(Photo: Make the Road New York/ Twitter)
July 10, 2018 By Tara Law
Trans people and their allies marched through Jackson Heights and Corona yesterday for the seventh annual Trans Latinx March.
The march is organized each year by TRIP Queens, the trans justice project of immigrant activist group Make the Road New York. The Trans Latinx March aims to promote awareness that trans people live in the neighborhood and are part of the community.
Several hundred marchers, including many in traditional Latino dresses, started the parade at Make the Road New York’s 92-10 Roosevelt Ave. office and then walked up Roosevelt to Junction Boulevard and back down 37th Avenue.
The march struck a somewhat more serious tone than the Queens Pride parade in Jackson Heights last month. The marchers passed by a shrine to 14 trans people who have been killed in the United States over the past year, and many marchers carried posters decrying transphobia.
Councilmember Daniel Dromm noted in a speech to the crowd that, in some ways, trans people have an even greater need for visibility than the LGBTQ community as a whole.
“This march is the most important march in Queens,” Dromm said. “We often forget about the T, in the LGBTQ.”
The Consul General of Mexico, Diego Gomez Pickering, also made an appearance to give an Ohtli Award to Bianey Garcia, an organizer for Make the Road’s trans project. The honor is among the highest awards handed out by the Mexican government to Mexican citizens living abroad.
Councilmember Francisco Moya also announced at the march that he intends to apply to the city to co-name Answer Triangle— which is located between the intersections of Whitney Avenue, Aske Street and Roosevelt Boulevard— Trans Latinx Triangle.
On Twitter, Moya said that the city should change the name of triangle into something meaningful that embodies, “love and acceptance.”
“Today we’re constantly asking the question, ‘who are we as a city, as a country?’” Moya wrote. “Are we a place that tolerates hate, transphobia and bigotry? Or are we a place that offers refuge to the oppressed, where people are free to express themselves and their love however they want?”
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3 Comments
When does it stop? Also I can’t read Spanish , could they do the signs in English?
Ricky- I guess it will stop when the violence and murder against them stops. You sound narcissistic. Maybe the signs in Spanish aren’t meant for you.
then they should have them in both english and spanish this is america.