West Dakota, a drag queen in Brooklyn, was checking in on a fellow drag queen and mentor when they began discussing what they said was a painful reality about the George Floyd protests: Black transgender people are disproportionately the victims of police violence, but attending demonstrations against police brutality can often put them in further danger. Her mentor, a drag queen named Merrie Cherry, who is black, said she had seen silent marches in other states and would have felt safer attending an event like that, West Dakota recalled. And so she had an idea: a rally for black trans people that would evoke one of the most notable protests in New York history, the Silent Parade, when the N.A.A.C.P. assembled nearly 10,000 people in 1917, all wearing white and silently marching down Fifth Avenue to demand an end to violence against blacks. Two weeks later, West Dakota’s idea blossomed into one of the most striking demonstrations that New York has seen since the killing of Floyd, a gathering of thousands of people in a sea of white. Its size and intensity stunned bystanders, participants and the organizers themselves. … Black transgender people not only bear a disproportionate burden of police violence but also face high rates of violence and harassment on the street. The American Medical Association said last fall that
killings of transgender women of color in the United States amounted to an epidemic.Two more black transgender women nationwide were killed in less than 24 hours while the event was coming together. Dominique Fells, 27, known as Rem’Mie, was found with stab wounds in Philadelphia on June 8,
Rolling Stone reported. A day later, Riah Milton, 25, was
found shot multiple times in Liberty Township, Ohio.
