When Creating Change kicks off in Dallas, I'll be getting another award for my 22 years of activity in the TBLGQ movement.
I'm being honored with the Susan J. Hyde Award for Longevity in the movement during the opening plenary on January 16.
I'm not the first Black trans person to receive this award. Kylar Broadus received it during the 2011 Creating Change event held in Minneapolis. It's nice that I'm following someone in receiving this award that I have much love and respect for.
I'm looking forward to that when it happens, and it also means I'll have a speech to deliver as well
For those of you planning to attend, see y'all in two weeks.
One thing I can promise you dear reader is that you won't be disappointed. There will be times I'll make you laugh. Other times I'll touch your heart. Then there will be the occasional time or two when I piss you off. But my goal is to make you think and expose you to some of the drama that African-American transpeeps (and transpeople in general) deal with.-TransGriot, January 1, 2006
The arrival of New Year's Day 2020 also means that TransGriot is celebrating another birthday!
It was on January 1, 2006 at 12 midnight EST that my first post went up on my blog. It took me a year to find my voice and figure out what I wanted to do with it, but once I did, it has led to four a GLAAD Outstanding Blog Award nominations in 2014, 2017 and 2019. I captured it on my third nomination in 2018.
It also led to last year the TERF enemies of the trans community cyberattacking it in a failed attempt to shut it down.
It has also opened up some opportunities for me to express myself not on on these electronic pages, but at college campuses, conferences, on radio and television, and other venues across the United States.
There are over 11, 000 posts on this blog discussing everything from trans issues to sports. It is not only an electronic repository of our Black trans history, it has also allowed me to elevate my voice in the political discourse of the moment inside and outside of the TBLGQ community.
And with 2020 being a presidential election year, I'll have a lot to talk about until New Year's Eve rolls back around in 365 days.
Yep, this is also a leap year and an Olympic year Will be nice to see if we have a trans athlete FINALLY qualify for an Olympics.
Note to all you haters claiming that trans feminine athletes are 'dominating women's sports' So far this is the only trans woman who has made it to an Olympic opening ceremony, and she was holding the placard for the Brazilian Olympic team.
While I have been documenting the murders of my trans family over the last few years, it is not the only mission of this blog. Here's my mission statement to tell you what it is.
The TransGriot blog's mission is to become the griot of our community. I will introduce you to and talk about your African descended trans brothers and trans sisters across the Diaspora, reclaim and document our chocolate flavored trans history, speak truth to power, comment on the things that impact our trans community from an Afrocentric perspective. I will also enlighten you about the general things that go on around me and in the communities that I am a member of. --Mission Statement compiled January 2, 2011
That's my blog's mission. Been handling that business for now fourteen years, and just an FYI, the 15th anniversary of this blog will take place 366 days from now on January 1, 2021.
Happy New Year to all of you on the eastern side of the International Date Line. My friends west of it and Down Under already celebrated New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.
The arrival of January 1, 2020 also means I'm celebrating another TransGriot blogiversary.
Hope that 2020 is one that is chock full of amazing accomplishments and abundant blessings for you all. May we also receive the blessing of watching Trump go down in flames on November 3, 2020.
That's Election Day for those of y'all who were wondering about the significance of that date.
2020 also means I get to celebrate another high school reunion, my 40th. It is still mind blowing to me that I walked out of high school with The Class With Class in 1980, 20 years before the year 2000 happened. Now me and my classmates are 20 years beyond the year 2000.
My niece Chantoya, who was born on January 20, 2000, will be turning 20 this year.
And just warning y'all now BTACers, Moni will be at the 9th annual conference May 5-10 will be ready to lay down some dominoes beatdowns in defense of my BTAC dominoes championship.
So you better bring your dominoes 'A' game. I don't wanna hear any excuses when I'm calling out points in multiples of ten. I'm also looking forward to celebrating my 58th birthday with y'[all as well
The ladies of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc are also celebrating a birthday this year.. January 16 will mark their centennial year, and every Zeta I know is ready to pop their collars and celebrate the occasion.
The sorority was founded on the Howard University campus in Washington DC back in 1920.,
And yes, besides attending a few conferences and conventions along the way, 2020 will definitely have some domestic travel in my near future.. Will it finally see me going to an international destination for the first time ever? I do have an international travel bucket list that is several pages long.
In July, the world will get to watch the dawn of another Olympiad in the Land of the Rising Sun
I'm anxious to see if my Houston homegirl Simone Biles will make history and dominate the gymnastic competition in these Tokyo Games just as she did four years ago in Rio.
