San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Protesting continues for the third Saturday in S.A.
When a student a couple of years ago walked into teacher Jalen McKee-Rodriguez’s math class at Madison High School, the student saw photos of McKee-Rodriguez with his husband. Moments later, the student came out to McKee-Rodriguez as transgender.
“They walked into the room, they saw my rainbow flag, they saw a picture of my husband and they felt empowered to walk back outside and reintroduce themselves by their name, by their pronouns,” McKee-Rodriguez said. “Sometimes it’s easy to feel ostracized and so put out of every community that when we’re able to say, ‘You matter, all the different parts of you matter, you belong here,’ that’s important.”
McKee-Rodriguez, who is black, told the story as hundreds gathered outside the Bexar County Courthouse on Saturday as part of a queer Black Lives Matter rally. The demonstration came on the third weekend of protests against racial and social injustice in San Antonio after the Memorial Day death of George Floyd in police custody.
Black transgender and queer protesters spoke of their experience feeling shunned even within the black community.
“It definitely can be hard. I’ve experienced discrimination within my own culture, not wanting to be accepting of me. But just because my culture feels that it’s not OK to be trans, or it’s not OK to be feminine, to do things others would see as strange — to me, it’s not strange,” said Amari Decor, a black trans woman. “I feel that it’s important to be able to educate ourselves and understand those who we may not normally hang out with, those we might not normally get to know.”
Suicide rates among transgender youths far outpace the rate among all high school students across the country.
The 2017 Youth Risk Behaviors study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 7.4 percent of all high school students nationwide had attempted suicide sometime in the 12 months prior to the survey.
But in 2019, 29 percent of transgender and nonbinary youths attempted suicide, according to a survey of 34,000 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer youths. The study was done by the Trevor Project, a nonprofit focused on preventing suicide among young LGBTQ people.
“My femininity should not challenge anyone’s masculinity, and it should not offend or make anyone feel uncomfortable,” Decor said. “I just have to be me. And I have to love me and I have to accept me and move throughout life holding my head high, even when people want me to hide under a rock.”
Protesters also discussed details of the killings of three black men in police custody: Charles Roundtree, Marquise Jones and Antronie Scott. Organizers called on Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales to reopen the cases.
Gonzalez, however, said earlier this month that he had no plans to re-examine the cases.
Hundreds of protesters, many wearing masks, peacefully marched over a mile from the downtown courthouse and ended the rally at Crockett Park, where music and dancing broke out in the early evening.
“People say that black lives matter, but we need to talk about how all black lives matter,” said Kimiya Factory, an activist and organizer who is queer. “San Antonio is a beautiful, beautiful place for the (LGBTQ) community.”