The City of West Hollywood and its Transgender Advisory Board recognize November as Transgender Awareness Month. Since its incorporation in 1984, the City of West Hollywood has led the region in the pursuit and implementation of progressive and humane policies, fostering an environment of acceptance in which diversity is celebrated.
The City will host an in person Transgender Day of Remembrance Ceremony on Sunday, November 20, 2022 at 6 p.m. at the City’s Council Chambers/Public Meeting Room, located at 625 N. San Vicente Boulevard.
The ceremony will feature speakers and a reading of names to memorialize people who have been murdered as a result of anti-transgender violence. Transgender Day of Remembrance is part of the City of West Hollywood’s annual recognition of Transgender Awareness Month, which is recognized throughout the nation each November. Transgender Day of Remembrance is an opportunity to look forward to the future and recommit to ending discrimination and transphobia by amplifying the visibility and voices of the transgender community.
More information about this event can be found on the City’s calendar at www.weho.org/calendar. The City encourages every community stakeholder to honor the lives and memories of community members and to take the opportunity to reflect on the work that remains to be done.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) tracks annual statistics of violence against the people in the transgender community. In the latest statistics currently available, HRC has reported that in 2022 there have been at least 31 transgender or gender non-conforming people fatally shot or killed by other violent means in the United States. A disproportionately high number of victims are Black and Latinx transgender women.
The 2022 report follows reports of 41 deaths in 2021; 33 deaths in 2020; 27 deaths in 2019; 26 deaths in 2018; 29 deaths in 2017; and 23 deaths in 2016. According to HRC: “it is clear that fatal violence disproportionately affects transgender women of color, and that the intersections of racism, sexism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia and unchecked access to guns conspire to deprive them of employment, housing, healthcare, and other necessities, barriers that make them vulnerable.”
This wave of violence has been declared an epidemic by the American Medical Association. Rates of actual violence or deaths may, in fact, be higher but anti-transgender violence can be difficult to accurately measure, as victims are sometimes misgendered in reports, which can delay awareness of deadly incidents.
The City of West Hollywood has been one of the most outspoken cities in the nation in advocating for the legal rights of LGBTQ people. More than 40 percent of residents in the City of West Hollywood identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.
The City of West Hollywood is one of the first municipalities to form a Transgender Advisory Board, which addresses matters of advocacy on behalf of transgender people in the areas of education, community awareness, and empowerment, and makes recommendations to the West Hollywood City Council.
Through its Transgender Advisory Board, the City of West Hollywood regularly co-sponsors programming and recognizes Transgender Awareness Month and Transgender Day of Remembrance each November. For more information about the City of West Hollywood’s Transgender Awareness Month events, visit www.weho.org/lgbtq.
Elephant in the room: majority of murders of trans women are directly related to the unmitigated risks of survival sex work. The ideologues are quick to claim what suits their agenda.. in the last few years trans liberation has been co-opted to advance a top down erosion of Constitutional gun ownership. Stop using our communities tragedy for ideological goals. It’s all so tiresome..
Would the erasure of the Temple Beth El and theoretically erasure of their congregation composed of many remaining Holocaust Survivors fall under the purview of HRC? This seems a question for the City, Human Rights Attorney Zekiah Wright and alleged advocate for Iranian Human Rights Immigrants Council Member Sepi Shyne. Are not Human Rights an international concern or are the subjects cherry picked according to a suitable occasion? Human Rights should not appear on a selective menu, they are understandably and universally recognized as HUMAN RIGHTS.