She been collecting gold medals at all the gymnastics world championship events since 2016 and is now the most decorate athlete ever in the sport.
And yes, with the USA men's basketball team handle their Tokyo business, or will they finally get beaten for the first time since 2004 on an Olympic basketball court?
Will the World Champion USA women's soccer team repeat their FIFA Women's World Cup success in the 2020 Olympic tournament after being shut out of the medals in the 2016 Rio Games?
The wonderful thing about New Year's Day is that it is a chance to hit the reset button on your life. You can celebrate the things in your life that did go right, and glean lesson from the stuff that didn't.
Whether you did New Year's Resolutions or not (I did), the one thing that we should all have on our 2020 to do list is to be better human beings this year than we were in 2019.
2020 is here, whether we are ready for it or not. You have 366 days to make this year a great one!
Another 365 days have passed, and it's time to add another fool or (group of fools) to our distinguished and highly anticipated list of idiots,
These are the folks who have engaged in outright lying, massive hypocrisy, engaged in brazen gaslighting, or consistently exhibited WTF levels of lunacy and gob smacking ignorance.
And no, Donald Trump isn't our winner. That's would be too easy to give it to him. Besides, I gave Twitler the TransGriot Shut Up Fool of the Decade award already, and he's the only two time winner (2015-2016) of a TransGriot Shut Up Fool of the Year award.
These are the previous winners of the TransGriot Shut up Fool of the Year Award
2009- Michael Steele 2010- Sarah Palin 2011- Herman Cain 2012- Mitt Romney 2013- Ted Cruz 2014- Louie Gohmert 2015- Donald Trump 2016- Donald Trump 2017- Dan Patrick
2018- Sarah Huckabee Sanders
Who will join them tonight> We had plenty of contenders for the ward, Cruella Betsy DeVos, Rep Jim Jordan (R-OH), Rep Devin Nunes (R-CA), Kellyanne Conway, Laura Ingraham, Sucker Tucker Carlson, Jerry Jones,, Rep Doug Collins (R-GA), Gov. Matt Bevin (R-KY), Franklin Graham, Rev Jim Jeffress, TX State Rep Briscoe Cain (R), Candace Owens, Diamond and Silk, TX State Rep Bill Zedler (R), JK Rowling, and group nominations for the Republican Party, the TERFs and every TBLGQ person who voted for Trump .
That was the level of idiocy I had to wade though, and it's now time to cut the jibber jabber and announce this year's winner.
The envelope please.
This year's 2019 Shut Up Fool of the Year is HUD secretary Ben Carson
What the hell happened to the man who was a gifted brain surgeon? Did someone give him a GOP cranial rinse and make him this conservastupid?
And naw Uncle Ben, haven't forgotten all the transphobic crap you spouted this year as well.
Don't even get me started on the cooning for Trump you did at that Blacks For Trump rally in the ATL.
As the ball is about to drop in New York's Times Square to signal the end of the 2010's and the beginning of a new year and new decade, still had this bit of old business to deal with.
I don't have to tell you TransGriot readers that 2019 was another deadly year, specifically for Black trans women. Texas was the epicenter of it, with us losing four trans women. It could have easily been six had Pinky in Houston and Daniela in Dallas not survived being shot by assailants who are at this writing, still at large.
These are the names of the trans folks in the US who have been killed in this 2019 calendar year
Dana Martin, 31, Montgomery, AL Ashanti Carmon, 27, Fairmount Heights, MD Jazzaline Ware, 34, Memphis, TN Muhlaysia Booker, 22, Dallas, TX Michelle Washington, 40, Philadelphia, PA
Claire Legato, 21, Cleveland, OH
Paris Cameron, 20, Detroit, MI
Chynal Lindsey, 26, Dallas, TX
Chanel Scurlock, 23, Lumberton, NC
Zoe Spears, 23, Fairmount Heights, MD
Brooklyn Lindsey, 32, Kansas City, MO
Denali Berries Stuckey, 29, North Charleston, SC
Marquis Kiki Fantroy, 21, Miami, FL
Pebbles LaDime Doe, 24, Allendale, SC
Jordan Cofer, 22, Dayton, OH
Tracy Single Williams, 22, Houston TX
Bailey Reeves, 17, Baltimore, MD
Bee Love Slater, 23, Clewiston, FL
Ja'Leyah Jamar Berryman, 30, Kansas City, MO
Elisha Stanley, 46, Pittsburgh, PA
Itali Marlowe, 29, Houston, TX
Brianna BB Hill, 30, Kansas City, MO
Nikki Kuhnhausen, 18, Vancouver, WA
Yahira Nesby, 33, Brooklyn, NY
The three things that jump out at me besides the fact that 22 of the 24 people that we lost were Black and 14 of them we between the ages of 20-29, is that we lost ZERO Latinx people to anti-trans murders.
