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tauers-go-dutch · 7 years ago

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Italy: like putting on an old boot

Since losing my passport in Madrid, I had a two-week window before our next trip to get a new one. I ended up going to the US Consulate in Amsterdam, which was an adventure all in its own. If you picture the DMV, but on ‘roids, that is about the experience of applying for a passport abroad. After getting a new passport photo, I got to wait outside the building on the literal coldest day of the year for an hour before being ushered through security in order to wait for another two hours interspersed with quick trips up to the counter to explain that I don’t know what happened to my passport because I lost it and then being chastised for losing my passport because I must look too young to possibly be able to comprehend the gravity of importance such a document. Oh, and I had to pay $140. But luckily the US is very efficient at printing rush order passports and it arrived the following Friday, just in time for our trip to Rome. But of course, there would be one more hiccup in the story- the city lost power on Friday afternoon when I planned to pick up my passport. So the Consulate did not have power… or at least the backup generator did not power the whole building. Luckily, the guards were able to just grab the newly printed passports (I was not the only one trying to pick one up that day), and I was on my way.

Once we got into Rome, the same feeling of joy I had from my first visit washed over me, and I think I had a smile on the whole weekend. Rome is a huge city, so it is crowded, busy, smelly, full of trash, a bit rundown, etc. However, I love it for the amazing art, culture, and food. What can I say, Rome was the center of Western culture for much of history, and for much of my Catholic upbringing (and my brief stint as a Latin nerd), so it generates some degree of awe.

We threw in our coin, so I guess we’ll be back again

We checked into our hotel, which was across from some state building. When checking us in, the clerk said if we take photos from the window, the state employees might think we are spies and send people over to the hotel to investigate. I’m pretty sure he was joking? Mariah may have tested the theory the next evening after a few drinks.

We went to dinner that evening and tried some authentic Roman dishes, including an artichoke sampler platter. To be honest, steamed artichokes and butter was one of my sister’s favorite meals growing up, but they were never one of mine. But the Roman style artichokes blew me away. They are originally prepared by Jewish immigrants, but were quickly adopted by the Roman locals, so much so that Rome is one of the largest artichoke producers in the world. The Jewish version is lightly battered and fried, while the Roman version is steamed, and both are incredible. I also had pasta al’amatriciana (tomato sauce with pork cheek) and Mariah had ravioli before we split an incredible tiramisu. Before calling it a night we walked over to the Trevi fountain and threw in a coin. I guess we’ll be back one day.

Magical artichokes

We had some super delicious pastries in our hotel the next morning before heading to St. Peter’s Basilica. After taking some initial photos, I was talked into upgrading our museum tickets to a guided tour. While this is expensive, it is worth it- the guide is great, but you’re really paying to skip the 3+ hour line to see the basilica from the museum (and Sistine Chapel). We learned why the Vatican is its own country (long, convoluted story short- the modern church never wanted to join the united Italy, and the arrangement stuck- helps when you have your own private army). The Vatican treasures are as incredible as they are extensive. We saw Greek/Roman gods, human personifications of the Tiber river, supposed tombs of Helena and Constantina (mother and daughter of Constantine), maps of the world, paintings and tapestries for days, and a Roman Zach Galifianakis. But this was all a lead in to the Sistine Chapel, of Michelangelo fame. Of course there are no photos, but the Creation of Adam and the Last Judgment are every bit as amazing as hyped. We then fast tracked to the staggeringly beautiful St. Peter’s basilica. We saw the tombs of the popes (St. John Paul II has his own chapel on the main floor) and the Pieta, but my favorite is the altar from Bernini. Just look at the pictures.

St. Peter’s Basilica

Is that you, Zach?

Pieta

Pope JPIII!

Bernini’s altar

After a lunch of arancini (rice balls- I might not be able to eat the ones at Cinzetti’s ever again) and cacao e pepe (literally cheese and pepper- basically Italian mac ‘n cheese for adults), we set out to explore the city. We saw Castle Sant’Angelo (the pope fortress/Church of Illumination), Piazza Navona, The Pantheon, the Spanish Steps, and so much gelato. Eventually, we met some friends who also happened to be in Rome, and had dinner and a shared a few bottles of wine.

