TRANS ACTIVISTS PLAN MARCH ON D.C.

By Lisa Neff

Staff writer

Transgender activists plan to gather in Washington as early as the fall of 2003 for the first March for Gender Rights.

"I was in Atlanta at a Martin Luther King exhibit and was inspired to think that maybe it was time for the gender movement to have its own march," said Sabrina Marcus, of the Southern Comfort Conference. Marcus proposed the march at a meeting of trans activists in May. "At this time the gender movement is very disjointed in its efforts. I believe a march on Washington would help unify the community toward a common goal and at the same time educate people to who and what we are. Society as a whole is barely aware of our existence, much less the problems we face as a community."

Activists intend to meet Aug. 9-10 in Atlanta to discuss organizing and setting goals for the march.

"We need to get our community on the radar screen and raise people's awareness about our issues and who we are as a people," said activist Rory Gould. "At the same time we need to advocate for social justice issues that effect trans and gender-variant people."

"As minority and social justice groups have done before, we will stake our claim for equal rights by marching on Washington," Gold continued. "Other movements have held national marches, whether it be African Americans in 1963 or gays and lesbians in 1979, they had politically come of age in the fight against discrimination."

The community has held four national marches: the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in October 1979, the second National March for Lesbian and Gay Rights in October 1987, the March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Rights and Liberation in April 1993 and, most recently, the Millennium March on Washington for Equal Rights in April 2000.

The 2000 march began and ended in controversy. Several of the nation's largest GLBT groups, as well as a number of state organizations, did not endorse the march. A group of gay New York politicians drafted a letter encouraging people to stay home, where their energies would be better used. And, most rambunctiously, a group of about 700 activists came together as the Ad Hoc Committee for an Open Process to protest the Human Rights Campaign, which set the march in motion; the licensing and corporate sponsorship of the event; and the mainstream objectives.

In the end, just 325,000 people attended the march, which cost about $1.5 million to produce and incurred a $330,000 debt that left businesses around the country with unpaid bills.

Organizers of the gender march said they plan to apply lessons learned in the last march-that a march must be organized at the grassroots, that a march is pricey and that there shouldn't be a rush to get to Washington.

"The original concept is to shoot for the fall of 2003," Gould said. "However, we want to do this right. And if we can't get it done in 2003, then we'll got into 2004. There's no particular rush since we aren't timing this to coincide with any particular event or anniversary."