Thousands turned out on Sunday for a rally and silent march for Black Trans Lives Matter on Sunday in front of the Brooklyn Museum. Police scanners estimated more than 15,000 people attended the rally.
CBS News reports: “The event was organized by groups including The Okra Project, which provides meals to black trans people, and the Marsha P. Johnson Institute, named for the black trans activist who was a prominent figure in the Stonewall uprising of 1969. The rally began in front of the Brooklyn Museum and included speeches from writer and activist Raquel Willis as well as the family of Layleen Polanco. The 27-year-old trans woman was found unresponsive in a Riker’s Island jail cell earlier this month while in solitary confinement.”
On Saturday, on what was to be the city’s annual LGBTQ Pride festival, thousands marched for transgender rights and racial equality in Boston.
WBZ reported: “The group Trans Resistance says it is made up of trans people of color and their allies. Saturday’s event was seemingly inspired by the recent climate of protest in the nation and the variety of voices being heard. Demonstrator Megan Anderson said the time is right for protest. ‘We are standing here together in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and our black transgender brothers and sisters. … We have a monster in the White House right now who is trying to erase transgender women.’”
And in Los Angeles, thousands more turned out for a march for LGBTQ rights and racial justice.
As Towleroad’s John Wright reported on Friday, the Trump administration late this week finalized a regulation that removes Obama-era transgender nondiscrimination protections in healthcare.
Roger Severino, director of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services, told the New York Times the timing of the regulation — on the fourth anniversary of the Pulse massacre and in the middle of LGBT Pride month — was “purely coincidental.” Severino also falsely claimed the change was “equivalent to housekeeping.”
From the NYT: The rule, which does not differ much from a proposed version released last year, is part of a broad Trump administration effort across multiple areas of policy — including education, housing, and employment, as well as health care — to narrow the legal definition of sex discrimination so that it does not include protections for transgender people. … Transgender rights advocates criticized the timing for another reason: the coronavirus. “It’s really, really horrendous to not only gut nondiscrimination protections, but to gut nondiscrimination protections in the middle of a pandemic,” said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, the deputy executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. “This rule opens a door for a medical provider to turn someone away for a Covid-19 test just because they happen to be transgender.”
