22 February 2015

Trans Lives Matter

The other day, MTV news ran a story, written by Katie Speller entitled, 6 Transgender Women Have Been Murdered in 2015 And No One Is Talking About It".

The title says it all.  I wrote about two of them--Penny Proud and Taja DeJesus--in this blog. They were the two I heard about.  If I do say so myself, I follow the news of crimes against transgender people a bit more closely than the average person.  So, even though I'd only heard of two out of the six victims, that's still two more than 99.9 percent of other people knew about.

I will follow the lead of MTV news and post the photos of each of the victims.  Remember:  They are all someone's sister, daughter, granddaughter, niece, friend and possibly girlfriend.

Here is Ty Underwood, who was shot to death in North Tyler, Texas on 26 January:


Ty Underwood 

Five days later, on the 31st, Yazmin Vash Payne was fatally stabbed in Los Angeles:


Yazmin Vash Payne 

The following day, the month of February began with Taja DeJesus being stabbed to death in a San Francisco stairwell:


 
 

On the 10th of this month, Penny Proud was shot to death in New Orleans:

 Penny Proud
 

Five days later--the day after Valentine's Day--Kristina Gomez Reinwald was found dead in her Miami home.  Originally her death was ruled a suicide, but it is now being investigated as a homicide:

 kristinagrantinfiiti.jpg

Then, on the 17th, Lamia Beard was shot to death in Norfolk, VA.  As happens too often, the local media misidentified her gender.

Lamia Beard 

Lamia's death made me think of the slogan "Black Lives Matter".  It's so good and righteous that we should appropriate it:  Trans Lives Matter.

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