‘These People Were Not Just a Name’: Transgender Day of Remembrance Held in Santa Barbara

Cardboard butterflies fluttered down State Street on Saturday. The signs bore the names of transgender individuals lost to violence or suicide this year — honoring their memory for the Transgender Day of Remembrance. 

“These people were not just a name,” said Megan Overland, a boardmember of the Santa Barbara Transgender Advocacy Network (SBTAN), organizer of Saturday’s activities. 

Overland herself came out as trans five years ago, she said, after moving to Santa Barbara. She was looking for support and found Lisa’s Place, a group through SBTAN that provides friendship and support to trans people on the Central Coast. 

“They lived lives as full as yours and mine,” she continued. “They were deserving of dignity and support and love and acceptance.”

Community members first gathered in De la Guerra Plaza for a rally before proceeding down State Street. Participants remembered those who have been lost and refused, in the words of trans activist and artist Dahkotahv Beckham, to be silent in the face of hatred.

The group that marched on Saturday was relatively small. Around 60-80 people attended, making it a more intimate event compared to the Transgender Unity March SBTAN held in March, which saw around 1,000 attendees. 

The first Transgender Day of Remembrance was reportedly born out of activists’ anger toward the killing of two Black trans women in Massachusetts in 1999. People lit candles and spoke the names of the victims out loud, a tradition that has been carried on ever since.

Research has shown that transgender people are four times more likely than cisgender people to be murdered, Overland noted. Over the past year in the U.S., at least 27 trangender people have been killed, according to the nonprofit Advocates for Trans Equality — although it is likely an undercount, since it is hard to collect exact data (some victims may have kept their identity private, for example). 

For more than a decade in Santa Barbara, the community has held vigil for victims of violence. But with Trump in office, “things are different right now — that’s why we asked you to be here today,” Overland told the crowd.

She brought attention to the federal government’s recent attacks on the transgender community — ”they’re telling us we don’t really exist,” she said. 

Under the Trump administration, the federal government has, from the jump, defined and treated “sex,” or gender, as an unchangeable male-female binary, determined at birth. Trump immediately — on his first day in office — signed an executive order declaring people only be federally recognized as men or women. 

What’s followed are bans on military service and participation in sports for trans people, restrictions on gender-affirming care, limits on gender markers for identification documents such as passports, the removal of information related to trans identities from government websites, and rollbacks of multiple other protections established by previous administrations. 

“Clinics are closing their doors on the trans community due to attacks from Washington,” Overland said. “The federal government wants to label our existence as a radical ideology … the message being spread is that trans people don’t matter.”

Overland described Santa Barbara as a kind and supportive community, but called on the crowd to ask their representatives to codify protections for the trans community, as the cities of Ventura and Ojai have done. According to Santa Barbara City Councilmember Oscar Gutierrez, he and fellow councilmember Kristen Sneddon — who both attended the rally and march — are working on a resolution to affirm the city’s support and protection of trangender rights no matter what comes out of Washington. 

Other speakers, including Deja Cabrera Hartley, the director of programs for the Pacific Pride Foundation, concluded their messages with positivity and love, in spite of the feds’ harmful rhetoric. 

“We are not here to only mourn. We are here to rise,” she said, tearing up. “Every trans person, past, present, and future, deserves to live in safety, dignity, and joy. Our lives are not negotiable. Our worth is not up for debate, and our existence does not require permission.”

“We remember those who were taken too soon, and in their honor, we commit ourselves to building a world where no trans person has to ever fear stepping outside … They are sparks that ignite our courage. Look around you. This community is powerful. This community is resilient, and this community is unstoppable.”