Numbers and names

FERNDALE – Over 50 people attended the Fifth Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance at the Metropolitan Community Church of Detroit in Ferndale Nov. 20. The event was sponsored by Transgender Michigan, Affirmations Lesbian Gay Community Center, and MCCD.
Transgender Day of Remembrance is observed in nearly 100 locations worldwide as a way to honor and remember those individuals killed due to anti-trans violence. Other Michigan events occured in Ann Arbor and Lansing.
Lining the sidewalk before the church's entrance were 38 tombstone-like markers bearing the names, photos, dates, and locations of the people killed due to anti-trans violence since the last Day of Remembrance in Nov. of 2002.
Michael Larson, Program Director at Affirmations, helped make the markers. He said the idea came from Jamie and Michelle Fox-Phillips of TransGender Michigan. "We wanted to do something visual so that people can really see the impact," said Larson. "When we laid them out I was surprised how many there were. Even as we were making them I didn't realize myself how visual it would be."
Larson has been involved with the project since the first Day of Remembrance in Michigan, held outside in the cold on the patio at Affirmations in 1998. Reverend Mark Bidwell, who was in attendance, offered the use of his church for the next year's event, and Transgender Day of Remembrance has been held there each year since.
The evening began with a welcome message from Fox-Phillips followed by an invocation by Rev. Bidwell. Fox-Phillips told the audience that the evening was to honor those people killed by anti-trans violence. Each year the number of deaths has increased. "This by far has been the bloodiest year yet," she said.
Rev. Bidwell spoke standing beneath two tapestries on the wall, one bearing the words, "Whatever is born of God overcomes the world," the other a rainbow. "And bless us tonight as we celebrate their lives and remember the loss," he prayed.
Larson, the first speaker of the evening, read a speech prepared by Gwen Smith, the founder of Transgender Day of Remembrance. "As I read this you're going to hear the number 37 a lot," he said. He then said the number had risen to 38 in between the time Smith wrote the speech and the actual day of the event. The very morning before, he said, the number nearly reached 39. Tiffany Erkins, 22, was ambushed in Cincinnati, Ohio at 3:00 a.m. by two gunmen who yelled anti-gay slurs and fired six shots. She was treated and released for a gunshot wound to the leg.
"My first thought was to edit the speech by changing the number," Larson said. "I decided to keep well enough alone as it serves as a good illustration of how quickly the list changes."
In Smith's speech, she discussed the murders in terms of numbers. "In August, I was looking at twenty-four murders this year, but that number was not at all static," Larson read. "Two months later, it was already into the thirties, and tonight, it stands at thirty-seven."
Larson continued, "To put that into perspective, the average seating capacity in a cross-town bus is around thirty-seven. And that's with people standing. It's one more than three dozen eggs, or six six-packs of one's favorite beverage. It's even seven handfuls of fingers, plus two. In short, it's not all that small of a number. Especially when one is counting deaths."
Coda Stone from Ohio and Jeffrey Montgomery, Executive Director of the Triangle Foundation also spoke. Stone spoke about how finding a transgender community made him feel less alone as he transitioned from female to male. He encouraged visibility to combat prejudice. "The more that the transgender community can be open, the more people will realize we're not monsters," he said.
Montgomery emphasized the relationship between the different experiences and people that make up the LGBT Community. He acknowledged that none of the groups that make up the LGBT acronym are the same. He called them, "four distinct experiences that people bring to life in our community." However, he maintained that we are and must remain a community. "We have to come together because the people who perpetuate these things, who continue to insist that we're all equally damned," he said, "they don't see a distinction."
So that the individuals this event was created to honor and remember did not remain anonymous statistics, the name of each victim killed since 1972 was read aloud. Not all of the victims had names. Some were identified simply by the cross-gender clothing they were wearing at the time: "man dressed in women's clothing" or "unknown cross dresser."
For those who were killed since Nov. 2002, a short first person bio was read.
Readers included artist and writer Charles Alexander, Affirmations Executive Director Leslie Thompson, Affirmations volunteer Gaye Tischler, Jamie Fox-Phillips, Ruth Ellis Center Executive Director Grace McClelland and Program Director Atiba Seitu, Rev. Bidwell, Erin and Jennifer Adriel of Soulforce Detroit, B.C. Cabangbang, and other members of the LGBT community.
Cabangbang said he came to the vigil to show his support for transgender people. "In the gay community transgender people have always been the ones who are most misunderstood," he said, "and by being here I want to give my support, my understanding, and to learn. We're one family and I feel whatever is done to transgender people is also done to me."
The ways the victims had been killed ran the gamut of horror: set on fire, hogtied with the cord from a Playstation, shot in the chest and genitals, beaten, hit in the face with a baseball bat, and one case police had termed an "accidental bludgeoning."
The places the victims were found were equally horrific: in the street, in a shopping cart, in the charred remains of an apartment or bedroom, in a field, in a bathtub, alongside a highway, in a riverbed.
Two of the names read were individuals from Michigan: Nikki Nicholas who was shot to death and found at an abandoned farmhouse in Green Oak Township in Feb. 2003, and Tamyra Michaels who was shot to death in Highland Park in Dec. 2002.
After all the names were read the lights were dimmed and each person held a lit candle as a tribute to the dead. Many sat in silence while others left quietly to join those who had gathered outside the church's door, some hugging, others talking and laughing.
Alison Miller from Washington Township came to the vigil because she is trans. "We need to stand up and be counted and people need to know that we don't forget," she said. "There were 38 people this year and I don't want to be one of them next year."
In the speech read by Larson, Smith ended with a note of hope. "It's not only to remember these thirty-seven we've lost," she wrote, "but for millions more who will live. Together, we can make a world of compassion, of respect, and of love."