The cloudy sky matched the sea of white outside Brooklyn Museum on Sunday, where thousands gathered for the second annual Brooklyn Liberation march. Like last year's inaugural event, the march brought together LGBTQ+ people to highlight the needs of the most vulnerable among us. Hosts Joshua Obawole and Junior Mint set the tone by kicking things off with a call for Black queer and trans youth to come to the front — along with deaf and hard of hearing people, in order to better see the ASL interpreters provided.
The march originated last year amid the nationwide uprising against police brutality, while also seeking to draw attention to the ongoing crisis of violence against Black trans people. Inspired by a 1917 protest for racial justice, an estimated 15,000 protestors clad in white took to the streets of Brooklyn last summer, which is thought to be the largest protest ever for Black trans lives.
While this year’s march continued to center Black trans people, it specifically spotlighted what one speaker referred to as the “genocide” facing trans youth. A press release characterized the march as “an emergency action in response to the more than 100 pieces of legislation that have been filed in over 34 states,” and bills limiting youth access to sports participation and medical care signed into law in at least 8 states, including Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, and West Virginia.
That record-breaking legislative assault on trans youth is why Qween Amor came to the event. Amor has been dancing through New York Pride every summer for a decade, but she’s also an EMT and a student nurse who seeks to provide equitable, safe health care to LGBTQ+ people. She tells them. that what’s happening to trans youth across the country feels “very problematic, especially because I am fucking trans.”
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“A lot of times we do not feel safe accessing health care,” says Amor, who was gyrating atop a speaker as demonstrators filed into the plaza. “Ultimately, what is happening is that the United States government is sexualizing and exploiting the bodies of children. It doesn't matter whether they're trans or not. Don't tell me that there is any fundamental excuse, religious or otherwise, to deny health care to children.”
But if you asked each attendee at the march why they were there, you might receive a thousand different answers. Senna, who also attended last year’s march, carried a hand-painted sign that said “Arm the Dolls.” It depicted the Trans Pride flag above neon illustrations of women toting pepper spray, tasers, and brass knuckles.
“A lot of trans women, especially trans women of color, don’t feel safe,” she said of her inspiration for the sign. “I wanted to show examples of what being able to have the tools to defend ourselves looks like.”
The diversity of perspectives and voices on display demonstrated the breadth of issues affecting young trans people in 2021, according to those who spoke at the rally. Speakers Qween Jean, Joela Rivera, Lafi Melo, Anesu Nyatanga, Shéár Avory, and Schuyler Bailar addressed a wide spectrum of subjects in their speeches, whether it was abolition, gentrification, or Palestinian liberation, but they claimed that each issue was connected in the intersectional fight for trans liberation.
“Our struggles are each unique but they are undeniably connected, by state violence, white supremacy, colonialism, and injustice,” Melo, a Palestinian artist and activist draped in a keffiyeh.
The rally formally began by honoring the lives of the 27 trans Americans who have lost their lives to violence in 2021, which is on track to set a new yearly record for deadly anti-trans violence. That tribute was personal to many speakers and protestors. Qween Jean, co-founder of the Stonewall Marches, said the weekly demonstration in front of Stonewall Inn was directly inspired by the call for trans survival that came out of last year’s Brooklyn Liberation.
“Things cannot resume because there’s still an ongoing crisis that affects transgender people, in particular Black trans femmes,” she said, referencing the so-called “return to normal” following the pandemic.” “The rate of violence, the rate of HIV infection is something that we cannot be comfortable with.”
When Jean took the stage with Rivera, the organizer with whom she co-founded the Stonewall Protests, they were greeted with raucous cheers, then silence as people listened to them speak on the myriad crises facing the trans community. Rivera addressed the 10 p.m. “curfew” imposed upon Manhattan’s Washington Square Park by the New York Police Department (NYPD) at the beginning of June, leading to 23 people being arrested during the first week of Pride month.
“NYPD put a curfew on the park because the people who call that park home were making gentrifiers feel uncomfortable and unsafe,” she said. “If you don’t want people living in a park, give them housing. Many of the people living in that park are still suffering from the war on drugs, offer them resources.”
“When I say abolition now there should be no speculation, there should be no fear,” Rivera added. “The police are obsolete.”
Jean corroborated the lack of need for police by emphasizing the community presence at the march. “We do not have to wait for freedom to come,” she said. “We do not have to wait for deliverance. Our deliverance is right here.”
But as trans people fight for their liberation, Jean acknowledged the “state of emergency” facing trans people both past and present, particularly people of color. The majority of victims in the now-annual epidemic of anti-trans violence are Black or Latinx, such as Tony McDade, a Black transgender man who was shot and killed by Florida police in May 2020. “What a shame that they weren’t given the love they deserve while they were alive,” she said.
Before the crowds embarked on their mile and a half route to Fort Greene Park, Jean ended the rally portion by channeling organizer Raquel Willis’ chant from last year, balancing the celebratory and mournful moods of the event. “I believe in my power!” she chanted above the crowd, as they chanted back at her. “I believe in trans youth power!”
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