Reason for Hope

June 27, 2018 | 3 min. read

Dear Ones,

It’s been another rough week in the news, and we know each new headline can feel like another reason to lose faith. But tonight, we at Trans Lifeline want to remind you that there is still reason for hope. While the danger we face is real, it’s not the only thing that’s real.

As so many institutions fail our communities, we remember that we have never relied on seats of power to protect us. When our lives come under attack, we make our own hope. For millennia, queer and trans people have survived by taking care of our own, supporting those whose resources run low, and building one another up. That’s what Trans Lifeline has been doing since 2014 through our crisis hotline and our work to help trans people access and fund accurate identification documents. And it’s what we’ll keep doing until the day we’re no longer needed. Whatever goes down, we’re here for you.

There’s no denying that the landscape in this country tonight looks bad. But we’ve seen bad before. Our community is made of survivors. Every day, we at Trans Lifeline meet people whose defiance in the face of the unspeakable is their beauty, whose insistence on being treated with dignity is their advocacy, and whose very breath is their resistance. From the halls of hospitals to the halls of Congress, our ancestors have beaten back epidemics, colonial violence, and every single effort to eradicate us through individual acts of care and courage. Black trans women faced down police raids, gender nonconforming nurses volunteered on locked wards, and young people with no homes to go back to found family in the fight for their lives. And it worked. And it will work again.

Tonight, what gives us hope is you and the legacy your life carries forward. So, if your resources are running low, allow us to take a moment to return the favor. Here are a couple of reasons for hope you may have missed this week:

• Last night, 28-year-old Latina Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ousted a 10-term white male incumbent in New York’s 14th Congressional District
• This morning, the Massachusetts House of Representatives passed a bill to protect LGBTQ youth from conversion therapy designed to change their sexual orientation or gender identity
• Today, prosecutors pressed charges against two police officers who shot unarmed black victims in recent weeks, 17-year-old Antwon Ross in Pittsburgh and 33-year-old Tony Green in Georgia
• This week, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction in a case brought by the ACLU, ordering that all children separated from their parents under Trump’s zero-tolerance immigration policy be reunited within 30 days
• This month, Trans Lifeline’s Microgrants project celebrated $100,000 in disbursals to trans people now able to obtain accurate identity documents. Check out the blog post on our new website!
• And, finally, an arctic fox was rescued from an iceberg at sea by a crew of fishermen who kept him alive by feeding him Vienna sausages

Stick around. This world needs you. We’ve got each other. And we’re not going anywhere.

Love,
Sam Ames, Esq.
Interim Executive Director