We Rise Together: BLUU to Observe the Transgender Day of Remembrance
By Rev. Mykal Slack
For the last several days, I’ve woken up sick to my stomach and tearful. It happens almost like clockwork each year leading up to the International Transgender Day of Remembrance, or TDOR, but I’m thrown off by it every time. Every November 20th, since 1998 when Rita Hester was murdered in Boston, trans and genderqueer folks, our friends and loved ones, and supportive communities all over the world gather to memorialize trans people who died the previous year due to anti-transgender violence.
As trans people, a mix of sadness, disgust, and hopelessness happens in our bodies, minds, and spirits when, every year, we are reminded that our determination to live our best lives could ultimately lead to our untimely death. It’s how ancestral and generational trauma shows up — a deep and abiding message gets reinforced over and over again that we don’t really matter, even if we happen to have a good job, or a caring community (whatever those things mean to you). And for folks who aren’t trans or don’t have trans people in their lives, this time of year is often the ONE time people are really thinking about the impact of the gender binary, heteronormativity, and structural racism on our lives, much less talking about it or doing anything about it.
But here’s the thing… Thinking about black trans lives once or even two or three times per year is nowhere near enough. It’s just not. Black and brown trans people, black trans women in particular, have been dying at increasingly alarming rates for years. In the last year alone, 325 trans and gender-diverse people were murdered around the world, the majority of which occurred in Brazil (171), Mexico (56), and the U.S. (25). These numbers don’t even account for the folks who died, but were misgendered or deadnamed in law enforcement reporting, on social media, or by family members, and so we won’t even know about them. And, with the current political and social climate we’re in, it’s only getting worse. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the annual murder rate for Americans ages 15 to 34 is about one in 12,000. But an investigation by the news organization Mic found that, for black transgender women in the same age group, the rate was one in 2,600.
Every life struck down in the ways we see and hear about year-round is a life struck down too soon, and every life lost shatters a little piece of our humanity. All our hearts should be torn apart when a parent beats a child to death because he “acted too much like a girl”. When an employer shuts the door of opportunity in the face of a genderqueer worker, we can all connect with that distress because jobs, much less jobs that pay a living wage, are often hard to come by. When a Trans person is shut out by family, or eaten up by the hardships of the world, we can all feel that pain because we know that community and solid relationships are vital to our growing up happier and healthier. All of this contributes to our emotional, spiritual, or physical death.
So we can’t talk about this enough as black communities. We have to move beyond being desensitized to violence against all our people. The first of BLUU’s 7 Principles of Black Lives speaks plainly to this:
ALL BLACK LIVES MATTER
Queer Black lives, trans Black lives, formerly incarcerated Black lives, differently-abled Black lives, Black women’s lives, immigrant Black lives, Black elderly and children’s lives. ALL BLACK LIVES MATTER and are creators of this space. We throw no one under the bus. We rise together.
The Movement for Black Lives calls on the Unitarian Universalist faith — a faith willing to make the bold proclamation that each person inherently matters — to live up to that claim by working toward a future in which Black lives are truly valued in our society. We call on UUs to actively resist notions that Black lives only matter if conformed to white, middle-class norms, and to challenge assumptions of worth centered around clothing, diction, education, or other status. Our value is not conditional.
It has been said that what we pay attention to grows. We see this in every aspect of life, from what we tend to in our gardens to the building up of family, chosen or otherwise, all around us. And so it stands to reason that, if we want those numbers to begin to go down, if we want black trans lives to matter and to thrive, we have to pay more attention. Our UU faith calls us to this. Hearts, minds and spirits that cry out for justice in this world make a way for this. But we have to actually do more and be better, remembering that change most often begins with what most needs changing in us.
On November 18–20th, this Saturday, Sunday, and Monday evenings, I and four other transgender clergy in North Carolina will be leading an inaugural trans-led, trans-voiced, trans-visioning moment of spiritual renewal and resistance called TRANS-Forming Proclamation. During three worship services over three nights, we’ll focus on Naming (our concerns, strengths, and resilience) on the 18th, Healing (into deeper support and spiritual nurture) on the 19th, and Hearing (the call to remembrance, resistance and active engagement) on the 20th, the actual vigil and observance of TDOR. And in keeping with BLUU’s commitment to ALL Black Lives, in lieu of offering BLUU’s usual 3rd Sunday online worship service, we are asking our Black UU online community to join us via Live Stream on November 19th at 7pm EST for the Healing service. And if you’re in North Carolina or the surrounding areas, we hope you’ll come out on the 19th, as well as on the evening before and the evening after. Either way, it will bless me to know you’re there with us.
Part of our collective work begins with showing up, listening, and deepening our understanding. It continues with engaging, being in relationship, and being made new by the offering that is our truest selves. For some of us, this weekend’s gatherings will represent a continuation of life being lived and ministry being done. For others of us, everything that’s said and done will feel new, maybe even awkward and unwieldy. That’s alright. Wherever you happen to be in the work of bringing that first principle to life, join us…that we might be made better and made whole in the effort to rise together. Just like Oleta Adams said, “I don’t care how you get here. Just get here if you can.” My life and the lives of black and brown trans and genderqueer people all across the diaspora depend on it…which means yours does, too.
