Activist Raquel Willis believes Democrats have abandoned trans people

For transgender Americans seeking help or protection from The Biden administration In her dying days, Raquel Willis has a sharp assessment.

“Unfortunately, the signals coming from our government right now, under a Democratic president, tell us that we’re basically on our own,” says the 33-year-old activist. The Independent.

That’s nothing new for the woman behind last week’s headline-grabbing convention bathroom rallyprotesting Republican attempts to ban trans people from using gender-appropriate bathrooms on any federal property.

Along with former US Army whistleblower and trans rights advocate Chelsea Manning, Willis was among 15 people arrested by Capitol Police for occupying the women’s bathroom and the hallway outside Mike Johnson’s office.

But that protest wasn’t just aimed at Republicans. It was also to encourage Democrats to abandon what Willis describes as “a pattern of ignoring and marginalizing the trans community” in the face of escalating conservative attacks.

Just hours after Willis’ interview with The IndependentHouse and Senate negotiators discovered a bipartisan compromise spending bill that would prohibit military health insurance from covering transitional care for children. On Wednesday, 50 House Democrats who had previously condemned the provision voted yesand key Senate Democrats said that they too would reluctantly support.

Now, with Republicans taking control of all three branches of government and both houses of Congress in January, Willis is gearing up for a fight — and she doesn’t believe trans people can afford to take their cues from Democrats.

“We have to be ready to take care of ourselves, to speak up for ourselves and to fight for ourselves, because there are not enough political leaders who stand up for us,” she says.

“People need to find political homes that actually speak to their values ​​… I don’t think the Democratic Party is serving that for the majority of marginalized people right now.”

Fighting ‘eradication’

For many Americans, their introduction to Willis came on a sunny day in Brooklyn in June 2020, three weeks after the killing of George Floyd sparked protests against racial justice across the US.

“I believe in black trans power,” Willis said into the microphone. Almost 15,000 people chanted it to her – an electric moment, given that the city’s usual LGBT+ pride parade has been canceled due to Covid-19.

it was she said afterwards“the complete opposite” of what happened when she spoke at the first Women’s March on Washington three years earlier. As she called on feminists not to treat trans women as an “afterthought”, she was reportedly muted.

Originally from Augusta, Georgia, Willis got her start in black social justice activism and anti-violence advocacy, later working at the Transgender Law Center and serving as executive editor Out magazine.

In the spring of 2023, she co-founded a new protest collective called the Gender Liberation Movement, which organized last week’s action. (Manning, Willis says, has been involved since earlier this year.)

According to Willis, the protest was modeled after the 1960 Greensboro sit-in, organized by four black students against racial segregation in North Carolinaas well as the bar “sip-in” organized by gay rights activists in New York in 1966.

This time, there was a problem Republican attempt to ban Delaware Representative Sarah McBridethe first openly trans woman ever elected to the US Congress, from the women’s bathrooms on Capitol Hill – along with all the staffers, tourists, journalists and lobbyists who are also trans.

One group, made up of trans women, cisgender (i.e. non-trans) women and non-binary people, occupied the women’s only bathroom, holding banners and chanting slogans, while another group of mostly trans and cis men made noise in the hallway outside.

That was important, Willis says, because the bathing ban also affects cis people by subjecting them to hostile surveillance and policing based on their gender presentation and physical appearance. She also argues that people of color are particularly targeted for such scrutiny.

“For years and decades, maybe longer, trans people have used public accommodations like everyone else and it hasn’t been a problem,” she says.

Willis believes these types of bans are part of an “eradication” campaign aimed at “erasing trans people from public life” in the US, in line with attempts to purge trans people from the US military and search for pro-LGBT+ and anti-racist books from schools.

“Republican Party [is] counting on the general public not caring enough about less than 1 percent of the population,” she says. “We’ve seen this throughout history, where authoritarian regimes will target a small segment of the population, make them public enemy number one, and then use that as a license to slowly target other groups they deem undesirable.”

‘We are beyond the scope of calling this a nuisance’

With a few open exceptions, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and John Fettermanthe party largely did not retaliate directly against Republican Nancy Mays, who banned McBride, allegedly at McBride’s own request.

Willis says McBride herself “deserves all the grace to manage her career as she sees fit.” But she continues: “The discrimination and disrespect she experiences… has consequences for how trans people will be treated at every stage of existence in the United States. So it’s important to make it clear that we will not allow continued disrespect and violations of our rights.” civil rights.”

What does Willis make of the standard Democratic line that the GOP’s war on trans is just a “distraction” from the “real issues”? Willis pauses and considers her words carefully before answering.

“It’s not enough at this point to just call anti-trans attack Republicans a nuisance,” she says. “Maybe if this was 2015, 2016… maybe there would be a fight.

“But lives have already been targeted and changed by these efforts. So we’re beyond that point, and we can’t counter discrimination by not doing it.”

The Harris campaign, she adds, has set a “terrible example” by refusing to respond tthe GOP’s late-election assault on anti-trans TV ads, on which the party is estimated to have spent at least $215 million.

“It was a loss before the election even happened,” Willis says.

“If the Democratic Party wants to claim to be the representative of progress and the left, it cannot leave communities unturned, because it will continue to lose if it does.”

For now, Willis believes it’s a good time for trans people and their allies to step back, connect with each other and “recharge their batteries” for the coming era of “radical defiance.”

She suspects that in the future they will have to practice mutual aid of the kind that was widespread during the pandemic and study movements in other countries that have “faced authoritarian takeovers.”

And after that? “We definitely can’t share more publicly about our plans at this time,” says Willis.