“Regardless of whether she was Eddie or Gwen, she was still my kid.”
—Sylvia Guerrero, Gwen Araujo’s mother
Today is the International Transgender Day of Rememberance. Groups around the world are preparing marches, candlelight vigils and film screenings to memorialize transgender victims of hate crimes.
On this day, we remember Gwen Araujo, a transgender teen who was murdered in 2002. After Gwen was killed by local youth in the Silicon Valley suburb of Newark, high school students, residents and civic leaders respond, and in so doing, they struggle with how to deal with a brutal and preventable crime.
Their efforts are captured in this 5-minute film:
"Staging a Response to Hate" is part of Not In Our Town: Northern California. You can find the DVD and free educational guide here. To find a local remembrance event near you, visit http://www.transgenderdor.org/.
anti-transgender
An Advocate for Victims and Survivors of Violence Reflects on the Process of Recovery
By Tina D’Elia
On Friday, a jury found Dwight DeLee guilty of manslaughter in the first degree as a hate crime for killing Lateisha Green. This is the first hate crime conviction for the killing of a transgender person in New York state, and only the second such conviction in the United States. Though the trial is concluded and Lateisha’s family feels justice has been served, transgender people around the world face extremely high rates of discrimination and violence. Posts at Transgriot, Questioning Transphobia, and Feministe address the issues of pronoun usage, the lack of protection for trans people under New York hate crime laws, and the ongoing threat of violence to transgender people.
Kelly Whalen, Producer of NIOT Gwen Araujo story, reflects on transgender victims of hate crime and the law
EDITOR’S UPDATE: After deliberating for two hours, on April 23, 2009, a Weld County jury found Allen Ray Andrade guilty of first-degree murder and a bias-motivated crime in the killing of Angie Zapata. The trial was Colorado’s first successful hate crime prosecution involving a transgender victim. Andrade was sentenced to life in prison without parole, the mandatory penalty in Colorado for first-degree murder.
Below is a video of the statement by Zapata’s family:
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