Silence as an outcry
15,000 people dressed in white march for Black trans lives, remembering a trans woman who died in prison.
On 14 June 2020, an estimated 15,000 people dressed in white streamed to the Brooklyn Museum in New York for the Brooklyn Liberation March, until then the largest demonstration in history for Black trans rights.
The timing was no coincidence. Pride Month 2020 fell in the middle of the worldwide protests following the murder of George Floyd. At this intersection of two movements, Black trans people were particularly exposed: the most marginalised of the marginalised, as journalist Imara Jones put it at the time. Activists such as Raquel Willis, a writer and long-time trans rights campaigner, spoke to the crowd.
At the centre of the march was one name: Layleen Polanco. The 27-year-old Afro-Latina trans woman had died on 7 June 2019 in a solitary confinement cell at the notorious Rikers Island jail, because prison staff ignored her epileptic seizure for more than 47 minutes. She had been held because she could not afford bail of 500 dollars. The prison knew about her epilepsy. Nevertheless, a doctor had cleared her for solitary confinement. A city investigation later found that institutional failure had contributed to her death. No criminal charges were brought against the officers, however; the City of New York eventually reached a 5.9 million dollar settlement with the family.
The organisers deliberately called on people to wear white, in reference to the NAACP's historic Negro Silent Protest Parade of 28 July 1917, in which around 10,000 Black Americans marched silently down Fifth Avenue to protest against racist violence. A century later, Black queer activists chose the same gesture to say: silence can be resistance.