Gelato number two - sadly, we have no evidence of number one

The Pantheon

These two like their Italian wine

Brent and Christine happened to be in town

The next morning, we packed in some more sightseeing with the Altar of the Fatherland (Mussolini funded statue dedicated to the united Italy), Palatine Hill, the Capitoline Wolf, and Turtle Fountain (which does not have live turtles in the fountain). We ventured to the Jewish quarter of town, and had more marvelous artichokes, pasta, and possibly some of the best table bread ever (I had to take a picture it was so good). We went to a beer bar and enjoyed some brews (Italy has some good breweries), before going over to the hip Trastevere neighborhood and having more food (including a tremendous prosciutto sandwich which I would not shut up about, more arancini and a pizza) and beers. We needed to get back to the hotel, and decided to walk by the Colosseum and the Circus Maximus on the way. Unfortunately, the sky opened up and we were drenched in ten minutes… so we made a quick pit stop for more gelato to let the rain pass. There are worse things.

Remus and Romulus!

No live turtles

Mariah’s happy place (Gelato three of four?)

...and mine (prosciutto sandwich)

Sometimes I can get her to drink a beer

But it generally involves bribery with margherita pizza

Aaaaand it’s pouring outside

Rain keeps the tourists away - most of them, anyways

Are you not entertained?

All that’s left of the Circus Maximus

We packed a ton into our Rome weekend, so in Florence (the following weekend) we were a bit more relaxed. We arrived late on Friday so our adventure really just started on Saturday morning. Our first stop was to the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, which is better known for ‘il Duomo,’ or the massive dome that adorns the church and dominates the city skyline. It was a fairly easy climb, but the vertigo is real when you are on the interior of the church and looking down. But you are rewarded with amazing art reminiscent of Dante’s Inferno (Florence is his home town, btw) and panoramic views of the city.

I hope you’re not claustrophobic... or afraid of heights!

Afterwards, we put our name down at Trattoria Mario for lunch, and killed some time at the markets before our table was ready. I don’t think you can see more leather outside of a Vegas S&M convention, but to be honest it is really cool. We stopped into a market and bought some pastries- creampuff for me and a chocolate cookie for Mariah- to hold us over. Luckily we did not have to wait for lunch long. Trattoria Mario is regarded as the best restaurant in town, and is only open for lunch. The place is tiny, and you will be seated at a two-person table with two other people and sit on stools that are made for toddlers. The bread is disappointing, but the food is marvelous. The place is meat-centric, and their specialty is the classic bistecca alla fiorentina, which is a super thick, bloody porterhouse steak. The frites were good too.

After lunch, we crossed the famed Ponte Vecchio to the other side of the city. We walked up to the Piazzale Michelangelo for more magnificent views of Florence. We walked along the river and stopped by a small tea shop, and sampled some of their goodies. We walked out with some good stuff, and an aspiration to become a tea sommelier and to (keep) travel(ing) the world. We had a rest at a dessert shop before finding dinner (easier said than done, since our first choice for dinner just never opened the restaurant for service- no notice posted physically or online), and closed the night with more beers. It was a bit early, but we have been traveling a lot.

It was a pretty creepy sculpture...

We slept in, but woke to go to the Galleria dell’Accademia, which is a museum that has nothing of much significance except for a little piece from Michelangelo called the David. Before seeing the main event, we did explore some of the other parts of the museum, including the musical instruments and some religious paintings. Two asides- first, we saw a pair of little girls (say seven) on a private guide with their parents looking at the musical instruments and throwing out some serious knowledge of the Medicis and the Renaissance art movement (the girl was a self-proclaimed art history buff, and I believe it!). Second, some of the art made to explain the dogma of Christianity is as bizarre (though simultaneously stylish) as the Thai paintings we saw in Bangkok. Seriously, if I didn’t have knowledge of the immaculate conception, I would have thought Christians believed that an old cloud god shot pigeons at a sleeping woman while some creepy dude with wings looked on approvingly.

But onto the David. It is every bit as masterful as everyone says. The story is unbelievable too. Just think, some 27 year-old just said, ‘hey, can I use that chunk of marble over there? I wanna make something for you.’ And then the Florentine people were graced with one of the most incredible works of art in history is ridiculous. Michelangelo was TWENTYSEVEN!!! Oh, and he made the Pieta before that (pictured above, from Rome).

Just look at him!

Afterwards we just relaxed. We had some pizza, coffee, macarons and beers. I did grab a snack- a lampredotto. There was a stand just outside of our hotel which filled up during lunch with locals, so I figured I’d try it. The sandwich is made from spiced lamb intestine, and it’s pretty good. I mean, it’s no prosciutto sandwich, but its good. We did make our outside the Uffizi gallery before leaving, and took in some of the city’s most famous patrons before saying goodbye.

