“We are all standing together against the fascist lie that our bodies are not our own.”
Trans people and their allies flooded the National Mall on Monday for the Trans Day of Visibility, armed with calls to action and lawmakers who pledged to defend trans Americans against attacks on their civil rights — regardless of the political party these attacks may come from.
The event was spearheaded by The Christopher Street Project, a trans-led advocacy group and with a PAC under the same name. Its 19-year-old executive director, Tyler Hack, told Erin in the Morning the group seeks to challenge a popular, emerging narrative: that trans people are to blame for the re-election of Donald Trump.
“We can win on trans issues,” Hack told Erin in the Morning. “People who are pro-trans can use those issues and turn them into a fighting force in electoral politics.”
Christopher Street is focusing on the 2026 midterms and 2028 elections, and working to help trans-friendly candidates. “Cowards have no place in Congress,” Hack said in a speech to the crowd.
The nascent group mobilized major political organizations, such as GLSEN and Planned Parenthood, for the event, plus elected officials including Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, who called on the Democrats to pass the Transgender Bill of Rights, and Representative Sara Jacobs of California, who alongside Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington introduced a resolution earlier today to make the Trans Day of Visibility a nationally-recognized occasion.
“No matter what some in my party might say, we are not going to buy into the false narrative that we can either protect trans kids or win elections,” Jacobs said. “Because that is some bullshit.”
She said she was speaking out in part because of her own queer siblings — and wasn’t the only Democrat in a position of leadership to cite their love of their own trans family members as a call to action.
Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the Democratic Whip, personally pledged to safeguard the rights of trans Americans on behalf of her own trans daughter. She called the recent wave of anti-trans legislation a “distraction” deployed by lawmakers to distract from issues such as access healthcare, the dismantling of public education, and healthcare access.
“We won’t let them steal the future from our kids,” she said. “We are all standing together against the fascist lie that our bodies are not our own.”
The House’s first Gen Z member, 28-year-old Maxwell Frost, said trans people in his constituency are no stranger to this kind of rhetoric. “In the south and red states, our trans community has been going through the same stuff for many years,” he told Erin in the Morning at the rally. He said that while the Biden Administration did “great things,” it was not “aggressive enough” on trans issues.
“We weren’t loud enough,” he said of the Democrats. “We have to lead the conversation.”
Recent years have ushered in unprecedented levels of anti-trans policies, from executive orders to laws passed at the federal, state and local levels.
“The little ray of hope is that trans people have always learned how to survive under the harshest conditions,” said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, Executive Director of Advocates for Trans Equality, in his speech. “No matter how hard the government tries to erase us, they simply do not have that power.”
Jay Jones, the 64th Howard University Student Association president — the first trans woman reported to hold the student government association’s highest rank at any HBCU — echoed the sentiment. “Visibility is not about you trying to take the gender marker on my ID,” she said. “Visibility is about my ability to organize, mobilize and galvanize people when an institution says I cannot.”