Not that there weren't any attempts on the lives of our Latina trans siblings. It's just they were blessed those attempts didn't turn into fatalities.
For those of you claiming Layleen Polanco, who died while incarcerated at Rikers Island was murdered, not according to the NYC coroner. That is why she is not on this list, which follows the protocols of the Remembering Our Dead project founded by Gwen Smith 20 years ago.
One thing we can all agreed on is 24 murdered trans people is far too many, and these are just the ones we're aware of. It may be far more . There is a Black trans woman in Oakland who has been missing since December 1
May they rest in power with the ancestors. May the peeps who murdered them also be found guilty of their crimes and be punished to the full extent of the law for their crimes
On January 30, 2009 I started one of the more popular features on my blog in the weekly Shut Up Fool Awards. My inaugural fool for that week was FOX Noise Contributor Juan Williams.
The Shut Up Fool weekly awards begat a Shut Up Fool of the Year, that I announced on New Year's Eve also starting in 2009, with the inaugural winner being then RNC chair Michael Steele.
The blog had only been in operation then for three years, so at that time I wasn't thinking about doing a Shut up Fool of the Decade award.
With TransGriot about to turn 14 years old on New Year's Day, and the blog having been operational for the entire decade of the 2010's, I think it's definitely appropriate to follow up on Brandon Mack's suggestion and name a Shut Up Fool of the Decade.
While I considered group awards for Fox Noise, The Republican Party, the evilgelicals, the TERFs, Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh and Mitch McConnell just to name a few, there's really only one person who so richly deserves this inaugural Shut Up Fool of the Decade Award.
That person would be the only repeat winner of a TransGriot Shut Up Fool of the Year award, and he actually could have won it for several more years because he'd done and said enough WTF level stuff to justify it.
So enough jibber jabber, let's get to it.
The winner of the inaugural TransGriot Shut Up Fool of the Decade Award is Donald Trump
"My message to every trans and gender non-conforming person is this: God is love and you were made in the image of perfect Love. There is space for you in this world. There is space at your church, in your desired career, in your family, on sports teams...and it is time to take your space. Show up! In large number or in small...your presence is valued and necessary. So what, they stare or ask questions, answer them. Look them in the eyes proudly with your beautiful, handsome, artsy, brilliant, capable, transgender self. Claim your space. Rearrange the seating to make room at the table. Correct people when they use the wrong pronouns. Hang up your own sign on the bathroom door. Tell them who you are and who you are not. Be bold. No one is going to understand what they cannot see, cannot hear or cannot know. " -Rev Lawrence T, Richardson, 2013
One of the best things about being a advocate over 20 years is that you get to meet some amazing people along the way.
I met Rev. Lawrence T. Richardson during a BTAC conference back in 2013, and saw him again during my recent April trip to Minneapolis and on the University of Minnesota campus.
For the last five years he has been the associate pastor at Linden Hills United Church of Christ in Minneapolis under the Rev Eliot Howard, who has been the senior pastor at Linden Hills UCC for the last 26 years.
Rev Howard, along with everyone else Rev. Lawrence has encountered, has recognized that he is an amazing leader who is well respected not only in the local and national faith communities, but in the trans one as well.
Rev. Howard has decided to retire, and in an overwhelming affirmative vote by the membership of Linden Hills on October 27, chose Rev Richardson to be their next leader. It makes him the first out Black trans cleric in his home state of Minnesota
Rev Richardson is excited about the new opportunity, and one of his his missions will be to have Linden Hills UCC continue to be a welcoming church community, just as it was when he encountered it.
Congratulations Rev. Richardson! I'm extremely proud of you and the history you're making! I hope that I'll get a chance to visit Linden Hills the next time my travels bring me to the Twin Cities.
This it it. The last week of the regular NFL season. Playoff seedings and the NFC East and West division titles are on the line. For many of the teams that qualified and either locked in their byes into the Divisional round or are headed to Wild Card Weekend, it's deciding whether they want to rest starters or play them.
