HRC Back Story

Allyson Robinson, our associate director of diversity (pictured below), is in Orlando tonight to speak and take part in the National Transgender Day of Remembrance.  I thought I would post her prepared remarks for delivery:

As a minister for nearly a decade, I have stood over more caskets than I have the strength to recall at even my strongest moments.  I have stood over the caskets of people who had lived long, full lives that they devoted to the service of others, and over those of people who were cut down before their potential had begun to blossom.  I have stood before families and friends who were grieving parents, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, infant children.  My task at those moments, and my calling, were to speak—to say something that would honor the lives of the people in the caskets and allow healing to begin in the lives of those who had gathered to mourn and to listen. 

But that experience taught me the truth: words do not assuage grief, and cannot possibly do justice to the life and memory of a loved one lost.  It was, at times, almost painfully frustrating.  I have felt that same frustration as I have prepared to share this Transgender Day of Remembrance with you.  What can I possibly say that will help, or that will reverence our dead as they truly deserve?  The only words that arise naturally in my mind are questions.  Why do these things continue to happen?  When will it end?  How many more have to die at the hands of hate?  Questions, and an offering of profound, piercing regret:  I’m sorry.  I’m so, so sorry.  I’m sorry I didn’t come out sooner.  I’m sorry I didn’t speak out louder.  I’m sorry for all the things I could have done to make you safer, but didn’t. 

The Day of Remembrance reminds me that I’m one of the lucky ones, one of the privileged few in our community.  I have a wife and children and parents and friends who love, support, and encourage me.  I have meaningful work that allows me to preserve my sense of human dignity.  I have a roof over my head and I enjoy three square meals a day; I haven’t had to sell my body or my soul to obtain or preserve them.  I live in one of the few places in America where I can dine in a restaurant, shop in a store, or take my children to a public restroom without fear of being kicked out or having police summoned.  I have a community of faith that embraces me, values my gifts, and is fighting for my rights.  All of these things are blessings most people in America take for granted, but which no transgender person can. 

And yet despite my good fortune, like many of you, I’m afraid.  With the faces of those whose lives we commemorate tonight, and the sheer inhuman brutality they faced constantly in my mind, I look at strangers on the street differently.  I worry when I notice someone staring at me on the subway.  I get scared when I hear footsteps behind me in a dark parking lot.  I hug my wife and children tight when I get home each night and thank God I’ve made it.  The Day of Remembrance reminds me that in spite of the privilege that I have been given, I could be next.  This is the world in which we live.  But it doesn’t have to be this way. 

This moment, this very day, is one of the most crucial our community has ever faced, and how we live into this moment will determine the way of life for future generations of transgender people.  For some, it will make the difference between life and death.  But we stand at this crossroads not because of the path that lies before us, but because of the path that lies behind us.  We’re not here because for the first time in our history, legal protection against hate crimes and employment discrimination are within our grasp, or because someone who is not ashamed or afraid to speak our name is about to move into the White House.  We stand at this crucial juncture because of the people whom we memorialize tonight.  We stand here because of their integrity to embody the truth of who they were despite years of harsh social conditioning that told them to deny it.  We stand here because of their courage to live out that truth in full view of a world that is largely hostile to it, a world that at best doesn’t understand it and at worst doesn’t want to.  We have been given this opportunity by virtue of the lives they lived, and by virtue of the deaths they died.  History will judge us by our stewardship of the legacy they have entrusted to us. 

Tonight, let us recommit ourselves to that legacy.  Tonight, I recommit myself to it.  I will live more boldly and speak more loudly.  I will not allow myself or my community to be marginalized—dehumanized—by those who don’t understand us or don’t want to.  I will not allow hate to go unchallenged or ignorance to go uncorrected.  I will admonish allies should they waver and hold elected officials accountable to their commitments and to justice.  I will not allow myself to be distracted, deterred, co-opted, or deferred.  I will settle for nothing less than a country and a world in which our right to exist and our human dignity are enshrined in the law and respected in the public square.  And I will not rest until I can close my eyes, see the faces of Lawrence and Angie and Duanna and Lloyd and the others, and hear them whisper from somewhere beyond this world, “Well done.”