By Karen Ocamb
July 26, 2015 :: 1:31 PM
In the past few years, transgender women have become more visible in fiction, entertainment and reality TV. Before Laverne Cox achieved superstar status with Orange is the New Black, Calpernia Addams, Alexis Arquette, Carmen Carrera, Candis Cayne and BET host B. Scott were all in some way featured on television. And this July, we saw the premier of I Am Jazz, a reality show about trans teen Jazz Jennings, and Sunday night Caitlyn Jenner premiers her new reality TV show, I Am Cait E!, which documents her remarkable transition from Olympian super star Bruce Jenner to trans reality TV super star, Caitlyn Jenner.
But this weekend, another remarkable moment in trans history also happened on TV: Janet Mock, author, journalist, TV host of So POPular! on MSNBC’s Internet channel Shift, became the first trans person to anchor a mainstream news show when she served as a substitute co-host for Melissa Harris-Perry, with Richard Lui, on NBC’s liberal-leaning cable network, MSNBC.
On Saturday, among scores of other stories, Mock reported on a very important milestone, an anniversary many have forgotten: that day on July 25, 1985 when mainstream closeted Hollywood star Rock Hudson announced he had AIDS.
On Sunday, Mock and Lui discussed the epidemic of trans murders in America—11 murders in seven months. And instead of simply displaying the names in chyron on a slide, Mock actually stopped the segment and said their names out loud.
#TransLivesMatter has been a significant issue for LGBT activists in Los Angeles, especially under the leadership of Bamby Salcedo, who organized a demonstration Friday night in Hollywood over the murders of India Clarke and K.C. Haggard in the past two weeks.
On Sunday, Mock and Liu interviewed The ACLU’s Chase Strangio, NBC BLK contributor Danielle Moodie-Mills and Alicia Garza (pictured above), Special Projects Director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance and co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter for the #TransLivesMatter segment.
As Garza told USA Today, “#BlackLivesMatter was started by two queer women and the daughter of Nigerian immigrants”—Garza’s friend Patrisse Cullors, executive director of the Coalition to End Sheriff Violence in L.A. Jails, and Opal Tometi, an immigrant rights activist who runs the Black Alliance for Just Immigration—right after George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing 17 year old Trayvon Martin in 2013.”
In a “Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement,” Garza writes:
Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks’ contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression….
Black Lives Matter is a unique contribution that goes beyond extrajudicial killings of Black people by police and vigilantes. It goes beyond the narrow nationalism that can be prevalent within some Black communities, which merely call on Black people to love Black, live Black and buy Black, keeping straight cis Black men in the front of the movement while our sisters, queer and trans and disabled folk take up roles in the background or not at all. Black Lives Matter affirms the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, Black-undocumented folks, folks with records, women and all Black lives along the gender spectrum. It centers those that have been marginalized within Black liberation movements. It is a tactic to (re)build the Black liberation movement.
“Unlike the Civil Rights movement’s emphasis on the politics of respectability, Black Lives Matter has a populist, come-as-you are vibe that doesn’t police people’s sexuality, religion, age, race, dress and speech,” said Travis Gosa, author and social science professor in Africana studies at Cornell University.
“Black Lives Matter is unapologetically queer, black, multiracial, feminist, digital, atheist or at least non-denominational, and young,” he said. “The optics of protesters dressed in everyday clothes, sagging pants and T-shirts, nurse scrubs and work boots reinforce the idea that anyone can and should be part of the people’s movement.”
Garza says that while #BlackLivesMatter stands on the shoulders of giants in the civil rights movement, the #hashtag generation is trying to find their own way.
On the Melissa Harris-Perry show Sunday, Garza told Mock and Lui that trans violence would be part of the discussion at the weekend-long Movement for Black Lives Convening in Cleveland, Ohio:
“The relationship facing #BlackLivesMatter as a movement and the violence facing trans women of color, and black trans women in particular, is that it’s am important conversation for us to be having, especially within the Black community.
What we’re seeing here is that not only is there an epidemic of violence again black bodies, but certainly within black communities, there is an incredible epidemic of violence against black trans bodies and when we talk about black lives mattering, we have to make sure we’re talking about all black lives. And certainly we are pushing within our movement to ensure that black trans women and their experiences are centered because, quite frankly, when the average life expectancy of a black trans woman is 35 years old in this country, we have a lot farther to go.”
Fox News is hosting the first official Republican Presidential Debate in Cleveland on Aug. 6.