I attended the Transgender Day of Remembrance last night in Austin, TX. It was a very moving, solemn, celebratory experience. As a person who has been working in the field of anti-racism for the last twelve years, as a co-facilitator with The Center for the Healing of Racism, Houston, Texas, I stand in solidarity with the GLBT community, as I know my colleagues at the CFHR do as well. I reperesented St. Hildegard's Church in Austin at the event.

In our dialogue training at the CFHR we focus on sexism, hetersexism, homophobia, and xenophobia, as well as all the other kinds of racism that still surrounds us here in the U.S. I believe we must all stand for the rights of all people, and if any one, no matter who they are is the victim of bias, hate, or hate crimes, none of us is safe. Because we never know when a person or group will turn on us because they see in us something they hate, that the feel compelled to take away our identities or our lives. As I listened to the speakers and artists last night, none of us is really safe, if our transgendered brothers and sisters are still in the raw, vulnerable position of attack at the hands of biggots. We must all fight by protesting this kind of cruelty by raising awareness, doing political work, passing the word, making statements, and doing the consistent kind of social education that is needed.

On the stage at Austin, in front of the City Hall, were twenty-seven empty chairs, symbolically standing for the twenty-seven transgendered people who died in 2008. The person who introduced this section of the program noted that these chairs were cold and empty (temperatures were low last night with wind chills in Austin). These chairs should have never been empty, but should have been warm, warmed by the bodies of human beings, someone's son or daughter, someone's lover, and someone's friend. Then as the names were read, a person from the audience came and took a flower off the chair and sat in it. At the end, there was a time of silence and reflection. For me this was the most moving piece of the memorial.

One other speaker urged the audience to keep looking around for faces that we knew should have been there, but weren't. This is our responsibility. To look around us with nurturing care, and to see if we can find these faces. Many transgendered folks, the speaker commented, turn to the streets as sex workers or prostitutes; in this space they become even more vulnerable to flagrant hate crimes, and even harder to trace by law enforcement. No one is invisible, and no one should be forgotten.

I'd like to share a poem that I wrote as a result of participating in the Day of Remembrance for Transgendered people murdered or dead in 2008.

THESE VOICES CAN NEVER BE SILENCED

Tonight I sat at the memorial
for people murdered for
choosing to be who they were--
transgendered.
Twenty-seven names were
read, and the gong was sounded
for each one.

The most courageous act
is choosing to identify
with one's own person
not with what the rest
of the culture says we
should be. This is fearless courage,
a supreme virtue.

Although I'm straight,
I remember a time when
I was a young boy,
sitting in a diner,
on a trip from Chicago
to Louisville.

The old, ignorant, drunken
man kept calling me names,
with the twisted charge
from human to animal.

At my young age when
I couldn't edit much out,
and my cerebral cortex
was in its unformed
growing state, I felt
the sting of rebuke,
the harshness of ignorance
and hate, the spite of
drunken abuse, and it seemed
to go on forever.

And why didn't my parents
do anything at first to
interrupt this adultism, dropped in a glass
like a date-rape pill merging with the
rotted stupification of ethyl
alcohol. They kept letting
it go on and on. Why, I ask you now?

Were you afraid to speak up
because I was a child, and he
was drunk? This is too often
the food and drink of hate filled
bias, found behind the menus
of everyday silence, the fear
of speaking for one life, or
for anyone one that we love,
that has been the specialty on
the menu, but, I for one, will
never buy this meal again, or
give my money to this place

This is the inebriated brew of stabbings,
hate crimes, executions, shootings,
and the stars are dropped and buried
and the crimes go unsolved. Why?

Now a new age has arisen with a new dawn
of protest and uprising
with voices raised to protect us all.
If we save one life, we've saved humanity.

© Christopher Bear Beam, MA

Thank you for your words Christopher.