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Transgender Day of Empowerment
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Transgender Day of Empowerment or Transgender Empowerment Day is celebrated each spring to honor the diverse lives in the transgender community. It is an event conceived originally in 2003 by Tracie O’Brien, director of Project STAR (Supporting Transgender Access to Resources), a program of Family Health Centers of San Diego. It is a day designed to counterbalance the mournful Transgender Day of Remembrance six months earlier, the first major holiday in the transgender community, honoring those who have been killed by transphobic violence. Instead of memoralizing those who have lost their lives, this event celebrates the diversity of living transgender people. Empowerment Day features speakers, live music and an awards ceremony honoring those who have made a positive impact upon transgender people's lives. The 2009 event addressed the mistreatment of incarcerated transgender people, and the empowerment they enjoyed when the San Diego Sheriff's Department unveiled a new treatment policy on transgender detainees.
The event has spread to other cities, often by another name (e.g., Transgender Advocacy Day) and publicized on Facebook. For example, Detroit hosts their own Transgender Empowerment Day, starting in 2008 and again in 2009. With high unemployment and underemployment within the transgender population, coinciding with housing discrimination and security issues, the Detroit event features workshops to help empower transgender persons to meet these challenges. And how to avoid becoming another name memoralized on the Day of Remembrance.
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