I throw my hands up in the air sometimes... singing ayo...

NBD, just our country’s namesake

Last minute snack

Italy is superb. It is a country with so many different layers of nuance and culture. Sometimes I feel people boil it down to pizza and statues, but it’s so much more. Each region, from Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples, Sicily, Milan, etc. is so different from the next. The food, outside of the tourist traps, is every bit of what makes Italian fare heralded as some of the world’s best. The culture and history is dense and rich- just think, Rome was the center of the western world through two different points of time for two different reasons. Sure, Italy has its problems and frustrations like we all do, but it is a country I will enjoy returning to time and time again.

#tauersgodutch #tauers go dutch #Italy feels like putting on an old boot

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wp-yahoo-style-1042-yahoopa-blog · 5 years ago

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Transgender women of color are pioneers of the LGBTQ-rights movement. Why are they still fighting for their lives?

Transgender rights activists protest the recent killings of three transgender women, Muhlaysia Booker, Claire Legato, and Michelle Washington, during a rally at Washington Square Park in New York, U.S., May 24, 2019. (Photo: Reuters/Yahoo Lifestyle)

The start of LGBTQ Pride Month came with an exciting announcement in New York City: Two pioneering transgender activists, vanguards of the gay-liberation movement, would be getting statues in Greenwich Village, immortalizing their vital roles in the 1969 Stonewall rebellion — which has its 50th anniversary this year and is widely considered to be the official start of the movement.

“The LGBTQ movement was portrayed very much as a white, gay male movement,” Chirlane McCray, first lady of New York City, said at the official announcement. “This monument counters that trend of whitewashing the history.”

News of the statues, the first in the U.S. to commemorate transgender individuals, was celebrated on social media, where Raquel Willis tweeted, “Monuments don’t make up for the mayhem, but this is beautiful.” Many others, including Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg and Queer Eye costar Karamo Brown, weighed in with praise and shout-outs to the activists.

#HeyFriends... here’s some education on #Pride! Because I’m tired of this month passing year after year without acknowledging #MarshaPJohnson & the reason “Pride” began. pic.twitter.com/pFHWAmr1Ik

— Karamo Brown (@Karamo) June 3, 2019

Thanks to leaders like Marsha P. Johnson and Harvey Milk, I have faith in the possibility of change and growth in this country. There is still more work to do, but let us take a moment and celebrate the gains we've made this #PrideMonth.

— Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) June 2, 2019

There would be no Pride Month without sharing our deep gratitude and respect for the transgender women of color who started it all, Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. Happy Pride Month! #StoneWall50 #PrideWasARiot pic.twitter.com/6SkdUgn3Ln

— سارة جهاد (@spoiledsoymilk_) June 1, 2019

We stand on the shoulders of giants. I am so happy to see New York City immortalizing Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. They gave so much to this world and community, we should all continue the work that would make them proud. https://t.co/DHo15fdrim

— Chasten Buttigieg (@Chas10Buttigieg) May 30, 2019

Still, there was a lot that the valiant effort could not make up for, and many wounds it doesn’t seem likely to heal — especially for people like Sharron Cooks, a transgender activist in Philadelphia.

Cooks spent June 1 eulogizing and then burying her dear friend, Michelle “Tameka” Washington, who was one of four black transgender women murdered, in cities across the country, within just 12 days of each other.

“On the first day of Pride Month, we laid our sister to rest,” Cooks posted on Facebook. “Pride Month will never be the same for me.”

Along with Washington, who was remembered by loved ones that day as “beautiful,” “outspoken” and “a mother figure,” the recent spate of murders has claimed the lives of Muhlaysia Booker in Dallas, Claire Legato in Cleveland and an as-of-yet unidentified trans woman in Detroit, all of whom were gunned down. A fifth transgender woman, Amber Nicole of Denver, was brutally beaten by two men outside a nightclub, leaving her with facial nerve damage and a broken jaw. And most recently, on June 3, the body of Chynal Lindsey, 26, was pulled out of a Dallas lake by police, showing “obvious signs of homicidal violence.”

The anti-trans violence has sparked a flurry of national media coverage, plus vigils and rallies across the country.

“We will not be erased!” yelled a fired-up speaker into a megaphone at one such demo — Keep Your Hands Off Trans Bodies in New York City, held on the Friday before Memorial Day. A crowd of nearly 300 had gathered beneath the stately arch of Washington Square Park, forming a thick ring around each speaker who spoke or screamed from the heart — “Stigma is weaponizing murderers!” and “Black trans lives matter!”

