On Sunday, about 80 people gathered in Albuquerque’s Tiguex Park to celebrate the International Transgender Day of Visibility, which officially happens on March 31st.
For the second annual event, a planned march was cancelled due to high vehicle traffic in Old Town. But festivities did include a drag show, followed by a concert at Sidewinders Grill benefitting the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico and Casa Q. Julie Beckel is with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, one of the event organizers, and she said that trans liberation is an everyone issue.
“We're an easy target because our numbers are so few, so it's important for them to divide us from the wider LGBTQ community and the working class as a whole,” Beckel said “They're coming for us first, but they're coming for everybody else too.”
Raife Juarez with Southwest Solidarity Network also helped plan the event.
“Honestly, it's kind of horrifying especially to see how people have so much hate for us, Juarez said.” “But it's also a beautiful thing to see all of us leaning into each other and seeing the community that we have together and the power that we build and hold with each other.”
The drag show featured six trans drag performers from Albuquerque. It was emceed by drag artist Allison Saint.
In a speech to the crowd, Beckel said the trans community isn’t going away anytime soon.
“I remember when Trans Day of visibility became a thing, and in the old days the older trans folks told us ‘you got to fly under the radar,’” Beckel said. “We traveled a long road to get here, and yeah, no more hiding, no more flying under the radar.”
Roughly 1% of the population is transgender, which would average out to about 5,000 trans people in Albuquerque.
