Tanya Aspansa Walker, a transgender Army veteran, and Jennifer Louise Lopez, founder of the T.R.A.N.S. Network, at Washington Square. | DONNA ACETO
PHOTO ESSAY BY DONNA ACETO | As Transgender Awareness Week came to a close on Monday, November 20, Transgender Day of Remembrance was solemnly marked in several locations in Lower Manhattan.
At Christopher Park, the site of the Stonewall National Monument, the Transgender Flag took its place alongside the Rainbow, American, and NYC Parks Flags — recognition made possible by the activism of Michael Petrelis and Steven Love Menendez.
LaLa Zannell, lead organizer at the Anti-Violence Project, speaks at City Hall. | COURTESY: NYC AVP
At City Hall, transgender activists and allies, including the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, the New York City Anti-Violence Project, and Amida Care, rallied and held up signs bearing the names of transgender Americans who have fallen victim to hate violence.
Longtime activist Randolfe Wicker, a close friend of Sylvia Rivera’s, at Christopher Park. | DONNA ACETO
Later, as darkness fell, Rise and Resist led a similar commemoration at Washington Square Park, where the names of transgender violence victims were read, the crowd responded with, “Say their name,” a person in the crowd would read a paragraph about that victim’s life, and then the crowd would chant, “Trans lives matter.”
Kellen Gold and Jamie Bauer, Rise and Resist organizers of the Washington Square vigil. | DONNA ACETO
At the World Trade Center, the spire of One World Trade Center was lit for the evening in the colors of the Transgender Flag.
The spire of One World Trade Center lit in the colors of the Transgender Flag on November 20. | COURTESY: ONEWTC
The transgender colors join the rainbow colors on the flagstaff at the Stonewall National Monument in Christopher Park. | DONNA ACETO
Rise and Resist’s Jay Walker. | DONNA ACETO
Melissa Sklarz, a longtime activist who is development director at the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Network. | DONNA ACETO
In front of the Transgender Flag in Christopher Park, Summer Minerva reads the late Sylvia Rivera’s famed speech at the 1973 Christopher Street Liberation Day Rally. | DONNA ACETO
