Trans Day of Remembrance | Vigil & Memorial Workshop

Every year, Transgender Day of Remembrance/Resistance honours the memory of trans people who have lost their lives through transphobic violence & discrimination. We light a candle, we say their names, we honour and remember them.

Join us this year on Gadigal to commemorate our community through a vigil and memorial workshop; drawing inspiration from those we have lost and those who still guide us today. This is a family-friendly event, curated by The Gender Centre and ACON, with generous support from City of Sydney, SWOP, Twenty10, Trans Pride Australia and the Inner City Legal Centre. The day will include speeches from trans and gender diverse activists and an optional memorial activity. 

Attendees can participate in the vigil or the memorial workshop, facilitated by writer Dylin Hardcastle (they/them). The memorial workshop will include prompts for people to respond with poems, art, writing. Attendees choose to submit these to a memorial book that will be donated to the City of Sydney, or simply take them home. The night will overall provide an opportunity for trans people, their friends & family, to connect with one another, honour those who have passed away and pay tribute to the ongoing strength of the trans community.

History:

Trans Day of Remembrance or Trans Day or Resistance (TDOR) was started in 1999 by transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith as a vigil to honour the memory of Rita Hester, a transgender woman of colour who was killed in 1998. The vigil commemorated all the transgender people lost to violence since Rita Hester’s death, and began an important tradition that has become the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance.

"Transgender Day of Remembrance seeks to highlight the losses we face due to anti transgender bigotry and violence. I am not longer a stranger to the need to fright for our rights, and the right to simply exist is first and foremost. With so many seeking to erase transgender people - sometimes in the most brutal ways possible - it is vitally important that those we lose are remembered, and that we continue to fight for justice." - Gwendolyn Ann Smith