Los Angeles — In recognition of the 17th annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, Equality California Executive Director Rick Zbur issued the following statement:
“2015 has been a year of impressive accomplishments for LGBT people, but an underlying tragedy should mute any celebration: the transgender members of our community, especially transgender women, continue to suffer from staggering levels of violence.
This year saw the murders of at least three transgender women in California alone. Those numbers are repeated in a brutal pattern across the United States and around the world. Since 2012, more than 50 transgender people have been murdered in hate crimes or by domestic partners. The vast majority were transgender women of color. But those figures hide the murders never reported, the hate crimes that went uncounted because police or family members did not respect the victim’s gender identity, and the transgender kids who, facing hostility from their families and communities, took their own lives.
This is an immediate, pressing concern to all members of the LGBT community and to anyone who believes in a fair and just society. Rather than exclude transgender people from our civil rights movement – removing the “T” in LGBT – as some have recently suggested, it is incumbent upon all of us, as a community that has faced discrimination and worse, to help those among us who are still fighting a desperate battle not just for civil rights, but also to simply stay alive.
Equality California is proud to be leading, together with the Transgender Law Center, the launch of a groundbreaking coalition to educate Californians about their transgender neighbors – and to fight any effort to target transgender people at the ballot box.”
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Equality California is the nation’s largest statewide lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization dedicated to creating a fair and just society. Our mission is to achieve and maintain full and lasting equality, acceptance, and social justice for all people in our diverse LGBT communities, inside and outside of California. Our mission includes advancing the health and well-being of LGBT Californians through direct healthcare service advocacy and education. Through electoral, advocacy, education and mobilization programs, we strive to create a broad and diverse alliance of LGBT people, educators, government officials, communities of color and faith, labor, business, and social justice communities to achieve our goals. www.eqca.org
