To the Editor:
Rita Hester died on Nov. 28, 1998 in Allston, Mass. Her death didn’t make the news. It was just a month after the brutal murder of Mathew Sheppard, a young, white, gay man from Laramie, Wyoming and the few minutes of LGBT news coverage that day were dedicated to his death.
Rita Hester didn’t make the news and the darker reality of violence in her life, and the life of women like her, went unreported. You see, Rita Hester was transgender. She was a woman. She was black.
Rita Hester’s story is not unique. Hundreds of transgender people around the world are murdered each year for being who they are. Most of them, nearly all of them, are women of color whose intersecting identities of gender, race, and class leave them especially vulnerable to extremes of violence. Their deaths don’t make the news either.
On Nov. 20, 1999, a crowd gathered in Allston. In it were friends of Rita Hester, members of the local trans community, and empathetic allies. They gathered to remember Rita, and the hundreds of trans people who had lost their lives in the year following her death. It was the first observance of the Transgender Day of Remembrance. TDOR
Each year since then, on Nov. 20, trans people and our allies observe a vigil. We read the names of our siblings lost to the senseless violence forced on our community. This year, we’ll read 271 names – 27 of them from the United States.
We’ll hold their lives in silence. Then we’ll honor them by saying “rest in power,” giving their deaths the power we failed to give them in life.
We’ll gather this year for Transgender Day of Remembrance at 5:30 p.m. inside Skidompha Library. All those who seek a safer world for trans people are welcome.
