The King Avenue United Methodist Church will comemorate the lives of the victims of transgender-targeted violence at a Transgender Day of Remembrance event Saturday. Credit: Courtesy of Felicia DeRosa
This year saw more transgender and nonbinary people violently killed than any other previously recorded year, with at least 46 reported deaths, the majority of whom were Black or Latina, according to a report by the Human Rights Campaign foundation.
King Avenue United Methodist Church, which has been outspoken on LGBTQ+ rights for almost 20 years, will honor the lives of the victims of transgender-targeted violence at a Transgender Day of Remembrance event Saturday, Felicia DeRosa, an artist and LGBTQ+ activist who helped organize the event, said.
“The idea of the Transgender Day of Remembrance is to have a big wake for our community, to mourn the people that have lost and then remember all the really cool things about each of the individuals, especially those in our immediate community,” DeRosa said.
According to GLAAD, a media group of journalists and writers that advocates for LGBTQ+ rights, the day was established in 1999 by transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith to honor Rita Hester, a transgender woman killed in 1998. The vigil for Hester honored other victims of transgender-targeted violence and began the annual tradition.
DeRosa said many cases of murder targeting transgender individuals can not be recorded or honored because the victims may be listed under the name and gender they were assigned at birth, instead of who they are in the present day. She said this causes statistics around violence against transgender people to be inaccurate.
DeRosa said the church has been holding this event for eight or nine years, and it is the seventh year that she and Gwendolyn DeRosa, the church’s director of student ministries, have been involved.
“It’s been a very important part of my mission as an organizer to make sure that my community feels welcome while at the same time leaving with a sense of hope and a sense of peace, and then I also being a source of education for our allies and our families so that they can really understand what we as trans people are facing every single day and what we’re fighting for,” Felicia DeRosa said.
Gwendolyn DeRosa said before the pandemic, more than 400 people attended the event annually. For this year’s observance, up to 100 people can attend in person to maintain social distance, but the event will also be live-streamed.
“The pandemic made it very hard because a lot of trans folks are often fairly isolated anyway,” Gwendolyn DeRosa said. “That isolation was amplified as well.”
Felicia DeRosa said it is important for the community to have a safe space to meet in person to mourn victims of violence and to build community.
“As a community, we feel like they shouldn’t be forgotten,” Felicia DeRosa said. “We should take the time to mourn the loss of them from our community.”
