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Leave the TDOR alone.
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If you wish to have an event that takes a happy-happy joy-joy approach to publicizing transgender issues, by all means organize it and promote the hell out of it. If it's a good one and has no connection whatsoever to the Homosexual Rights Corporation, I'll even post whatever press release you put together for this event on TransGriot.
Just pick some other calendar date to do it.
Just as Memorial Day and Veterans Day are two calendar days specifically set aside to memorialize veterans and anyone who has paid the ultimate price for us to have what freedoms we do enjoy here in the States, we transgender peeps need that same kind of day to memorialize the people we've lost as well.
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The TDOR in addition to us ensuring the names of our fallen brothers and sisters don't fade from our memories with the passage of time, is also a way for us to initiate teachable moments with our allies, do coalition building, talk to the general public about our issues, and sometimes get the bonus of media coverage as well.
The TDOR is also important to transgender people of color as well. We get precious little media coverage and people of color make up the disproportionate share of the 412 people (and counting) memorialized on the Remembering Our Dead site.
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It would be centered on the August 7 date of Tyra Hunter's death due to the ignorant negligence of an African-American EMT in Washington DC.
The proposed day's mission would be to publicize the fact that many of the anti-transgender murders of African-American transgender people are committed by our own people. It would also seek to do some 'ejumacation' of our community around those and other issues affecting us and point out that 60% of the ROD list is transpeople of color.
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If my fellow transpeeps of African descent realize the importance of the world pausing to contemplate anti-transgender violence, then what's the problem with the cognitive abilities of those of you trying to mess with the TDOR's simplistic perfection for specious reasons?
I will go Maya Wilkes on you quislings if what I'm hearing about this effort to change the 'morbid and depressing' TDOR's is true and the unstated purpose is to grease the skids for HRC to resume raising funds in our community on the bones of our fallen brothers and sisters.
5 comments:
There's also this site that has 2007 and 2008 TDOR info as Remembering Our Dead hasn't been updated a regularly as it used to:
http://www.transgenderdor.org
TDOR must remain as a memorial to our fallen. It's not the time for frivolity. Also transgender people will need to go forth as our own entity. We can't depend on gay and lesbian organizations to do what we need to do.
And I will go All Dyssonant on them should they try to change it.
That's not very good. I cuss a lot. I get nasty and make commentary about upbringing and parentage.
Let's not go there, please..
TDOR is ours.
The dead are all ours.
The lack of justice is all ours.
It is our community's time to solemnly reflect. We invite others to reflect with us, and to take the time to learn, for that is how we can slow the rate of killing. It is our time to forgive, but never forget. It is our time to demand justice, and to comfort those left behind.
TDOR cannot ever be allowed to become a fund raising opportunity, or part of a sales pitch for a certain evil gay rights organization. It isn't about money, or fame. It is about taking stock, and finding justice somehow.
I agree! Very well-written post, as usual. I wonder if trans porn industry observes this day. Does anyone know?
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