Caught Between A Rock And A Hard Place

For us all we want is to live our lives in peace. We don’t want special rights or treatment we just a job, a roof over our heads, and food on our plates.

But for many trans people those are out of our reach.

As a homeless transgender woman, she had turned to sex work to survive. Then she was killed.
The Washington Post
By Samantha Schmidt
April 6, 2019

Ashanti Carmon was about 16 years old when she first stood out on K Street in the nation’s capital to look for sex work. Rejected by her family for her identity as a transgender woman, she was homeless and desperate.

In the decade that followed, Carmon moved from friends’ couches to budget motels, finding support from a community of other transgender women in Washington. She fell in love, moved in with her boyfriend and sought jobs at fast food restaurants, her friends said. She started relying less and less on sex work, knowing how dangerous the streets could be for someone like her.

But last weekend, she was back on Eastern Avenue, a popular strip for sex workers and a gathering place for transgender women, straddling the border between Northeast Washington and Maryland. At 6:20 a.m. on March 30, police were called to the 5000 block of Jost Street in Prince George’s County, Md., just off Eastern Avenue, to reports of gunfire.

Carmon, 27, had been shot multiple times and was pronounced dead at the scene.
[…]
Her death serves as a painful reminder of the challenges transgender women of color face when seeking employment and affording the high cost of living in the D.C. area, local advocates say.

We need to end the hate, to end the bigotry, to end the discrimination, and to end the violence!

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The Crisis of Violence Against Transgender People Is Not a “Myth”Truth Out
Gillian Branstetter, Rewire.News
April 6, 2019

I learned a lot about myself while sitting in the first U.S. congressional hearing about the Equality Act this week.

As debate about the act—which would extend federal nondiscrimination laws to LGBTQ people nationwide—began in earnest, I learned that I and other transgender women are tricksters and frauds intent on supplanting “real” women throughout public life. I learned I’m a threat to women’s sports, a topic many committee members only seem to care about when it can be wielded as a cudgel against transgender people. And perhaps most shockingly, I learned that the well-documented crisis of violence transgender people face across this country is, in the words of one witness at the hearing, a “myth.”
[…]
Family rejection, unemployment, poverty, and a lack of stable housing increase the likelihood anyone will face violence. This is most certainly true of transgender people, and Black and Latina transgender women in particular. The USTS found that transgender people are three times as likely to be unemployed as the rest of the United States, and Black transgender women are four times as likely to be unemployed as the general U.S. population. The survey found 1 in 6 transgender people have been fired from a job because of their gender identity, and 1 in 4 Black respondents experienced the same.

We need to end the hate, to end the bigotry, to end the discrimination, and to end the violence!

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Video of Transgender Woman Attack Forces France to Confront Anti-LGBT Attitudes
A video depicting a shocking hate attack against a transgender woman in Paris is serving as a wake-up call for France.
The Daily Beast
By Erin Zaleski
April 5, 2019

PARIS—Julia was trying to enter a metro station when the violent attack began.

The 31-year-old transgender woman was returning from the Canal St. Martin in Paris’s trendy, energetic 10th Arrondissement on Sunday when she ran into a crowd of protesters near Place de la République, who were demonstrating against Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika prior to his resignation. Sporting a striped tunic and a black miniskirt, Julia approached the steps to the station when several men blocked her path.
[…]
The widespread media coverage of the incident has served as a troubling wake-up call in a country that is widely viewed as laid-back and welcoming toward the LGBT community.
[…]
The video of the brazen daylight assault has already been viewed over 2 million times, and has garnered outrage from LGBT activist groups, politicians, and Parisians alike. Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo took to Twitter to condemn the attack saying that those responsible “should be identified and prosecuted.”
[…]
Indeed according to a report published by SOS Homophobie last May, there were 186 attacks against transgender people in France in 2017—a 54 percent increase over a 12-month period.

Nationalism, Fascism, white supremacists are increasing around the world.

As the global economy continues to squeeze the lower and middle classes the “isms” are increasing.

Axios reports…

By the numbers: Those 400 Americans own more than the 150 million adults in the bottom 60% of the wealth distribution. According to the World Inequality Database maintained by Zucman and others, the bottom 60% saw their share of the nation’s wealth fall from 5.7% in 1987 to 2.1% in 2014. Zucman, who advised Elizabeth Warren on her wealth tax, finds that "U.S. wealth concentration seems to have returned to levels last seen during the Roaring Twenties."

And what happened in the 1930s?

The Great Depression.

The rise of nationalism and fascism.

The rise of persecution of Jews, Gypsies, gays, lesbians, trans people, and the disabled.

We need to end the hate, to end the bigotry, to end the discrimination, and to end the violence! We need to end the inequalities.