Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Why Is This Trans WH Petition Lagging In Getting The Necessary 100K Signatures?

When a White House petition posted on January 3 in honor of the departed Leelah Alcorn called for the passage of Leelah's Law to ban all conversion therapy aimed at TBLG Americans, it easily garnered its over 100,000 signatures, and got a WH response from Valerie Jarrett

Now we have a Fran Watson created White House petition posted on August 10 calling for the federal government to investigate the anti-trans violence that leads to the unacceptable slaughter of trans women of color.  

And how close are we to hitting that 100,000 signature threshold that we need to reach by September 10?   As of this writing, it has only 4735 signatures, well short of the number needed.

Ii this signature rate doesn't ramp up soon, we are probably NOT going to hit that 100,000 signature target required by September 10 to get an official White House response on this .


 And that's irritating and depressing to the trans communities of color reeling from the off the charts murders and anti-trans rhetoric being aimed at us.   I have no doubts if the racial composition of the trans murder victims was switched, and it was overwhelmingly white trans women under 30 being eviscerated, this would be 'State of Emergency' news and we would have already hit that signature target.

But since its predominately Black and Latina trans women, note it's now August 25 and we haven't even gotten to 50,000 signatures, much less 10,000.

This disappointing response is sending us in Trans POC World and our allies the unmistakable impression that All Trans Lives Don't Matter, and that the lives of the 17 murdered trans women of color we've lost in 2015 don't matter as much as one non-POC teen that committed suicide.  


The differing signature rates between the WH Leelah's Law petition and the current one aimed at trying to get action on a trans issue that overwhelmingly affects trans women of color is striking and a problematic look.  


So come on trans community and allies.  How about you showing as much love for murdered non-white trans women as you did for Leelah Alcorn earlier this year?  Black Lives Matter, how about you 
encouraging people to sign this WH petition?    Where you at NAACP?  Congressional Black Caucus?
 

Sign it and share it...Talk this petition up and also get people to understand why this is important to get 100K signatures for it so we can hit and exceed the signature target before that September 10 deadline. 

The clock's ticking.
  

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