Associated Students of the University of Arizona, Pride Alliance, LGBTQ Affairs and Southern Arizona Gender Alliance will be hosting a Transgender Day of Remembrance event on Thursday, Nov. 16, from 5:30–7:30 p.m., in front of the fountain at Old Main.
The purpose of the event will be to raise awareness about the hate crimes committed against the transgender community, as well as honor and mourn transgender people who have been murdered in the past years. The victims will be honored by name with candles and a procession after the ceremony.
“The Transgender Day of Remembrance was started by transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith as a vigil to honor the memory of Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was killed in 1998,” according to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation website. “The Transgender Day of Remembrance seeks to highlight the losses we face due to anti-transgender bigotry and violence,” wrote Smith on the website. “With so many seeking to erase transgender people — sometimes in the most brutal ways possible — it is vitally important that those we lose are remembered, and that we continue to fight for justice.”
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The UA event will be hosted earlier than the National Day of Remembrance, which is Nov. 20, because some students who help organize the event will already have gone home for Thanksgiving break.
Scheduled speakers include members of the Tucson transgender community and allies. The combined Desert Voices and Reveille choirs will perform at the end of the vigil.
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