Some, like Olympia Perez of Black Trans Media, could not contain their fury. “Black trans people have been here forever — and on their backs, you guys stand!” She directed her rage at the many white and non-trans people who took up space at the front of the crowd, referencing the legacies of activists such as Johnson, who worked tirelessly for LGBTQ rights only to be found dead in the Hudson River, after a suspected but never-solved homicide, in 1992.

“Marsha!” Perez screamed in anguish, smacking the ground with an open palm, “Stand the f*ck up and show them!”

Four days later, hundreds of mourners filed into the Cathedral of Hope church in Dallas, where the funeral of 23-year-old Muhlaysia Booker received a crush of media attention (and even a subsequent social media post by none other than Prince Harry and Meghan Markle).

People protest the killings of transgender women this year during a rally at Washington Square Park in New York, U.S., May 24, 2019. (Photo: Reuters)

“She would always say, ‘Mama, I’m willing to die for my transition, my respect and what I believe in,” Booker’s mother, Stephanie Houston, told the crowd, which included lots of local and national press — interest likely piqued by the fact that Booker had been viciously attacked in a parking lot in broad daylight, in a video snippet that had gone viral just a month before she was killed.

Those recent scenes — of funerals and rageful rallies — have stood in stark contrast to the excitement oozing through many queer-activist circles, where preparations have been underway for a particularly auspicious Gay Pride Month: This year marks not only the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, which started when patrons of the Stonewall Inn bar pushed back against an anti-gay police raid, but of the arrival in NYC of the annual international WorldPride festival, from InterPride, after past stops in Rome, London, Tel Aviv and Madrid.

The entire month, and especially the last weekend in June, when the annual NYC Pride March takes place, will be a lavish display of dance parties, celebrity appearances, parades, film screenings, concerts, drag performances, rallies and, of course, marketing opportunities.

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It’s pretty safe to say, then, that the commemoration of those so-called “riots” of 1969 is now more a riot of rainbows and glitter. And many transgender people, believing they’ve been left behind by the larger LGBT movement, are not feeling it.

“World Pride should be about re-shifting resources to those who need it the most,” New York Transgender Advocacy Group executive director Kiara St. James, organizer of Keep Your Hands Off Trans Bodies, tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “While cis[gender] queers will converge on NYC to celebrate Pride, the reason for having it was Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, two transwomen of color. Their ‘children’ are still dealing with lack of housing and healthcare and employment opportunities. So, celebrate Pride. But know that the community does not have equity.”

Elle Hearns, a social-justice organizer and founding director of the Marsha P. Johnson Institute, launching June 21, adds: “We all want to celebrate. I would love to get on a float and just really be happy going to Pride. But I also understand who's not there.”

TOO MANY MISSING

Media interest in anti-trans violence may be at an all-time high. But, says Hearns, “One of the biggest points is that this is actually been happening for decades.”

It’s only recently that statistics on transgender killings, believed to be widely underreported, have been more reflective of the reality. Since 2015, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an average of 24 transgender individuals have been murdered each year, and disproportionate numbers of the victims have been trans women of color. The deadliest year on record since then was 2017, during which activists tracked at least 29 such deaths, with killings by acquaintances, partners and strangers, some never identified. In 2018, there were 26 such recorded murders, and in 2019, so far, there have been seven.

From left, Michelle "Tameka" Washington, Claire Legato and Muhlaysia Booker, all murdered within days of each other. (Photo: Facebook)

(And anti-transgender violence is, of course, not limited to the United States. A 2016 Transgender Europe report found that over 2,000 trans people had been killed since 2008, with Central and South America accounting for nearly 75 percent of those total trans killings; just last month, the body of a trans woman from Veracruz, Mexico, was reportedly discovered by police, beheaded.)

Further, the results of a 2015 survey (the most recent available) by the National Center for Transgender Equality found the following: that 20 percent of black transgender individuals were unemployed (twice that of the cisgender black population); 38 percent were living in poverty (compared to 24 percent of non-trans people of color); 42 percent had experienced homelessness; 53 percent had been sexually assaulted; and 6.7 percent were living with HIV — more than 20 times the rate of .3 percent in the general U.S. population.

There is also this shocking statistic, cited often by the country’s largest LGBTQ non-profits (though the exact source is not apparent): that the average life expectancy of transgender women of color is just 35 years old.

