Debbie says:

2020 hasn’t just been a miserable year of pandemic, police murder, and poverty — it has also been an extremely violent year in our violent society. The murder rate is rising in most cities, and when the murder rate rises, murders of trans people rise faster.

So we can’t ignore Trans Day of Remembrance. Heath Owens and Adam Schubak, writing for Elle, provide a list with pictures of the 34 (!) identifiably trans people murdered this year, whose names we should know. One of them is Tony McDade, whose murder by police got some attention, but that he was trans was not often mentioned.

I like to pick one person from these lists of loss, and put my mind on an individual, rather than a wall of names.

So I randomly picked Riah Milton (photograph above). Here’s what they say about her:

Riah Milton, 25, loved to travel and be outdoors, her mother, Tracey Milton, told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “She just wanted to be accepted for who she was,” her mother said.

She’s beautiful, she looks very thoughtful in that picture, and her mother clearly accepted her as who she wanted to be. She should be around to enjoy that. I would like to have known her.

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