 2015 NCAVP report on hate violence experienced by LGBTQH persons: http://www.avp.org/…/documents/ncavp_hvreport_2015_final.pdf
TPI's Housing Services Committee Meeting is this Friday, July 1!
Whether you would like to just learn about housing issues and barriers to housing for trans persons, help us work to address housing problems, or get involved and work toward one day operating a queer and trans house/shelter here in Dallas, join us tonight to learn and work toward eliminated trans discrimination in housing!
For all our announcements, sign up for our email list! http://tpride.org/subscribe
"I'm too young. I refuse not to have my rights in my time. I refuse not to be safe in my time. That's just my motto. I need to be safe and I will be safe now, so give me my safe space," she concluded.
It's nice to see this confirmation of what Trans Pride Initiative has been saying for over a year now.
We noticed the 2014 Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance System survey indicated 0.52% of the population was trans and advised looking at a higher number than reflected in the earlier 0.3% noted by the Williams Institute. We've been saying that was too low and we needed to show an upper bound estimate due to poor data for a long time. It's interesting that page 9 of this re...port gives the Texas population range as about 72,000 to 212,000, approximately the same range we have been giving for over a year now (https://public.tableau.com/profile/nell7070… -- hover over Texas to see our estimate, this first developed inearly 2015).
Note that the Lancet (http://www.thelancet.com/series/transgender-health -- you can register for free, then look down to "Transgender People: Health at the Margins of Society" for the article) indicates about the same percentage range as reflected in the upper and lower bounds of the Williams Institute study, between 0.5 and 1.3% of the population.
Williams Institute Estimate of Transgender Adults in U.S. Doubles from 700,000 to 1.4 million -- 0.6% of Adult population
D.C., Hawai'i, New Mexico, Georgia, T...exas, and Florida are states with the highest percentages of adults who identify as transgender.
0.7% of 18 to 24 year olds identify as transgender, as do 0.5% of those 65 and older
https://t.co/cYxUhGEZEB via @sharethis https://t.co/Z9ObMGGo4l
TPI's Housing Services Committee Meeting is this Friday, July 1!
For all our announcements, sign up for our email list! http://tpride.org/subscribe
We are moving away from Facebook events due to their unfair banning practices that have kept us from inviting folks to important events (an HIV testing event and every other event for about two weeks).
Trans Pride Initiative shared Black and Pink's post.
Reminder that the TPI Fundraising Team meets tonight at 6pm!
Events and meetings this week at TPI!
-- June 28, Fundraising Team Meeting...
-- July 1, Housing Services Committee Meeting
On Nov 20, 2015, TGI Justice Project (TGIJP) and TAJA's Coalition led a Trans March of Resilience, protesting the war on Black people, particularly Black trans ...people, through displacement, the shelter system, and the "justice” system. The march was a response to calls for action from Black trans youth of New Orleans (BreakOUT) and lifted up the message that trans folks say we are #HereToStay.
Gentrification and lack of housing increases the criminalization of trans people of color. But despite being displaced, many trans people choose to be houseless rather than staying in shelters, because of transphobic violence in the shelter system. We demand #HousekeysNotHandcuffs: safe, dignified shelter and access to permanent housing.
In the spirit of Marsha P. Johnson, trans & queer youth from LYRIC made flower crowns for trans women leading the march. Protesters marched from TGIJP and St James Infirmary—two community organizations displaced by gentrification—to Episcopal Community Services (ECS), one of largest shelter operators in SF. They presented demands that the shelter system create safety for trans people, hire trans staff in order to better resemble client base, and establish a Trans Inclusion Council.
Protesters formed a soft blockade to disrupt business as usual, and TGIJP Executive Director Janetta Johnson confronted the Director of ECS. The action resulted in both a commitment to and actual institutional shifts towards the demands outlined by TGIJP and Taja’s Coalition. ECS is now working to make their housing system, including a significant number of SF shelters, safer for trans, gender non-conforming and intersex people. Intergenerational, formerly incarcerated, Black trans women-led direct action for the win!
[Visual description: Janetta Johnson, A Black trans woman, wears a flower crown and leads a protest of trans people. She confronts a white man, saying “Don’t you stand here and lie to my face – we came for justice!” Above them is the headline “Black Trans Folks Demand Economic Justice and Safety.”]
Janetta Johnson is an Afro-American trans woman who was raised in Tampa, Florida. She is a healer through her work at the Transgender Gender Variant and Intersex (TGI) Justice Project and facilitator invested in decolonizing spaces. Since 2006, she has been organizing around the intersections of violence she and her trans and gender non-conforming communities of color face. She has been both politicized and mentored by Miss Major Griffin-Gracy who has been deeply influential in her life, and she is honored to have accepted Miss Major’s former position as Executive Director of the TGI Justice Project. The spiritual force that drives her to dismantle the violent systems that black trans people are subjected to and oppressed by is one that awakens her.
As a formerly incarcerated trans person, Janetta has faced adversity and this has informed her community work as well as her deep investment in the liberation of all black trans and gender non-conforming people. Janetta works to restore her community’s spirit from the confines of the prison industrial complex: she has developed a grassroots reentry program with the focus on recidivism and reentry, she is a member of Black Lives Matter Bay Area, and is dedicated to ending capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy, and building the organizing capacity of trans and gender non-conforming communities of color as a trans warrior. She enjoys working to shift and reframe the value of black trans lives through media, education, and community building.
One correction in the article: it says 44% of trans persons are unemployed. The source that data come from actually says that 44% are _under_employed, and 14% unemployed.
That data is actually old (2008/2009, at the beginning of the recession), so we hope for an update soon, maybe next year.
The young man on the left is carrying TPI's flag -- he had just come out to his parents two months ago, and they have been super supportive! He came back by our table just before the march started, and I asked him if he wanted to carry the TPI flag in the parade since I had to stay back with our table, and he said yes! So glad he got to march and carry the flag, and that he let us share in his excitement and pride!
~nsg