Then there's the other side of this last week of the NFL season for the teams that didn't qualify for the playoffs. It's assessing what went wrong with this 2019 season, making corrections, and gearing up for the 2020 NFL Draft in a few months.
And tomorrow, a few NFL coaches who have been on the hot seat for months will be getting fired. Over/under on that is FIVE coaches get the pink slips on Monday and TWO GM's .
Ron Rivera has already been fired by the Carolina Panthers, and Jacksonville Jaguars GM Tom Coughlin has already been given the boot
The first pick for the draft has been locked up by the Cincinnati Bengals, we'll see how the rest of the picks all after today's games are played
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This is the last week of the regular season and after 16 weeks of prognostication, we are tied going into the last 16 games of the regular season. Who will take the title this year?: We're about to find out.
My picks in bold red print. Mike Week 17 picks are here.
Week 16 Results 2019 NFL Season Record
TransGriot 10-6 TransGriot 148-91-1
Mike 10-6 Mike 148-91-1
Sunday Early Games Browns over BENGALS PATRIOTS over Dolphins VIKINGS over Bears CHIEFS over Chargers BILLS over Jets Packers over LIONS Saints over PANTHERS Falcons over BUCCANEERS
Sunday Afternoon Games TEXANS over Titans Eagles over GIANTS COWBOYS over Washington RAVENS over Steelers Colts over JAGUARS BRONCOS over Raiders RAMS over Cardinals
Merry Christmas TransGriot readers! This is the last Christmas Day we will celebrate in the 2010's as a new decade starts a week from now
Hope this day is turning out to be a pleasant one for many of you and the food at your holiday tables is tasty and plentiful. i also hope that Santa brought you everything on your Christmas wish list as well.
Happy Birthday to all of you who were born on this day as well.
What I wished for as a Christmas gift won't happen until November 3,2020. But I did to see his azz impeached as an early Christmas 2019 gift.
If you have extra Christmas cash lying around and want to reward someone who was up to angelic trouble for our community this year, you can always hit me up on my Pay Pal at paypal.me/TransGriot or my Cash App at $TransGriot
I also have a link to my PayPal in my TransGriot Tip Jar in the upper left hand portion of the blog
The other early Christmas gift was my transphobic Harris County Commissioner Steve Radack deciding not to run for another term.
Speaking of Christmas gifts, here's hoping that all the tarns younglings celebrating their first ones as their true selves are getting the stuff they always wanted under the tree today.
For those of you who are not with your blood family, much love to you today and hope you are hanging out with your chosen fam.
Here's also hoping we lose no more trans people between now and New Year's Day.
Earlier this year Jazell Harvey became the first Black person ever to win the Miss International Queen trans pageant in its 15 year history.
While we have had since the Miss Universe system opened their doors to trans women in 2013, several trans women from around the globe have attempted to make it to the Miss Universe pageant stage,. starting with Canada's Jenna Talackova.
The only one so far that has successfully done so, although she didn't make it to the 15 semifinalist round, has been Miss Spain Universe 2018 Angela Ponce.
We have had trans women from Canada, Mongolia, Chile and Norway make it to their national pageant stages. Trans women in China, Belgium, Brazil and Puerto Rico fell short of making it to their national pageant stage.
None of those trans contestants attempting to make it to a Miss Universe stage or compete in a US state pageant has been Black until now.
Taj Jackson is the person who attempt to do so, and she couldn't have picked a tougher pageant challenge. The Miss Inglewood delegate is competing in the Miss California Universe 2020 pageant, which sends its winner to the Miss USA one and is part of the Miss universe pageant system.
Miss California Universe along with Miss Texas Universe are considered two of the toughest state pageants to win and qualify for Miss USA in because both have more than 200 contestants competing in them. That is triple the number of contestants Miss Universe has had in recent years.
Miss Universe 2019 only had 90 contestants in this year's pageant won by South Africa's Zozibini Tunzi.
These pageants also have a proud history of sending their winners on to Miss USA and Miss Universe glory. Miss Texas USA and Miss California USA also rank numbers one and two in terms of the number of winners of their respective pageant who have gone on to win Miss USA
A Miss Texas USA has won nine times, with a streak of five consecutive winners in the 1980's. Miss California Universe has had six women win Miss USA.
Jackson won't be the first out trans woman to ever compete in Miss California Universe. That distinction already belongs to Kylan Wenzel, who competed back in 2013.
