Transgender community remembers hate victims

Oakland Tribune, Nov 20, 2007 by Lisa Fernandez

Throughout the nation, supporters of the transgender community will unite today to speak out against intolerance and violence.

Included among the services, vigils and protests scheduled for National Transgender Day of Remembrance is a San Jose event and one in Los Angeles that will remember Gwen Araujo, a transgender 17- year-old Newark student murdered five years ago.

In San Jose, guests are invited to the Billy DeFrank Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Community Center to hear Sylvia Guerrero, Araujo's mother.

Araujo was beaten, strangled and then buried in a shallow grave near Placerville in 2002 by four men who discovered she was a biological male.

Also scheduled to speak at the event is Shelly Prevost, a Fremont documentarian whose film about Araujo, "Trained in the Ways of Men," debuted in March at San Jose's Cinequest film festival.

In Los Angeles, the transgender community also will honor Araujo with a memorial at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Crescent Heights.

The purpose of the events is to show that as a group, transgender individuals demand equality, respect and legal protections at a federal level, said Coral Lopez, spokeswoman for Bienestar, one of the groups organizing the Los Angeles event.

Only 11 states, including California, have hate crime laws protecting gender identity.

This year, 16 people from Iraq to Louisiana were killed because of "anti-transgender hatred and violence," said Ethan St. Pierre, board chair of the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition. In San Francisco, Ruby Rodriguez was found in the street, naked and strangled in March -- typical of the brutality in transgender killings, organizers said.

"Often, their throats are slit, they're dismembered, burned, beaten," St. Pierre said. "We're calling for no more. Our lives matter. We want to remember the people killed and to educate the people about the horrific ways we are murdered. And we need our government to pay attention."

Contact MediaNews staff writer Lisa Fernandez at 408-920-5002.