Transgender Day of Remembrance

Floor Speech

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Ms. JACOBS of California. Madam Speaker, I thank Congresswoman Newman for yielding and thanks to the Equality Caucus for organizing this Special Order.

As the gentlewoman mentioned, I am the proud sister of a trans brother and a gender nonconforming sibling. I am also the proud Representative of Hillcrest, the heart of San Diego's LGBTQ-plus community, so this issue is deeply personal to me and to the people whom I love.

Every time that we hear about another trans person being murdered, I think about my siblings and my constituents, and my heart breaks because this epidemic of violence has gone on for too long.

For too long, trans voices have been silenced, ignored, and disrespected. Whether they are trying to access healthcare, trying to find housing, or even when they are just trying to go about their daily lives, our trans neighbors and friends face discrimination, harassment, and a pervasive lack of resources.

Even in this body, we have colleagues actively working to prevent equality for the trans community who continue to misgender and dehumanize our trans friends and family and continue denying them the support they need and are trying to keep them on the margins of our society.

This rhetoric and this anti-trans legislation making its way through the country has real-world consequences. With the recent news of the killing of Marquiisha Lawrence in South Carolina, 2021 just became the deadliest year on record for trans and nonbinary people. This year alone at least 45 trans people have been killed.

It is, at least, because all too often when trans people are killed, the details of their lives are misreported. They are misgendered or deadnamed in police reports and death certificates. So not only are their lives being taken from them, their authentic identity--who they really were and fought so hard to be--is also being erased. So we must continue to say the names of people like Poe Black and Natalia Smut who were killed this year in California.

Their lives are a reminder that we must continue to fight for trans equality especially for transwomen of color.

As important as it is for us to celebrate the lives of the trans people who were taken from us, we also need to celebrate trans people when they are still alive. So this Transgender Awareness Week, let us commit to uplifting trans people when they are still here not only after they are gone.

I honor the strength and resilience of the trans community. I will continue to make their voices heard in the Halls of Congress, and I will continue to advocate for the support that they have been denied for far too long.

I want any young person who is watching this to know that they are perfect, they are loved, and they are needed in this world exactly the way they are, and I will be here every day fighting for them.

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