Colin Michael Smith and Michelle Dionne Peacock were neither intersex or transgender. However, anti-trans crime claimed the lives of both people this month.
Peacock, 59, overcame numerous cancer attacks. She was reportedly slashed in the chest on June 30 by a man who believed she was trans woman, but she did not live. That man, a fellow citizen of the apartment complex in Richmond, Indiana, where Peacock resided, has been accused of murder.
Smith, 32, was out with friends on July 2 at a club in Portland, Oregon, when he allegedly started harassing and hurling racist insults at one of the group’s trans members. Smith was repeatedly stabbed when he stepped in to defend his friend, whom friends and family referred to as” a protector.” Days later, a suspect was detained and is facing several charges, including death.
White supremacist criminals threaten, harass, and power delays of family-friendly drag queen story time at a time when Republican presidential candidates openly boast about the damages they will impose on the transgender community and their rights, but the hatred they incite does not only affect trans people. Such feelings inspire murder that unmistakably puts all of us at risk, regardless of our sexual or gender identity.
According to the Human Rights Campaign, violence has claimed the lives of at least 26 transgender or nonbinary individuals this month. Because these incidents are n’t always properly reported, as is frequently the case, the actual number is probably higher.
Near the end of his brief career, Jacob Williamson, who companions remembered as interesting and thinking, appeared to be coming into his own. He was 18 years old on June 30 in Pageland, South Carolina. He was turned down by some family members due to his gender identity and moved in with a buddy, Promise Edwards. She remarked,” I wish people had taken the time to get to know his spirit and who he really was rather than who the world made him be.”
Pauli Cakes and Amira Gunde, Fernielli Mary Mora’s friends, recalled her as” so passionately loved by her friends and family and showered all in her career with like” on a GoFundMe page on July 6. The suffering and pain of losing our Mary are beyond comprehension.
On July 21 in Winter Haven, Florida, Camdyn Rider, 21, who used the he/they nouns, was eight months pregnant at the time of his death. Horse wrote on Twitter,” It’s crazy to think that I’m now going to be a father, especially to little boy.” But man, I’m so excited and could n’t be happier to be working with Riley Groover. After killing Rider, Groover, Rider’s partner, committed suicide. Oliver was the intended title for the infant, but it died.
Jean Thomas Butchart, 26, was born on August 4 in Belleville, Michigan. His moniker,” Nature Boy,” was a smile to his passion for” camping, foraging, agriculture, and mushroom-hunting.” He intended to go back to school and pursue a scientific education degree after earning his bachelor’s degree in environmental studies. His mother, Amy Butchart, described him as” a well-loved people and illegal head in the local trans community.”
DeVonnie J’Rae Johnson, 28, was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but relocated to Los Angeles to pursue her artistic aspirations. Johnson’s title was formally added to Senate Resolution 464 on November 15th, which endorsed” the objectives and principles of Transgender Day of Remembrance by recognizing the outbreaks of crime toward transgendered citizens and memorializing the life lost this time.”
Luis Engel Daz Castro, 22, was a pupil at the Universidad de Puerto Rico in Arecibo and employed by the department of education for the country. He was born on August 12 in San Juan, Puerto Rica. His home claimed that during his free time, he enjoyed listening to Latin music and considered Hector Maysonet and Chema con JohnD to be among his friends.
Lewis Page, 62, who identified as femalenonconforming and went by the name Sweet, had two sons and numerous children as of August 16 in Chicago.
Thomas Robertson, 28, in Calumet City, Indiana, on August 17. Robertson, who was nonconforming in terms of sex, loved to change their appearance by changing their hair in various styles and colors. He was known as” Tom- Tom” among companions. Robertson, a native of Chicago, was renowned for his friendly demeanor and nice teeth.
Bre’Asia Bankz, 27, who identified as transgender and loved videos, was born on September 5 in Casa Grande, Arizona. Her diverse tastes were evident in the two movies she hailed as favorites: 1962’s” To Kill a Mockingbird,” which centers on racism in an isolated Alabama city, and” Like and Basketball,” an adored Black romantic episode about the ten-year-long on-and-off-again relationship between two socially hoops-obsessed young men and women.
Globe journalist Renée Graham writes. You may reach her at Renee. www.graham@globe .com @reneeygraham, following her.
