‘Our lives are not disposable’: Lawrence mourns, builds community power at vigil for transgender lives lost to violence

Lawrence community members read the names and stories of all of the transgender people known to have been lost to transphobic violence in the United States this year, and as they detailed the hobbies, friends, professions and passions, partners and pets of those who died, no one was allowed to fade away as a statistic.

Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) takes place annually on Nov. 20 to honor transgender people lost to anti-transgender violence, which includes murder and death by suicide.

Trans Lives Matter reported that 55 transgender and nonbinary people were killed by transphobic violence in America from Nov. 21, 2024, to Nov. 20, 2025.

“There are two times as many people on this list as there were last year,” Ruby Mae Johnson said. Johnson was one of the readers who presented the names and stories of the deceased at Lawrence’s TDOR vigil Thursday.

Many of the transgender people honored were under the age of 40 — some were as young as 15. The increase in transgender people facing unnatural, early deaths can be in part attributed to the federal administration’s campaign to eradicate gender diverse rights.

“The ongoing efforts and erasure of our identity, and removal of us from statistics and research, means that there are many whose names we do not know and will not know,” Johnson continued. “There are many people on here who we do not have much information about. We are being removed from the public record.”

Griffin Weber, a transgender man, reminded the crowd that this erasure is what birthed TDOR in 1999.

TDOR was founded by transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith to honor Rita Hester. Hester was a Black transgender woman born in Hartford, Connecticut who was an “electric performer” in the rock scene, according to Weber. She was stabbed to death in 1998.

Weber eulogized Hester for the person she was — a simple feat that media outlets at the time failed to accomplish. Hester was repeatedly misgendered and deadnamed, as many transgender people are in news outlets today.

“When the media is where people are receiving most of their knowledge about transgender people, it means that our lives, our stories and our legacy are determined by those who may not have our best interests,” Weber said. “Those who may reinterpret our stories for a flashier headline, who may purposefully deadname and misgender victims of violence who didn’t live the way the author would have liked to erase the identities of those who passed. That’s why we’re here today. To not allow the media to sanitize the deaths of my fellow transgender siblings. To not allow a single life to be unacknowledged. The language of the media will not be our legacy, and that is what Transgender Day of Remembrance was founded on.”

This year, as in years past, Black transgender women were overrepresented among the 55 recorded deaths.

Weber said that being transgender or queer could not wash away his privilege as a white person, while Black, brown and Indigenous transgender people face disproportionate levels of violence.

“It would be easy for me to look at the statistics and to live in fear … but to fear, to hide, to ignore the reality is what the oppressor wants,” he said. “Those of us with privilege need to stand up for those voices that have been stripped and silenced, whether that be through the prison-industrial complex, through sexual violence or through murder … Our fear is what the oppressor feeds on. They can’t fight all of us, but when most of us don’t show up, they can.”

D.C. Hiegert, staff attorney with the Disability Rights Center of Kansas, issued a twin rallying cry to resist fear while building solidarity. 

He highlighted two recent victories in the state, born of transgender people who fought for their rights in court. In October, transgender Kansans regained the right to change the gender markers on their driver’s licenses. This week, the families of two transgender teens went to court to challenge the ban on gender-affirming care for minors.

Yet, Hiegert encouraged people to look outside of the courts, the expensive suits and imposing government buildings, to turn to mutual aid.

“I think what we are here doing is dreaming and working towards a world that feels better in our bodies and for our trans loved ones to move through,” they said. “And I think focusing on the power that exists in this room, in these spaces that we have in our community and across our state is so much more important, especially in the current moment.”

For example, Hiegert said that Kansas doesn’t have a health care fund for transgender people unlike other states, but folks can turn to the Kansas Association for Social Housing support fund.

Hiegert also highlighted Trans Lawrence Coalition, PFLAG and Food Not Bombs. He urged listeners to host their own clothing swaps or start food pantries in their apartment complexes.

“No matter what they say and do about what is allowed or what is legal for trans folks to do, we know what is best for ourselves,” they said. “We know what’s best for our trans loved ones, and we can create the things that we need together.”

Before the reading of those lost wound down, organizers took a moment to honor an additional, beloved member of the Lawrence community, Louise ImMasche.

ImMasche, 41, was an artist, musician, star of Theatre Lawrence stages and “shining genderqueer light,” Johnson said. They were killed in a car crash in October. Read more about them here.

The Louise ImMasche Celebration Tour Cabaret will celebrate their work Saturday, Nov. 22. Money from ticket and merchandise sales will seed a fund to support an independent artist producing a musical.

Speakers and audience alike sniffled, cried, sometimes laughed and held each other throughout the night, but mourning did not have the opportunity to devolve to helplessness.

“I just want to encourage folks to feel more powerful, because people like Trump or Kobach — or insert whatever fascist figurehead you want in that sentence — like to walk around like they have a lot of power, and really they only have as much power as we let them have,” Hiegert said.

Lawrence’s TDOR vigil took place at the Ecumenial Campus Ministries. It was co-hosted by PFLAG, Plymouth Congregational, Trans Lawrence Coalition, the ECM, Lawrence PRIDE, Rainbow Kids & Families and Equality Kansas.

Read about the lives of the transgender people lost to violence this year at this link.

Wulfe Wulfemeyer (they/them), reporter and news editor, has worked with The Lawrence Times since May 2025. They can be reached at wulfe@lawrencekstimes.com.

Read their complete bio here. Read their work for the Times here.

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