“One of the biggest problems that trans people face — more specifically, black trans women — is the lack of access to healthcare, employment, housing, social support and everything that can help an individual thrive,” transgender-rights activist and media personality Ashlee Marie Preston, who marked her 34th birthday last year by launching the hashtag “Thrive Over 35” to raise awareness of the short life expectancy, tells Yahoo Lifestyle.

Marsha P. Johnson. (Photo: Netflix)

“And what happens is, when you don't have access to housing, healthcare and employment or social support,” she continues, “you get caught up in the growth of the prison industrial complex. You have to engage in street economy, which adds an additional layer of risk to your life. And that cuts into your life expectancy.” Plus, Preston explains, “the fact that some people say ‘I experienced racism’ or ‘I experienced sexism’ or ‘I experienced a transphobia,’ many people aren't able to imagine experiencing all of those simultaneously.”

Sometimes, in fact, even with all that’s been gained since Stonewall — marriage equality, parenting rights, and various protections in employment, housing and healthcare — it can feel to some, especially transgender women of color, like not much has changed at all, particularly when one looks at the current administration’s anti-trans policies, which take away rights in areas of military service, healthcare and housing.

“For what good it did my trans girls, it might as well have not happened,” Miss Major, a longtime transgender activist and veteran of the Stonewall rebellion, told HuffPost in 2018 of the legendary uprising.

HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF

That feeling — that the “T” of LGBT is oft forgotten by the larger movement, and even more so for trans individuals who are not white — hits home especially hard if you watch the iconic, heartbreaking clip of Sylvia Rivera getting booed as she addressed the largely white, cisgender crowd at the 1973 Gay Pride rally in New York City.

“Y’all better quiet down!” Rivera screamed from the stage, accusing those rallying of belonging “to a white, middle-class white club.” She had joined forces with Marsha P. Johnson to form STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries), a queer-youth advocacy group, but had to struggle with Pride organizers to get any time to speak at all. “I have been to jail! I have been raped!” she finally yelled into the mic, her voice raw with emotion. “I have been beaten! I have had my nose broken! I have been thrown in jail! I have lost my job I have lost my apartment for gay liberation — and you treat me this way? What the f*ck’s wrong with you all? I believe in gay power! Revolution now! Gay power!”

Sylvia Rivera onstage at NYC Pride in 1973. (GIF: Netflix)

In a later interview about that moment — footage that’s included in the 2017 David France documentary The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson — Rivera says that she went home from that rally and attempted suicide, and survived only because Johnson found her in time. “I was hurt, and I felt that the movement had completely betrayed the drag queens and the street people,” she says. “And I felt that the years I had already given them had been a waste.”

Decades later, many trans activists feel similarly frustrated and forgotten.

“It's very disrespectful to the legacy of the queer liberation movement when the LGBTQ community at large refuses to prioritize the wellbeing and survival of trans women of color — given that Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera quite literally built the movement on their backs,” Preston says. “They started a nonprofit where they were just renting hotel rooms and apartments from the money they were making from sex work, so that they could take young LGBT kids off the streets who were kicked out by their families for being who they are.”

Sylvia Rivera in 1994. (Photo: AP Images)

Although Johnson and Rivera (who died of liver cancer in 2002) are often credited with actually sparking the Stonewall uprising — or throwing the first brick or Molotov cocktail, as the legends go — both denied having done so. They were certainly key players on the scene, though, and their years of advocacy both before and after are undeniable, hence the plans for NYC monuments.

But whether or not that sort of public acknowledgment or visibility translates into actual change is yet to be seen.

Some give big props to the strides made regarding transgender visibility in pop culture, most recently with the FX series Pose, kicking off its second season on June 11. The show, produced by Ryan Murphy and Steven Canals and written and directed by transgender pioneer Janet Mock, broke ground by casting actual transgender actors to play transgender characters, and tells the story of New York City’s 1980s drag ball culture — first told to a larger audience through Jennie Livington’s 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning, and thrust into the mainstream spotlight with Madonna’s “Vogue” that same year.

Mock spoke about the potential power of such representation on Pose on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah in 2018. “We have five women with different dreams, who have love, desire, who want to be desired, who are funny, who are villains,” she said, which educates viewers in many ways. “You show people that, number one, it’s not scary, that they’re not horrible people, that they’re not freak shows — that instead they’re humans that you care about… They’re invested, and I hope that it doesn’t just entertain and inspire, but that it also moves people to care and hopefully do something.”

