From left:
Trans Americans recently lost to violence include Queasha Hardy and Brian
Powers; no photo was available of the third victim, Tiffany Harris.
Two more
transgender women have become homicide victims this week, and it’s also been
reported that a trans man was shot to death in June.
Tiffany
Harris, 32, was stabbed to death in New York City’s Bronx borough early Sunday,
local TV station WPIX reports.
Harris, who was deadnamed and misgendered by some other news outlets, was found
in the hallway of an apartment building around 1:30 a.m. She was taken to a
nearby hospital, where she was pronounced dead about 2:20 a.m. She had lived in
another Bronx building, about a mile from where she was found.
Police have
released a photo of a man they are seeking for questioning; they said he likely
had a relationship with Harris. They have not characterized her death as a hate
crime. They asked that anyone with information about the crime call (800)
577-8477 (TIPS).
Black trans
woman Queasha Hardy, 24, was found shot to death on a street in Baton Rouge,
La., Monday afternoon, according to The
Advocate, a Baton Rouge newspaper that is not related to this
publication. The outlet initially identified her as male, but several friends
told reporters she was a trans woman.
She is being
widely mourned on her Facebook page. Friends planned a balloon release in her
memory for Tuesday afternoon.
Anyone with
information about the shooting is asked to call Baton Rouge Police at (225)
389-4869 or Baton Rouge Crime Stoppers at (225) 344-7867.
In Akron,
Ohio, Black trans man Brian Powers, a cook for a catering company who was
nicknamed “Egypt,” was found dead on a sidewalk outside a church June 13.
Police later said Powers was killed by a single bullet that went through both
thighs, and they classified his death as a homicide, the Akron
Beacon Journal reports.
Police have no
leads in the case, and relatives and activists recently told the paper they
fear the matter isn’t being taken seriously because of his race and gender
identity.
“I would think
someone, you know, would know something,” his sister Vivian Powers-Smith said.
“Nobody’s saying anything. ... The police, they say they have no leads.”
Added Steve
Arrington of the Akron AIDS Collaborative, who met Powers at a drop-in center
for LGBTQ+ African-Americans: “I’m kind of disturbed when they say ‘Black Lives
Matter.’ I say, ‘Whose lives, my life? Or just heterosexual Black people’s
lives? What about my LGBTQ brothers and sisters? They’re Black. Do their lives
matter?’”
Powers’s
family has set up a GoFundMe page
to raise reward money. Relatives also plan to hold a vigil August 29 to honor
him and heighten awareness of crimes against LGBTQ+ people in general.
Anyone
with information about his death is asked call Akron detectives at (330)
375-2490. Callers have the option of anonymity.
Activists are
mourning all the recent deaths, noting that at least two of the three were
Black; Harris’s race has not been reported. “While the national focus on the
effort to ensure #AllBlackLivesMatter shifts to the upcoming presidential
election and the unrelenting pressures associated with COVID-19, Black trans
people are still being murdered,” said a statement issued by David Johns,
executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition. “There is not
enough attention being paid to the damage that racism, anti-Blackness, and
transphobia continue to have, and this must end.”
SOURCE: ADVOCATE
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