‘We Will Not Be Erased’ Activists Say
200 Attend Rally To Oppose Potential National Rollback Of Protections
NEW HAVEN — About 200 people braved Saturday’s wind and rain to attend a rally in opposition to a Trump administration proposal to roll back federal legal protections and recognition of transgender individuals.
“A lot of people are angry, and we should be,” Chardonnay Merlot, one of the organizers of the rally, told the crowd gathered in the community room of New Haven’s United Church on the Green Parish House.
Merlot said Saturday’s rally would send a message to President Donald Trump. “In case you didn’t get our memo, we will not go quietly into the night,” Merlot said to roars of approval from those at the rally.
“By building community, by being there for each other … by fighting for our people, that is how we get change,” said IV, hotline program director at the Trans Lifeline in New Haven and another organizer of the rally.
“When transgender life is under attack, what do we do?” IV asked the crowd, drawing the chanted response: “Stand up! Fight back!”
Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that Trump’s administration is considering a new and much narrower definition of gender, a move that would dramatically lessen protections for transgender people under federal civil rights laws. According to an administration memo, the proposed change would define gender as a biological and permanent condition determined by an individual’s genitalia at birth.
Under changes made by the Obama administration, the federal definition was revised to essentially leave a person’s gender up to the choice of that individual. The change triggered a wave of opposition from many conservatives and evangelical Chris- tian groups and launched often fierce debates over access to bathrooms, single-sex programs and dormitories.
If adopted, the Trump administration’s proposed changes would effectively eliminate federal legal recognition of the approximately 1.4 million Americans who identify as transgender.
“Us being in existence in a legal sense is relatively new,” IV told those at the rally, warning that the intent of the Trump administration plan now under consideration is to take those new legal protections away.
“We will resist any attempt to erase Americans out of American life,” Merlot said before the rally got underway. “Do we stand for human rights [in this country] or don’t we? There’s no in-between … We will not be erased.”
“Being transgender … doesn’t make you less of a person,” Lisa Koskelowski, a deacon at the United Church on the Green, told the rally crowd. “You are loved.”
Sponsors of the rally included the Party for Socialism and LiberationCT, Trans@Yale, New Haven Pride Center, the antiwar group ANSWER Coalition in Connecticut, Planned Parenthood, and several other groups from around the state, according to the organizers.