This year Southend-on-Sea Borough Council will be raising the Transgender flag at 9.00am on 20th November. Please support by assembling at 8.45am under the flagpole in the Council’s Car Park.
Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) is an annual observance on November 20th that honours the memory of those whose lives were lost in acts of anti-transgender violence.
TDOR was started by transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith as a vigil to honour the memory of Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was killed in 1998. The vigil commemorated all the transgender people lost to violence that year and began an important memorial that has become the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance.
“The Transgender Day of Remembrance seeks to highlight the losses we face due to anti-transgender bigotry and violence. I am no stranger to the need to fight for our rights, and the right to simply exist is first and foremost. With so many seeking to erase transgender people — sometimes in the most brutal ways possible — it is vitally important that those we lose are remembered, and that we continue to fight for justice.”
Transgender Day of Remembrance founder Gwendolyn Ann Smith