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Transgender Activists Honor 22 Slain Victims in US, 331 Worldwide

Reuters

   NEW YORK - Layleen Cubilette-Polanco had experienced some rough patches
   in her 27 years but had tried to change course, seeking to switch out
   of previous jobs as a go-go dancer and sex worker for employment in
   places like McDonald's and Walgreens, her sister said.

   She never completed that journey. Cubilette-Polanco died in June of
   complications from epilepsy in New York's notorious Rikers Island jail
   where she spent her final two months, unable to make $500 bail.

   On Wednesday, transgender advocates across the United States
   commemorated people like Cubilette-Polanco for the Transgender Day of
   Remembrance.

   Vigils such as one in New York that culminated in front of the
   Stonewall Inn LGBTQ landmark drew attention to at least 22 transgender
   people, almost all of them black women, who have been killed so far in
   2019. A similar number have been killed in each of the past seven
   years, as tracked by the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ
   advocacy group in the United States.

   Globally, at least 311 were killed in the 12-month period ending Sept.
   30, the second-highest total on record, according to the Trans Murder
   Monitoring project of the Berlin-based group Transrespect versus
   Transphobia Worldwide.

   Of those 130 were killed in Brazil and 63 in Mexico, the project said.

   The U.S. campaign made special note of Cubilette-Polanco.

   Though she was not a homicide victim, her story illustrates the
   insecurity of trans women of color, who are more likely to be
   unemployed and lack access to healthcare.

   After a youth spent helping others, whether rescuing stray animals or
   bringing home runaway kids needing a place to stay, she decided to
   start helping herself, sister Melania Brown said.

   "The last couple of months of her life, she wanted the change. She
   wanted to get a real job. She wanted to fulfill herself in society, and
   society let her down," said Brown, who believed that discrimination
   never gave the Dominican-born U.S. citizen a fair chance in the job
   market.

   Cubilette-Polanco was arrested in April on charges of misdemeanor
   assault and theft over an altercation with a taxi driver. Bail was set
   at $500 because of a 2017 prostitution arrest, local media reported,
   citing arrest records.

   She lived with epilepsy and schizophrenia, according to a lawsuit her
   family filed against New York City's Department of Correction.

   The Human Rights Campaign has recorded at least 157 homicides of
   transgender people since 2013, nearly all of them women of color.

   More than 100 demonstrators gathered in New York on Wednesday night to
   remember those slain, meeting at the Christopher Street pier, where
   transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson died in 1992, and marching to
   the Stonewall, site of the 1969 uprising considering the birth of the
   modern queer rights movement.

   "We need to invest more in our trans community. Don't just send me
   roses when I'm gone," said Kiara St. James, executive director of the
   New York Transgender Advocacy Group.

   The names of victims were read, and people dressed in white, their
   faces veiled, held up portraits of the dead.

   Another speaker, who goes only by the name Synthia, said she had been
   the victim of a hateful act of aggression in which a man pulled a gun
   on her.

   "I survived that day knowing my name could have been on the list I just
   read," she said. "So for me, Transgender Day Remembrance is about
   living survivors that walk these streets daily just trying to survive."