But Taj is undaunted by the odds, and proud of the history she is making as the first out Black trans contestant at any Miss Universe system pageant in the US and across the Diaspora..
As Miss Inglewood, Taj is looking for fiscal sponsors as the January 26 date of this Miss California 2020 pageant rapidly approaches.
Good luck to you Taj and here's hoping you make history.
As someone who has gotten to do a lot of interesting things in my life, 2019 definitely was one that was chock full of milestones and amazing events.
Going into 2019, it was a personal double anniversary year. April 4 not only marked my 25th transiversary, it was also marked the 20th anniversary of activism on behalf of this community.
Because 2019 is an odd numbered year, it also meant I knew as soon as the ball dropped in Times Square I would be making a lot of trips to Austin for the Texas legislative session.
Seven of them in fact. I also made a few trips to the ATX after The Lege mercifully hit sine die on May 27.
This was also a year in which I made more trips inside of the state of Texas than I did outside of it.
I made several trips to Dallas besides the usual birthday week one for the Black Trans Advocacy Conference (BTAC) and three to San Antonio.
One of the Dallas trips was for Muhlaysia Booker's funeral. Another was Dallas Pride which was held on the Texas State fair complex for the first time. Less than three weeks later was back for the BTAC Leadership Institute in Dallas, and another was for the March For Black Trans Lives.
The trips I made to San Antonio were a May 4 birthday trip to witness the end of Frankie Gonzales-Wolfe's historic campaign for a San Antonio City Council seat that unfortunately fell short, and one in September to the Excellence in Journalism Conference.
That's a nice segue into me talking about how much I was on TV this year.
Much of it has been local. I went on The Isiah Factor Uncensored multiple timeson FOX 26, and had two interviews with Natasha Geiger. Multiple interviews on ABC13 with Chauncey Glover, Miya Shay, and Mycah Hatfield. Various newspaper and media interviews in which I got quoted in everything from CNN to OUT Magazine.
The icing on the cake was taping an eight hour conversation about trans issues for ABC News Nightline with Dee Dee and Diamond.
I even got to go to NYC World Pride, even if it was for 36 hours, thanks to Sara Ramirez. I was one of the movement leaders across the country along with my other H-Town peeps Ashton Woods and Ana Andrea Molina honored onstage as she sang 'Somewhere Over The Rainbow' during the opening concert for it at Brooklyn's Barclay's Center
Speaking of Pride, which was marking its 50th anniversary this year, I got to serve as an honorary Grand Marshal during Houston's Pride Parade this year.
Lot more fun riding in a jeep for the entire length of our nighttime parade and sitting in the VIP section afterwards instead of marching in it. Also got to attend a few events during the week in my role as a honorary grand marshal.
And this year, probably in large part to the heightened media visibility and the recognition that I have been doing this for 20 years, received some major awards.
The Harris County Democratic Party gave me the Barbara Jordan Breaking Barriers one at the JRR Luncheon in May in which I spoke just before Secretary (and should have been president) Hillary Clinton
I also received the Transgender Activist Award from Equality Texas at their Austin gala in November, and the Minnie Fisher Award from the Texas Democratic Women of Galveston County.
I was also named this year for the first time ever to Out Magazine's OUT100.
It wouldn't be a Moni year without me going to a few conferences. In addition to the BTAC and Excellence in Journalism ones I mentioned earlier in this post, I also attended the Netroots Nation one in Philadelphia for the fourth consecutive year, Gender Infinity and the Texas Transgender Nondiscrimination Summit which were both held at UH Clear Lake this year and the NLGJA Conference in New Orleans.
It's also cool anytime I go to these events to reconnect with old friends, meet new ones and also talk to the next generation of leaders in our movement.
It was also nice to make progress toward living up to one of my 2019 New Year's resolutions of getting better connected with the Houston cis Black women community and our local activist community
I got to attend a few events throughout the year that helped facilitate that goal, and looking froward to doing the same in the near future. And yes, got to spend some quality time with my high school classmates. Our 40th reunion is coming up in 10 months.
And always cool to spend some time with my trans fam, where it be in Dallas at BTAC, here in Houston, or wherever I'm doing an event around the country.
Some of those events happen on college campuses and corporate settings, where I'm doing my part to educate people about our Black trans lives and the challenges we face inside and outside the Black TBLGQ community.
So yes, 2019 was definitely an amazing year for me to close out a decade Hope that 2020 is even better