Preston also sees Pose’s potential to change hearts and minds. “I think it underscores the level of humanity that is universal that anybody can connect to,” she says. “We all know what it feels like to be thrown away. We all know what it feels like to be discarded. We all know what it feels like to not know if you're going to survive or not. We all know what it feels like to want to be held and like want to have purpose and want to be seen.”

Still others are skeptical, including transgender artist and activist Reina Gosset, aka Tourmaline, who was speaking in general about visibility when she told Teen Vogue in 2017, “While trans visibility is at an all-time high, with trans people increasingly represented in popular culture, violence against us has also never been higher. The push for visibility, without it being tied to a demand for our basic needs being met, often leaves us without material resources or tangible support, and exposed to more violence and isolation.”

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And Hearns believes that the power of Pose may be overstated.“I think Pose is necessary, but I also see that organizing is necessary and [that it] doesn't change the conditions for everybody because there are five trans women who are stars on a show,” she says. “What's happening in the White House, Pose is not shifting.”

WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE

Preston — who first gained wide recognition when she called out Caitlyn Jenner for being a “fraud” for her support of Trump in a 2017 video that went viral — does not mince words about who she believes is to blame for trans women of color being left behind by the LGBT movement.

“Every time that I hear another black trans woman was murdered, there’s this flame of rage that ignites in the pit of my belly, because I want to hold the other communities accountable for not showing up for us the way that we show up for every other community at the intersections of our identity,” Preston says. “I want to ask the LGBTQ community why they aren't prioritizing black trans lives. I want to ask the black community why we aren’t prioritizing black trans women. I want to ask women why we're still not considering trans women as women and as part of the larger national conversation around intimate partner violence, which is an extension of some of these deaths.”

“The truth,” she continues, “is that many gay white men use their sexuality as a shield to absolve them of the responsibility of dismantling sexist, racist and transphobic mechanisms within our community systems of oppression.” Instead, Preston says, some of these men believe “‘if I lean into my own oppression, then I don't have to do the work to liberate other people’… I'm not saying that [no] gay white man knows struggle. What I'm saying is that your race and your gender aren’t contributing factors to your struggle.”

Activists Ashlee Marie Preston, left, and Elle Hearns. (Photo: Getty Images; Elle Hearns/Instagram)

Cooks, in the wake of her friend Tameka’s murder, tells Yahoo Lifestyle that she believes the answer is complex and nuanced, and that it partly lies within the trans community itself. “I think, ultimately, there is a lot of internal work that the trans community needs to do and that needs to be addressed,” she says, noting that, too often, trans women are killed by people they know. “Trans women have to do a better job at building our self-esteem and our self-worth, and not settling for less than we deserve.”

She also points a finger at various LGBTQ nonprofits, however, for not putting trans women of color into positions of power. “How many trans women do we have in the nonprofit world? How many are sitting on boards? A lot of the gay and lesbian and bisexual orgs aren’t really offering the economic opportunities.” (At the Human Rights Campaign, the “largest national lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer civil rights organization,” the executive staff and other higher-ups is largely white and cisgender, similar to the makeup at other national organizations, including the Family Equality Council, Lambda Legal and GLAAD.)

“A lot of these nonprofit organizations claim they are about the advancement of all LGBTQ people,” Preston also notes. “The reality is, they have a propensity to screen ‘black trans trauma porn’ to rake in donor dollars. But when it's actually time to benefit from those dollars, trans women of color are always at the back of the line.”

The scope of the problem is huge, Hearns, notes, because the LGBTQ movement, as she sees it, is not reflective of the communities it purports to represent. “My hope that the Marsha P. Johnson Institute will restore our belief that all of our people are worthy of everything — and in order to believe that, you really have to start with the people who have nothing. That is my take on Pride.”

That’s why Hearns is launching the Institute in the middle of June, she explains, “because we recognize how quickly the celebration will overtake what we understand about the history. Stonewall was a radical protest. It was a radical demonstration. It was a radical movement. And so, over the last 50 years, that movement has become not only sanitized, but it has stopped making radical demands, because of the desire to be seen as ‘normal.’”

It's why Pride, for Hearns and many other activists, such as the organizers of the Reclaim Pride Coalition in NYC and similar efforts across the country, are pushing back against mainstream festivities this year. “We are celebrating from very ahistorical perspective, and it's painful to just see the celebration and the corporations who have really embraced Pride — without actually embracing what they need to do to alleviate the reasons why Pride exists in the first place,” she says. “You cannot shake hands with the police and then use trans people in a campaign with rainbows on. That’s just not what this is about.”