2020 Transgender Day of Remembrance & Resilience

Landon J. Woolston is organizing this fundraiser.

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Amidst a global pandemic, economic fallout, national uprisings aimed at addressing over four centuries of racial inequities, and near-constant political threats targeting the rights/lives of trans people, your support is needed for this year’s Miami Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDORR) — now more than ever.

All around the world on November 20th, people come together for Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) events to mourn and honor the lives lost to anti-transgender violence, transphobia, and at times, suicide.

In 2013, after a local white gay male "ally" delivered a speech at Miami's TDOR written by a trans woman of color, failing to credit her, and owning her story as his own, several local trans people vowed to never let that happen again.

Since then, the Miami Transgender Day of Remembrance and Resilience (TDORR) grassroots planning committee has brought the community together to respectfully mourn and honor the lives of trans people lost, while also focusing on resiliency, and uplifting the lives of trans people living in our community.

We center trans/non-binary performers and speakers, and the event itself is organized by an entirely trans/non-binary committee. Some years, over 200 people have attended our TDORR, which has been held on the grounds of Barry University since 2013. This year, we will be hosting TDORR virtually, with an intentional focus on providing healing spaces, especially for trans/non-binary folks.

All proceeds raised go directly towards purchasing event-related materials (including access to the virtual platform, HopIn), along with providing a small stipend to all trans/non-binary speakers/performers and the TDORR planning committee members for their time, brilliance, and contributions.

For many in the transgender community, November 20th is a holy day on which we come together to mourn, uplift, love, and affirm one another. Each year, we can only hope that we will all be together to share space again on the same day next year.

However, we know that the grim reality is that someone among us will likely be gone.

Since our TDORR event last year, we lost yet another one of our very own right here in South Florida -- Clio Kalliope, a 20 year old Black non-binary young person, who was murdered at a local youth shelter. Clio’s killer walked free just three weeks later, on a claim of self-defense, just as many others have when they’ve taken the lives of our trans/non-binary siblings.

One part of our annual TDORR event is the Remembrance portion, where we will uniquely mourn and honor the irreplaceable lives lost locally, around the country, and throughout the world. The picture below is from last year's event (2019), where we did another live, interactive community installation highlighting the lives of all of the people we lost last year.

The second component of our TDORR event includes our Resiliency and healing pieces, which will continue to focus on uplifting and celebrating the lives of trans people living in our community, and creating space for trans/non-binary people to come together to heal. This includes performances by local trans spoken word artists, trans authors, trans singers and songwriters, and trans-identified drag performers.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of trans people are dying every year. This is especially true for trans women of color, whose lives are stolen from us constantly locally and abroad. This is an epidemic. We must come together in community, as trans/non-binary people and allies, to honor and lift these lives up.

By contributing to this event, you're not only supporting us to honor trans lives lost with dignity and grace, but you're also contributing to local trans people's existence, survival, and radical acts of resilience and healing.

(Art by Jack Lee Jordan)

We thank you for your support and look forward to ‘seeing’ you virtually, on HopIn (register: https://hopin.to/events/tdorrvirtual2020) at 6pm on Friday, November 20th, 2020.