Over 100 people gather for a somber rally on Transgender Day of Remembrance in front of City Hall in San Francisco on Nov. 20, 2024, an annual event honoring lives lost to violence against transgender people. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)
For those gathered under umbrellas on the steps of San Francisco City Hall to remember the lives of transgender people lost to violence over the past year, the somber event felt not only like a vigil but like a preparation for struggles to come.
More than 150 people came together for the city’s Transgender Day of Remembrance event, holding pink, blue and white trans pride flags, electric candles, and signs bearing the names and images of victims.
“The bad news is, this weather is very appropriate: we have a storm to weather,” trans activist KaiKai Bee Michaels said to attendees. “I think that we have some hard times ahead of us. That kind of sucks. It builds strength. We have a lot of work to do. And I think we’re going to do that work.”
Sponsored
Transgender Day of Remembrance comes at a frightening time for the community as it braces for a second Donald Trump presidency. Throughout the 2024 campaign, trans people were a target of Trump and the Republican Party’s culture war rhetoric — stoking fears about trans women in sports, promising to pull federal funding from hospitals that perform gender-affirming care, and accusing schools of sexualizing children by speaking with them about gender identity and sexuality.
On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R–La.) announced that Capitol Hill restrooms and changing rooms would be restricted by “biological sex,” essentially barring trans people from using facilities that match their gender identity — just two weeks after Sarah McBride (D–R.I.) was elected as the first trans member of Congress.
As California prepares to lead the fight against many of Trump’s political promises, San Francisco will also likely be at the forefront.
The city’s sanctuary status makes it a place many trans folks come to when they don’t feel safe in their hometowns, according to Honey Mahogany, director of San Francisco’s Office of Transgender Initiatives.
Marcela Ruiz listens to speakers during a rally on Transgender Day of Remembrance in front of City Hall in San Francisco on Nov. 20, 2024, an annual event honoring lives lost to violence against transgender people. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)
“Because they are not able to access the health care that they need, families have trans kids who live in states where their state legislatures are enforcing bans on health care, bans on sports, or even the ability for them to transition socially in schools,” she told KQED. “They’re making plans to move to places like San Francisco.”
The event held Wednesday honored trans people who have died due to violence and oppression. Its organizers said it was a space to “remember, grieve, and heal — while also imagining a future of safety and liberation for trans communities,” according to a post on social media.
It was the first Trans Day of Remembrance that Susan Spencer, 77, has attended. She said that recent events had made it important for her to show up in support of trans members of her church, St. John’s Episcopal.
“These are the laws that have been passed. It is the deaths that have occurred. It is the abuse on the streets of people,” Spencer told KQED. “So many things that aren’t allowing people to be free and to be who they are.”
People gathered for a rally on Transgender Day of Remembrance hold candles in the air in front of City Hall in San Francisco on Nov. 20, 2024, an annual event honoring lives lost to violence against transgender people. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)
Across the country, 36 trans and gender-expansive people have been killed in acts of violence in the past year, and a similar number died in 2023, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
This includes Michelle Henry, who was 25 years old when she was found dead in a downtown San Francisco residence in May, according to an SFPD news release. The death was ruled a homicide, and the medical examiner found that Henry had suffered multiple stab wounds and was strangled, according to the Bay Area Reporter, which reported that police did not have evidence the killing was motivated by hate.
Mahogany said Henry grew up in San Francisco and became well-known within the local trans community.
“She was formerly homeless, was able to engage in services, was housed, was a participant in the S.F. LGBT Center’s youth program,” she told KQED. “I think people were really excited for the progress that she had made in her life and for the life that waited for her ahead. For her life to be cut short at 25, in a very violent way, was really disturbing for a lot of people here in San Francisco, in our community.”
People gather for a rally on Transgender Day of Remembrance in front of City Hall in San Francisco on Nov. 20, 2024, an annual event honoring lives lost to violence against transgender people. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)
In 2023, Banko Brown, a Black trans man, was shot and killed by a security guard at a Walgreens store in San Francisco.
“I know that for many of us today, Trans Day of Remembrance, is a really tough time,” Mahogany said during the rally. “Many of us know people who have passed, many of us know people who have passed due to violence.”
She said that these deaths are a reminder of the dangers that anti-trans rhetoric carries.
Her hope is for the city to rally around the trans community and defy the fear-mongering and divisive language coming from prominent Republican representatives and right-wing interest groups.
‘We continue to fight back against anti-trans rhetoric or any kind of rhetoric that seeks to divide us,” she told KQED. “Divide and conquer has proven a very effective strategy. It is the way that fascism comes to the front, but it’s also a way in which those who are powerful, those with a lot of money, those with interests in keeping the working class and the middle-class populace down — that’s the way that they maintain their power.”
