"We Have to Fight": LGBTQ Kids Stage Walkouts, Marches Against Anti-Trans Bills

LGBTQ advocates are taking to the streets to protest the coordinated legislative attacks on transgender people nationwide after successfully beating back bans on gender-affirming care for trans youth in West Virginia and Wyoming.

Trans activists have organized demonstrations at capitol buildings across the country and are currently coordinating protests for Trans Day of Visibility on March 31 and Trans Day of Vengeance on April 1. Activists have planned rallies at the state capitol of Georgia, which recently became the 10th state to ban gender-affirming care; Tucson, Arizona; the Missouri state capitol; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; New York City; and the Kansas state capitol, among others.

“We are here and we will not allow ourselves to be erased,” Trans Radical Activist Network, a group organizing a Washington, D.C. rally to stop trans genocide, wrote in a tweet.

Independent reporter and transgender activist Erin Reed told Truthout that the protests draw on a long history of LGBTQ resistence.

“I’ve seen #DIYHRT trending and I’ve seen mutual aid being one of the ways people are responding [to anti-trans legislation],” she said. “I’m also seeing tactics that we haven’t seen since the ACT UP era … the tactics we’re seeing right now are more resistant and show resolve in the face of these policies being passed.”

The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) is a grassroots direct action group that was founded in the 1980s to advocate for AIDS research, treatment and policy change. ACT UP organizers famously choreographed public “die-ins” to draw attention to their demands, taking aim at lawmakers, Wall Street, the Catholic Church and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Transgender activists have returned to these tactics as anti-trans policies are being introduced in statehouses across the country.

https://truthout.org/articles/we-have-to-fight-lgbtq-kids-stage-walkouts-marches-against-anti-trans-bills/

“We need to be loud, ” said one youth activist at a march in Colorado. “We are here and we are powerful.”