Community members gathered in Harvey Milk Park in Long Beach the evening of Saturday, Nov. 20 to honor and mourn all the transgender people who were killed in 2021.
“We are here tonight to remember all of our friends who have been violently killed in our community for being trans,” City Councilmember Cindy Allen said. “We’ll say the names tonight of those who were making it any way they could. They were trying to make it in a world that was actively hostile to their existence.”
Transgender Day of Remembrance is observed each year on Nov. 20.
According to UCLA’s Williams Institute, transgender people are four times more likely to be the victims of violent crimes.
According to the Human Rights Campaign, 47 transgender or gender non-conforming people were killed in 2021.
Vivian Gallardo, a health educator at Bienestar, recalled the last time she saw Rayanna Pardo before the transgender Latina was killed.
“I remember with a breaking heart the case of Rayanna Pardo who came to our Long Beach center asking for a hotel voucher,” Gallardo said. “She was scared, confused, crying, with a broken jaw and she was running away from her partner.”
According to Gallardo, Pardo filed a police report after she was assaulted, but nothing came of it.
Two weeks after she saw Pardo, Gallardo was watching the news and saw that Pardo had been killed.
According to an article by CBS, Pardo was hit by a car. Video footage shows that a group of people had been following Pardo minutes before her death. According to the article, Pardo’s family wants investigators to find out whether she may have been chased or pushed into the street by the people following her.
The names of each transgender or gender non-conforming person whose death was recorded this year were read aloud at the vigil.
Volunteers took turns coming up to the microphone and reading the names of those who had passed, as well as details about their life and who they were.
B.A. Dunagan read the name of Mel Groves, a personal friend who was killed in October.
Groves was a passionate environmentalist who loved plants, Dunagan said. He was attending Alcorn State University and belonged to The Knights & Orchids Society, a grassroots group that provided resources to transgender people in rural areas.
“He was a twin, a sibling, a lover and an advocate for himself and for all of us,” Dunagan said. “He had an amazing smile, a deep laugh.”
Groves died in a Jackson, Mississippi hospital on Oct. 11 after being shot multiple times, according to an article by NBC.
According to Dunagan, before Groves came back to Mississippi to attend Alcorn State University, he attended the prestigious Tuskegee University in Alabama.
However, Dunagan said Groves faced transphobia in Alabama that caused him to transfer schools and return to his home state.
“And then he was snatched in the very city where he was born,” Dunagan said.
According to Dunagan, Groves dreamed of starting a community garden program that would allow transgender people to work with their hands.
Groves was the 39th trans person whose death was recorded this year.
“We celebrate, grieve and grow in his honor,” Dunagan said “And we plant seeds for Mel Groves.”