***Note: These Friday articles by Jason X are to get the cycling community in Detroit talking and maybe to connect what we do to other issues currently occurring. The Hub of Detroit is not an advocacy organization.***

Transgender Day of Remembrance

I like repeating themes. No one can truly explain the way they think in a certain number of pages or words. That is why the wonderful world of blogging has such possibilities. If you “follow” bloggers and engage in the conversations they are creating you grow and understand more as you go. Everyone grows together.

So previously I’ve spoken my mind on transgender issues in relation to why I think they are important here at The Hub. Being someone that works mostly to get kids on bikes doesn’t seem like it would have lots of political ties, but it does. As I’ve said before, the Hub is not an advocacy agency as far as what traditionally people would think of when they hear those words. But living in the environment that we do, and having the values that we do, things can often look political. I really wish that wanting many different kinds of folks to build bikes and ride them together as traffic without harassment wasn’t a political statement, but this is the world I was born into. A world that doesn’t really want people to get along, and as I have written about before, don’t want to do something as simple as sharing public space to allow equal access to people’s own communities.

I bring these concepts back up because I want to give you my opinion once again on this very important day. This weekend (Sunday to be exact) is Transgender Day of Remembrance which will be observed today at Central United Methodist Church downtown. This is a day for all of us to remember friends, family and other community members who have been murdered due to transphobia. Our friends Fender Bender will be leading a bike ride to the service downtown tonight and I highly encourage all of you to join. I will be doing my best to be a part of the ride as I will be getting back from visiting our school program in Brightmor at Detroit Community Schools as the ride leaves.

I personally have reasons for attending the Day of Remembrance, but as cyclists we need to make the connection between different groups of folks if we are to be a “movement.” Our whining about being discriminated against or not cared about will simply be whining if we don’t connect oppressions of all groups. This is not to say that all oppressions are equal. In no way am I saying that violence against trans people is the same thing as a car cutting off a cyclist. This is why we need to recognize all hierarchies of oppression is society, because they are not the same. None of them are the most important. As a society we need to be able to recognize all of our prejudices and make changes in all aspects of our life. So oppressions are not the same and should be recognized as individual issues, but the connections between them all should not be denied either.

I will be visiting a bunch of high school and middle school aged youth building up bikes at Detroit Community Schools today. I’m really excited for that and I think in our society, most people love to see children succeeding. However, as those children age our society is less and less interested in protecting or remembering those folks. If one of our youth were to be hit by a car on their bike, it would make it into the news. However, when adults get hit by cars on their bikes, they make the news but the consensus is that they deserved it. This is why the Ride of Silence exists for cyclists. We remember our dead so hopefully people will hear their story and not simply cover their remains in fresh pavement to forget about them.

So again, making the connection to the transgender community, when a young woman like Michelle Moore gets murdered, we cannot accept some people’s actions to retell history and try to pretend that she was in fact a man. Very powerful organizations like the Detroit News (can’t they seem to get it yet?) are trying to bury this woman in their version of history as a man. A person in our society that “deserved it.”

The death of someone shouldn’t be more or less important because of their mode of transportation. The same should be said for gender identity and expression. None of us should be written out of history. We exist, we are here.

Keep riding safe and hopefully I’ll see you tonight.

In remembrance,

Jason x