Transphobia & Transgender Rights Activism, In The News

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I searched the Politics Forum thinking there would already be a thread on transphobia and/or transgender rights activism, but didn't find one, so, after reading the article, posted below, that touched a nerve with me, and about how in January, 2021, Puerto Rico's new Governor declaring a State of Emergency over the sharp rise in femicide and murders of trans women and men there, I am opening this new thread.

There has been some positive news lately, like the elections of a few openly transgender politicians, and Joe Biden's rescinding of Trump's discriminatory ban on the presence of transgender women and men in the Military. But, that's not nearly enough when human beings are being murdered or arrested just for living as the gender that they identify as... So, if interested, here's a place to post pertinent news on the topic.
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"Walking While Trans"... Is not a crime!:

Theintercept.com:
Repealing the Walking While Trans Ban Is Part of the Struggle to Decriminalize Sex Work

Natasha Lennard - February 4 2021
Andrew Cuomo may not realize it, but the repeal recognizes that police interactions with marginalized people are sources of harm.

AFTER YEARS OF tireless organizing, advocacy, and struggle led by trans women of color, the state of New York has finally repealed the pernicious anti-loitering statute that was widely known as the law against “walking while trans.” On Monday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation to remove sections of the law, on the books since 1976, that were intended “to prohibit loitering for the purpose of prostitution.” Broad and vague, the statute has been used as grounds to profile, harass, and arrest women of color, especially trans women — with ruinous and deadly consequences.

A victory is a victory, and this repeal was hard won. Yet while Cuomo is seeking to frame the new legislation as a means to protect innocent women from being targeted in the otherwise justifiable policing of sex work, the repeal of the “walking while trans” ban should instead be seen as a step in the abolitionist struggle to defund the police and decriminalize all consensual sex work. Justice is not a world in which only real sex workers — disproportionately trans women of color, who face discrimination in other industries — are considered legitimate targets for the police.

The repeal of the discriminatory “loitering” statute is of major significance in and of itself. In 2018, 91 percent of those arrested under the law were Black and Latinx people. “As a trans woman, I will be able to feel safer walking through the streets of my neighborhood without the police bothering me or arresting me for my gender expression,” said Norma Ureiro, a member of immigrant and working-class rights organization Make the Road NY, in a statement. “I am a trans woman from Mexico, I am happy, and I want to cry! I know that the struggle we are leading is bearing fruit,” said Silvia Escobar, another Make the Road NY member.

In a separate op-ed for the New York Daily News, Ureiro made unambiguous the central danger of the “walking while trans” ban, elucidating the framework in which its repeal should be seen. “Repealing the Walking While Trans ban is a crucial step toward stopping interactions with police and reducing the criminalization of our community,” she wrote. This is key. The victory is not one of ensuring that the police better identify sex workers, but rather that the repeal works toward removing grounds for police to intervene in peoples’ lives. This is the undergirding logic of calls to defund the police, so demonized by conservatives and feeble liberals: a recognition that police interactions with marginalized communities are consistent sources of harm, deportation, incarceration, and death.

WHETHER CUOMO RECOGNIZES it or not — and he does not — an abolitionist, anti-carceral logic informed the struggle against the “walking while trans” ban. It is no accident that the organizers behind it are also committed to the full decriminalization of sex work, rather than sharpening the distinction between “guilty” sex workers and “innocent” trans women of color who are discriminatorily misidentified as prostitutes. The “loitering” statute provided expansive grounds for police to harass and arrest trans women of color, including using the possession of condoms as alleged evidence of prostitution. With full sex work decriminalization, law enforcement officers would no longer be able to use policing prostitution as a pretext for harassing trans women, raiding immigrants’ businesses, or discrediting sex workers who report abuse.
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IT’S WITH GOOD reason that the organizers who fought for the “walking while trans” ban repeal consistently describe their victory as astep.”
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NYdailynews.com:
Puerto Rico declares state of emergency over alarming rate of violence against women and transgender people


Violence against women and transgender people has grown to such alarming levels that the government of Puerto Rico on Sunday declared a state of emergency.

“Gender violence is a social evil, based on ignorance and attitudes that cannot have space or tolerance in the Puerto Rico that we aspire to,” newly sworn in Gov. Pedro Pierluisi said in a statement. “For too long, vulnerable victims have suffered the consequences of systematic machismo, inequity, discrimination, lack of education, lack of guidance and above all lack of action.”

In so doing, Pierluisi was making good on a campaign promise, reported The Miami Herald, in which he pledged to use policy, education, technology and other means to quell the violence. Declaring a state of emergency is an unusual measure, and a possible first for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Advocacy organizations and activists have been pressuring for such a move for years, especially as the rate escalated during recent crises such as Hurricane Maria and the coronavirus pandemic. In 2020, at least 60 direct and indirect femicides were committed, CNN reported, citing the local group Gender Equality Observatory. Among that total are the cases of six trans people, as well as 26 other cases still being investigated or lacking sufficient information.
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Last year alone saw the murder of several transgender women, at least six by September with the killing of Michelle Ramos Vargas, 33, who was found shot in the head, lying alongside a road. The previous May had seen two men arrested in the deaths of two transgender women in April, two of three transgender murders occurring in an eight-day span.

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TheHill.com:
State of emergency declared in Puerto Rico after killings targeting women, transgender people

Newly sworn-in Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi declared a state of emergency in Puerto Rico in response to killings targeting women and transgender people in recent years.

Pierluisi signed an executive order declaring the emergency for gender-based violence on Sunday. It is set to last until June 30, 2022.

Activists for years have pushed for government action to address the killings and violence, which they say have gotten worse after Hurricane Maria in 2017 and the coronavirus pandemic struck the island, CNN reported.

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NBCNews.com:
Trans man killed amid Puerto Rico's 'wave of homophobic and transphobic violence'

Puerto Rican police are investigating the death of a transgender man found with multiple gunshot wounds Jan. 9.

A motorist was driving on an unlit section of highway in Trujillo Alto, a municipality about 15 miles southeast of San Juan, when she hit something, according to the local news site WAPA. As she got out of the car, she realized it was a dead body and notified authorities, who identified the victim as Samuel Edmund Damián Valentín.
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Damián is the seventh known transgender person to die by violence in Puerto Rico since last February, according to the Transgender Law Center.
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HRC.org:
HRC Mourns Michelle Michellyn Ramos Vargas, Transgender Woman Killed in Puerto Rico

HRC mourns the death of Michelle Michellyn Ramos Vargas, whom some reports identify as Michelle Ramos Vargas and Michellyn Ramos Vargas, a transgender woman who was killed in San Germán, Puerto Rico. Vargas was found dead of multiple gunshot wounds early in the morning on September 30. Her death is believed to be at least the 30th violent death of a transgender or gender non-conforming person this year in the U.S. We say “at least” because too often these deaths go unreported -- or misreported. The number of transgender or gender non-conforming people whom HRC has tracked as being killed so far this year has now surpassed the total number of deaths that HRC tracked in all of 2019.

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